Hyvää Päivää Suomi

Finnish is a fascinating language. It is very different from anything you have learned, but also very logical. Knowing this logic makes learning Finnish much easier, but unfortunately usually you don’t learn the logic until you are well into courses (if ever). This turns what should be an enjoyable exploration of a new language into a frustrating process which many people end up giving up on.

This course is designed to make learning Finnish fun.

This isn’t a real Finnish course, it is a pre-Finnish course. It is designed for people who know English well enough, and are at a high risk of dropping out of Finnish courses (most likely, because it is not strictly needed for their jobs). The goal of this course is to make you appreciate and enjoy learning Finnish, which despite what people may believe is very possible.

This course is written by someone who is learning Finnish, but by no means knows it. This isn’t designed to be technically correct, but easy and fun to understand. Do not trust anything in here, but learn it and remember once you start you own courses.

Note

Current status: There is a first draft of many sections, but they need revising, fact checking, and made consistent.

Contents:

• About Finnish
• Vocabulary and word structure
  • Vocabulary
  • Pronunciation
  • Consonants
  • Vowels
  • Diphthongs
  • Segmenting words
• Word structure
  • Syllables
  • Breaking words into syllables
  • Open and closed syllables
  • To think about
• Word order and basic noun cases
  • Word order
  • Parts of speech
  • The Finnish cases: Nominative, genitive, and partitive
  • Sentence structure
  • The Partitive
  • More rules
  • Complexities
• Verbs
  • Forms and stems
  • Personal endings
  • Verbs in sentences
  • Tenses
  • Negation
  • Moods
  • Passive
• Word endings (noun cases) and word changes (declension)
  • The noun case endings
  • Reminder: syllable formation
  • Consonant gradation
  • Stems from basic forms
  • Forming new words with endings
  • Plural
  • Overall diagram
  • Notes
• Study material and references
  • Before learning Finnish
  • For reference
• Speak simply - hints for Finnish speakers
  • Talk about unimportant things
  • Write efficiently
  • A multi-lingual message idea
  • Ask people about what they are learning
  • Don’t give up
  • Use Finnish words
  • Try to separate words well
  • Try to articulate words well, especially the ends
  • Consider your puhekieli
  • Listen to bad Finnish
  • It’s easier to read and write
  • Don’t hide Finnish text
  • Make domain-specific cheatsheets
  • Use children as teachers

Upcoming chapters:

• Common suffixes/forms
• Spoken Finnish/dialects

This is written by Richard Darst, and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This is an open-source project and suggestions and direct contributions are very welcome. I (Richard) don’t claim to be an expert in Finnish, and would like other viewpoints. I would especially like people with a more in-depth knowledge of Finnish to fact check things.