5 Ways to Learn Finnish More Quickly
In my previous article "Finnish: An easy language to learn?", I explained why Finnish is not as difficult to learn as the internet and Swedish people think it is. Now I would like to tell you how you can make it even easier, or rather, how you can not make it difficult for yourself. This is based on my own experience of studying and teaching Finnish. Read my suggestions carefully. Think about how you yourself are currently approaching your language studies. Hopefully, you'll be able to take something positive from this article and apply it to your studies to improve your Finnish skills.
1. Think of Finnish as a puzzle, rather than a language.
When you're trying to piece together a Finnish sentence, it can be difficult. But as I've said before, Finnish is a logical language. It is like a puzzle. The form of each word you write depends on another word somewhere in the sentence. I think of this as kind of like a sudoku puzzle. In sudoku, each time you write a number, you've chosen that particular number based on the other numbers in the grid, using the process of elimination. Apply that to Finnish. When you're trying to think of what form the object has to be in, or what tense the verb has to be in, eliminate all the possibilities until you have only one. So long as you never just guess the answer, you can never be wrong, just like in sudoku.
2. Don't be afraid to speak Finnish
This is by far the most important rule of them all. The only reason I didn't put it first is because I'm sure you hear it all the time if you're on a language course, and I didn't want to start by boring you.
Students sometimes are afraid to speak Finnish because they've studied the grammar so much but haven't really tried applying it to speech. The truth is, there is so much grammar to remember that you're not going to be able to just read it, take it in and speak fluent Finnish. But that doesn't matter. If you speak and make mistakes a Finnish person will understand you, and they won't criticise or get annoyed just because of a few mistakes. Think of how foreigners speak your language. Is it perfect? Of course not, but you're pleased that they're speaking your language rather than just speaking their own and assuming that you'll understand. The only way to speak without making any mistakes, is to keep making mistakes until you get the hang of it. Speaking English will not help your Finnish to improve.
3. Watch kids TV and read kids books
In a language that contains so much important grammar, it's important to try to recognise how it is used in context. By reading children's books you will improve your language skills immensely. The language in them is nowhere near as difficult as say, in a newspaper, but it's something new, something other than the pieces of text in your textbook, something real. But of course, you can't just focus on your reading skills...
Watching TV will improve your listening skills dramatically. I watched a few Disney films, such as Aladdin, dubbed in Finnish. This was very helpful because I'd seen it so many times in English that I already knew what they were saying throughout most of the film, so I could make translations much more easily. I also watched Muumilaakson tarinoita. I'd recommend this to anyone learning Finnish. The characters speak very clearly, and use very simple Finnish. You can usually watch it online for free at areena.yle.fi/tv. One episode per day and I guarantee you'll notice a significant difference after a couple of weeks.
4. Read textbooks but write in a notebook
I honestly believe that this is the one main reason that I was able to learn Finnish so much more quickly than most people. When I started studying Finnish, we used Suomen Mestari 1. Halfway through our first module, I lost my textbook on a drunken night out (yeah, that's how dedicated/sad I was, took my textbook everywhere with me). After that I had to constantly borrow a textbook from a fellow student, and since he was writing his answers to the exercises in his textbook, I had to write mine in my notebook.
I then realised that just writing the answers in my notebook was pointless. Without the questions, the answers made no sense and they certainly wouldn't help me when I came back to study from them later. So I started to write the questions down as well.
I then noticed that I was able to remember the things that we had learnt in class better than most other students. Without a textbook to refer to, all of my knowledge came from my own memory of writing things down in my notebook.
I decided to take it even further. I went to the library, borrowed Suomen Mestari 1, and started again from the beginning. I wrote the entire book by hand into a notebook.... well, 2 or 3 notebooks. I translated every word that I didn't understand into English, wrote them down over and over and over again until I couldn't ever possibly forget them. By the time our third module ended, after 9 months of studying Finnish, I understood every word (including all of the grammar) in Suomen Mestari 1... AND 2!!!
Writing things down helps to store things in your memory. I never had to refer back to my notes, it was enough that I understood what I was writing when I was writing it. It helps to remember new words by learning what they mean in context rather than by just memorising a list of words.
5. Write letters, postcards, articles, or whatever in Finnish and ask your teacher to check them for you.
If you feel that you don't do enough writing exercises on your course, there's nothing stopping you from doing your own work. You don't need a teacher to tell you what to do all the time. It helps when you learn something new, such as the pronoun "joka" or the 3rd infinitive for example, to write a piece of text using your new grammatical skill as much as possible. It's more beneficial to you if you're creating this piece of writing yourself rather than just filling in the blanks in an exercise written by a teacher. And as I've already said, you'll remember things better if you write them down.
By the way, feel free to send your own pieces of text to me by inboxing me on the facebook page. I'll gladly check over them.
If you're still unsure about whether these methods actually work, remember this:
1. It can't hurt to try.
2. They worked for me, and as anyone who knows me will tell you, I'm an idiot.
1. Think of Finnish as a puzzle, rather than a language.
When you're trying to piece together a Finnish sentence, it can be difficult. But as I've said before, Finnish is a logical language. It is like a puzzle. The form of each word you write depends on another word somewhere in the sentence. I think of this as kind of like a sudoku puzzle. In sudoku, each time you write a number, you've chosen that particular number based on the other numbers in the grid, using the process of elimination. Apply that to Finnish. When you're trying to think of what form the object has to be in, or what tense the verb has to be in, eliminate all the possibilities until you have only one. So long as you never just guess the answer, you can never be wrong, just like in sudoku.
2. Don't be afraid to speak Finnish
This is by far the most important rule of them all. The only reason I didn't put it first is because I'm sure you hear it all the time if you're on a language course, and I didn't want to start by boring you.
Students sometimes are afraid to speak Finnish because they've studied the grammar so much but haven't really tried applying it to speech. The truth is, there is so much grammar to remember that you're not going to be able to just read it, take it in and speak fluent Finnish. But that doesn't matter. If you speak and make mistakes a Finnish person will understand you, and they won't criticise or get annoyed just because of a few mistakes. Think of how foreigners speak your language. Is it perfect? Of course not, but you're pleased that they're speaking your language rather than just speaking their own and assuming that you'll understand. The only way to speak without making any mistakes, is to keep making mistakes until you get the hang of it. Speaking English will not help your Finnish to improve.
3. Watch kids TV and read kids books
In a language that contains so much important grammar, it's important to try to recognise how it is used in context. By reading children's books you will improve your language skills immensely. The language in them is nowhere near as difficult as say, in a newspaper, but it's something new, something other than the pieces of text in your textbook, something real. But of course, you can't just focus on your reading skills...
Watching TV will improve your listening skills dramatically. I watched a few Disney films, such as Aladdin, dubbed in Finnish. This was very helpful because I'd seen it so many times in English that I already knew what they were saying throughout most of the film, so I could make translations much more easily. I also watched Muumilaakson tarinoita. I'd recommend this to anyone learning Finnish. The characters speak very clearly, and use very simple Finnish. You can usually watch it online for free at areena.yle.fi/tv. One episode per day and I guarantee you'll notice a significant difference after a couple of weeks.
4. Read textbooks but write in a notebook
I honestly believe that this is the one main reason that I was able to learn Finnish so much more quickly than most people. When I started studying Finnish, we used Suomen Mestari 1. Halfway through our first module, I lost my textbook on a drunken night out (yeah, that's how dedicated/sad I was, took my textbook everywhere with me). After that I had to constantly borrow a textbook from a fellow student, and since he was writing his answers to the exercises in his textbook, I had to write mine in my notebook.
I then realised that just writing the answers in my notebook was pointless. Without the questions, the answers made no sense and they certainly wouldn't help me when I came back to study from them later. So I started to write the questions down as well.
I then noticed that I was able to remember the things that we had learnt in class better than most other students. Without a textbook to refer to, all of my knowledge came from my own memory of writing things down in my notebook.
I decided to take it even further. I went to the library, borrowed Suomen Mestari 1, and started again from the beginning. I wrote the entire book by hand into a notebook.... well, 2 or 3 notebooks. I translated every word that I didn't understand into English, wrote them down over and over and over again until I couldn't ever possibly forget them. By the time our third module ended, after 9 months of studying Finnish, I understood every word (including all of the grammar) in Suomen Mestari 1... AND 2!!!
Writing things down helps to store things in your memory. I never had to refer back to my notes, it was enough that I understood what I was writing when I was writing it. It helps to remember new words by learning what they mean in context rather than by just memorising a list of words.
5. Write letters, postcards, articles, or whatever in Finnish and ask your teacher to check them for you.
If you feel that you don't do enough writing exercises on your course, there's nothing stopping you from doing your own work. You don't need a teacher to tell you what to do all the time. It helps when you learn something new, such as the pronoun "joka" or the 3rd infinitive for example, to write a piece of text using your new grammatical skill as much as possible. It's more beneficial to you if you're creating this piece of writing yourself rather than just filling in the blanks in an exercise written by a teacher. And as I've already said, you'll remember things better if you write them down.
By the way, feel free to send your own pieces of text to me by inboxing me on the facebook page. I'll gladly check over them.
If you're still unsure about whether these methods actually work, remember this:
1. It can't hurt to try.
2. They worked for me, and as anyone who knows me will tell you, I'm an idiot.
