Introduction
My name is Michael and I began learning Finnish in late 2012. At first I thought I'd never be able to grasp this seemingly impossible language, but after a little time I began to notice that Finnish was in fact a simple language, when looked at from a certain angle. The thing that makes Finnish seem so hard at first I think, is the rules. There are so many rules. This sentence is constructed in this exact way because of all of these reasons and these suffixes are on these words because of the rules. In English we say "table". In Finnish we have to choose from fifteen or so versions of "pöytä". Maybe it's "pöydälle" or "pöytänä". When you first hear about the six verb types or the 15 grammatical forms that any noun or adjective can take, it's very easy to feel overwhelmed. How on earth am I supposed to remember all this?
But actually, when you think about it, these things make Finnish simpler rather than more complicated. Six verb types means 6 different ways to conjugate verbs. You learn those 6 rules and then you can easily ,conjugate any verb you come across, even if you don't know what it means. All those different grammatical cases really just replace all the different prepositions that we use in English. Learning them and when to use them is no different than learning when exactly you should use words like in, on, at, to, by. from, and for.
In Finnish we don't have to worry about regular verbs and irregular verbs. Irregular verbs in English really are irregular. There's no rule in place for remembering how to conjugate them. There's no system that explains why the past tense of take is took, but make becomes made and wake becomes woke. Finnish does have words that break the rules. There are exceptions. But there are so few of them that they really are just that, exceptions. In English there are so many exceptions to the rules that the rules begin to not look like rules at all.
I don't expect you to read all that and say "Oh I get it now". But I hope that this site can help you to reach that moment of illumination that hit me after about six weeks of studying. At some point it should all click into place in your mind. That's how it happened for me. Once you hit that point, the Finnish language will suddenly become just a series of simple, very solvable puzzles, and you have the solutions here on this website.
Contact
email: thefinnishteacher@gmail.com
twitter: @Finnishteacher1
Facebook: www.facebook.com/search/top?q=the%20finnish%20teacher
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ-KWKPAQQ57Jsx1rtPgqjg
My name is Michael and I began learning Finnish in late 2012. At first I thought I'd never be able to grasp this seemingly impossible language, but after a little time I began to notice that Finnish was in fact a simple language, when looked at from a certain angle. The thing that makes Finnish seem so hard at first I think, is the rules. There are so many rules. This sentence is constructed in this exact way because of all of these reasons and these suffixes are on these words because of the rules. In English we say "table". In Finnish we have to choose from fifteen or so versions of "pöytä". Maybe it's "pöydälle" or "pöytänä". When you first hear about the six verb types or the 15 grammatical forms that any noun or adjective can take, it's very easy to feel overwhelmed. How on earth am I supposed to remember all this?
But actually, when you think about it, these things make Finnish simpler rather than more complicated. Six verb types means 6 different ways to conjugate verbs. You learn those 6 rules and then you can easily ,conjugate any verb you come across, even if you don't know what it means. All those different grammatical cases really just replace all the different prepositions that we use in English. Learning them and when to use them is no different than learning when exactly you should use words like in, on, at, to, by. from, and for.
In Finnish we don't have to worry about regular verbs and irregular verbs. Irregular verbs in English really are irregular. There's no rule in place for remembering how to conjugate them. There's no system that explains why the past tense of take is took, but make becomes made and wake becomes woke. Finnish does have words that break the rules. There are exceptions. But there are so few of them that they really are just that, exceptions. In English there are so many exceptions to the rules that the rules begin to not look like rules at all.
I don't expect you to read all that and say "Oh I get it now". But I hope that this site can help you to reach that moment of illumination that hit me after about six weeks of studying. At some point it should all click into place in your mind. That's how it happened for me. Once you hit that point, the Finnish language will suddenly become just a series of simple, very solvable puzzles, and you have the solutions here on this website.
Contact
email: thefinnishteacher@gmail.com
twitter: @Finnishteacher1
Facebook: www.facebook.com/search/top?q=the%20finnish%20teacher
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ-KWKPAQQ57Jsx1rtPgqjg
