I don't want to start a raging debate here about how best to learn Finnish, but, while I agree that it's not ultimately enough for fluency, the traditional atomic approach to language learning is probably necessary, in the beginning, for most adult learners. The wholistic total immersion approach that works so effortlessly for babies simply does not work for the vast majority of adults.
I think it's generally accepted that adults, babies and young children don't acquire language in the same way. The adult brain is physiologically different and can no longer absorb, sponge like, a new language using the same tricks it did when young. Sure, there are savants that acquire language without breaking a sweat, but they are by far the exception, not the rule. Most adults, I believe, will reach fluency the quickest through a combination of both atomic and wholistic learning.
Here's what I think might work well for Finnish (24 to 42 months to fluency):
Acquire a seed vocabulary and learn the basic grammar (12 to 18 months)
- perhaps a core vocabulary of one to two thousand words (basic nouns, verbs,
adjectives, adverbs, etc.)
- Learn to form and recognize the principle forms for each:
nouns: basic, partitive singular, genitive, partitive plural (Ex. kirja,
kirjaa, kirjan, kirjoja)
verbs: basic, present 1st person singular, past 3rd person singular, perfect
(Ex. puhua, puhun, puhui, puhunut)
adjectives: basic, comparative, superlative
- Learn the rules for consonant gradation (kk>k, tt>t, t<d, nk>ng, etc.)
- Learn the basic cases and when to apply them
- Learn the basic tenses and how to form them
Finnish for Foreigners I, although now somewhat dated, is still available and the best textbook I've encountered. Study it from cover to cover and you will have a solid foundation on which to build a tower toward fluency. In addition, there are many online sources for basic vocabulary.
Book2 has pictures and pronunciation and would be a good supplement to FFF.
BTW, regarding the use of the elative case (-sta / -stä): coming out of something or somewhere is only one of the uses covered by the case. FFF is much more thorough and instructs on several other uses such as the topic about which something is discussed, and the object for which we thank someone (e.g., Ihmiset puhuvat säästä. = People talk about the weather; Kiitos kahvista = Thanks for the coffee).
Learn 10,000 sentences (12 to 24 months)
You can read more about it
here, but the basic premise of the
Method of 10,000 Sentences is that your brain builds relationships through categorization and that to become fluent in a new language your brain needs a ton (10,000) of sample sentences for processing. The goal during this phase is to fully learn and comprehend 10,000 sentences, after which, the method claims, you will be fluent. You should strive to learn perhaps 20 new sentences per day (10000/20=500 days, or ~18months). You should be able to read, write, say, and hear each sentence with understanding, concentrating NOT on a word-for-word direct translation but on the taken-as-a-whole meaning.
Yle Uutiset Selko Suomeksi is an outstanding source for sentences. The topics are current and likely to be something that you would encounter in everyday conversation in Finland. The vocabulary and grammar is purposefully kept simple and each article (typically four per day, each with 7-8 fully constructed and grammatically correct sentences) is accompanied by a downloadable mp3 recorded by a variety of native Finnish speakers, both male and female. Some speak rather slowly with exaggerated enunciation (Tuukka Lukinmaa) while others speak a bit faster (Pertti Seppä) and probably sound more normal (Jan Fredriksson). You get a variety of voices and tempo, both male and female.
I created an app with which to collect and organize Yle Uutiset sentences. Here's a screenshot with the embedded player visible:
I can read and/or listen to each day's articles in the order in which Yle presented them, or skip around randomly with or without the audio enabled. The quiet mode is ideal when I'm at work and don't want to disturb others. At work I typically set it up to auto play random sentences without audio. Then, whenever I'm at my desk, I click on the 'Random' button until a sentence appears that I don't immediately understand. That becomes my 'sentence of the moment' and I repeat it over and over in my head until it makes sense.
At home each evening I download and parse the articles and chop up the mp3 file into individual sentences. Then I read, listen, repeat, and write each until it comes more or less natural. I spend approximately one hour each morning and one hour in the evening reviewing the sentences, and it has definitely improved my vocabulary and comprehension since I started doing this in August (almost 4000 sentences and counting!).
Double-clicking on a word will bring it up in Wiktionary. Highlighting a phrase or triple-clicking the sentence will bring it up in Google Translate.
Speaking of which, I think Google Translate is perfectly suitable for basic single word translations as it seldom gets it wrong. Homographs can be a problem (seal, for example, doesn't mention the animal, only the mechanical part. It's okay to blow the latter but definably not the former!
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)
) and complex sentences are typically butchered. But coupled with Wiktionary, the two can compliment each other.
One last thing:
I wasn't aware that engineers are particularly attracted to Finnish nor that they typically don't do well in it. But it stands to reason that the very same brain wiring that makes us good engineers (e.g., logical, analytical, and objective reasoning skills) probably cripples us somewhat when learning something as subjective as a foreign language. We are much better at analyzing grammar and memorizing vocabulary!
Give an engineer a black box that does something unusual in a at-first-glance unexplainable way and it will be taken apart in short order to find out how it works. We can't help ourselves - it's just the way our minds work. We build complex systems from simpler components and deconstruct complex systems for insight and analysis. Thus our predilection for the atomic approach to language learning.
And that's all I'm going to say about that (probably).
![Wink :wink:](./images/smilies/icon_wink.gif)