Colloquial Finnish by Abondolo

[Mook]

it's about the only Finnish book that I could read without falling asleep, so in that sense I had "success". Finnish is a small language, the market for material is small so I guess there'll always be a couple of mistakes.

[Satish]

Frequent use of grammar that has not been introduced.

I agree with this tendency in the book. My tactic was to stop going through the book, and go off and get some of the theory that the reference alluded to. This led to some interesting travels in the by-lanes of Finnish... By the way, the little glossary in the back I found very useful because it made me go and understand all the grammar terms that I had no idea about.

Onks teillä siiderii? in chapter 4 - surely this should be siideriä?

Umm... I thought so too about the siiderii bit until I realised that the conversation is colloquial. Books like Karlsson specifically mention the short vowel 'a' or 'ä' assimilating to the preceding vowel..

4. The book's analytical framework is interesting but complicated. The glottal stop at the end of osoitte is written Q in the book....
The infinitive ending is written as -TAQ. You have to understand his notation. ".....He has X stems, XE stems and TSE stems in verbs as well - all meaning strange things in his notation.

I agree about the strangeness, and in the end it was dangerous! I used Abondolo exclusively in Australia since it was the only reference I could get. His 4 verb classifications Q stems etc became familiar but then when I came to Finland I find that this is NOT the widely used verb classification system etc. So trying to cross reference stuff was impossible. I spent a lot of time rewriting all my notes to a system that worked across various grammar books. Ah well, you learn anyway...

Has anyone had success in using this book to learn Finnish?

As Mook alluded to before, 'success' could be difficult to measure but I have found it a very good starting point. The early conversations were difficult to follow but using the raw MP3 files and a program like Audacity I could loop the passages and get used to the conversations. His standalone treatments of grammar topics, sprinkled throught the book, I found very useful.

[Pursuivant]

Onks teillä siiderii?

ei oo siiderii, tuo blandist meil on brenkkuu

[Satish]

Do you mean Audacity can slow down the speed at which MP3s play back? That could be useful...

You can slow the speed down, but the main feature I use is to choose any portion of the audio track and loop it...

[Bavarian]

Onks teillä siiderii?

ei oo siiderii, tuo blandist meil on brenkkuu

Puhu oikein, olkaa hyvää!

[Pursuivant]

essentials of colloquial Finnish my ass...
blandis = cf. blanda/blandning = smth to blend with, mixer
brenkku = cf. brännvin = distilled liquor

now try again...

[Upphew]

Some "fine" examples of colloquial finnish in written form: http://ircquotes.fi/list.php?sort=new
Maybe they are not the best learning material, but at least can be used to train reading comprehension and they might at least be funny.

[abondolo]

Glad you enjoyed what you could of the book. One can never satisfy everyone. My main aim
in this book was to present a view of Finnish taken from a different angle than the usual one.

[abondolo]

Frequent use of grammar that has not been introduced.

I agree with this tendency in the book. My tactic was to stop going through the book, and go off and get some of the theory that the reference alluded to. This led to some interesting travels in the by-lanes of Finnish... By the way, the little glossary in the back I found very useful because it made me go and understand all the grammar terms that I had no idea about.


ALL THIS SOUNDS GOOD

Onks teillä siiderii? in chapter 4 - surely this should be siideriä?

Umm... I thought so too about the siiderii bit until I realised that the conversation is colloquial. Books like Karlsson specifically mention the short vowel 'a' or 'ä' assimilating to the preceding vowel..

so does the CF book

4. The book's analytical framework is interesting but complicated. The glottal stop at the end of osoitte is written Q in the book....
The infinitive ending is written as -TAQ. You have to understand his notation. ".....He has X stems, XE stems and TSE stems in verbs as well - all meaning strange things in his notation.

it's no more 'complicated' than Finnish is! the -d- of sade 'rain' is a -d- for tha same reason that the -d- of
saada 'to get' is a -d-. Once you understand this, Finnish morphophonemics becomes easier to explore.

I agree about the strangeness, and in the end it was dangerous! I used Abondolo exclusively in Australia since it was the only reference I could get. His 4 verb classifications Q stems etc became familiar but then when I came to Finland I find that this is NOT the widely used verb classification system etc. So trying to cross reference stuff was impossible. I spent a lot of time rewriting all my notes to a system that worked across various grammar books. Ah well, you learn anyway...

The map is not the terrain! Thank GOODNESS we have more than one grammar of a language ...

Has anyone had success in using this book to learn Finnish?

As Mook alluded to before, 'success' could be difficult to measure but I have found it a very good starting point. The early conversations were difficult to follow but using the raw MP3 files and a program like Audacity I could loop the passages and get used to the conversations. His standalone treatments of grammar topics, sprinkled throught the book, I found very useful.