Colloquial Finnish is easy to use with no prior knowledge of the language required. These CDs are recorded by native Finnish speakers and will play on any audio system. The material can be used on its own or to accompany the book, helping you with pronunciation and listening skills.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Audio Cassette
I think that this course is excellent but really not for the absolute beginner. It teaches from the outset the colloquial spoken version of the language which can be quite different at times from the standard form. Call me old-fashioned but I tend to think that you have to know a language fairly well before you have the confidence to deliberately break the rules. I also think you need to know the language well to pull this off as a foreigner without sounding odd to a native speaker. Using slangy forms when you are struggling with the basics, I think can result in a strange hybrid. Finns often use the standard forms when addressing a foreigner learning the language anyway. Also the dialogues on the tapes, which are of an excellent quality, are authentic but delivered far too quickly to be of any use to a complete beginner. The dialogues themselves often suggest situations that a student studying in Finland or someone working there might use rather than a casual visitor. I also find D. Abondolo's approach to teaching verb types very interesting but extremely confusing. In the long run I find it easier to work from the infinitive than figure out his system. Others may disagree, I suppose it depends what you're used to. Having said all this, I cannot recommend this course too much to anyone who has already got a grounding in the language and who is going to Finland. In fact without it much of the Finnish you'll hear on the street, in TV dramas and even in magazines (especially on the letters page!) will be hard to follow. You may also like to take a look at "Kato Hei" by Maarit Berg and Leena Silfverberg (ISNB 951-792-028-8) Published by Finn Lectura. It's the same idea but is more advanced.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By Daniel
Format:Paperback
This book has (understandably) recieved a lot of criticism from past reviewers, who bought this book hoping to master the basics from scratch, without requiring any previous language study. Afterall, this is what the book promises. However, the reader is thrown into complex paradigms, confusing tables and in-depth grammar rules from the outset. I myself, a final year language student at university, struggled to fathom out some of these paradigms. And as for no previous language study... a good knowledge of German is needed just to gain full benifit from the pronunciation section!
However, this is not to say that this book does not have it's uses. The grammar explanations (paradigms and diagrams aside) are very useful and concise and have helped me to bridge those gaps in my knowledge. Furthermore, this book does actually teach the colloquial language, so you will understand the language the people actually speak, not just the language the text books use.
All in all, this is a good book... just not for beginners. My advice for anyone interested in buying this book, or indeed in learning Finnish, is to buy Teach Yourself Finnish by Terttu Leney and then move onto this book afterwards. It will improve your Finnish, polish your grammar and teach you less stilted Finnish.
However, this is not to say that this book does not have it's uses. The grammar explanations (paradigms and diagrams aside) are very useful and concise and have helped me to bridge those gaps in my knowledge. Furthermore, this book does actually teach the colloquial language, so you will understand the language the people actually speak, not just the language the text books use.
All in all, this is a good book... just not for beginners. My advice for anyone interested in buying this book, or indeed in learning Finnish, is to buy Teach Yourself Finnish by Terttu Leney and then move onto this book afterwards. It will improve your Finnish, polish your grammar and teach you less stilted Finnish.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By Alan Smith
Format:Paperback
A nicely produced book but most decidedly not for beginners. The grammar moves along at far too rapid a pace for most of us to absorb and the explanations are confusing. For all its notoriety the old Teach Yourself Finnish, if used judiciously, is still useful, and provides the bonus of a continuous narrative. The word lists may initially look formidable, but the book is nicely paced in terms of grammar, allowing one plently of time to learn, for instance, the present tense before introducing the past, unlike Abondolo, who introduces past tense forms early on with, certainly for the novice, confusing morphological explanations.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Suomi
I decided to teach myself FInnish because my university course was boring me, and there's a guy from Finland living down the hall from me. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Nath
2.0 out of 5 stars
Just gets two stars
This is the first time that I've written an Amazon review, and I felt compelled to do so by the disappointment I felt towards this book. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Tom L
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not well thought out
So little thought seems to have been given to the production of this course. For a speaker of English, learning Finnish is never going to be easy, but there are ways to make the... Read more
Published on 23 Mar 2011 by tnbms16
4.0 out of 5 stars
Useful
Although there are a few Finnish books that I might recommend as supplementary material, this is one of the best introductory books. Read more
Published on 6 Jun 2010 by M. Hamann
2.0 out of 5 stars
A curate's egg of a book
If you are an absolute beginner and want a useable introduction to Finnish, this isn't it. It runs full pelt into complex rules for consonant gradation and vowel harmony within a... Read more
Published on 4 Feb 2004
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent, but mistitled
I started with the simpler and more light-hearted book by Terttu Leney, but wanted another perspective on the bits I find hard. Read more
Published on 3 Dec 2002
2.0 out of 5 stars
Overambitious and confusing
This book tries to cover too much - written and spoken languages from the very basics to bits of grammar most Finns don't even know ! Read more
Published on 10 July 2001 by Revd. Steve Day
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