A language learners’ forum

The “Finnisch mit extra Mühe” group learning project doesn’t officially start until 1 September 2016, but I wanted to start this group log a little ahead of time, so we can discuss our plans and in case anyone else wants to join us.

I’m not sure exactly how the idea of learning Finnish together as a group came about. Elenia, Cavesa and I had been discussing our interest in Finnish back and forth for a while in each other’s logs, and somehow we ended up deciding to study it together. At some point, Yuurei got a little too close and our enthusiasm sucked her in too. The start date was chosen to fit Cavesa’s schedule.

Why “mit extra Mühe”? I’m afraid that’s my fault. I enjoyed using Assimil to study German and wanted to use it for Finnish as well, but the Finnish course is only available for French and German speakers. I don’t know any French (yet), and my German is still pretty bad, but I decided to get the German-based course anyway. Assimil claims that its method allows people to learn a language “without pain,” but I figured with my poor German skills, this method would be extra painful in my case. As a joke, I started referring to the course as “Finnisch mit extra Mühe” and the name caught on. Eventually we decided to give the name to our group log and to use Assimil as our text, all of us choosing either the French-based or German-based course according to which would cause us sufficient difficulty. We will, of course, be using other materials as well.

So, if anyone would like to join us for some masochistic language learning, you are very welcome. Get yourself a copy of Assimil and join us. So far our group consists of:


Masochistic Finnish learners*
Brun Ugle : 29 / 100 : 0 / 100
Cavesa : 7 / 100 : 0 / 100
Elenia : 0 / 100 : 0 / 100
Yuurei : 18 / 100 : 0 / 100
jeff_lindqvist : 100 / 100 : 0 / 100
missreadalot : 0 / 100 : 0 / 100
Ani : 0 / 100 : 0 / 100
rdearman : 0 / 100 : 0 / 100
urubu : 0 / 100 : 0 / 100
Anya : 0 / 100 : 0 / 100
Vedun (Finnisch mit einem anderen Buch)
Snow (Finnisch mit einem anderen Buch)
arthaey : 0 / 100 : 0 / 100
Basil : 10 / 100 : 0 / 100

Please fill in the poll about when you can participate in group meetings via Skype, Google Hangouts or whatever we choose.

* Progress bars are for Assimil. Passive wave first and then active wave.

Useful links:

Courses
FSI Conversational Finnish
Supisuomea: Finnish course from YLE – videos and exercises
Supisuomea videos on Youtube
Excited about Learning – Complete Finnish: supposed to be similar to Language Transfer
Tavataan Taas For Basics
videos for "Kuulostaa hyvältä" on YouTube with transcripts to all of the videos with translations to Russian and notes on the dialogues' grammar also in Russian.

Various links
Chung's Finnish Profile

Perhaps you should learn Finnish through German via Mandarin? Because really it really isn't hard enough for you at the moment.


This holds some bizarre attraction to me, even though I have zero interest in learning Finnish, a group learning experience seems kinda fun.

rdearman wrote:Perhaps you should learn Finnish through German via Mandarin? Because really it really isn't hard enough for you at the moment.


This holds some bizarre attraction to me, even though I have zero interest in learning Finnish, a group learning experience seems kinda fun.

I was considering using some Russian sites for learning Finnish. There seem to be quite a few of them and I don't know any Russian beyond having a vague idea of how the alphabet is pronounced, so that would be reasonably challenging.

There is talk of doing group learning for Polish and Swahili sometime in the future, if those are more interesting for you.

Finnish through Russian:
https://speakasap.com/en/fi-ru/

ViaDiva has some experience with the course (the Czech one, I believe).

Good luck folks! Ask me any questions you need answered and remember this; Standard Finnish is not a spoken variant, meant for interpersonal communication, so use Glossika or whatever else you need to get a hang of the real language. I'd much rather talk to a beginner who only speaks Helsinkian than to an advanced who only speaks the standard, and this extends to a lot of people here in Finland because the standard is the lect that we hear on the evening news and on the train and frankly most people aren't comfortable speaking it.

Thanks for setting up our thread, Brun Ugle!

rdearman wrote:Perhaps you should learn Finnish through German via Mandarin? Because really it really isn't hard enough for you at the moment.

I mean, Mandarin is really high on my wishlist--

rdearman wrote:This holds some bizarre attraction to me, even though I have zero interest in learning Finnish, a group learning experience seems kinda fun.

Ah, I'd be careful if I were you. That's exactly what I thought back when I saw Brun Ugle, Elenia and Cavesa talking about the project - and look at me now. XD
And to further tempt you, there's free cookies for all Finnish learners*!

Henkkles wrote:Good luck folks! Ask me any questions you need answered and remember this; Standard Finnish is not a spoken variant, meant for interpersonal communication, so use Glossika or whatever else you need to get a hang of the real language. I'd much rather talk to a beginner who only speaks Helsinkian than to an advanced who only speaks the standard, and this extends to a lot of people here in Finland because the standard is the lect that we hear on the evening news and on the train and frankly most people aren't comfortable speaking it.

Wait. What? D:
Does Assimil teach Standard Finnish then? And what does Glossika teach?


*Max. 3 cookies/learner.

Yuurei wrote:

Henkkles wrote:Good luck folks! Ask me any questions you need answered and remember this; Standard Finnish is not a spoken variant, meant for interpersonal communication, so use Glossika or whatever else you need to get a hang of the real language. I'd much rather talk to a beginner who only speaks Helsinkian than to an advanced who only speaks the standard, and this extends to a lot of people here in Finland because the standard is the lect that we hear on the evening news and on the train and frankly most people aren't comfortable speaking it.

Wait. What? D:
Does Assimil teach Standard Finnish then? And what does Glossika teach?

Standard Finnish is an artificial Frankenstein monster made to facilitate communication, and no one has ever acquired it as a first language to my knowledge. It's sort of a compromise between the West and East Finnish languages.

Glossika has the most natural Helsinki-Finnish I've ever heard which is why I'm so keen on recommending it, the speaker sounds like she could live next door.

I have never seen the Assimil Finnish course (wonder why!) but I can't imagine it being very natural. I trust that it does give you a good grounding in the workings and vocabulary though, so do carry on with it.

Henkkles wrote:Standard Finnish is an artificial Frankenstein monster made to facilitate communication, and no one has ever acquired it as a first language to my knowledge. It's sort of a compromise between the West and East Finnish languages.

Glossika has the most natural Helsinki-Finnish I've ever heard which is why I'm so keen on recommending it, the speaker sounds like she could live next door.

I have never seen the Assimil Finnish course (wonder why!) but I can't imagine it being very natural. I trust that it does give you a good grounding in the workings and vocabulary though, so do carry on with it.

Well, that's certainly good to know. Thanks for the warning.
If you recommend the Glossika speaker so highly, it's probably worth a look as well! (The Glossika course had been on my mind as a possible Finnish option before, but I've heard varying reports as to the naturalness of the sentences [in general, not about the Finnish course in particular]...)

Honestly even I find Henkkles' post intimidating Maybe because I'm now in Pori (the area is known for its dialect I've been to Rauma too and bought a nice book)
Unless there are any resources I don't know of, I don't think there's a way to learn a local variety without going for the standard language first. it's necessary for writing, and some people (especially older) will find it jarring if you write too colloquially
The best puhekieli resource is Kato hei, and it's a monolingual textbook that requires at least some knowledge of the standard language.

BTW I certainly think that while natives often have prescriptivist ideas, learners shouldn't be judgemental towards spoken Finnish, and should definitely learn to understand it asap. Try to speak it if you can but use whatever resources you have to. (BTW Colloquial Finnish tries to teach puhekieli directly, but it's not a particularly good textbook according to Chung)

Also, learning materials are somewhat artificial in any language. For example after 15+ years of English I actually find British problems very useful for learning what people really say

Assimil uses standard Finnish but it's pretty good