Listening skills

I'd like to say a few words about listening activities. It's hard to underestimate the importance of listening skills while learning a language. Being able to understand written Finnish is one thing, but being able to understand a spoken speech is a whole new experience.

Offtopic: I believe that fluency in a foreign language is not something abstract. You can always tell when you're fluent in a target language by asking yourself two simple questions:
1) Can you convey all the depth of your thoughts in a target language both in writing or speaking?
2) Can you understand all the depth of someone's thoughts presented to you either in writing or speaking?
And that's it. If your answers are "yes", then you could say you're fluent. And most of the times it doesn't matter if you convey your thoughts in a simplified language (as long as you convey everything you wanted to say or meant, it's fine, you're still fluent). However, being able to understands someone's deep thoughts is, at times, a problem, because you have to have a large bulk of passive vocabulary and recognize the foreign accents or dialects in real time often without thinking... Thankfully, there's a way to train this "instant recognition".

In order to be able to understand spoken Finnish on the go, you have to listen to finnish in large and superlarge quantities. You have to listen to Finnish while commuting to work or walking your dog. Jogging at the park in the evening. Cooking food. No matter what you are doing, if you feel like you could squeeze some listening into your activities, you should do it. It is crucial. Training listening skills takes time, and the more time you put into your listening the better!

Ok, what to listen to?

I don't think it is vise to begin with authentic audio matherials. It's too easy to get lost. However, the voice should be recorded by native speakers. The tetbook I use in my studies has a CD. I found on the trackers the PDF version of this book with all audio files in mp3. My progress with the text book is slow, so at first I listened to the same audio matherials over and over again for weeks. Sometimes I felt like I already knew what I listened to by heart (and this is a good thing). But after two weeks I felt like it was time to spice it up a little and add some new matherials. I stopped my choice on Pimsleur's Finnish level One and it sucked a lot. It didn't feel like it at first, but I'm not using this course anymore. The course has very limited vocabulary along with a very formal language. Finns just don't talk like this. Plus, there's no explanations of grammar in this course as well. It says: "The word for lunch is lounasta". Okay, thinks I, lounasta. Pretty easy to remember and I'm gonna use this common word a lot. But turned out lounasta is in partitive, and in order to add differend case endings, you have to know the stem of the word. But Pimsleur told me the lunch was lounasta and he didnt mention it was actually a partitive form of the word lounas, so it stuck in my mind as lounasta... And there are too many such casualties in the course. So, I found it useless after a couple of weeks of using it.

I found on the internet the complete collection of podcasts by Finnish Pod 101 (turned out the site was free and I could have downloaded everything from one spot). There are many different podcasts for many different levels. In the audio, they introduce you some short dialogue, then explain everything about grammar and vocabulary in English. I found it interesting and useful and for now it's always in my playlist, although I try to indulge in these podcasts only half of my listening time, because, well, there's not to much actual Finnish in them. They talk mostly in English, explaining you vocabulary and stuff, while in order to get used to Finnish speech, you have to listen to Finnish a lot. Right now I listen to their Lover Beginner podcasts, but I started from the Absolute Beginner and, I'm not gonna lie, it was challenging nevertheless.

Actually, this is what I'm listening to for the time being: audio files from my textbook and the FinnishPod101. I have to admit, when you listen to the same thing over and over again, it starts to get to you. When I have free time at work (I have an office job), I like to read another absolutely great Finnish textbook Suomen Mestari. It's fun and interesting, and it's entirely in Finnish. It's not too complicated for me already because I've already learnt the grammar it covers, so I use this book as a supplementary material. There's audio files in addition to the textbook and they are absolutely amazing too. Interesting dialogues, for or five different actors including children. Great. I downloaded the files from the trackers, and , when my usual listening materials start to bore me, I listen to this Suomen Mestari audio for fun. Highly recommend both the book ad the audio. You could find the book by typing Suomen Mestari PDF on google.

Also, there's a good site with authentic audio, News in easy Finnish. It's an awesome resourse, I guess, but I don't really use it for now, because I'm not there yet.

How to listen to?

I train my listening skills like this: I take short audio matherials which last 15 min max amd listen to them on repeat for two days (while commuting to work). After two days I take another 15mins audio and repeat the activity. Sometimes, in a few days or weeks, I return to matherial that was fun or interesting or to the matherial that was challanging and that requires more listenings. Very effective.

I believe I've covered everything I wanted to say for now. If someone has any questions, feel free to ask them in the comment section!

Two very useful links

Two extremely useful resources that I use all the time:

1) Whenever you can't figure out the infinitive of a verb.

Find the Verb

2) Whenever you have the infinitive but don't know how to conjugate it.

Verb conjugator

In the meantime...

In the meantime studying Finnish grammar has become my daily routine. More than that, Finnish has become the background of my daily life. I study the language both at home and at work. I've changed the interfaces of all my gadgets to Finnish. I listen to podcasts in Finnish on my way to work. And I study grammar, of course.

I use the book Opi puhumaan suomea or Learn to speak Finnish. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything of the sort in English.

What do I like about this book? Almost everything. There is a short dialogue or a text in the beginning of each lesson. The student is expected to notice the new grammatical structure and figure out its meaning. After that you read an explanation which is followed by examples. The book is created the way that every new theme overlaps the preceding one so you are constantly reminded of what you have already learned. I like this approach.

What do I not like about the book? There's no keys to exercises. For me, it's very important to correct myself after doing the exercises so that I know my errors. Knowing your errors is crucial because this way you know what to work on... So I decided to skip the exercises and for now use this book as a source of grammar and vocabulary only.

I also found a very good book for the beginners. Lessons on Finnish Grammar in English by Heikura Vuokko. The book is written from the first person's point of view and the author tries to guide you through the labyrinth of the Finnish grammar.

Very useful! It's on the net so if you google hard enough you can find this book in digital formats. I'd highly recommend it to be your very first Finnish grammar book.

What to do first?

There are many different methods of learning a language. Here and there we see adds offering new effortless ways of acquisition Spanish/French/Finnish/whatever. Some of them suggest to put the grammar books away, others convince us that we don't even have to do anything because their "methods" will teach us the language while we are sleeping. The market is full of this stuff but I can't stress it enough: your ability in a foreign language depends on two factors: time and effort. I've heard and read many sories about people who learnt a foreign language naturally while living in a country where the target language is spoken. It might be a good option of learning Finnish but I can't move to Finland for now. Some say that we must learn languages as kids, surround ourselves with the language and take it in. But it will takes years and I think this method is not productive. On top of that, our brain learns differently when we are adults. So I deliberatly chose the only approach that works: a grammar based approach.

The first thing I did was that I found a short grammar book for an absolute begginer covering the very basic Finnish grammar. It is essential to familiarize yourself with the amout of work you are expexted to put in learning Finnish from the get go. Thank to that book I found out that there are several types of verbs in Finnish, I learned the basics of noun cases. It is worth noticing that I quickly went through the book (it took me three or four days) without trying to memorize any grammar rules or words. But I must say that some of the language has stucked in my brain already and this was the initial goal. All grammar books generaly explain grammar in similar ways, so when I start a real comprehensive textbook, I will know what is ahead of me and when to expext the answers to the questions that will inevitably pop up in my mind. I used a grammar book for begginners written by a Russian author so it is no use of posting the title on here. At first it doesn't really matter what book to use as long as it is short (mine was 50 pages) and covers the basics.

One cannot rely on just one sourse of grammar so it is important to have several of them. Since I already ordered a comprehensive textbook I am planning to use to teach myself Finnish, I needed something more. Having read tons of reviews and comments on different internet resourses I chose Finnish: an essentian grammar by Fred Karlsson as my supplementary book. This is no textbook but rather a refference book and I use it accordingly. I'm content with the book for now.

Another thing that is essential to do first, apart from familiarizing yourself with basic grammar, is starting to listen to the language. I dont't believe in explanations in books of how to pronounce this sound or another. I have to hear it. Plus, listening is a huge part of my studying in general. I found some matherials to listen to but I'll make a separate post dedicated to these matherials once I've formed my opinion of them.

To be or not to be

I was surprised to learn that Suomen grammar has a cetrain resemblance to Russain grammar. Take, for example, to have. In English (as in French by the way), we use the verb to have to express the idea of posession. In Russian we use the verb to be. This concept might seem hard to understand but I'll try to explain. Russian phrase I have a pen would look like У меня есть ручка which could reflect the idea that a pen is in my possesion. The Russain version In my possesion (У меня) is in the beggining of the sentence because in Russain we could change the word order without loosing the sence of the phrase.

Finnish uses a similar structure to express this idea. The pronoun Mina meaning I, the ending (or suffix) lla meaning into, in; together (Minulla) they convey the idea that something is in your hands, in your possesion. And this possesion is expressed with the verb to be: olla, which takes form of on for some reason... I have a car. A car is in my possesion. Minulla on auto.... Makes sence for my "Russian" mind.

Even though it should be easy for me to grasp this structure, it is actually not. Years of studying English and French have deeply etched in my brain the concept of to have and I guess it will take time for me to get used to this construction.

Background

Hi there to everyone who has stumbled upon this humble blog of mine!

I think that the title of the page reveals it in the most obvious way but still: I’m going to learn Finnish language. I must admit I don’t speak Finnish yet, but I decided to name the blog “How I learned Finnish language” assuming that I will have learnt enough of the language by the time I get first visitors on here or even first subscribers...

Finnish has never been the language I always wanted to learn. I have never really watched Finnish movies or listened to Finnish songs that could make me fall in love with the language (although I’ve been to Finland for a short week). Quite contrary, I heard that Finnish was one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn (especially for English speakers) and I have never been gravitated towards undoable tasks. However, my life is now taking a direction where I need to know Finnish. Well, I myself am leading my life to a path where I need to know Finnish, because this is how life works – you have to take responsibility for your own choices if you want your life to change/improve.

To learn Finnish quickly is an ambitious goal and goals are nothing but dreams unless they have deadlines. I’m writing this post in the beginning of October 2016 and I’m planning to be at B-2 level by 2019. I give myself 2 whole years for teaching myself as much Finnish as I can. During this time I am going to talk about my experience in studying Finnish on this blog, share the materials I use, technics and methods I employ. I hope one day it will be helpful for anyone facing the same goal as mine.

Suomi is not going to be my first foreign language. I speak English a little, although not well enough to consider it as my second language. In fact, one of the reasons of why I’m writing in English right now is because I want to practice it. So, don’t throw poop at me when you see a mistake or a grammar error. Quite possibly it was just a typo! I also understand French at an intermediate level and I do love this language. What I’m trying to say is that I already have some experience in learning languages from a different language family than my native tongue (I was born in Russia 27 years ago and have been speaking Russian ever since, with a two year’s delay in the beginning of my personhood) and this experience may help me with my efforts in conquering Finnish. I believe that previous exposure to learning foreign languages is my essential advantage for now because I know HOW to learn foreign languages in general (or, at least, I think I know).  I hope this will speed up the process a little.

The last thing I want to say is that I don’t think I have any predispositions towards languages. I believe your success in learning a foreign language mainly depends on the amount of time you allocate to your studies and work you put in that time. A very easy formula that have never failed me.