PART 2
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Literature / Media / Film / Music
For the learner of Finnish, there is plenty authentic material from Finnish culture that could enhance or enrich the learning experience.
Finnish literature as a “high” art form is relatively young as the literary language was standardized in the 19th century. In the past, folklore was the primary means of literary expression, and its most famous example is “Kalevala” (1835) which is an edited compilation of myths and folk tales. It became a symbol of emerging Finnish nationalism in the 19th century and became regarded as the Finnish national epic. Its influence went beyond Finland and was claimed by J.R.R. Tolkien to have been the inspiration for some of the characters and themes in “Silmarillion” and “Lord of the Rings”
Important figures in Finnish literature include Aleksis Kivi (writer of “Seitsemän veljästä” (Seven Brothers)), Mika Waltari (writer of “Sinuhe” (The Egyptian)), Eino Leino (poet known for his poem collections “Helkavirsiä” and translation into Finnish of Dante’s “Divine Comedy”) and Tove Jansson (the “Moomin” books). Note that Jansson belongs to the minority of Swedish Finns and wrote in Swedish. Finnish versions of the “Moomin” books are ultimately translations from Swedish.
Movies in Finnish can also provide a helpful diversion for students learning Finnish. A couple of noteworthy directors are Aki Kaurismäki and Timo Koivusalo. For someone interested in Finnish and its related languages, watching the Estonian film “Kinnunen” (2007) or the Russian film “Kukushka” (2002) may be worthwhile. The former deals with differences between Estonian and Finnish as well as stereotypes held between Estonians and Finns. The latter deals with two soldiers who are taken in by a nomad even though each person speaks a different language: Finnish, Northern Saami and Russian.
A music lover who is learning Finnish can use Finnish songs to enhance understanding of the language, while also enjoying the creative efforts of Finnish musicians. Fans of classical music may take a liking to music by Sibelius or Rautavaara, while fans of rock or heavy metal may enjoy bands such as The Rasmus, HIM, Lordi, Apocalyptica and Nightwish. Prominent Finns active in dance or electronic music include Ville Virtanen (a.k.a. Darude), Harri Andersson (a.k.a. DJ Proteus), and Tapio Hakanen (a.k.a. Orkidea).
Learning material
i) Books
1) Teach Yourself Finnish (Terttu Leney)
- It comes with two CDs and a textbook and costs about $25 US on Amazon.
- What I enjoy about this course is that it has lively dialogues, a user-friendly presentation to grammar. The back of the book contains the answer key, some appendices on Finnish inflection and small bidirectional word lists.
- A noticeable shortcoming of the course is that it presents a lot of material at once (however Leney (thankfully) doesn't use idiosyncratic methods/analogies to describe or explain Finnish grammar as “Colloquial Finnish” (q.v.) does). This figurative avalanche of information is made worse by the small amount of exercises relative to what is introduced in the dialogues. The section for exercises in most chapters is little more than a series of 10 to 15 questions of which some ask the learner to translate one sentence into Finnish, or ask what a certain Finnish phrase means in English.
- Another shortcoming is that several of the dialogues are not recorded. This is especially noticeable in the later chapters when only one dialogue out of several in the chapter is on the CD.
- A minor shortcoming of this course is the emphasis on situations encountered more frequently by tourists (e.g. making hotel reservations, cashing travellers’ cheques, shopping). This aspect may irk some users who wish to learn Finnish for “less practical” reasons. In addition, the course does not spend much time discussing colloquial Finnish.
2) Colloquial Finnish (Daniel Abondolo)
- It comes with two CDs or cassettes and a textbook and costs about $35 US on Amazon.
- The course follows the pattern of other books in the “Colloquial” series with chapters usually containing dialogues, some notes on grammar and exercises. Answers and word lists (English-to-Finnish and vice-versa) come at the end of the book.
- Compared to “Teach Yourself Finnish”, “Colloquial Finnish” takes a very different teaching approach and presentation and is probably best avoided by a beginner.
- In “Colloquial Finnish”, Abondolo takes the unorthodox step of teaching a lot of colloquial language starting from the first lesson. While this may not be necessarily harmful in the long run (and is certainly not inaccurate since Finns do not usually speak to each other in the formal way), his approach is comparable to teaching mainly colloquial English rather than formal or standard English to beginning ESL students. If any foreigner would like to deal with Finns in less informal situations (e.g. writing emails requesting official or business information) or take Finnish classes and/or Finnish proficiency tests relying on what he or she has learned from Abondolo's course, then it would likely not be a good idea. Beginners relying on this course may get the habit of letting the slangy or colloquial expressions and forms as emphasized in this course become their default ways of communicating with Finns. This (over)use by force of habit may unfortunately be perceived as the learner being impertinent, trendy or too cozy by Finns rather than polite or respectful.
- Another unorthodox step is that Abondolo uses an esoteric convention of notation when explaining details in Finnish grammar. As a result many of the words or morphemes used in the examples, grammatical notes or glossaries are not expressed primarily using conventional Finnish spelling, but rather in this esoteric notation. Abondolo is adhering to a notation that I’ve only seen so far in a few academic monographs or analyses of Finnish grammar written by him, and certainly never in any other Finnish course for foreigners or reference manuals written by other experts.
- In addition his idiosyncratic approach leads him to describe consonant gradation as "consonant compression" (a non-standard descriptor) and describe certain suffixes as being "tight-lid" (another non-standard descriptor) with the idea that certain "tight-lid" suffixes "compress" the consonants.
- Like “Teach Yourself Finnish”, “Colloquial Finnish” also suffers from a lack of exercises and some of the dialogues in the textbook are not recorded on the CDs.
- Lastly I was rather annoyed by the CDs containing so much in English with Abondolo either paraphrasing some of his grammatical notes or reading aloud the dialogues' English preambles as printed in the textbook (with all due respect, does he think that learners are illiterate or dying to hear his chattering?). This habit of his can be as grating as people reading their Powerpoint slides verbatim which imparts nothing extra to the audience (apart from letting the audience hear the presenter's voice). Consequently the amount of audio in Finnish is less than one would think given two CDs holding roughly two hours' of audio in total.
- All in all, this course left me with very mixed feelings and seems reflective of the author’s attempt to be iconoclastic or a "bomb-thrower" among authors of courses for foreign languages or scholars of Finnish. On one hand, “Colloquial Finnish” appears to live up to its title thanks to the preponderance of informal register in its dialogues. Yet it counteracts this trait toward representing the language of the average Finn by using grammatical explanations and word lists strewn with an estoeric academic notation or non-standard approach. The only value of the course may be for advanced students who want some structured practice with the colloquial register and so are able to skip past Abondolo's idiosyncratic explanations thanks to their having already gained a sound understanding of basic Finnish grammar in earlier studies.
3) Beginner’s Finnish (Agi Risko)
- It comes as a textbook with 2 CDs and costs about $25 US on Amazon
- The course is somewhat similar to “Teach Yourself Finnish”. Each chapter begins with a dialogue followed an English translation of that dialogue. A helpful feature that I found was Risko also includes short lists of fixed or idiomatic expressions meant for specific situations (e.g. upon being introduced to people). Afterwards there is a list of vocabulary and then notes on grammar before ending with some exercises. The end of the book also contains a key to the exercises.
- While the course does not overwhelm the user with as much information per chapter as “Teach Yourself Finnish”, it still suffers like that course from providing a rather small amount of exercises.
- When compared to “Teach Yourself Finnish” or “Colloquial Finnish”, “Beginner’s Finnish” may be a slightly gentler introduction to Finnish.
4) Mastering Finnish (Börje Vähämäki)
- It comes as a textbook with 2 CDs and costs about $50 US on Amazon
- This is an extended reorganization/repackaging of material that Vähämäki was using when teaching Finnish at the University of Minnesota and University of Toronto
- It follows the common pattern of dialogues, followed by notes on grammar and then some exercises. The third edition of the course has a glossary of Finnish-English at the end of the book, and like all of the other courses above it does not provide a high quantity of exercises to allow for much structured independent practice of new grammatical topics. Some of the dialogues are somewhat engaging but the vast majority of the dialogues are in standard Finnish rather than colloquial Finnish; for native speakers, these dialogues can sound rather stilted.
- The notes on grammar are dry but thorough and coming from a professor, tend to be somewhat wordy and use linguistic jargon. However the book's notes on grammar are structured well enough for a motivated beginner to put off buying a dedicated reference manual for Finnish grammar until somewhat later in his/her studies.
- Whatever its flaws for use by an independent learner of Finnish, “Mastering Finnish” is still the primary textbook in some beginners’ courses of Finnish at North American universities.
5) Finnish for Foreigners Vols. 1 and 2 (Maija-Hellikki Aaltio)
- For a someone wishing to learn Finnish independently, this is one of the better courses available. Its cost can vary since second-hand copies of the books can be bought from second-hand bookshops. The most reliable if not more expensive way to get the course is to buy it new from Amazon. The usual cost for both volumes combined is about $300 US but it may be possible to buy them at a lower price from Audio Forum.
- The first volume is for beginners and consists of a textbook, workbook, book of oral drills, and 10 cassettes or CDs. The second volume assumes completion of the first one and consists of a textbook, workbook and 3 cassettes or CDs.
- Each of the chapters in the textbooks begins with a short dialogue, monologue or narrative, and then ends with notes on grammar and a list of new vocabulary in the chapter. The appendices have charts showing inflection using “model” words, and a master list of all vocabulary taught in the lessons. Each chapter in the textbook is linked to a chapter in the workbook which has many exercises, and their answer keys. Lastly each chapter in the textbook for the first set is linked to suitable exercises in the book of oral drills.
- What I enjoy most about the course is that it presents Finnish grammar quite gradually (having 40 chapters in the first set does allow the author to spread things out) with clear grammatical explanations throughout. The word list for each chapter is only Finnish-to-English but each entry has relevant grammatical information (i.e. various stems for a word) which will help one learn how to use the words properly. The workbook and book of oral drills are excellent as exercises consist of transformation, substitution, translation and fill-in-the-blank, listening comprehension exercises.
- The course may seem slightly old-fashioned as it was last edited in 1987, and what is available nowadays are reprints
- A couple of quibbles are that it doesn’t introduce very much in the way of colloquial language in the latter half of the course (although it does include notes and examples throughout the book that compare standard forms with colloquial ones), and the very few exercises which request the participation of a fellow student suggest that it was originally designed to be used in a classroom.
6) Finnish for Foreigners Vol. 3 (Maija-Hellikki Aaltio)
- This is a graded reader to supplement the first two volumes of “Finnish for Foreigners”. Unfortunately I only know of this book thanks to the appendix in the textbook of Finnish for Foreigners Vol. 2, which has a list of suggested extra learning material for Finnish.
7) Basic Course in Finnish (Meri Lehtinen)
- It comes with a textbook and 32 cassettes
- This is a very comprehensive Finnish course produced by Indiana University during the Cold War and whose approach is similar to FSI’s “Basic” courses with plenty of drills and dialogues. This course is meant for those with plenty of motivation and discipline.
- The textbook is most easily available through on-line booksellers and usually sells as a reprint from Routledge for about $150 US or more. It’s possible that second-hand bookshops may have a copy of the original text from the 1960s on sale for somewhat less than Routledge’s inflated price.
- As far as I can tell the course is not in the public domain as Indiana University holds the copyright to the recordings while Routledge through Curzon Press Ltd. hold the copyright to the reprint.
- Indiana University has posted the course's audio as .mp3 files on the website of its language course archives. See the subsection “Online material and links to information of interest” below.
- A Finnish-American, Gregory S. Isola, apparently obtained permission in 2004 from Meri Lehtinen to publish a condensed and updated version of this course. Mr. Isola expected to complete his work by the end of 2010. See the subsection “Online material and links to information of interest” below for Mr. Isola’s website and contact information.
8) FSI Conversational Finnish (Aili Rytkönen-Bell & Augustus Koski)
- This is a somewhat newer course from FSI compared to most publicly-available FSI courses in the “Basic” series.
- Because of the course’s association with FSI, it is likely held to be in the public-domain in the USA.
- It comes with a textbook and workbook and 23 cassettes or CDs.
- Like most courses from FSI, this one is designed for use by students interested in working in the foreign service and thus has vocabulary and structure appropriate for that environment.
- According to introductory remarks in the textbook:
Rytkönen-Bell, A. et al. “Conversational Finnish”, xi. wrote:
“The aim and purpose of your textbook, “Conversational Finnish”, is to serve as a basic course. With this book you are expected to develop the skills needed for fluent workable proficiency in Finnish. This translates to a level of 2 to 2+ on the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) scale and “advanced” proficiency on the ACTFL scale. This book is designed for the first six months of an intensive ten-month course in US government language schools.”
- I found that the course was not as easy to use independently as with FSI’s “Basic” courses as some of the exercises in “Conversational Finnish” require the help of fellow students or the teacher. The exercises requesting that students act out a certain situation using language taught in the chapter would be problematic when done alone. There is no reliable way of measuring how well or poorly the learner is completing that exercise, without enlisting the help of a native speaker or teacher of Finnish.
- Nevertheless, the notes on Finnish grammar are detailed and helpful, while the variety of exercises is wide. They range from substitution or transformation drills, to listening comprehension exercises, dictations, and acting exercises. Another helpful feature is that the textbook has exercises devoted to developing at least passive command of colloquial Finnish by using juxtaposed short dialogues in both standard and colloquial registers. Answer keys come with most exercises, including ones for listening comprehension.
- The appendices in the textbook contain charts and lists of inflectional patterns, as well as a master list of all vocabulary taught which is in turn linked to the specific list of the relevant chapter.
9a) Suomen kielen alkeisoppikirja (Anna-Liisa Lepäsmaa & Leena Silfverberg) [textbook]
9b) Harjoituskirja suomen kielen perusopetusta varten (Leena Silfverberg) [workbook]
- In its complete form, this is a set of textbook, workbook and two CDs for beginning students. The cost of all components is roughly 100 Euros.
- This is broadly similar to Finnish for Foreigners Vol. 1 by Maija-Hellikki Aaltio (see 5)) but is better suited for use in a classroom than the independent learner as the material and explanations are entirely in Finnish and there is no answer key to the exercises. The exercises are mainly fill-in-the blank, substitution or transformation drills.
10a) Suomen kielen jatko-oppikirja (Leena Silfverberg) [textbook]
10b) Harjoituskirja suomen kielen jatko-opetusta varten (Leena Silfverberg) [workbook]
- In its complete form, this is a set of textbook and workbook for advanced students. The cost of all components is about 70 Euros
- This is broadly similar to Finnish for Foreigners Vol. 2 by Maija-Hellikki Aaltio (see 5)) but is better suited for use in a classroom than the independent learner as the material and explanations are entirely in Finnish and there is no answer key to the exercises. The exercises are mainly fill-in-the blank, substitution or transformation drills.
- As far as I can tell, no CDs come with the course.
11) Kato hei! (Maarit Berg & Leena Silfverberg)
- This is a course for beginners in colloquial Finnish and comprises a textbook and CD. The cost altogether is about 100 Euros.
- In a certain way this is better than Abondolo's “Colloquial Finnish” (see 2)) as it doesn't use unorthodox explanations or conventions. However this course is not as suitable as “Colloquial Finnish” for the independent beginning learner as its explanations are in Finnish only.
12a) Finn Talk, yksi, kaksi, kolme: yks, kaks, kolm (Part I) (Terttu Leney & Liisa Needham)
12b) Finn Talk, neljä, viisi, kuusi: neljä, viis, kuus (Part II) (Terttu Leney & Liisa Needham)
- Each part comprises a textbook and two CDs and are the materials used in Finnish classes by Finn Guild in the UK. Finn Guild sells each part for roughly 30 pounds (see the subsection “Online material and links to information of interest” below).
- Part I is meant for beginners while Part II is meant for advanced students with the material teaching both standard and colloquial Finnish. There are answer keys to the exercises while the CDs contain the dialogues in their standard and colloquial versions.
13) From Start to Finnish (Leila White)
- This is a beginners' course comprising a textbook and CD. It costs around 100 Euros for the kit. However it is possible to buy just the textbook for about 45 Euros and use the audio which is available without charge for listening at the course's website. See “Online material and links to information of interest” below for the website's URL.
- There is also a teacher’s manual with additional material but it is not essential to the learner.
- Despite the somewhat cute title, the course is by no means comprehensive and it teaches basic grammar and high-frequency vocabulary in small doses (40 chapters in all).
- Each chapter begins with a short dialogue or monologue followed by a list of vocabulary, brief notes on grammar and concludes with a few exercises. There is also an appendix with the answer key.
14a) Suomen Mestari 1 (Sonja Gehring and Sanni Heinzmann)
14b) Suomen Mestari 2 (Sonja Gehring and Sanni Heinzmann)
14c) Suomen Mestari 3 (Sonja Gehring, Sanni Heinzmann, Sari Päivärinne, and Taija Udd)
- Each volume consists of a textbook and audio. The audio of each is available as a pair of CDs with a set of a textbook plus its audio costing about 120 Euros. As with “From Start to Finnish”, it is possible to buy just the textbooks (about 45 Euros each) and use the audio which is available without charge for listening at the course's website. “Online material and links to information of interest” below for the website's URL.
- There is also a teacher’s manual with additional material but it is not essential to the learner.
- The volumes are in Finnish only and meant to be used sequentially in a classroom with the first, second and third part suitable for students at A1, A2.1 and A2.2 respectively on the CEFR scale.
- Particularly motivated learners, could easily use this series on their own with the help of a two-way Finnish dictionary issued in their native language and a reference guide to Finnish grammar also issued in their native language since each volume of “Suomen Mestari” has plenty of exercises and an answer key.
- Notes on grammar are short and the authors rely heavily on charts, tables or illustrations with example sentences to demonstrate the grammar rather than descriptions of this grammar. This alleviates somewhat the need to know enough Finnish to understand explanations but one would then use other sources for additional explanations on the relevant grammatical phenomena.
- All dialogues in volume 3 are in colloquial Finnish thus familiarizing the advanced beginner or emerging intermediate student with how Finns typically speak to each other.
15) Finnish Dictionary & Phrasebook (Ville Kataja)
- This is a small phrasebook and dictionary published by Hippocrene and has roughly 5 000 entries in its dictionary. It costs roughly $10 US on Amazon.
- For a student of Finnish, the book has some value in being a phrasebook (i.e. lists of fixed or idiomatic expressions tied to certain situations) and that its Finnish-English glossary shows both the “strong” and “weak” grade of words. In other words, it shows the most commonly-used inflectional stem of a word alongside the “dictionary” form of a word. Knowing the inflectional stem will help when learning how to inflect a Finnish word properly.
16) Langenscheidt Universal Finnish Dictionary: Finnish-English/English-Finnish Dictionary
- This is a small dictionary that costs about $10 US on Amazon.
- It's little more than a bi-directional word-list, with indication of idiomatic uses being largely absent. Each Finnish entry in the Finnish-English section has its approximate pronunciation transcribed using English conventions but no inflectional information or hints are given for the Finnish words.
17) Berlitz Pocket Dictionary: Finnish-English/English-Finnish Dictionary
- This is a small dictionary that costs about $10 US on Amazon and is practically the same dictionary as Langenscheidt's Universal Finnish Dictionary mentioned above (Apa Publications which is part of Langenscheidt bought Berlitz Publishing in 2002).
18) Suomi-englanti-suomi sanakirja (Ilkka Rekiaro & Douglas Robinson – published by Gummerus)
- This is a medium-sized (roughly 65,000 entries) bi-directional dictionary between English and Finnish. It costs approximately $60 US on Amazon.
- Most entries show idiomatic uses and several translations but none of the Finnish entries include grammatical information or cross-references to lists of model words for declension or conjugation.
19) Suomi-englanti-suomi sanakirja (Raija Hurme - published by WSOY)
- This is another medium-sized (roughly 119,000 words in total) bi-directional dictionary between English and Finnish. It may be hard to find on Amazon, but most sellers offer it for around $70 US or 40 Euros.
- As with the dictionary published by Gummerus above most entries show idiomatic uses and several translations but none of the Finnish entries include grammatical information or cross-references to lists of model words for declension or conjugation.
- This dictionary is also available on a USB-flash drive for about 30 Euros.
20) Englanti-suomi suursanakirja (Raija Hurme)
- This is a larger (roughly 160,000 entries) dictionary of English-to-Finnish. It may be hard to find on Amazon but it can be bought from Finland for roughly 90 Euros.
- Most entries show idiomatic uses and several translations but there is no inflectional information given for Finnish words.
- This dictionary is available on CD-ROM as “Englanti-suomi CD-ROM suursanakirja”.
21) Uusi suomi-englanti suursanakirja (Raija Hurme)
- This is a larger (roughly 160,000 entries) dictionary of Finnish-to-English. It may be hard to find on Amazon but it can be bought from Finland for roughly 90 Euros.
- Most entries here show idiomatic uses and several translations but there is no inflectional information given for any of the entries.
- This dictionary is available on CD-ROM as “Suomi-englanti CD-ROM suursanakirja”.
22) Suuri englanti-suomi sanakirja (published by Gummerus)
- This is a large dictionary (about 70,000 entries) of English to Finnish. It may be hard to find on Amazon but it can be bought in Finland for roughly 80 Euros (although it can be sometimes found on sale for as low as 17 Euros (!))
- When compared to "Englanti-suomi suursanakirja" in 14), Gummerus' dictionary gives better treatment of idiomatic uses with example sentences in the headwords. However it also suffers from the same problem in that it doesn't give inflectional information for Finnish words.
23) Nykysuomen sanakirja (edited by Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seurassa – published by WSOY)
- This is large monolingual dictionary in three volumes (roughly 200 000 entries) which provides grammatical / inflectional information for each entry by making a cross-reference to the appropriate inflectional chart of a model word at the beginning of the dictionary.
- This dictionary was last edited in 1961 and despite its age, is still treated by translators and educated Finns with a good deal of respect. It is also difficult to obtain, and nowadays it is most likely to be found in libraries of research universities.
24) Kielitoimiston sanakirja (edited by Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus)
- This is a large monolingual dictionary in three volumes (roughly 100 000 entries) which also provides grammatical / inflectional information of each entry by referencing each headword (where applicable) to a model-word and its inflected forms at the beginning of the dictionary. The cost of the dictionary is roughly 80 Euros. The version on CD-ROM costs roughly 120 Euros.
- The printed version of this dictionary is from 2006 and is based on an electronic version from 2004. Despite its recent publication, this dictionary is meant to complement rather than replace the older “Nykysuomen sanakirja” mentioned above.
- This dictionary can be ordered from the publisher or from Finnish bookstores. See the subsection “Online material and links to information of interest” below
25) Oikeeta Suomee. Suomen puhekielen sanakirja (Dictionary of Spoken Finnish) (Vesa Jarva & Timo Nurmi)
- This is a useful albeit expensive dictionary for those learning Finnish that comprises roughly 7,000 entries of spoken/colloquial Finnish.
- The dictionary is mainly in Finnish but it includes translations of the headword into English and example sentences of the headword in use.
- It costs roughly 35 Euros.
26) Suomen sanakirja opiskelijoille ja ulkomaalaisille (Finnish Dictionary for Students and Foreign Learners) (Timo Nurmi)
- This is another useful but expensive dictionary for learners of Finnish that comprises roughly 17,000 words and their inflections.
- The dictionary is entirely in Finnish and the inflectional information for each headword is presented adjacent to the heading. There's no cross-referencing of words to a table of model-words at the beginning of the dictionary.
- It costs roughly 45 Euros.
27) Finnish dictionary for the language learner (Zsuzsanna Oinas)
- This is an useful but somewhat less expensive dictionary for learners of Finnish that comprises roughly 13,000 words and their core inflections.
- The dictionary is Finnish to English and the inflectional information for each headword is presented adjacent to the heading.There's no cross-referencing of words to a table of model-words at the beginning of the dictionary.
- The headwords in turn are divided by theme (e.g. travel, food) which may be an advantage to some learners.
- It costs roughly 25 Euros.
28) Finnish: An Essential Grammar (Fred Karlsson)
- This is a handy and user-friendly reference guide to Finnish grammar. It costs approximately $35 US on Amazon.
- It is part of Routledge’s series of descriptive grammars meant for students learning how to use the target language.
*AVOID the Finnish dictionary that is compiled by Aino Wuolle and published by Hippocrene Books. That dictionary is inadequate and contains less information than the free online Finnish-English dictionary from sanakirja.org that I have listed under the section “Links”.
**Interesting note for students of Finnish: Getting a Finnish dictionary meant for non-English-speakers may be an inexpensive way to get a Finnish dictionary that shows inflectional information of Finnish words if the standard “Kielitoimiston sanakirja” of 100,000 headwords in 24) under “i) Books” is too expensive at 80 Euros. For some reason bilingual Finnish dictionaries for speakers of English, French, Italian and Spanish do NOT provide inflectional information for Finnish words. However the following bilingual dictionaries do include such information for the Finnish words and are often in stock in larger Finnish bookstores as of 2011.
FINNISH-ESTONIAN
i) Mägi, Ruth et al. (ed.) “Soome-eesti seletav sõnaraamat”. Tallinn: TEA Kirjastus, 2007. (Finnish-Estonian explanatory dictionary, 50,000 headwords, ISBN-13 978-9985715178, 40-70 Euros, almost every Finnish headword conveniently has the inflectional stems standing adjacent to the headword itself)
ii) Pihel, Kalju & Arno Pikamäe (eds.) “Soome-eesti sõnaraamat” (4th ed.). Tallinn: Valgus, 2007. (Finnish-Estonian dictionary, 50,000 headwords, ISBN-13 978-9985680544, 20-30 Euros, almost every Finnish headword is cross-referenced to a model word in a table for inflections in the appendices)
iii) Vaba, Mari (ed.) “Soome-eesti / eesti-soome taskusõnastik”. Tallinn: TEA Kirjastus, 2003. (Finnish-Estonian / Estonian-Finnish pocket dictionary, 30,000 headwords, ISBN-13 978-9985713402, 10-20 Euros, almost every Finnish headword conveniently has the inflectional stems standing adjacent to the headword itself)
iv) Valdek, Pall et al. (ed.) “Soome-eesti suursõnaraamat I-II”. Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus, 2003. (Large Finnish-Estonian dictionary, 90,000 headwords and entries, 2 volumes, ISBN-13 978-9985790021, 40-60 Euros, almost every Finnish headword is cross-referenced to a model word in a table for inflections in the appendices)
FINNISH-GERMAN
Katara, Pekka & Schellbach-Kopra, Ingrid (eds.) “Suomi-saksa suursanakirja (8. painos)”. Helsinki, WSOYpro, 1997. (Large Finnish-German dictionary, 100,000 headwords and entries, ISBN-13 978-9510214855, 90-110 Euros, almost every Finnish headword is cross-referenced to a model word in a table for inflections in the appendices)
FINNISH-HUNGARIAN
Papp, István (ed.) “Finn-magyar kéziszótár”. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1993. (Finnish-Hungarian concise dictionary, 49,000 headwords, ISBN-13 978-9630564984, 15-50 Euros, almost every Finnish headword is cross-referenced to a model word in a table for inflections in the appendices)
FINNISH-SWEDISH
Cantell, Ilse et al. (ed.) “Suomi-ruotsi suursanakirja (3. tark. p)”. Helsinki: WSOYpro, 2004. (Large Finnish-Swedish Dictionary (3rd ed.), 135,000 headwords, ISBN-13 978-9510247143, 90-110 Euros, almost every Finnish headword is cross-referenced to a model word in a table for inflections in the appendices)
Students of Finnish who know any one of Estonian, German, Hungarian or Swedish are in luck as certain Finnish dictionaries meant specifically for them contain inflectional information of Finnish headwords. However all learners of Finnish can use these dictionaries if all that they're after are the inflectional stems of a Finnish word.
For a learner of Finnish who doesn't know any Estonian, German, Hungarian or Swedish, the best choice from this list of 7 dictionaries depends on price, coverage and ease of use.
If cost were by far the overriding factor, then the Finnish-Estonian dictionaries ii) and iii) or the Finnish-Hungarian one could be the way to go (10-50 Euros for a dictionary containing between 10,000 and 50,000 headwords, depending on the dictionary that you choose in the end).
If coverage and cost were the overriding factors, then the large Finnish-Estonian dictionary iv) could be the way to go (40-60 Euros for a dictionary of 90,000 headwords with each headword cross-referenced to a model word in a table of inflections for these model words.)
If coverage, cost and ease of use were the overriding factors, then the Finnish-Estonian explanatory dictionary i) could be the way to go (40-70 Euros for a dictionary of 50,000 headwords with almost every headword showing the core inflected forms)
For myself, it'd be a toss-up between the Finnish-Estonian dictionaries i) and iv) or effectively a matter of ease of use versus quantity of headwords. Almost every headword in the Finnish-Estonian explanatory dictionary i) has a list of its core inflected forms rather than cross-referencing to a model word in the appendix as in the large Finnish-Estonian dictionary iv). Yet this same large Finnish-Estonian dictionary iv) has almost twice the headwords (90,000 headwords versus 50,000 in i)). The retail price of each dictionary varies but it's common to find either dictionary fetching at least 40 Euros and so the outlay should be almost the same. In either case, paying about 40 Euros would be much easier to stand than paying 80 Euros for the standard Finnish explanatory dictionary or at least 90 Euros for WSOYpro's large Finnish-German or Finnish-Swedish dictionaries.
***If you need to buy Finnish books, you have a choice between Suomalainen kirjakauppa (“Finnish Bookstore”), Akateeminen kirjakauppa (“Academic Bookstore”), Adlibris.com, Bookplus.fi, Info.fi and Ruslania.com. All of these offer online purchasing but beware of shipping costs (see below for more information). Adlibris is a Swedish bookseller which does business throughout Scandinavia while Bookplus.fi, Info.fi and Ruslania.com are Finnish operations. Info.fi sometimes offers dictionaries at lower prices than the competition and was also where I bought a copy of Gummerus' new and large English-Finnish dictionary for 17 Euros rather than the regular price of approximately 80 Euros. Despite its name and focus on selling Russian books, Ruslania also carries Finnish books. Shipping costs to places outside the EU may be high, and combined with customs could make securing Finnish materials more expensive than one would anticipate. In the UK, Bay Foreign Language Books Ltd. carries some Finnish learning materials while in the USA, Schoenhof’s and North Wind Books carry such material. See the subsection “Online material and links to information of interest” below for the URLs of these shops
ii) Online material and links to information of interest
Discussions, posts or logs on how-to-learn-any-language.com involving Finnish:
- 6WC - Finnish (MGF)
- Accelerated Challenge (Feb) - Finnish
- The Awesome Difficulty of Korean, Finnish
- A Few Finnish Questions
- Changes in Spoken Finnish
- Chung at work / Chung pri práci
- Determined to learn Finnish
- Easiest Finno-Ugric language?
- Estonian/Finnish/Hungarian "cheat sheet"
- Evita's TAC 2008 - Finnish
- Feanarosurion's Finnish Journey
- Finnish & Estonian
- Finnish books
- Finnish Dictionary + Example Sentences
- Finnish: Hard as its reputation?
- Finnish Language Grammar Thread
- Finnish language materials
- Finnish: most difficult language?
- Finnish Online Resources
- Finnish Partitive Sing. and Plu.
- Finnish thread
- Hungarian or Finnish - please help!
- Learning Finnish
- Mick's 2010 TAC Log Multilingual Bliss!
- Mick’s 2012 log Teams *jäŋe / *ledús & Žá
- MoqT Log - Team *jäŋe/*ledús for TAC 2012
- My journal for Finnish
- My journey through Finnish
- Serpent’s log
- The Sound of Finnish
- What makes finnish so hard?
- 日本語+Suomi
Other forums or discussions from other forums
- Unilang's discussion forum for Finnish
- WordReference's discussion forum for Finnish
- An active discussion board about Finland and Finnish life. It includes a sub-forum for learning Finnish which is called "Kielikoulu" (scroll down to the group "Finland Forum Regulars")
- Discussion about mutual intelligibility between Estonian and Finnish on WordReference
General treatment and descriptions of Finnish's learning difficulty
- Wikipedia's article on Finnish
- Finnish tutorial at
http://www.ielanguages.org
- Sketch of Finnish at everything2.com
Dictionaries and other databases
- A database on various language families including Nostratic (source of some of my etymological material under the “Vocabulary” section):
- A website on language difficulty for native speakers of English
- A dictionary of many languages including Finnish. When looking up Finnish words, the dictionary provides not only translations into other languages but it usually provides at least a few inflected forms of a Finnish word. This would be most useful for people who are learning Finnish without a printed dictionary that provides such information.
- The Finnish equivalent of Urban Dictionary, Urbaanisanakirja
- Looking up Finnish entries in English Wiktionary may also be useful as most of the Finnish entries there include full inflectional tables (i.e. they're more explicit and comprehensive than what you may find in the hard-copy of a Finnish dictionary). Looking up Finnish entries in Finnish Wiktionary may also be useful as a headword's page sometimes gives idiomatic phrases and/or example sentences.
- Website of the Research Institute of the Languages of Finland (mostly in Finnish - it includes links to the updated monolingual dictionaries that I mentioned earlier in the review).
- Information on the dictionary as a hard copy
- Information on the dictionary as a CD-ROM
Online courses or downloadable material
- Audio of Meri Lehtinen's “Basic Course in Finnish” from Indiana University as .mp3 files
- FSI Finnish Graded Reader hosted at ERIC (textbook only)
- Spoken Finnish Vols. 1 and 2 hosted at ERIC (textbooks only)
- Online courses from the ONENESS online language-learning project (includes Finnish)
- Self-study / Itseopiskelu (Online course for self-study affiliated with the University of Jyväskylä. Some sections require free registration)
- Suomea, ole hyvä!
- Supisuomea
- Tavataan taas!
- Uuno
- Vilma (Graded texts on Finnish society with glossaries of difficult vocabulary and comprehension exercises but not suitable for novices learning on their own as glossaries and notes are in Finnish only)
- Ymmärrä suomea
- Finnish Language Lessons Podcast
- Random Finnish Lesson blog
- Murrepeli or game of dialects from YLE (Finnish national broadcaster).
- Bezpłatny kurs języka fińskiego (for speakers of Polish)
- Lexin (picture dictionary from Sweden with most sections translated into Finnish)
- Изучаем финский язык (for speakers of Russian)
- Finn nyelvleckék (lessons for speakers of Hungarian derived from parts 1 and 2 of "Finnish for Foreigners" by M-H Aaltio - 60 lessons planned, 44 available as of Oct. 28, 2012)
- Online reference of Finnish grammar from the point of view of English-speakers
- A SUPERB website with notes on Finnish grammar, thematic lists of vocabulary, and reviews and bibliographical information of various courses and dictionaries published in Finland.
- Online edition of Iso suomen kielioppi which is a large reference manual on Finnish grammar (in Finnish only)
Other links related to Finnish courses
- List of Finnish learning materials with bibliographical information and reviews
- UCLA’s page on Finnish as part of the Language Materials Project (contains database of learning material for Finnish as well as links to Finland-related portals and websites)
- Order form from Finn Guild for Leney and Needham's “Finn Talk” series.
- Announcement by Gregory S. Isola (email:
Greg@Finn.St
) who was planning to release an updated version of Lehtinen's “Basic Course in Finnish” by December 2010.
- Website for “From Start to Finnish” which also hosts all audio for the textbook as Soundcloud files
- Website for “Suomen Mestari” series which also hosts all audio for the textbooks as Soundcloud files
- List of sites providing information on learning Finnish in Finland at universities or private schools.
Bookstores that have Finnish inventory
- Adlibris
- Akateeminen Kirjakauppa
- Bay Foreign Language Books Ltd.
- Bookplus.fi
- Info.fi
- Northwind Books
- Ruslania.com
- Schoenhof's
- Suomalainen Kirjakauppa
Literature and authentic texts
- Audiobook at Librivox of Juhani Aho's Helsinkiin (public domain in the USA - check copyright status for other countries)
- Website of the Finnish Literature Society with some online texts from Finnish literature of the 19th century
- Online collection of children's storybooks in Finnish from the International Children's Digital Library.
- Free content in Finnish at Wikisource including full online text of Kalevala and selected works by Minna Canth and Juhani Aho among other writers.
Downloadable/streamed media
- Selkouutiset or daily broadcasts of news from the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) in "Simple Finnish" meant for immigrants and others who are learning Finnish as a foreign language.
- YLE's streaming service for radio and television (some content can be played only within Finland or via a Finnish IP address), instructions in English to listen to or watch programs in Finnish or Swedish from YLE's archives.
- List of Finnish radio stations with internet streaming.
Credits
This is a somewhat modified version of my Finnish profile in the "Collaborative Writing" subforum last edited on Oct. 28, 2012 at how-to-learn-any-language.com.
Statistics: Posted by Chung — Mon Apr 04, 2016 3:29 am