#new finnish vocab

[mehilaiselokuva]

do you have any recommendations for (preferably free/low cost) online websites/classes/apps that teach finnish? i know duolingo is a thing but i've been kinda wary of them ever since the ai debaucle, plus ive heard theyre really only helpful up to a point

Hi!

The Duolingo course for Finnish SUCKS from what I have seen. I've been testing it out since it came out to see if I can recommend it to the learners and I can say that I wouldn't recommend it at all (unless you really like game-type learning, it might help you start but the vocabulary doesn't get you too far and the grammar isn't explained at all)

Here's my past master post on resources (with the even older one linked in there too so check both out)

I can also always respond to any asks about grammar or vocab if anyone has any questions!

[allthingslinguistic]

Language Guinea Pig Diaries #2: Highlights & Troubleshooting

I'm trying to improve my skills at four languages in preparation for summer travel: Italian, Dutch, Finnish, and Estonian.

Italian and Dutch I've studied a bit a while ago and I'm now trying to "activate" so I can hopefully have a conversation or two in them, while Finnish and Estonian I'm trying to pick up some rudimentary bits in. Here's the previous post in this series describing these goals and strategies in more detail.

Highlights

I've progressed from my menu of only gelato-making videos in Italian to other recipes in general, and in particular to lots of cooking videos from this popular Italian home cooking channel which was in the recommended videos after another one I watched. Maybe I'll branch out again at some point to other speakers, but for now it's nice to be able to stumble into more videos without having to think up new keywords to search. Also, I might need to make some of these recipes now...

The Dutch podcast listening is going well (though see weird issue below) and I especially like that the podcast I chose because it's the only podcast I knew in Dutch contains a mix of adult-to-adult and adult-and-child speech, which is a fun way to mix it up.

In Estonian, so far I have learned one (1) highly useful word, "tere", which this video tells me is an all-purpose neutral greeting (neutral with respect to both formality and time of day). Ooh, I've just realized while writing this post that it's probably cognate to Finnish "terve", a greeting I learned from Duolingo! (Yes, I just looked this up, seems like they both mean something to do with health.) So I've already learned one neat thing!

I'm also recognizing a few Estonian cognates from the Finnish Duolingo lessons, especially the verb "on" (which means "is"). I'm not recognizing many other words though, and I'm wondering how much of that is differing vocab and how much of that is not having learned many common words in Finnish yet (I've been especially chafing at how few verbs we've learned yet, it would be really useful to have a word like "I want" even if it's unanalyzed because the grammar is more complicated than they want to introduce early).

Youtube's algorithm has, after about a week, adjusted to the fact that I now want to watch videos entirely in Italian, and started recommending further Italian videos on my home feed (it was already doing so at the end of previous Italian videos). Tiktok's algorithm, so far, has not done this yet, and is still recommending me stuff in English, despite me aggressively liking basically all of the Estonian videos I watch and nothing else.

Troubleshooting

I've noticed that it's been easier to remember to do the podcast listening in Dutch and the youtube videos in Italian because I already have habits related to opening those apps, whereas I don't have habits around using tiktok so I kept forgetting to open it and look at some Estonian videos. But a couple days ago I moved the tiktok app on my phone to a more visible location, and now it's getting easier to remember.

Something else very weird that I noticed about listening is that when I play the tracks on my phone fairly loudly, it's relatively easy to focus on trying to listen to them, sometimes while playing a simple visual game on my phone for something to fiddle with (I've already noticed that unfamiliar languages need to be played louder than familiar ones). But when I beam the podcast over to my speaker at a distance, suddenly I very quickly start tuning out the unfamiliar language and opening up apps that involve reading and completely ignoring it. I have no problems listening to podcasts on speakers in English; in fact, it's my preferred method when I'm at home, but for some reason this causes my brain to reclassify Dutch as background noise to be ignored, even if it's the same loudness as it would be when it's played right near me. Super weird, has anyone else ever noticed anything like this?

Previously in Language Guinea Pig Diaries:

Summer 2024 travel plans and Language Guinea Pig Diaries

[beelearnsfinnish]

Hi :)

I'm also learning Finnish and seeing others learn it motivates me even more! Who can you recommend for watching vlogs?

Hey!! Yess I've seen your posts, same thing here! It's not easy to find people who are learning it so it's always cool to come across other learners :)

About vlogs, gotta say it's content I don't usually watch in my native language or English, but for Finnish seems like the easiest since it's very day to day vocab!

One of the first channels I started watching was KATTIS since when I started I couldn't find almost any videos with the subtitle option and she mixed lots of English expressions and had texts in the screen quite frequently, so it made it a little more enjoyable (I'm so thankful for the youtube subtitle update, lifesaver) Also I find the girl quite funny and her videos are very dynamic! here

Another one of the first channels I came across was Lotta Liikanen. Her videos are a bit longer, way more vibey and aesthetic and little less talking but hey sometimes that's all you need. here

The girl I've been watching the most lately tho is Anni Suvisuo. I'm really liking her videos, they feel bit more "realistic" than others, plus she posts quite frequently. Definitely one of my favs! here

I feel like those channels are the ones I watch more consistently, but I'll drop some names of other girls I'm subscribed to and watch from time to time: Linda Noora, Pauliina, Zane Manninen, Katri Konderla, Laura Rosilla... and honestly anything interesting looking in Finnish that youtube recommends me in an attempt to train the algorithm to stop showing me videos in Spanish haha.

As a little plus, reading is a big hobby of mine so I also like to watch some book related videos, tho I tend to have them more in the background since the vocab, specially when describing plots, is more advanced. Can't wait to be able to understand them a bit more because it's content I really like watching in any language.

For this I'd recommend neareadsnovels, she uploads pretty frequently with quite interesting videos that I'd love to fully understand, but man the girl talks fast haha. Really like her vibes! here

I also watch NuotioBee, pretty nice videos and normally the exact length of my bus trip to work so quite nice! here

Hope this was of any inspiration <3 I'm also happy to hear if you (or anyone!) have any recommendations, I'm always on the lookout for new resources or content for inmersion :)

[noellesnowelle]

Weekly Update

exam prep, studying Finnish and the first signs of autumn - the leaves are beginning to turn yellow, it is starting to get colder

19.08.-25.08.2024

Studying

finished the task I dreaded the most in my summer Finnish course

woke up at 7am 4/7 days to use some early study time

prepared for the exam to finish the Finnish course

Languages

studied an average of 60 Finnish Vocab cards this week

practiced the Imperfekti (a lot)

read and analyzed a korean sentence every other day

Health

had some digestive issues this week that stole some of my sleep, I hope that I won't experience that again soon

did yoga/ stretching exercises almost every day

For myself

finally made the bike trip to the lake which I planned to do for so long but my anxiety stopped me - until now

painted in my sketchbooks again

started learning the 'New Woman' dance

this week's

reading / watching / listening

Crooked Kingdom - Leigh Bardugo

Vikings Valhalla, Season 3

Ugly - Naomi Jon

New Woman feat. Rosalía - LISA

Why Do You Love - 홍중

"Zoya used to say that fear is a phoenix. You can watch it burn a thousand times and still it will return." - Crooked Kingdom, Leigh Bardugo

[opposumghost]

so this exists.

i fucking love the effort put into this, for multiple reasons: 1) it's not the instrumentals and a guy singing. this dude RERECORDED THE FUCKING ALBUM! He would've had to mix this shit! This would've taken sooooooo long. 2) I like how it's not a language remotely close to english. finnish isn't even part of the same language family as english. finnish is a part of the uralic languge family (a group of languages comprising much of northern europe and asia).

most languages in europe are from Indo-european (english, spanish, french, swedish ect.) but don't be fooled, as this family also spreads out to many north indian and west asian languages (like hindi, pursian and pashto).

a lot of those languages share words (like the english 'three', punjabi 'ਤਿੰਨ (tina)' and greek 'tria'). but finnish? FUCK NO! three in finnish is 'kolme' (K from "king', ol from 'old' and 'me' from 'men') so that means this album has almost no words that sound ANYTHING like the original. The only two titles that sound and look like the original are "Pink Triangle" ("Pinkki Kilmio") and "El Scorcho", which is just same same cuz it's spanish. so the result is a set of songs that sound NOTHING AT FUCKING ALL like the originals, with many of the melodies having to be kinda stretched to include the new words and sounds that rivers cuomo never had the fortune of singing 3) OMG THIS WOULD'VE TAKEN SO LONG TO FUCKING TRANSLATE! when you translate you have to take in so much more than just the words themselves you have to take in: change in phrasing, tone, cultural references, how to get the same emphasis into this new language from the one your translating from. and it's SO much worse with poetry and songs. The beat sounds off, the rhyme is completely gone, many translations just sound like nonsense being read aloud if the original lyrics maybe don't rhyme or are more impressionistic. and this is kinda easier with languages like english to french or spanish or swedish that share some vocab and have roots in many languages. but again i will remind you that finnish has none of that familiarity, so how these sounds sound to finnish native speaker must just be WILD!

he also did the blue album ffs

[latinthusiast]

life-long learning as pedogogical praxis

I honest to god think spending time trying to learn finnish this summer has significantly changed how I'm presenting material in my classes.

It had been a few years since I tried to pick up a new language from scratch (aka not learning a language derived from Latin) and I had forgotten the feeling of being new -- the excitement at getting to learn how to say something new, the overwhelm of similar vocab words, the frustration of getting stuck on something that your brain just refuses to integrate into your knowledge.

Most of all though it really reminded me about how much it doesn't matter if you repeat whole sentences over and over for a while -- it's not boring yet because you literally don't remember it yet.

And also how a mix of 'silly, unrealistic, rely-on-the-grammar-not-logic' sentences do need to be mixed into primarily 'real, useful, you'll-see-it-again' sentences. I had known this from being irritated at teaching from a certain Textbook Which Shall Not Be Named that only gives extremely difficult practice sentences as exercises, but... to feel it as a learner is still a better reminder.

[finnishbee]

I have the prefect website for you!

Try uusikielemme! It’s got everything - cohesively explained grammar, vocab lists, fun facts, easy navigation, etc!

You have a question about why Finnish grammar is the way it is? Don’t worry, this website has you covered. All the topics are organised into many different comprehension levels, especially the vocabulary, so its perfect for beginners!

The website is being regularly updated and genuinely helped me a lot in my own studies.

It’s never too late to try something new. I’m so happy that Käärijä had this effect on people. 💚

Hello! Do you happen to know any good resources for learning Finnish? As basic as possible, I literally started on Duolingo half an hour ago:) I know, I know, I'm a poser for learning Finnish *after* Käärijä, but the language sounds soooo interesting (although I've heard the grammar is quite difficult...). Thank you in advance and also love your blog:)))))

Hi!! So very very ecstatic that you've decided to learn Finnish! No reason to feel ashamed that you'd only start after Käärijä... believe me, in Finland people are just altogether very taken if a foreigner wants to learn Finnish, no matter the reason. (And all reasons for learning a language are good!) (And we're SO SO PROUD of Käärijä, he's done a monumental job of bringing our language to the public eye more than ANYONE ELSE BEFORE so, yup! He's a VERY good reason to start learning Finnish!!)

I'm not sure if I'm the right person to point you towards any resources... But I tried finding some for you! I've checked out the Duolingo course and it's a good place to begin! Here's also a drive folder that has some Finnish language books as PDFs.

Also here's a page for beginner's Finnish from our national news media Yle (it's like our version of BBC).

Here is a "picture book" kind of a page for learning names for objects, good to start with!

Here's an online course for beginners! This has grammar too, and links for further reading and studying.

Finnish is also notorious for having it's written language differ drastically from how people actually speak. We don't have accents per se, but dialects instead, which don't just affect the way we pronounce words (=accents, as in English) but the way we form them. So for example, the written Finnish "I am" is "minä olen", but in spoken Finnish it can become e.g. "mä oon", "mää oon", "mie oon", depending on where you live (and there might be some more variations as well but these are the most common ones.) Many foreigners find themselves in a spot where they can read and understand written Finnish pretty well, then the moment a Finnish person opens their mouth it's a bloodbath. But don't let it deter you! And Finnish people are more than happy to switch to written Finnish if you don't understand them. I found this website for learning the basics for spoken Finnish!

A good place is also good ole Youtube! Just type in "Finnish for beginners" and you're set to go!

Finnish is a difficult language to learn because of the grammar and lack of prepositions if your language has them... but look at it this way, I struggle with them in any language that uses them cos I haven't grown up using them. I still occasionally mess up with in/on or for/to (it's even worse with French and Swedish). Doesn't stop me from writing 100k fics in English apparently!

Welcome to learning Finnish! Remember that the most important thing is to learn the swear words, you'll go far with those. Just drop in a perkele and it's always the right thing to say haha.

Jokes aside, I'm very happy to hear this! Finnish is a very beautiful language and a very inventive one as well, which allows for more word play and creativity with the language than, say, English for example. And while Finnish is difficult, you'll find that once you've learnt the rules, there are no exceptions to them or the kind of hassle with the grammar as there is to English or French. I've known exchange students who've learnt near perfect Finnish in less than a year!

If anyone knows and wants to add more good resources here, go ahead!

[jeffersonhairpie]

So I know there’s various things about the new Duolingo layout that mess up a bunch of stuff - especially if you’re not doing one of the flagship courses. That’s just how it goes when these courses have all been written for the old format and are being forced into a shape that doesn’t fit them

But like

Some of the choices made in how you learn things are more annoying than others

I could ramble and rant about how grammar points intended to be learned in a certain order are now jumbled up so you don’t have time to get used to anything before you’re whizzing in to the next thing. I could talk about how I find it much more useful to learn related vocab in chunks so it feels like I’m unlocking new conversations I can have rather than learning random words in a random order

But what’s pissing me off this morning is that in the Finnish course they now throw what is VERY OBVIOUSLY intended to be the very last bits of vocab for the entire course in three quarters of the way through the learning path. I know because whoever wrote this course is a funny motherfucker and loves some meta references so there’s no way that ‘It’s over. What now?’ and ‘That was fun! Do it again’ were not intended to be the silly little finale

(Also I know because I had two modules left in the course before it switched to the new path a few days ago so like... it’s not hard to guess)

Anyway the point is that it feels like this change was made without a single thought for the rhythm of the course. If Duolingo were going to make such a big change to the way their app functions you would have thought they might have actually had to sit down and think about how this affected each course individually but nah

[norwegiatlas]

NEW FINNISH VOCAB 4

pomppia - to bounce, bump

taitavasti - skillfully

portaat - stairs

puuttuva - missing

askelma - step (of stairs)

astua - to step, tread

astua sisälle - to enter

huvittaa - to amuse; (PART. + 3P SG) to feel (like doing)

inttää - to argue, insist

nariseva - squeaky

sattua - to happen, occur; (+ 3. INF. ILL.) to happen (to do)

kohta - soon

joka tapauksessa - anyway, in any case

kellastua - to turn yellow

villiintynyt - feral, wild, untamed

hymistä - to hum

rutistaa - to sqeeze, squish

näköjään - apparently

kuiskuttaa - to whisper

kiljua - to sqeel, scream, shriek

takaraivo - back of the head

[atlassi]

NEW FINNISH WORDS 7

hoputtaa - to hurry, rush

iltapesu - washing up before bed

tai ainakin melkein - or at least almost

turvallinen - safe

tosiaan - indeed, all right

nolo - embarrased; awkward, embarrassing

tosin - albeit; although; however

asento - position, posture, pose

helteinen - boiling (of weather)

jäljiltä - of the aftermath

kantautua - to carry, be carried, reach

umpeen - sealed, closed, shut

rysähdys - crash (sound)

sen perään - after it

nyyhkäys - single sob

puristaa - to press; to clasp, grasp, grip (apply pressure)

kipittää - to scuttle, skitter

poikki - (+ GEN) across, through

kainalo - armpit

vierekkäin - side by side

vastakkain - against (one against another); face to face

yhtikäs - at all, absolutely

inhottava - disgusting, foul

vaihe - phase, stage, point, period

paukahtaa - to bang (give a sudden loud sound, once)

harppoa - to stride (walk with long steps)

[mehilaiselokuva]

Finnish vocab from news part 100000000000

Erämaa - wilderness

Isännöidä - to host (even though this word is formed with isäntä (male master/host), it's gender-neutral)

Meppi - MEP

Työkkäri - employment agency

Lytätä - to press flat

Saimaannorppa - Saimaa ringed seal

Yes, I will forever use this picture. Please donate to places like WWF Suomi and Suomen Luonnonsuojeluliitto or to individual local activists to save these little guys. Their living environment is threatened by fishing and climate change and they're one of the most rare seals in the whole world. With your donation, they could be saved. (Sorry for the sudden rant about this seal, I just love them)

Puskaparkkeeraus (puska+parkkeeraus) - "bush parking" parking in a bushy area. More about it here:

Tuotantokatko - pause in production

Kaukolämpöverkko - distance heating network

Raideliikenneonnettomuus - rail traffic accident

[loving-my-language-journey-blog]

looking for langblrs to follow

hi~ i’m tiia, a 16 yo girl from finland who just started her upper secondary school and with that new language studies! learning languages and reading about other cultures are the things i’m most passionate about and that’s exactly the reason i started this blog. i will post mainly vocabulary lists and if any of my followers are interested in finnish (i’m a native), i’d be more than happy to help! :D

since i’m quite new in the langblr community, i don’t follow many blogs. my target languages are german, french, italian, korean, spanish, norwegian and swedish. i have also some history with japanese and this fall i’m starting to study russian, so any content with those two is more than welcome! :D

[balloons-and-shadows]

Masterlist Langblr challenges

Following from my previous posts, if you do feel like working on your languages, but don't know where to start; here are some langblr challenge you might like!

Language Blog Challenge: 20 weeks of challenges | by @lily-learns-finnish

Langblr Reactivation challenge | by @prepolyglot

14 Day langblr challenge | by @lass-uns-studieren

Langblr News challenge | by @tealingual

90-day vocab challenge | by @jibunstudies

100 Happy Days Langblr Challenge | by @nordic-language-love

Mini speaking challenge | by @nordic-language-love

16 words challenge | by @neblina-a-blin

30 day langblr challenge | @moltre-s

Brick-by-brick language learning challenge | by @linguistness

Langblr word of the day challenge | by @nordic-language-love

Target Language Reading challenge | by @onigiriforears

P.S. Please let me know if you know some more fun langblr challenges!

[kjaerekrake]

5 (12) words a day

Norwegian 1. skjønnhet - beauty 2.  en gaffel - a fork 3. ei skje - a spoon 4. ei såpe - soap 5. ei pute - a pillow 6. ei lampe - a lamp 7. ei hylle - a shelf 8. et klesskap - a closet 9. et nattbord - a bedside table 10. en vask - a sink 11. en dusj - a shower 12. et kjøleskap - a refridgerator

Finnish 1.  tunne - emotion 2. hymy - a smile 3. hymyillä - to smile 4. toiveikas - hopeful 5. Kana - chicken 6. tänään - today 7. vesiputous - waterfall 8.tarvita - to need 9.  suuri - large 10. iso - big 11.huone - room 12. lentokone - airplane

Spanish 1. la química - chemistry 2. oeste - west 3. un bosque - a forest 4. zorro - fox 5. la nube - the cloud 6. la sombra - the shade 7. la sudadera - the sweatshirt 8. el anillo - the ring 9. el sosten - the bra 10. los tacones bajos - flats 11. las grafas - glasses 12. mientras que - whereas

French 1. Combien de - how many 2. dimanche - sunday 3. une affice -  aposter 4. une craie - chalk 5. un cahier - a notebook 6. une chaise - a chair 7.un mur - the wall 8. ouvrier - factory worker 9. avocat - lawyer 10. trouver - to find 11. la vaisselle - the dishes 12. une randonnée - a hike

[hindisoup]

Heyo ✨

I was wondering - what is your native language? And if you have any advice for someone starting to learn hindi? :) would really appreciate it a lot ✨love your blog and the whole concept :)

Hi there!

My native language is Finnish. So I am just a learner and very humble about whatever knowledge or understanding I may possess about Hindi - it's a long journey and I am far from fluency!

Some advice for beginners... lets see:

Learn Devanagari!

Is it absolutely necessary? Perhaps not but it's so beautiful and it makes learning pronunciation a heck of a lot easier when you can just, well, read the way words are meant to be said. मोती (a pearl) and मोटी (fat, feminine) for example are two very different things even if in the Latin alphabet both would be written as moti.

To practice the script you can use Duolingo app or practice books such as Taneja (2012) Practice Makes Perfect: Basic Hindi (also available as an ebook). Even if you wouldn't need to write by hand in real-life situations, I've found practising hand-eye-coordination somehow helps to internalise the script and the sounds letters represent.

Basic grammar

Hindi is a subject-object-verb (SOV) language and remembering that helps a long way. Learn your personal pronouns and basic verb conjugations (they are super regular and there are only a handful of irregular verbs!) and the rest will follow. For this, I recommend grammar books which there are several good ones (you can see my post about some of them) and most of them are available as ebooks.

Vocabulary

This is probably the trickiest part and only because there are so. many. words. and they come from so many languages (which may or may not affect how the word behaves grammatically) - you will notice soon enough that you know 4 or 5 synonyms for 'but' or 'and' before you learn enough words to even need a connecting word for two sentences.

Here my advice is that first learn the basic rules for feminine and masculine noun declension, and then just start hoarding your vocabulary. Listen, read, watch all kinds of different material. Latest films, tweets, news clips, old films, poetry, children's books... and you will find out what are the over-arching most commonly used structures and words. You will also inevitably gather dozens of synonyms and rare words you probably won't need ever again but hey, that's also part of the Hindi journey - think of them as the flowers growing alongside your path that you stop to marvel from time to time.

Here's some links too:

Language Curry - a free iOS and Android app for basic grammar and vocabulary, doesn't require the knowledge of Devanagari.

Hindilanguage.info - a website explaining Hindi grammar

Wiktionary - absolutely the best place to check for conjugation and declension tables for a beginner

@salvadorbonaparte's MEGA folder with study resources for all things linguistic and languages, including Hindi

Basic Hindi I - an open-access online book for learning Hindi

A door into Hindi - another free access online resource structured like a grammar book. It's a bit dated though, not sure if audio / video still works, but texts, grammar and vocab are still very valid.

Hope this helps. Enjoy your learning!

[lily-learns-finnish]

Häräntappoase

Earlier I tried to read "Häräntappoase" and it was pretty challenging as it is written in spoken Finnish with a lot of dialect words. Now I found the "selkokieli" (easy language) version of it and decided to read this instead and have also picked up some new vocab.

Chapters 1-4, new words

Verbs

vilkuilla = to glance at

järkätä (eli järjestää) = to arrange

kailottaa = to holler, to talk loudly

kömpiä = to move clumsily

kiikuttaa = to rock back and forth (trans)

jorista = to chitchat

viillellä = to incise, to slice

kehrätä = to purr (cat)

saapastella = to strut (to walk)

hihitellä = to snicker

lompsia = to pace, to stomp

Other

häirikkö = trouble maker

sänki = stubble (hair)

pilvilinna = pipe dream (literally: cloud castle)

linkkari =pocket knife

korpi = backwaters ("the sticks")

älyvapaa = non-sensical (literally: intelligence-free)

A few quotes:

Olin joutunut orjaksi korpeen. = I had ended up as a slave in this back water town.

Lahja tuli navetassa vastaan ja alkoi älyvapaan puheen. = Lahja appeared in the barn and started talking nonsense.

Mä katsoin Taalaa. Se viilteli linkkarilla nimikirjaimiaan tuolin selkämykseen. = I watched Taala. He was carving his initials into the back of the chair.