How do people learn this?

[Jukka Aho]

Pages 189 to 190 are not shown in this preview

Aww, oh well, perhaps Joensuun Yliopisto would have it...
Sorry about that...I guess "googlebooks" excerpts can be "randomized" a bit...it's no longer appearing for me either...:D

Yes, they randomize the preview pages and the missing parts. It is based on your IP address and cookies, with some time limits, too, I recall. I once read a detailed “hacking” article about the system they’re using but have since lost the URL to it. Someone had created a software tool which allowed bypassing the system and downloading the book in full through the use of several IP addresses and/or unconventional cookie handling. Or maybe he was doing it in several passes over the course of a few days. Can’t remember the details any longer. In any case, you can often view the “missing” section from another computer.

[Rennon]

I’m with Rob here and I am a native speaker. Maybe what your wife means is that it is not a construct she would normally use in colloquial speech or recommend to be used in official written text – as opposed to, say, poetry. (It has that certain old-fashioned ring to it.)

Try this variation on your wife:

Yes, she says now that she looks at it again, it does make sense (and she agreed that it has this old, poetic feel to it).

Tuo lintu, se vasta on kaunis!
...
Tuo lintu, se se vasta on kaunis!

I understand the doubled "se" in the second sentence well but how does vasta work here? what does it emphasize?

[Jukka Aho]

Do you listen to Finnish radio much? That does a lot to help you learn both to hear and to understand. If you just listen or at least have it in the background a couple of hours a day, your ear will gradually start absorbing. Finnish radio is very clearly spoken compared to most other sources of speech in Finland.

No I don't, I get intimidated by the lack of understanding anything. Do you recommend any particular stations?

The commercial stations are mostly about playlists and inane (supposed-to-be-funny!) bantering between the songs – often about some daily bits of gossip or on “News of the World” style topics. YLE runs a few stations which are more speech-oriented. Here’s a quick rundown of YLE’s radio services:

• Radio 1 is about culture, politics, news and current affairs, science, classical music and maybe jazz.
• Radio Suomi is mostly about sports, the interests of “the common people”, what’s going on in the provinces, and domestic music genres (iskelmä etc.)
• YleX is the pop/rock/youth channel. Doesn’t greatly differ in style or content from the commercial offerings. Has maybe a couple of regular shows for some less popular genres of rhythm music which the commercial stations don’t cover too well.
• Radio Vega is the same as Radio 1 + Radio Suomi but for the Swedish-speaking minority.
• Radio X3M is the same as YleX but for the Swedish-speaking minority.
• Ylen Klassinen plays classical music and related interviews and talk shows.
• Sámi Radio is for the Sámi minority in Lapland.
• YLE Mondo is the foreign language service of YLE. They broadcast domestically-produced content (such as news) in English and other languages but also have some regular timeslots for over-the-seas foreign content rebroadcast here (NPR in Washington D.C., CBC in Toronto, the BBC, some Russian and French content, maybe something else too...)
• YLE Puhe is a talk radio channel (the only true talk radio station in Finland?), and one you would probably be listening the most. It recycles talk show content and interviews from the other channels and also the audio tracks from YLE’s current affairs TV shows, where practical and applicable.

Then there are many regional stations run by YLE all over the country, practically one in each province.

You can get a full listing of all these here. The page contains links to the net streams of the respective radio services, so you can listen to them online, if you wish. YLE Puhe, YLE Mondo and Ylen klassinen are also available on digital TV as radio channels. (And, in some areas, as real FM radio channels, but not all over the country.)

YLE’s program guide for all their services is available here. Podcasts / downloadable MP3s are available here.

I would recommend YLE Puhe (listen to it here!) as it is the most likely radio station to broadcast Finnish speech at any given moment.

TV is also good when you can get it with Finnish subtitles, though the speech is usually not as clear and you tend to get engaged in the plot and then frustrated with what you don't understand.

Unfortunately we don't have a television.

Many of the Finnish TV shows are available online on YLE Areena, MTV3’s Katsomo, or TV4’s Ruutu.fi. The availability of many of the shows is limited abroad but since you’re located in Finland, that shouldn’t be a problem. There’s also an unofficial tool called rtmpdump-yle-gui for Windows for downloading Areena content to your own PC, for permanent storage and viewing, or the original RTMPDump-Yle aka yle-dl (see here as well) for doing the same on Linux.

[AldenG]

That's almost funny, actually. I was thinking YLE, specifically news, public affairs, and culture. I should have specified. To me that's "Finnish radio" because it's all I ever listen to, whether in Finland or on the web. It's the same for me in the U.S. Those others stations, which are a vast majority here, don't even register in my consciousness because I never tune to them. They're equivalent to background noise.

[Jukka Aho]

Tuo lintu, se vasta on kaunis!
...
Tuo lintu, se se vasta on kaunis!

I understand the doubled "se" in the second sentence well but how does vasta work here? what does it emphasize?

Tämä (se) vasta...!
Tuo (se) vasta...!
Se (se) vasta...!
Nämä (ne) vasta...!
Nuo (ne) vasta...!
Ne (ne) vasta...!
Minä (se) vasta...!
Sinä (se) vasta...!
Hän (se) vasta...!
Me (me) vasta...!
Te (te) vasta...!
He (he) vasta...!

Pysähtyminen - se vasta voimia vaatiikin!
“Stopping [metaphorically ‘on your tracks’, in your life] – now that’s truly something which requires some strength!”

Basaaritalous se vasta taloutta onkin.
“Bazaar economics, now that’s true economics for you!”

Tä(m)ä se vasta kiusallista onkin!
“Now this is something truly annoying/irritating/embarrassing!”

Kaikki muu muza [musa] on paskaa paitsi hevi ja metalli ja ne vasta paskaa onki[n]!
“Every other type of music is crap except heavy and metal, and those two are the definition of crap [crap in the truest sense to begin with]!”

Tuo vasta mielenkiintoiselta kuulostikin
“Now that sounded [began to sound] (truly) interesting!”

You’re contrasting the thing you’re talking about to something mentioned (or implied, or assumed) earlier, and emphatically stating how that is something that truly takes the cake and wins the competition, hands down, topping everything discussed earlier. The competition pales in comparison!

These expressions can be thought of being related to the regular meaning of vasta (“only until/after” / “at earliest” / “no(t) earlier than”). You didn’t get too excited about the things that were being discussed until after this latest thing was mentioned, or popped into your mind. Now that’s the thing! That is something that begins to have some effect! Forget everything we were discussing earlier, now we’re (finally) talking; this baby beats the rest, epitomizes the concept we were discussing! (Maybe not in absolute sense but at least in comparison to the things mentioned earlier.)

[Rennon]

Tuo (se) vasta...!
Se (se) vasta...!
Nämä (ne) vasta...!
Nuo (ne) vasta...!
Ne (ne) vasta...!
Minä (se) vasta...!
Sinä (se) vasta...!
Hän (se) vasta...!
Me (me) vasta...!
Te (te) vasta...!
He (he) vasta...!

Pysähtyminen - se vasta voimia vaatiikin!
“Stopping [metaphorically ‘on your tracks’, in your life] – now that’s truly something which requires some strenght!”

Basaaritalous se vasta taloutta onkin.
“Bazaar economics, now that’s true economics for you!”

Tä(m)ä se vasta kiusallista onkin!
“Now this is something truly annoying/irritating/embarrassing!”

Kaikki muu muza [musa] on paskaa paitsi hevi ja metalli ja ne vasta paskaa onki[n]!
“Every other type of music is crap except heavy and metal, and those two are the definition of crap [crap in the truest sense to begin with]!”

Tuo vasta mielenkiintoiselta kuulostikin
“Now that sounded [began to sound] (truly) interesting!”

You’re contrasting the thing you’re talking about to something mentioned (or implied, or assumed) earlier, and emphatically stating how that is something that truly takes the cake and wins the competition, hands down, topping everything discussed earlier. The competition pales in comparison!

These expressions can be thought of being related to the regular meaning of vasta (“only until/after” / “at earliest” / “no(t) earlier than”). You didn’t get too excited about the things that were being discussed until after this latest thing was mentioned, or popped into your mind. Now that’s the thing! That is something that begins to have some effect! Forget everything we were discussing earlier, now we’re (finally) talking; this baby beats the rest, epitomizes the concept we were discussing! (Maybe not in absolute sense but at least in comparison to the things mentioned earlier.)

Tuu heti mun kotiin ja ole mun ope.

[Jukka Aho]

Tuu heti mun kotiin ja ole mun ope.

Sano mua rehtorix!

[Rob A.]

.... But: "Your beauty will last forever."..."Sinun kauneus, sitä kesti ikuisesti." The idea being conveyed is that "kauneus" is ongoing....

I guess I had better correct this...I meant to use the present tense...kestää...."Sinun kauneus, sitä kestää
ikuisesti."

And while I'm here, here's another variation....Kauneus, se on katsojan silmissä." And I think se would be used here because we are talking about a "complete" concept, not an "ongoing" concept.

[Jukka Aho]

And while I'm here, here's another variation....Kauneus, se on katsojan silmissä." And I think se would be used here because we are talking about a "complete" concept, not an "ongoing" concept.

Yes... actually, if you said “Kauneus, sitä on katsojan silmissä” it kind of does away with the whole proverb thing (as the sentence would no longer appear to be the well-known proverb in its common, idiomatic form!) and it would simply mean there’s (literally) some beauty in the eyes of the beholder – she has beautiful eyes.

Senteces of the type “Kauneus, sitä on katsojan silmissä” could be thought of having a dramatic or thoughtful pause in the place where the comma appears. In a way, you begin by uttering the word which is at the top of your mind... then pause and formulate your actual thoughts about it. Ordinarily that and similar sentences would be written out just as “Kauneus on katsojan silmissä.”

As far as idiomatic sayings go there’s also the slightly more common (according to Google) variant “Kauneus on katsojan silmässä”. But silmissä is used as well.

[blaugrau]

... but the thing is I don't understand when people say to me "don't worry about all these minor details", because sentence structure is not minor, and neither are suffixes, these are all essential to meaning.

[..]
People seem to think that's what I want, and it's understandable that that's the impression people get, but really If I could understand the basic meaning of simple spoken sentences I'd be over the moon, but I can't, I really just want to understand what people say at a basic level.

I very much sympathise with your frustration, as i went through the same feelings when I first moved to Finland. And similarly, the affirmative suffixes like "-han", -"pa" did drive me mad as well -- but I would really disagree with what you say above: in most cases, they really are not vital to the meaning of the sentence. My strategy back then was to just ignore them (trying to be able to recognize them when seeing them in written language but not trying to use them actively), and I did so for a long time, until years later I got some kind of feeling for it.

I would also like to stress that for most people, the different aspects of language learning develop at different speeds -- in my case, reading and writing develops most of the time much quicker than speaking and listening comprehension when learning a new language. So even though it's of course frustrating when spoken skills lag behind, at some point it will become more balanced. I think key is that you have some patience with yourself (easier said than done, i know, I got quite frustrated sometimes). It definitely will get better! Listening comprehension exercises etc. definitely work (but if you're prone to frustration I think textbook-exercises might be a better choice than authentic material, even though stuff like selkouutiset is of course great too).

And about people talking English to you -- one way is to just ignore it, keep answering in Finnish until you run out of Finnish, and only then switch. At least for me this approach worked quite well.

[AldenG]

Another thing about TV is that you can watch DVDs on your computer. They're better than TV because it's easy to repeat episodes and also to stop and back up a few seconds to repeat a sentence.

You say you're not yet at that level, so this advice is probably premature. But when you get to that level, then you can invest in a series on DVD without having to invest in a TV -- unless you have a religious belief against TV or something like that.

Without getting into detailed diagnostics, it's possible you're simply trying to learn to fast. Since you have a patient wife, the right speed at which to learn is the speed at which you can engage in artificial conversations with her in Finnish, adding a few words and constructs at a time, expanding as your ability grows. Either you start with a simple text and use those sentences to form questions and answers, or you have somebody set up some sentence paradigms and vocabulary and you engage in artificial conversation based on those. Racing ahead to read about things you aren't yet ready to use at a conversational level isn't necessarily that helpful. It might even slow down your real-world progress.

Reading comprehension transfers poorly to conversational comprehension. Each is needed in its own right, but the way to learn to hear and understand what people say is to have conversations. You just have to be prepared that it's going to be a couple of years at best, probably, before you can do that outside the you-and-your-wife classroom. Or maybe sooner, it's very individual. It's the doing that teaches. The reading about is just an aid for the doing. It helps some people more than others, but there is no substitute for actually using pieces of the language to exchange meanings with other people.

[Upphew]

Reading comprehension transfers poorly to conversational comprehension.

Amen. I have no problems with literally anything that is written in English. Then I try to make snide remark here and fall flat on my face. I blame beer.

[Rob A.]

Reading comprehension transfers poorly to conversational comprehension.

Amen. I have no problems with literally anything that is written in English. Then I try to make snide remark here and fall flat on my face. I blame beer.

Humour must be the toughest thing to deal with in a second language..... Heck, even among different English-language forms, humour doesn't always travel that well... Though some people can pull it off well.... And with non-English accents, It's almost as though broken English is part of the "shtick"....and that itself becomes funny.

But I guess it won't work if the person gets offended if people laugh at his/her accent...

But having said this, I still fondly remember the first joke I made in German....a very dry joke, but the cab driver seemed to think it was hilarious.... Maybe for the reasons I cited above...

[andycrofts]

Hi
I've learned a few things.
1) Try NOT to use a dictionary! I was on a full-time course, and I noticed those without dictionaries did far better than those with, even though the starting (Finnish) point was the same. OK, some of these folks were already multilingual, but one girl, after 5 months went on to pass the YKI keskitaso course.
As one very frustrated American student on the course said "Why the heck teach this in Finnish only??. I replied "What language did your mother teach you English in?"
It seems (I used a dictionary, 'till I discovered this) that dictionary-users learn to translate, those who don't learn to understand.
Now I tend to use 'sanakirja.org - not for the translation, but for the examples of how to use a word.

2) Something I learned from learning Morse Code years ago. You suddenly hit a 'wall' that seems impenetrable. In the morse code case, I found these walls at 3 words/min, then 6, 8, then 10. I needed about 14wpm for my ham licence. No amount of extra practice got me through. One wise old sage said "Just drop it for a week. Let it 'pickle' in your brain. Then go back to it!" Amazingly, he was right. Not always an option at full-time school, but it certainly helped.

3) Little and often is far better than devoting a Sunday to 'cramming'. But I think we all know that from College days...

4) This really works for me. I always have trouble with the speed of recordings...I found a free (GPL) tool called "Audacity". It's the first link in Google, it's so popular. Windows or Linux*. One of its features is to be able to slow the tempo of sound (speech, music, etc) without changing the pitch. Using it to slow speech by 15-20% is a great help! Just sounds like slowing YLE-news to 'selkouutiset' speed. You can record alongside (use one of the stereo channels) and compare your speech/pronunciation with the native speaker. You can even see the differences graphically. As I said it's totally free, no ads,etc. Totally legally so.
I then put the 'slowed' version in a separate directory, play that a few times, following in the book then go to full speed version. Advantage is that you can easily select a phrase graphically, and play it again and again with a mouse click.
One can slow it to 50% if you like, and it sounds like me speaking Finnish...retarded, big ears, sitting on a wooden bridge in Bible-belt, playing a banjo... ("Deliverance", anyone...?)

5) I think this is OK...I go to the library, borrow every audio CD from the language section and put them on my Nokia N8, slowed down if required as step 4 above (MP3 at 128K takes 1/10 the space of .wav files, and the difference for speech on a phone is practically indistinguishable. I'm reasonably sure recording for own use is OK. I know someone's put a massive Finnish language pack together on the internet, but I don't think that's playing fair. If I want the book, I simply type the exercises from the library book into my computer - which is good spelling practice. As I just calculated I have bought maybe €600 worth of Finnish material, I don't feel too bad..I only need the exercises, and the 'readers'.
OK, I have:
Uusi Suomi-englanti Suur sanakirja €100 (for the 'odd' words, like "Kyvykkyys - which I think is beautiful! 'Capability')
Uusi englanti-suomi Suur sanakirja €100
Frank Karlsson essential grammar €40
Kuulostaa hyvää (both books ) tot. €50
Kuulostaa hyvää DVDs €40(?)
From Start to Finnish (L. white) €28
Finnish Grammar (L. white) €35
Hyvin menee 1 €35
Suomen Kielen sanakirja maahanmuuttajille €25 (Dictionary solely in Finnish
Suomen Laki 1&2 (Salvation Army, €3) - REAL Finnish !!!
Suomea suomeksi €30
Supisuomea €80
Finnish for foreigners 1
Suomea suomeksi (FIM 70)

Hope that helps. Got me from nothing to A2.2 (reading B1.1)

*One can also use command line in Linux. Much faster, if you're reducing an entire CD. If anyone's interested, I'll put the lines I use here. PM me.

[Jukka Aho]

I found a free (GPL) tool called "Audacity". [...] One of its features is to be able to slow the tempo of sound (speech, music, etc) without changing the pitch. Using it to slow speech by 15-20% is a great help! Just sounds like slowing YLE-news to 'selkouutiset' speed.

Hey, that’s pretty clever! ;) It’s obvious now that you said it but I never thought about that feature as a potential language-learning aid before...