Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French and a pinch of Mandarin)

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
Phantom Kat
White Belt
Posts: 48
Joined: Sat Dec 23, 2017 11:15 pm
Location: China
Languages: Spanish (N) English (N) Finnish (A2?) Mandarin (Learning) French (Learning)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10127
x 144

Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French and a pinch of Mandarin)

Postby Phantom Kat » Sun Feb 17, 2019 6:54 pm

My old log is out there somewhere, but new year, new log. Plus my priorities have changed a lot this past year.

So Finnish. I started learning Finnish back in high school and continued on and off through my first two years of college until life got too busy for me. I never had a concrete goal for Finnish. I still found it insanely fascinating, but that wasn't enough to keep studying. Yet those books on my bookshelf continued to taunt me.

So my long-term goal is to study my Master's in Education in Finland! I should start saving up for it in a year, right after I finish paying off my student loans. I have a Google Doc of research and information just ready to go. My ultimate goal is to use that as a stepping stone to eventually teach and live in Finland. It's going to be a long, long journey, but I'm insanely excited to officially get started on it.

Until then, I'm planning to travel to Tampere this summer with my mom. I hope to really use as much Finnish as I can while there!

Resources

Assimil Le Finnois
Finnish for Foreigners 1 and 2
Finnish: An Essential Grammar
Beginner's Finnish
Suoment Mestari
Suomu Taskussa
Anki
An assortment of children's books both online and in print

Current Goal

Finnish Assimil Le Finnois and Finnish for Foreigners, before heading off to Tampere in the summer.

And French...

I started studying it with fervor December 2017, but by the end of the summer I kind of grew bored. I still love French, but studying it stopped being exciting after the beginner stage. Plus I don't have a concrete, professional reason to study it right now, unlike Finnish.

So I'll read things here and there and use it while going through Assimil Le Finnois.

Resources

Assimil Freanch with Ease
501 French Verbs
Bescherelles Le Grammaire
1Jour1Actu
Tumblebooks
Netflix
Assortment of children's books

Current Goal

Read an article on 1Jour1Actu once a day
Last edited by Phantom Kat on Sat Aug 08, 2020 7:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
4 x

Phantom Kat
White Belt
Posts: 48
Joined: Sat Dec 23, 2017 11:15 pm
Location: China
Languages: Spanish (N) English (N) Finnish (A2?) Mandarin (Learning) French (Learning)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10127
x 144

Re: Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French)

Postby Phantom Kat » Sun Feb 17, 2019 9:04 pm

Progress so Far

Assimil Le Finnois I have completed Lesson 53 (1st Wave) and Lesson 4 (2nd Wave) as of yesterday. This is my favorite resource so far. At around Lesson 10, the dialogues felt very overwhelming with their vocabulary and grammar, and if I hadn't been working with Finnish for Foreigners I would have been totally lost. Eventually, though, I found my pace. I have a Google Doc where I write notes for every lesson, especially on vocab and grammar points not covered by the lesson notes. I'm around ten lessons behind ( :oops: ), but it really helps to go back and reread my notes when I review.

I really, really enjoy the dialogues and their humor, and it's a big part as to why I've been keeping up with my lessons. I tend to review before class begins and during my conference time. After school is reserved for new lessons if I have nothing pressing. I've even reviewed during "lunch bunch", when my students watch a cartoon and eat lunch in my classroom.

Also, my poor book is getting rubbed around the edges for being in my purse all day long. But hey! That means it's getting used and loved. :)

Finnish for Foreigners I'm up to Lesson 26 (out of 40), but man, do I feel burned out. Assimil has spoiled me with their dialogues. FFF's dialogues make me want to groan out loud more than once. I was on a roll with FFF around September - November, and I still aim to complete FFF before my trip. However, I think it would be better to continue after I finish Assimil. Besides, FFF is not a course I can do out of the house. I don't feel like lugging around the workbook, exercise book, and a notebook every day!

Anki I have been trying to be as consistent as possible with Anki. Right now I have 467 Finnish words and expressions, most coming from Assimil and Finnish for Foreigners. I keep track of my Assimil words in a mini notebook I carry around with the book.

I used to write a sentence for each word in my daily review back when I studying French in the summer, but I can't do that if I review Anki during work. Maybe I can do it for the words I got wrong that day? Write them down on a sticky note, then write my sentences when I have time during the day? I'll try that tomorrow and see how it goes. I seriously need to get off my butt and practice more writing outside of Finnish for Foreigners.

Pikku Pöllön Joulu This is a (pop up!) children's book I got off eBay years back and the easiest one I have. Last week I went through around a third of it, writing notes on vocabulary and grammar so I can actually finish reading it. This would be the first native material I read, front to back! I'd be lying if I said it wasn't exciting. :)
4 x

Phantom Kat
White Belt
Posts: 48
Joined: Sat Dec 23, 2017 11:15 pm
Location: China
Languages: Spanish (N) English (N) Finnish (A2?) Mandarin (Learning) French (Learning)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10127
x 144

Re: Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French)

Postby Phantom Kat » Sat Feb 23, 2019 4:03 am

Update!

Assimil

I have completed Lesson 56 (which was a hilarious dialogue between "two dogs", with growling and everything :lol: ). Personally, I don't like to do a lesson a day during the work week because I don't really have time to digest everything. I think the learning curve can get pretty steep at times, so if I did a lesson a day I would comprehend maybe 75% before moving on? Yeah, I don't like that. Weekends, I can do a lesson or two a day just because I don't really do anything else and can actually devote the time to it.

Most highly specific, yet useful word this week? Lukuhäiriö, Dyslexia. (And by extension, lukuhäiriöinen) As a teacher I definitely need to know this. Ironically, my student with dyslexia is my biggest language learning fan. She loved it when I brought a French YA book to read for our Read In day, and loved it when I taught them some Finnish words and phrases when we did our Countries Around the World craft stations. (She ended up saying, "Olen Père Noël," at one point when she wanted to know how to say Santa Claus in French. In that moment, she knew four languages: Spanish, English, French, and Finnish. ;) )

In the Active Wave I completed up to Lesson 6. What I actually do for the Active Wave is I transcribe the audio, then check for mistakes using the text. The reason I'm doing it this way is because I always, always end up ignoring the Listening part of my courses. Something about just listening and nothing else makes me restless and switch to reading. So the Active Wave is my way of actively listening and training my ear.

Anki

I've been pretty good about keeping up to date on my reviews. I need to back and scour Assimil for new words to input. I'm only up to 479 words and expressions.

I did end up doing some writing based off my review words, and by some I mean "only Friday morning". :oops: My coworker did ask with a very confused, "What's that?" and pointed at my writing practice.

Pikku Pöllön Joulu Got around halfway through the book now and did some review from the beginning. I managed to input a good number of words and expressions into Anki. The most useful one I found so far from the book is, Näyttää siltä, että...

You know, I still have all the sticky notes of vocab words stuck behind the cover from when I got this book almost seven years ago, but based off those, my knowledge of the book extended to "recognizing words and understanding the function of some of the cases". Going through the book now I can make a lot more educated cases based off what I know and can recognize more verb tenses. It's pretty cool how much progress I have made since August!

Forest App (Pomodoro) I love, love this app for keeping track of how much I've studied. (Getting new trees is so addicting!) Since mid-December until now I have studied roughly 24 hours. I know I've studied more than that, but I only use it when I know I won't be interrupted. At school there's always some teacher or student that knocks on my door to talk about something. :/ So I mostly use it at home.

A word wall???

So today I had a training on Word Walls. It wasn't very interesting, seeing as I'm forced to have word walls (one in Spanish, one in English) due to our dual-language program and don't need the "aha!" moment to do one. But then I started thinking, "What if I have one at home, for Finnish?" I do have a gigantic blank wall above my desk. I wouldn't put up every single word, of course. I already have Anki. But I could use it for those words I end up confusing (silittää and selittää), misspelling (ottamme instead of the correct otamme), and all those words in the partitive plural I can't decline.

Bilingual Labeling

I went on a English/Spanish labeling spree this week because the head honchos are coming to visit the district Monday, and I wanted to do the same at home, but with Finnish and French, to expand my "real world" vocab. I do have plenty of sentence strips in my class, itching to be used. I would start simple (like Kinder/1st grade words) then eventually do higher-level words like "threshold" or "light socket". Who knows? Maybe my mom will pick up some Finnish before our trip.

Question Time!

In Assimil Lesson 54, we have: Usein koira löytää luokasta sen, joka on eniten hyväilyn tarpeessa.

I can't figure out what "sen" is referring to. Is it referring to a person not yet specified? Or is it referring to an "it", a "something", that is later revealed to be a person? I'm pretty sure "luokasta" means "from the class", so could it be: "Usually the dog finds (sen) from the class, someone who is in most need of a caress."
1 x

Phantom Kat
White Belt
Posts: 48
Joined: Sat Dec 23, 2017 11:15 pm
Location: China
Languages: Spanish (N) English (N) Finnish (A2?) Mandarin (Learning) French (Learning)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10127
x 144

Re: Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French)

Postby Phantom Kat » Sun Feb 24, 2019 7:20 am

Bones wrote:
Phantom Kat wrote:Question Time!

In Assimil Lesson 54, we have: Usein koira löytää luokasta sen, joka on eniten hyväilyn tarpeessa.

I can't figure out what "sen" is referring to. Is it referring to a person not yet specified? Or is it referring to an "it", a "something", that is later revealed to be a person? I'm pretty sure "luokasta" means "from the class", so could it be: "Usually the dog finds (sen) from the class, someone who is in most need of a caress."


In this sentence sen refers to a person. It's the word se in the accusative case. Normally in Standard Finnish se is the third person singular pronoun that refers to inanimate objects and animals like the English word it, but here it's used as part of this "se, joka" collocation. In casual speech se can also be used to refer to people in place of hän. In modern Finnish hyväillä means to caress, but it's also an obsolete word for petting an animal. Now you should have all the remaining pieces to finish the translation.


I knew "se" was used instead of "hän" in Colloquial Finnish, but I didn't think that it was part of "joka". Interesting! And as for hyväillä, I guess that would make it a synonym of selittää? Since after that they use selittää to mention how the student pets the dog's head.

Bones wrote:
Phantom Kat wrote:Lukuhäiriö, Dyslexia. (And by extension, lukuhäiriöinen)


It's actually lukihäiriö, because... well, who knows. Maybe the person who came up with the word was dyslexic? The same root is spelled luku in many other compound words like lukulasit (reading glasses), lukujärjestys (class schedule) and lukutoukka (bookworm).


Huh. Good to know. Finnish Wikitionary does say lukihäiriöinen (that was just me not spelling it correctly) but still has lukuhäiriö... But then Google corrects it to lukihäiriö (which gives me 232,000 results as opposed to the 12,900 I get from the lukuhäiriö). I'll make sure to update my vocab list before I add it to Anki.

Thanks for the corrections!
0 x

naqvisson
White Belt
Posts: 48
Joined: Sun Dec 10, 2017 3:10 pm
Languages: English, Urdu/Hindi (N), Punjabi, Sariaki, Finnish (A1), Swedish (B1/B2),
Studies: German, French!
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... ch#p128541
x 101

Re: Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French)

Postby naqvisson » Sun Feb 24, 2019 10:32 am

Welcome to the forum and the world of wonderful Finnish language...I appreciate your motivation and will keenly follow your log...your log makes me think again of learning Finnish...I hv 2 queries if you can please help:

1. Do you hv Audios of Finnish for Foreigners 1&2? If not then how are you trying to follow these books?

2. How has been the Assimil Finnish experience so far...I hv the book in german and still mustering up courage to start it!

Looking forward!

BR
0 x

Phantom Kat
White Belt
Posts: 48
Joined: Sat Dec 23, 2017 11:15 pm
Location: China
Languages: Spanish (N) English (N) Finnish (A2?) Mandarin (Learning) French (Learning)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10127
x 144

Re: Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French)

Postby Phantom Kat » Sun Feb 24, 2019 9:30 pm

naqvisson wrote:Welcome to the forum and the world of wonderful Finnish language...I appreciate your motivation and will keenly follow your log...your log makes me think again of learning Finnish...I hv 2 queries if you can please help:

1. Do you hv Audios of Finnish for Foreigners 1&2? If not then how are you trying to follow these books?

2. How has been the Assimil Finnish experience so far...I hv the book in german and still mustering up courage to start it!

Looking forward!

BR


Thanks for the warm welcome! :D

1. I don't have the audio, just the course and exercise books. Back when I first bought the course and exercise books for Finnish for Foreigners 1 (like six years ago) I could not find the audio anywhere on the internet. It was only until a couple of months ago that I stumbled on the books in digital format (with the audio as MP3s) on Audio Forum (website is not connecting right now).

Without the audio you can pretty much do everything except the dialogue exercises in the exercise book. Since Finnish pronunciation is pretty straightforward (at least to me, as a Spanish speaker) I'm not in a rush to get the audio. I can supplement audio in other ways (i.e. Assimil, Netflix, etc.). So Finnish for Foreigners is my "grammar and writing drills" course.

2. I really, really like the Assimil Finnish course. The dialogues are pretty funny, and I find most of the vocab useful. I do think there's a steep learning curve after Lesson 7 or so. There are times where in a new lesson I can pretty much understand everything except for two or three vocab words. Other times I'm totally lost until I read the translation and pull up Finnish Wikitionary. There are grammar points here and there they don't cover in their notes, so I consult the internet or my Finnish: An Essential Grammar book.

I can share with you the Google Doc I use to take notes on Assimil Finnish. I break each lesson down and make color-coded notes on vocab I'm having trouble and grammar points either not covered by the notes or that I need to remember.
2 x

Phantom Kat
White Belt
Posts: 48
Joined: Sat Dec 23, 2017 11:15 pm
Location: China
Languages: Spanish (N) English (N) Finnish (A2?) Mandarin (Learning) French (Learning)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10127
x 144

Re: Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French)

Postby Phantom Kat » Tue Feb 26, 2019 3:46 am

Morgana wrote:I know you said you weren't worried about getting the audio, but in case it's useful to you or anyone reading there was some recent discussion about Audio Forum here.


Ahh, good to know! Yeah, I was pretty hesitant when I first stumbled upon the website but didn't think much of it later on. Thanks for the heads up!

Bones wrote:
Phantom Kat wrote:And as for hyväillä, I guess that would make it a synonym of selittää? Since after that they use selittää to mention how the student pets the dog's head.


Hyväillä can be a synonym of silittää in some contexts, but in general there is still a slight difference in meaning like there is between the English verbs to caress and pet. Both of these English words could be valid translations here depending on the author's intent. So, your initial translation is also correct, just not exactly the way I would translate it. I'm afraid I've just caused confusion by getting nit-picky about this particular word. Most of the time hyväillä = to caress and silittää = to pet. I think the original sentence was probably a French dad joke that didn't translate too well into Finnish and we are now trying to somehow accurately translate into English. Selittää is also a word in Finnish and means to explain.


Aww, man, that was a typo. I specifically remembered selittää as "to explain" because of the "e". That was how I separated it from silittää. It was one of the words that popped up in Pikku Pöllön Joulu. I'll make a mental note to proofread more carefully.

And don't worry! The distinction doesn't seem that confusing at all. Reminds me of the Spanish distinction of "pata" (an animal's foot or leg but is colloquially used for humans, too) and "pie" (a human foot).
0 x

Phantom Kat
White Belt
Posts: 48
Joined: Sat Dec 23, 2017 11:15 pm
Location: China
Languages: Spanish (N) English (N) Finnish (A2?) Mandarin (Learning) French (Learning)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10127
x 144

Re: Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French)

Postby Phantom Kat » Sat Mar 02, 2019 8:28 pm

I took my first personal day in three years this Wednesday to get my passport! Hopefully I get it with no hiccups.

Update!

Assmil

Up to Lesson 58 now. Active Wave up to Lesson 6, so uhh, a bit behind there. (This is what happened when I did Assimil French. I was just too gung-ho about going onto a new lesson that I put off doing the reviews. I'll make it up this weekend.) I'm not at the point in the lessons that I'm getting more instances of "wait, why is that in that case?". I like knowing why everything is declined or conjugated the way it is, so these little instances veer me off into a wild goose chase in Finnish: An Essential Grammar or online.

Children's Books

I'm almost done with Pikku Pöllön Joulu, but I've actually gone into analyzing/reading another book I have: Kummitusperhe Kammoset. It's a small chapter book, so it's not as easy to decipher as the pop-up book. I've actually only done the first two paragraphs. :lol: But I feel like I'm learning a lot. I'm getting used to seeing the Imperfect, as well as the Perfect and the Plusquamperfect. I'm also picking up new expressions or phrases, such as Luukun ottamatta (with the exception of (subject in Partitive)) and Toisensa jälkeen (one after another).

And, I don't mind if the book is pretty beyond my level. Going sentence by sentence, searching online dictionaries for expressions and words, looking up why a case is used in this way, is pretty fun. I'm running across words that are more useful than I thought (like nukhataa - to fall asleep and keksiä - to invent/make up.)

Oh yeah, and I found out that Peffapallo and Kymmentä Tikkua Laudalla are two children's games. I had been scratching my head for like, ten minutes figuring what those words meant in that context.

Conjugating Practice

Sometimes you need to put your nose to the grindstone and just do some conjugating practice. I use whatever paper I have at the time (using math copies I don't need in my classroom is one prime example) and just conjugate and check myself. Right now I'm mainly practicing the Present, Imperfect, Perfect, and Plusquamperfect (and their negatives) before I move on. Everything is pretty straightforward once you get the -nyt/nut/sut/syt, etc. form.

For the Imperfect, I still have to check the notes and rules before I add that -i. But progress was made! The last time I did this, about a month ago, it was more frustrating than anything else.

Writing

I know it's recommended to write journal entries about what you did, but man oh man is that boring to me. I kept a diary back in middle school, but other than that there's just something about writing about what I did in my daily life that makes me feel weird. I enjoy my hobbies to get away from my daily life. Why would I want write about how my admin wastes my time during conferences or how coworkers are spreading rumors? Those things get left at work, where they belong.

So I prefer writing fiction to practice my languages. I have a ton of original character with much more interesting lives. I really liked doing it with French, and I think I'm at the point in Finnish where I can write something that is more exciting than, "The cat was on the table." It's also a big reason I want to get those above tenses down pat. It's pretty boring to just write in the present tense. (And I'm glad that Finnish doesn't have the passé simple to keep track of.)

Last weekend I spent an hour and a half just writing about one of my characters, a hoodlum turned reluctant superhero. Maybe I'll post something later on. Some useful words I found I was using was likkua, hymyillä, and urhea.

Clozemaster

Got back into Clozemaster, now that I can comfortably deduce what the sentence means without looking every word up. It's very addicting doing just one more round. I'm hesitant doing too much of it because I'm not sure how accurate the sentences are as a whole. Has anybody gone through the English --> Suomi track and have any thoughts about it?

Anki

I need to add new words from: Assmil, my writing practice, the children's books I've been doing, and some from Clozemaster that I found useful.

Question Time!

These are from Kummitusperhe Kammoset:

Edellisenä iltana kaikki Onnisen lapset olivat saaneet Ollia lukuun ottamatta valvoa niin myöhään kuin huvitti.


I'm not sure what "kuin huvitti" means in this context. The closest I can come up with "as they felt like/as they wanted". If that's the case, I'm not sure what the rule on the construction is from the verb "huvittaa".

Pienten lasten tapaan, Olli nukahti joka ilta samaan aikaan.


I don't know what "pienten lasten tapaan" means in this sentence. Google Translate says it means "Like little children". Is this part of a fixed expression?

This one is from Assimil:

Siirrä kulhoa tännepäin, otan sitä vielä vähän.


Why is "kulho" in the Partitive? The French translation tells me it's singular: "le plat".
3 x

cathrynm
Orange Belt
Posts: 246
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:11 am
Location: Berkeley, California
Languages: Japanese(JLPT N3), Finnish(beginner), English(native)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=721
x 249
Contact:

Re: Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French)

Postby cathrynm » Sun Mar 03, 2019 3:52 am

I've spent some time on the ClozeMaster Finnish-Suomi sentences. To me, I guess, seems close enough. I see a few weird ones now and then, but I'm not good enough to really know for sure. I do like the program, as it's something I can squeeze in on the way to work, something like this.
0 x

Phantom Kat
White Belt
Posts: 48
Joined: Sat Dec 23, 2017 11:15 pm
Location: China
Languages: Spanish (N) English (N) Finnish (A2?) Mandarin (Learning) French (Learning)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10127
x 144

Re: Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French)

Postby Phantom Kat » Mon Mar 04, 2019 12:45 am

cathrynm wrote:I've spent some time on the ClozeMaster Finnish-Suomi sentences. To me, I guess, seems close enough. I see a few weird ones now and then, but I'm not good enough to really know for sure. I do like the program, as it's something I can squeeze in on the way to work, something like this.


Ahh, good to know~ And I agree. Clozemaster is a perfect way to squeeze in some language learning while on the go.
0 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: iguanamon and 2 guests