Private tutor?

[J.Honkanen]

Does anyone know of any private tutors who offer Finnish instruction online... via skype or something? I think I would absorb more of the information I am learning from books if I had a better way to practice what I am learning. I have not been able to find many Finnish speakers to practice with and learning from a book and repeating the same phrases over and over again only gets you so far. I have found some good websites for chatting in Finnish, but I would really like to find a way to speak and hear other people speak the language. I think hearing the language in a conversational way and being able to practice speaking with someone who will correct me if I am wrong would be highly beneficial. Most of the people I have found to chat with online will not correct me if I say something wrong, and I feel that by saying things wrong too many times I am only re-inforcing the wrong way in my head, which makes it even harder for me to remember how to say it the right way. Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

[Bubba Elvis XIV]

A lot of the language schools do...but it's for Finns...er...people in finland. Whether they would do it internationally I dunno, but
I will ring the office for you tomorrow and see. they will be damn expensive though...but maybe they'll cut you a deal as their would be no phone call involved.

surely someone in our little on-line community could help?

(Mind you when it comes to using Skype....I am the IT 'expert' in my office ).

[J.Honkanen]

You're the IT "expert"?? Should I take that to mean that Skype isn't very popular over there? I might be willing to do phone calls also, although that would get expensive pretty fast. Do you have a ball park idea how much a private tutor might cost? I would really appreciate it if you would ask around for me. Or you could give me the contact information and I can call or e-mail them myself.

[Bubba Elvis XIV]

Skype is possible and of course well known here...but I just find the language teaching industry very conservative and stuck in it's ways. The idea of using powerpoints and IT is all new and scary for a lot (not all) of the older (usually female) trainers...or at least in our office.

Contacts and cost...that's PM stuff.

To be honest, if you were doing phone calls...wouldn't be worth the cost.

Is there anyone in the US? There has to be!

[J.Honkanen]

You would think there would be, but I haven't found anyone. I found one group who would do online instruction, but only through e-mail. No voice. And they wanted to charge like $500 for it! Way too much if it is only e-mail instruction. I really want the voice/conversational aspect.

[Bubba Elvis XIV]

I think you might pay more through one of the private language schools in finland. Buuuuuut....I think the 'contact' is short. I think they do 30 mins on the phone, homework + preperation, then a face-to-face meeting once a month, which of course, you wouldn't do.

But I'll ask in the office, if that's no go...I'll ask the teachers if they would do it as an extra. I have some other contacts to.

With the economy the way it is they shouldn't be picky...I wouldn't be!

[AldenG]

I can't help you with the conversational aspect and feedback on your pronunciation.

But I was just writing in another thread earlier today that a surprising percentage of American DVD players will play Region 2 DVDs, including conversion from PAL to NTSC. You just have to Google your brand and model with region unlock and find the magic sequence of numbers to press on your remote. In some cases (Sony, JVC) you'd probably have to buy a new DVD player for under $100. Philips is a popular brand for multi-regional DVD playback. If you Google dvd player multiregion you can find advertisements and background info.

Then you could get someone to send you the DVDs of a Finnish TV series (that's cheapest) or several movies to watch with and without DVD subtitles (not closed captioning). Old B/W movies often have quite clear and standard Finnish in them, if you can find them with subtitles. They should be very cheap, too.

That doesn't solve your conversational problem but it helps you train your ear and can give you a head start toward making efficient use of any tutoring time you manage to purchase.

[tuulen]

@ J.Honkanen

Hei,

Seeing as you could be seeking a private Finnish language tutor: http://www.uusikielemme.fi/

Say hello to Inge! She teaches Finnish, online.

;-)

[J.Honkanen]

Alden G,

Will that still work if my TV is not set up to view PAL? Won't it mess up the colors and stuff?

[AldenG]

Alden G,

Will that still work if my TV is not set up to view PAL? Won't it mess up the colors and stuff?

Apparently, with a video output (not RF) the DVD player knows whether it's talking to a PAL set or an NTSC set. So some of them adjust their output accordingly. Or maybe all my players simply assume it's an NTSC set, I'm not certain. Or maybe PAL/NTSC is only relevant over RF. But tonight I have watched Finnish and Swedish DVDs on a vanilla America TV set. When Jukka Aho gets back from summer break or wherever he is, he can probably give a better answer. Or maybe someone else knows.

Tonight I just bought (for other reasons) a $40 Samsung unit at Walmart, model DVD-P191. I tried putting in a DVD of Metsolat, a popular Finnish TV series, that I bought just last week in Helsinki. It played fine, because the disc is enabled for all regions. So there is at least one 8-disc series you could watch on that model. I paid 50 EU for discs 1-4 and another 50 EU for discs 5-8. I think it's something like 23 episodes in all.

I don't know whether the unit is converting to NTSC on the fly or maybe the stored image is NTSC. Apparently 99% of DVD players in the EU can convert from NTSC to something that PAL TVs can display, even though it may not be true NTSC. I read on dvddemystified.com tonight that most EU players have no trouble with Region 1 discs once the region lock is disabled. (The site does appear to be rather dated, though.)

I haven't tried disabling the region lock on that one. I want to use it normally for a while and see if there are any anomalies. But I've seen instructions for unlocking it. Some people say they have succeeded. Others say they have not. The first have suggested that the second may have confused some similar keys on the remote that are used in the operation. One guy said his player wouldn't play anything after that, and he had to reset it somehow.

I also have a Daewoo that is many years old, a DVD-5700 or something like that from the early days of DVDs. I unlocked it yesterday and it now works fine with all my US, Finnish, and Swedish DVDs plus one my wife brought home from Nepal that is coded for that region. It is very obviously converting (in at least some cases) from PAL to something my NTSC TV understands. I even moved the DVD player off the multi-system TV to a vanilla American TV to be sure of that.

BUT:

I also have a Sony DVD/VCR, a something 271-P. It was not able to play Metsolat even though the region code was OK. I interpret this to mean that the Sony cannot convert PAL to NTSC (and therefore that the others DO convert). It puts a region-related error message on the screen even though Metsolat is allowed to play in region 1.

So the short of all this long is that at the least, you could watch Metsolat if you got the Samsung DVD-P191 for $40 at Walmart and got someone to send you Metsolat. There are probably a few other programs, particularly from YLE, coded to play in all regions. I also consider it likely but not certain that you could unlock the P191 and use it to play old movies -- or new ones for that matter, but I suspect the old ones would be easier at first, IF they come with Finnish subtitles.

[Mook]

Most computers play most DVDs, especially using Videolan

and for the region problems, well there's always DVD Decrypter

[rob34]

I also recommend Inge, from personal experience.

[AldenG]

Another TV series: Samaa sukua, eri maata. This is marked as Region 2 but plays in the Samsung on an American TV. (I know it's possible for the player to reject a true region-2 disc because I've seen that happen, too.) It's 5 discs (bought separately) for a total of about 25 hours. If you get serious about doing this, I'll check each disc individually for you, just in case there was some kind of production screw-up.

[J.Honkanen]

AldenG,

What do you mean by "video output (not RF)"? I do not know very much about technology terms. My searching google leads me to believe that by video output you mean SCART (i think those are the right letters) and by RF you mean the co-ax cable. Am I right or way off base? My tv doesn't have a spot for anything other than a co-ax and the yellow, red, and white do hickeys I use with my current DVD player and VCR. I had never even heard of SCART or RF before yesterday.



rob34 and tuulen,

Thank you! I will check out Inge.



Mook,

The website for Videolan was difficult for me to understand. I'm confused about the terms and what the program is supposed to do. Again, I know very little about electronics and the terms that go with them. Maybe you can help my poor feeble mind comprehend? Also, it looks as though the DVD decrypter is no longer on that website. Should I try one of the others they have listed? I thought those type of things were for burning DVDs, not watching them. No?
My laptop will allow me to watch DVDs from any region, but it will only allow me to switch regions 4 times and then it will be "stuck" on that region. As I would like to be able to watch region 1 movies on my laptop, I don't want it to stick in region 2. Will either of the websites help with that?




Thanks to everyone for all the advice so far! Keep it coming. Especially if anyone knows of private tutors.

[AldenG]

Yes, RF is radio-frequency, which travels over the coaxial connection used by cable TV.

Yellow, red and white is good news. I figured your TV probably had those, but I was going to ask to make sure.

The yellow is called composite video. The red and white are the audio connections.

So what my testing has demonstrated up to now is that the Samsung DVD-P191 on sale at Walmart will play my new copies of "Metsolat" and "Samaa sukua, eri maata" through the yellow, red and white connectors on an American TV that has those. Whatever the reason (and my earlier explanation might be technically incorrect), there is no PAL/NTSC problem with these DVDs and this configuration.

That's with the off-the-shelf, un-reconfigured Samsung unit.

Then I went ahead and and followed these instructions to unlock the Samsung and make it play all regions. No problem whatsoever. Now it plays ALL my discs on a 10-year-old standard Magnavox American TV using the yellow, red and white connectors. Still no PAL/NTSC issues.

This means you could ask someone to send you ANY Finnish series or movies with Finnish subtitles. (Possibly you could find some movies, though probably not series, that also had English subtitles.) Speaking of subtitles, I noticed that Samaa Sukua does NOT have any subtitles, so there's no point in getting that one at this point in your studies.

I don't know how you will fare directly ordering Region 2 DVDs for shipment to the US. In theory, stores are not supposed to export Region 2 DVDs outside Region 2. That's what it sometimes says in the copyright notice that plays at the start of discs. Others may not want the complication. Some sellers may not know of the restriction, or that particular restriction may no longer have legal force (something about anti-competitive pricing practices violating some laws), but I've run across a number of Finnish store websites that just aren't configured to accommodate cross-Atlantic transactions.

So you might need to ask some favors from Finlandforumites. But the technical path appears to be open and inexpensive. I can say that at a certain point in my study of Finnish, movies and TV shows with Swedish subtitles (the only ones available then, but a language that I happened to understand) were a very productive part of my learning to understand spoken Finnish. Often I wouldn't quite catch what they said, but even reading the meaning in a different language was enough for me to suddenly recognize what the Finnish words were. It made me wish I had a switch to turn on real-life subtitles -- like in "Annie Hall" for instance.