Complete Finnish Book/CD Pack (Teach Yourself)

Well, I ve heard so many scary things about the difficulty of Finnish, I already knew that its vocabulary is a world on its own, BUT, I was not ready for what I faced using this book, along with the Colloquial Finnish.

Now, let me put things straight here
Forget the idea that Finnish is difficult to learn and even harder to master.. Okay,. the only thing that will trigger a challenge here is the vocabulary as there s seldom links with any other indo european languages. (think about this.. university becomes yliopisto, hello becomes terve and darling is now kulta...)
Finnish grammar is very logic. people talks about the declensions, and its 16 cases ending .. sure.. but once you know them. finito ! done . as the ending as like propositions, and are used on every single nouns and adjectives . Nothing at all compared to Latin and its 5 declensions, or german with its weak and strong adjectives nightmares or the depressive declensions maze of icelandic...

verbes.. only ONE irregular verb...( for you who do speak french.. this will be a laugh), conjugations is extremely regular. and finnish syntax is at its simplest..

No, finnish is not hard.. it is simply different, totally different. By all mean,. don t let these scary long words with unpronouncables letters scare you . The finns are a very friencly bunch of people anyway and i can assure you (after my own experience) that if you do make a small effort to learn their lingo,, you ll be treated and welcomed like a king

This book is easy to go through, the grammar works perfectly fine, and yes, you ll enjoy the experience.. remember .. take your time.. and if you do make any mistakes ? so what ????.. finns won t care less, as they will be way too impress by your try of speaking their language...

give yourserf some time to learn Finnish . it s worth it and it is simply .. a scary language you will love

Book (0/2 people found this helpful)

Lies, lies and slander goddammit! Anybody who knows the basics of grammar would realize that the reason the phrases don't match up so that they are perfectly identical is because Finnish is an inflected language and English is not. Therefore, Finnish will have more roundabout ways of saying things in terms of grammar. I would recommend a crash course in grammar for anybody who has a problem with this.

Also trying to learn a language with just a book and no lessons or real life practice is an exercise in futility. Unless you are extremely gifted and skilled in the language learning process and have the memory of a machine, you will learn no more but some greetings and swearwords this way. If the method of total immersion is unavailable, then you must practice at every opportunity, paying attention to grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation etc. I have been studying Finnish as my fifth language for a year now, with lessons, books, practice with friends who speak it and trips to Finland and after all this I can just about ask for directions and order a coffee. But whinging that it's hard won't make it any easier. There is only one way to learn it, so you need to either practice more or re-examine your reasons for wanting to learn it in the first place.

This book is good for beginners, I have found it helpful and would recommend it even without the CD.

Confusing (7/13 people found this helpful)

Finnish is a pretty hard language, but this book makes it harder. In some of the example texts, the Finnish phrases did not match up correctly to the English translations - I was never really sure what the presented text actually meant.

Tough going, too little grammar at start (12/12 people found this helpful)

Finnish is a very different language for us indo-european speakers. It requires a different approach. Unfortunately, it seems to me that Teach Yourself Finnish is written around the standard "Teach Yourself" language style; this does not work for Finnish, and is probably the fault of the publisher rather than the author. You need in-depth grammar before you can make significant headway and meaningfully learn vocabulary.

Instead of introducing appropriate grammar early on, Teach Yourself Finnish contains in its vocabulary lists many whole phrases - which I am never likely to remember; it gives me the feeling of wasting my time learning them (in the same way that you don't learn a language by reading a phrase book).

I have struggled with this book for nearly a year (I have the CD too), dropping into it when I feel another spurt of motivation. I just started chapter 4.

Compared to other Teach Yourself books which I've read (e.g. the excellent and inspiring Teach Yourself Norwegian, and Teach Yourself Living Welsh - regrettably now out of print), this has been a failure for me.

I am a fairly experienced language learner, and I want to learn Finnish properly, not just to get a taste of it. I am not afraid of grammar; indeed I find it fascinating. So maybe I have different requirements to others.

Excellent introduction to Finnish for beginners (4/4 people found this helpful)

Simply put an excellent intorduction to the Finnish language. It is simple, informative and fun. You make quick progress with what is a difficult language. It also helps you understanding the Finns and their culture, which helped me with the language. My wife is Finnish and she thought the book was a super starter to the language too.

Complete Finnish Book/CD Pack (Teach Yourself)

Terttu Leney

Reader Reviews:

Challenging but well written (1/1 people found this helpful)

Book (0/2 people found this helpful)

Confusing (7/13 people found this helpful)

Tough going, too little grammar at start (12/12 people found this helpful)

Excellent introduction to Finnish for beginners (4/4 people found this helpful)

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