Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant second stage but not for absolute beginners., 15 Nov 1998
By A Customer
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.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good... but not for beginners, 22 Dec 2007
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.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not for beginners, 18 April 2006
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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