Home

List of Lists

Films

Food + Drink

Geography

History

Languages

Literature

Music

Science + Nature

Finnish

10 September 2008

Brilliant. So glad I did that. I'd better quickly say that no, the course at Harjattula didn't make me magically fluent, but it pushed me on in all areas; of basic grammar, consonants and vowels, reading, writing, speaking and listening. All of those got a workout at some point during the five/six days. Here below is the main building, where we ate and did most of our classes, some also in the manor house which you can just see up the hill behind. It's in the middle of a golf course, surrounded by forest, and on the edge of the sea. There are a number of houses in the trees and up the slopes all around, providing accommodation, and a number of saunas. To the right of this viewpoint is a fire/rescue station, and then the golf course's clubhouse. My very comfortable room was in a house up the hill behind here. You had to be alert when coming down the road in the morning for breakfast, because with little warning the grass cutters would pop over the rise and speed down, cutting machinery spanning the whole width of the track, and they weren't taking any prisoners.

Harjattula

Anyway, this is supposed to be about the language learning. The first point is that it's obviously better to actually be in the native environment, ie. Finland, hearing it all around; and to have expert teachers on hand. Even without trying, you get more accustomed to the sounds, and all that context is just what you want in order to learn vocabulary. There were fewer on the course than in previous years. Maybe it had something to do with the Olympics, which I was very happy to avoid. I didn't entirely because there were screens up in lots of public places, but the focus was more modestly on Finnish athletes so it was never too histrionic. Anyway, we were split into only three groups; I was in an intermediate group with five others. It was very good. Our teacher worked us with thoroughness and great expertise, constantly teasing us into little leaps of understanding. I think she lives in England, so she had a good idea of the English and our sense of humour.

And despite being 'intermediate', we pretty much went back to basics, and were none the worse for it. The main thing she did which led to a major rethink of what I thought I understood was to teach the object case. Which meant dealing with the accusative case and the partitive together. I think I'd been a bit glib in thinking I'd grasped what the partitive was about, and in not paying attention to the accusative. The thing is, when you look in a Finnish grammar book, you quickly notice there isn't a separate case ending for the accusative, and if your past experience is, as in my case, of Latin, you end up thinking it doesn't really exist. Worse, I had somehow persuaded myself that the partitive was basically about giving the sense of the indefinite article as opposed to the definite ie. 'a' and 'the'. No, when they say Finnish doesn't have articles, that's what they mean. I'd better say no more, because now I need to reread certain chapters and my notes. And to get rid of my preconceptions when I study the accusative.

What else... one afternoon we had an excellent session on pronunciation. Without living there, it's hard to keep up with Finnish pronunciation. There's nothing clever about it: you simply have to keep going over all the vowels, the consonants, especially the double consonants, and the dipthongs. Getting the voice right is probably a lifetime mission; it was striking that though the members of the advanced group spoke correct Finnish, some of them still sounded English. Apart from anything else, I think sounding English is one of the reasons Finns eg. in stores will quickly switch into English if you stumble. If I was disappointed, it was about the fact that I still can't manage much conversation. When we did our grand excursion into Turku, armed with lots of tasks from our teachers designed to make us talk, I did struggle, and was glad I wasn't on my own. If I'd been brave and gone solo, I think I'd have failed to achieve some of the tasks. If I return on the next year or so, I might have a proper go, but for now it was best to enjoy it, I think, and share the experience.

And later on, in my last few days in Helsinki, either through laziness or simply going off the boil, I didn't achieve anything in the way of a proper chat with anyone. I would tend to start off making an enquiry in Finnish, but then apologise and lapse into English. On a social level it was good, but I have a way to go. However, there's every reason to be positive. Learning a language is a slow process, when you don't live there. Magically, I did find I could pick up more of what I heard, in all sorts of situations. It isn't enough yet, but a whole lot more than I used to. I can make statements, and my vocabulary has certainly grown. My fascination with Finnish is just as great as it ever was. The thing now is to do my homework, work over the basics, get my vocab to a truly useful level, and practise talking. Well, there are Finns there at the school in Manchester; I can start by seeing if I can get away with saying a few things in Finnish to them :) If I can manage all that, then I may feel like turning up again to Finn Guild's course in Harjattula next year.

1 August 2008

I'm now getting nervous about this Summer Course. In Harjattula, near Turku. It's only a week away and on the one hand, there are all the practicalities of travel and accommodation to look out for, and one the other, my desire to do some preparation for the Finnish. Yes, it's a peculiar approach, because learning Finnish is what I'm paying them for. But I'm sure I'd be wasting money to go into their beginners' group, which means claiming some basic knowledge and going into the intermediate group.

So, what is my 'basic knowledge'? Ah. Well, although I have yet to discover a Finn who knows no English, if I met such a person, I probably could communicate some simple needs to them, and if they had the patience to talk slowly and simply, I might be able to understand the answers. In practice, eg. at a railway station or in a shop, I have to break into some English to a greater or lesser extent. Partly because I soon need a word I don't have, and partly because of the difficulty of following spoken Finnish. To be a bit more specific, I can use verbs in the present and the past though with frequent mistakes of construction. And I can use the more common cases, in a simple fashion. I don't manage agreement very well. And as for pronouns, demonstratives etc., I'm a bit lost. What I'm saying is that I'd still be a year away from GCSE standard, if there was one in Finnish. And probably even more away from the basic Finnish exam, because that rightly expects much more of you in speaking skills.

I see I didn't write anything here after my trip to Helsinki at the end of May. Except for a note in my 'journal', and that concert story. As for Finnish, I can say that I tried and used more than on my first trip, but I had opportunities to try even more, what with meeting up with some acquaintances, and I flunked that. Mainly because I wanted to chat, and I don't have enough for it yet. So, this is a 'before' entry; what I hope to see in my 'after' entry, apart from general improvement - and no mention of any pickpocketing - is evidence of much greater confidence in listening and speaking.

24 March 2008

I've signed up for a place on the Finn Guild Summer Course in Finland. It's just for a week, but I'm sure it'll be great for giving a boost to my standard, especially to my spoken Finnish. I've become very conscious lately of the gap between my ability to get the gist of written Finnish - with dictionary and grammar to hand! - and my weak understanding of spoken Finnish. The spoken language is anyway quite distinct from the written one, but also I don't have a quick ear or however you want to put it. I found it hilarious after the last lesson at the Finnish Saturday School when Mikko our teacher revealed that in Finland there's a helpline for people to ring up and ask about the correct way to say something. This isn't for foreigners, it's for Finnish people! Thinking about it, maybe we could do with a similar helpline here, for English.

So, what about the language? What new words of wisdom do I have to impart? Not a lot; I would say the most important part of learning any new language is simply vocabulary. I am gradually building it up. Sadly, learning word lists is the dullest thing ever. To make vocabulary more interesting, one idea is to get a kuvasanakirja - a picture dictionary. Use flash cards on yourself, that sort of thing. But for me, the best approach is to read about things you're interested in, in the foreign language. It really doesn't matter what sort of subjects they are. The point is, if you're interested, that provides the crucial motivating factor, and you'll be picking words up in context. The topics don't have to be broad ones, but make sure one of your areas of interest is food - it's basic and always necessary... and who isn't interested in food?? For me, music is a major topic, just one or two bands in fact, which might seem a bit narrow, but within that I'm encountering both formal and informal language, written and spoken, newsy language, talk about travel etc, opinions, feelings, chat etc. Vocabulary is a long slog. And with a heavily inflected language like Finnish, it can be infuriating when a strange new word turns out to be merely an odd form of a word you already knew. And I don't know about you but, never mind the difficulty of the language, you always finding yourself looking up some words over and over again...!

Incidentally, I've just remembered the first Finnish word I ever knew. It isn't sauna or anything like that. It's from well before I knew anything about Finnish, and I had no idea how to pronounce it. And I can't really pronounce it today, because it's a bit of a tongue twister. I was into planes when I was a kid (the legacy of that is evident elsewhere on this site :) and one day I became fascinated by the fact that in the Second World War, though the Finns mostly used equipment from elsewhere, they had built a neat little fighter of their own, the Pyörremyrsky (Whirlwind).

Badly learnt languages - Earlier Finnish entries