Learn Finnish on your own. Finnish language: learn online (training video)

Language is a means of communication. Language allows people to understand each other. At the same time, language can be a major barrier to understanding, as there are thousands of different languages on our planet.

You are reading this because you want to learn Finnish and you want to know how to do it quickly and efficiently. Most language learners are bored and frustrated. Keep learning Finnish with the LinGo Play Tutorial and you will learn how to learn Finnish on your own with fun and effectively. Start with the best Finnish learning exercises and you will become fluent in Finnish. The LinGo Play lessons are structured so that you can practice in all areas at the same time. Learn Finnish the way you've never learned it before - with fun and logical lessons and quizzes.

We have a unique method that teaches reading, listening and writing at the same time. Lessons start from the very basics, free Finnish lessons are open to everyone who has no knowledge of the Finnish language. Learning a language like Finnish requires a different approach. Each lesson contains many words, stages, exercises, tests, pronunciation and flashcards. You choose which content you want to use. After the initial content for beginners, you can quickly move on to things that interest you more. In the early stages of learning Finnish, you are interested in learning how the language works.

Learn Finnish online on your own easily and successfully with the Finnish learning app LinGo Play. You will find many free Finnish lessons with flashcards, new words and phrases. Once you learn how to learn Finnish from content, you can continue to do so throughout your life whenever you want. You can reach any level of language proficiency you desire. Just as there is no limit to the amount of content available in a given language, there is no limit to how much you can master a language as long as you are motivated. The best way to learn another language is through interesting content, listening, reading and constantly expanding your vocabulary.

Success in language learning depends mainly on the learner, but more specifically on access to learning and interesting content. Success depends more on interacting with interesting content than on a teacher, school, good textbooks, or even living in a country. You have more freedom to choose when and how to learn Finnish. Once you realize that you can learn more languages and enjoy the process, you will want to discover more and more languages.

Finnish is a unique language, completely unrelated to any other language. Intriguing and melodic, listen to the Finnish speech, it will sound like a murmuring stream, like an elven song. There are no unpleasant sounds in it, nothing guttural. Finnish was the main source of inspiration for John Ronald Reuel Tolkien in developing the Quenya Elvish language.

Reasons for learning Finnish

In addition to being the official language of Finland (apart from Swedish and Sami), Finnish is also an official language of the EU. Finnish is spoken in Sweden, Norway, Russia, USA - more than 6 million speakers worldwide.

Many people want to learn Finnish even though it is not widely spoken and is quite difficult to learn. Yes, it has a reputation for being one of the most difficult languages in the world. There are two explanations for this. Firstly, when asked what language Finnish is like, one can answer that it is unique, there is no other language like it.

The closest relatives of Finnish are Estonian and Hungarian. But there are more differences between them than similarities. The second reason is grammar. It makes Finnish "subtly" complex and very different from the grammatical structures in other most common languages. You may know hundreds of Finnish words. But at the moment when you are going to combine them into simple sentences, you have to apply more than one grammatical rule. This position often misleads the beginner and it seems that you are an absolute zero.

For many, Finnish is necessary to get a job or education in Finland. Studying in Finland is not just a rewarding experience that brings us into a special culture. Year after year, Finland maintains a leading position in PISA reports. Experience one of the best in the world, prestigious educational systems - the greatest opportunity that will expand knowledge, help to gain independence, self-confidence. And, of course, this is an important plus for any resume. The educational system in Finland has long since left traditional methodologies behind, giving way to innovative pedagogy. Every lesson at a Finnish educational institution is creative, experimental and personalized.

Learning Finnish will definitely help you communicate with Finns, but it will also give you access to understanding Finnishness (Suomalaisuus). Sisu is an untranslatable meaning, a concept that expresses the national character. This is the connection between Finnish culture in general and personal achievements. It is described as stoic determination in the face of adversity, perseverance on the way to the goal, determination, courage, stamina, endurance.

The Good Country Index, which ranks countries based on how each country contributes to the development of the planet and the well-being and prosperity of mankind, ranked Finland number one in 2018.

Characteristics of the Finno-Ugric group

Finnish belongs to the Finno-Ugric languages, which form a branch in the family of Uralic languages. Finno-Ugric languages are spoken by several million people, in an area stretching from Norway to Western Siberia and to the lower Danube in Europe. In this vast territory, the Finno-Ugric peoples represent enclaves surrounded by speakers of Germanic, Slavic, Romanian and Turkic languages.

The three most widely spoken Uralic languages are Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian. They are included in the Finno-Ugric group, although the linguistic roots common to both branches of the Finno-Ugric language tree are distant.

The Ugric sub-branch is the Hungarian and Ob-Ugric languages (Mansi, Khanty).

The answer to the question: what group is Finnish, the sub-branch consists of five components:

A group of Baltic-Finnish languages: Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, including the Olonets dialect, Vepsian, Livian, Izhorian, Ludikov dialect, Votic. Linguistically, Karelian is closely related to the Finnish dialects spoken in eastern Finland, and some Finnish linguists have even classified Karelian as a dialect of Finnish. Karelian should not be confused with the southeastern dialects of Finnish, sometimes called karjalaismurteet ("Karelian dialects") in Finland.
Permian group: Komi language, Permian languages, Udmurt.
Remaining groups: separate Mari languages, Mordovian and Sami. The Mari and Mordovian group are sometimes classified as a Finno-Volga group. In addition, since the Sami dialects are almost indecipherable among themselves, they are often referred to as separate languages. Mordovia is a republic that speaks Erzya and Moksha, related languages, which were previously considered as "a single Mordvinian language." Now they are considered as a small language family. Due to differences in phonology, vocabulary and grammar, they are mutually incomprehensible and for communication Mordvins (Moksha and Erzya), a Finno-Ugric people, often use Russian, and speak Russian.

The dictionary of Finno-Ugric languages reflects ties with neighboring non-Uralic peoples in different periods of history. The most ancient borrowings are from the Indo-Iranian languages. The Finnish language had borrowings from the Baltic languages even in remote times, and then from the Germanic and Russian languages. Mari, Udmurt, Ob-Ugric languages are rich in Turkic borrowings. Hungarian also borrowed at various times from several Turkic sources, also from Iranian, Slavic, German, Latin and Romance languages.

Finnish is difficult or not, what are the differences from Estonian, Hungarian?

Is it difficult to learn Finnish? It is well known that learning it for a foreigner is difficult, given the system of 15 cases, which uses nouns, adjectives, definitions. On the other hand, it's incredibly satisfying to be part of a relatively small group of people who are able to communicate with Finns in their own language.

It doesn't matter how difficult Finnish is or not. Your mindset matters. In fact, as people who study it methodologically admit, it is very logical. Although, linguists recognize such a phenomenon as Sprachbund (language union). This means that in a certain geographical area, languages that differ typologically from each other have other similarities - as a result of living in a similar environment. Such a phenomenon exists in the Baltic region. Like Estonia, which is with Finland in the north of the Gulf of Finland. Due to the common environment, common history, culture and contacts, the Scandinavian languages, German and Finnish have some common features. Accordingly, it is easier for people who know these languages to understand certain features of the Finnish language.

Learning Finnish will place certain demands on the student. Finnish is a synthetic language, of an inflectional type. In addition, all languages are not static. They change, it is often impossible to determine a specific rule for a particular grammatical structure. One example in Finnish is ti > si. Many native speakers may doubt between the imperfect forms kielsi and kielti (refused).

The problem you face when you start learning Finnish on your own from scratch is which order to follow: grammar or vocabulary. Everything depends on the goal. It may be enough for you to memorize a few conversational phrases. You can say "Minä pitää sinä" (Minä pidän sinusta - I like you), leaving all the words in their basic form, and the Finns will understand you. But if you're a perfectionist and take your studies seriously, you'll want to know what the Finn is talking about. In fact, a Finnish guy is unlikely to say Minä pidän sinusta to put his feelings into words. He would be more likely to say something like - Mä tykkään susta. This means that every language, and Finnish is no exception, has regional dialects and different social variants. Spoken Finnish differs markedly from standard Finnish. But it is always better for a foreigner to start learning Finnish from the standard form.

One of the main difficulties for beginners is learning vocabulary. Many words are completely different from anything you've ever heard (unless you speak Hungarian or Estonian, of course).

Word order in Finnish is very free, but rearranging words within a sentence slightly changes its meaning. Almost all permutations generate a meaningful sentence with a slight change in emphasis, but no change in intonation or stress.

The similarity or difference between Finnish and Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian, can be objective or factual, that is, it can be detected by the tools and methods of linguists. Or perceived by language users. The Finno-Ugric languages have enough common lexical and grammatical features, which proves their common origin. But these languages have evolved separately over millennia. Finnish and Estonian can in some cases be mutually intelligible when spoken slowly in Finnish or Estonian. On the other hand, despite the fact that Estonian may be similar to Finnish to some extent, and there are many similarities in the lexicon, the words in the two languages have different meanings:

for example, "maja" in Estonian "house", in Finnish - "tree house";
"huone", in Estonian "large building" in Finnish - "room".

Estonian has many borrowings from Low German, Finnish from Swedish. Estonian, having a German influence, uses more postpositions, while Finnish uses only cases: pöydällä (Finnish) = laua peal (Estonian) - on the table.

Finnish is more conservative and complex, while Estonian is more advanced. Estonia has been simplifying the language system for centuries. In general, Estonian morphology is simpler than Finnish, and the syntax is Indo-Europeanized.

Hungarian, which belongs to the Ugric subgroup of the Ugric people, is as far from Finnish as can be. Definitely, the Hungarian will not understand the Finn. Hungary, located in Central Europe, has the most widely spoken Uralic language in the world (13 million speakers).

in fin. - 14-15;
to Estonia. - fourteen;
to Hungarian. - 17-23 (average 18).

In Hungarian, the case system is the basis, it is regular. In Finnish and Estonian, they are not easy to understand, in particular, in the genitive and dative cases. Each Finnish verb has 200 possible endings. Only Hungarian uses articles. Both Finnish and Hungarian use possessive suffixes, but only Hungarian has a plural.

There are various speculative theories about the time and place of origin of the so-called Proto-Finno-Ugric language. According to the most common theory, Hungarian and Finnish are separated by 6,000 years of separate development.

Finno-Ugric speakers are now believed to have lived in present-day Finland since at least 3000. BC e. Over the next millennium, contacts spread between speakers of Finno-Ugric and speakers of neighboring Indo-European languages. Numerous words borrowed into Finnish, Estonian and other Baltic-Finnic languages demonstrate contacts between people who speak Finnish and people who speak Indo-European languages. Not only vocabulary was borrowed, but also many grammatical features.

Many cultures have regional dialects, and Finland is no exception. But along with dialects, there are forms in Finnish that are related to age, profession and other variables.

Today, in order to learn Finnish on your own from scratch, there are many opportunities, many for free:

With a tutor

On one's own

Uuno is a handy, colorful resource created specifically for foreigners who plan to learn Finnish on their own from scratch.
Easyfinnish is an online course for beginners developed by Yle, Finland's national public broadcasting service.
Supisuomea is a collection of videos also prepared by Yle for learning Finnish.
FSI Language Courses is a free conversational Finnish course in audio format.
LinguHouse is a program for travelers.
Uusi kielemme blog - grammar, vocabulary and more.

On course

Self-study apps

Most apps promise that a beginner will learn Finnish quickly and easily. Some focus on the conversational form for everyday situations, others focus on verbs.

Learn Finnish on your own from scratch:

Useful audio, video resources

audio for beginners - phrasebook
Podcasts – Aristoteleen kantapää , Ali ja Husu (Finland through the eyes of immigrants), Maailmanpolitiikan arkipäivää (foreign policy), Alivaltiosihteeri (humor)
TV show Moomin adventures– the characters use very simple Finnish. It can be watched online for free at yle.fi/tv.

Finnish music is fantastic! Listen to music on Radio Suomi Pop, also Finland's most popular band Eppu Normaali ,

A great way to hone your writing skills and get instant feedback from native speakers is to join an online language exchange program like the Conversation Exchange. The program is free and allows you to practice your language skills, get error corrections from native speakers.

Great for finding Facebook interest groups. In addition, there is the Speaky language community, bringing together linguists and language learners from all over the world who are looking for opportunities to practice the language and partners for communication. With features such as built-in translators and multilingual keyboards, Speaky will help you communicate with people learning almost any foreign language you can imagine.

Join online forums. This is a great way to communicate with native speakers on topics that interest you. Keep an eye on the various blogs in Finnish, they also contribute to lively discussions.

Students who practice the independent approach are often afraid to speak Finnish. Despite the fact that they learned grammar, they did not try to apply it in colloquial speech. The truth is, if you speak and make mistakes, the Finn will understand you and he won't criticize or get annoyed with just a few mistakes. The only way to speak without making mistakes is to keep making mistakes.

In a language that has such a complex grammar, it's important to understand how it's used in context. Read children's books, they are written in simple language. You will greatly improve your language skills.

Learning grammar structures is useful, but you need to write as much as possible. Write down a piece of text using the new grammar rule.

In general, Finnish is pronounced as it is written. Each letter represents one sound, there are no silent letters in it. Vowel harmony (when only certain combinations of vowels are possible in a word) affects the pronunciation (and spelling) of suffixes.

One of the problems for language learners is the definition of syllable boundaries in the pronunciation of very long words. But for many foreigners, the greatest difficulty is the pronunciation of double vowels and double consonants. For example, Tapaan sinut huomenna - "see you tomorrow" sounds very similar to Tapan sinut huomenna - "I will kill you tomorrow." Finns have an amazing ability to say very long sentences without pauses. This sometimes results in "aggressive" breathing, where the speaker appears to be breathing while speaking.

Think of Finnish as a puzzle, not as a language. When you try to put together a Finnish sentence, it's hard. But Finnish is logical, the form of each written word depends on another word somewhere in the sentence.

In contact with

Finnish is considered a difficult language. But learning Finnish is quite possible. You can even learn Finnish on your own by listening to the news in simplified Finnish. All you need is a basic understanding of Finnish grammar, a basic vocabulary and desire. At the same time, learning Finnish will be easy and even interesting. What is Simplified Finnish, and where can you find such news? This will be discussed.

I want to tell you how to learn Finnish. If you follow my recommendations, then after 2-3 months you will notice significant progress in Finnish. Why am I suggesting this to you? Because I tested it myself, and this method really works. I have been studying Finnish for ten years now and I must say that I have come across different methods, most of which have not justified themselves. For example, I don't really believe in language immersion when you go abroad to learn a language. This is especially doubtful in Finland, since the Finns, as soon as they see that you speak Finnish poorly, they will immediately switch to English. Therefore, the Finnish environment is unlikely to help you significantly improve the language in a short time. There are also various cutting-edge language courses that promise you knowledge of the language in a few weeks or months. I tested the courses myself and they don't work. Courses are needed to get basic knowledge about the language - the basics of grammar and basic vocabulary. And then you need to work on your own. Without it, there is no way to learn a language. To work independently, you need to be interesting, easy and simple. And now I will tell you how to make learning Finnish as simple and interesting as possible for you. First of all, I recommend that you watch a short video about simplified Finnish, and if you still have questions, then continue reading.

There is a TV channel YLE in Finland. This is something like our first channel, only here, in addition to TV, newspaper publications and even Finnish radio are also collected. All this is available not only with a TV, but also via the Internet at www.yle.fi. This allows you to learn Finnish online.

The Finnish information channel YLE has both a section with text news and a section for TV and video programs, which can also be watched offline. The amount of news and programs is huge. But this is all in everyday Finnish, and at first you are unlikely to understand anything here. However, the site also has a special section for Finnish learners – something like “Finnish online” or “Learn Finnish”. This news is in simplified Finnish. This section is called "selkouutiset": http://yle.fi/uutiset/selkouutiset/ . Simplified Finnish means that the news is read by a professional announcer using as simple sentences as possible and basic Finnish vocabulary.

Try listening to the daily news block, which is only 5 minutes long. Just click on the play button and listen. I offer you the following. You listen to these Finnish news, and if something or everything is not clear to you, then you read the text below, which repeats word for word what the announcer said. Here you deal with the dictionary, write out the words if you wish. After that, you listen to the news again. If you do this every day (and this news comes out almost every day), then in two or three months you will be surprised at the result... You will understand Finnish! This I guarantee you. It is very simple and only takes 15-25 minutes if you listen to the block twice and write out the words with a dictionary.

You don't have to listen every day. News is stored in the archive for some time and you can simply choose a couple of days a week for classes.

In addition to being simple, it is also interesting. It is interesting to hear what the Finns are talking about there. I must, however, warn you that the news of the Finns, even on such a training channel, is very biased. We are constantly told that there is no democracy in Russia. But in fact, there is no democracy in the West, including in Finland, sadly. The fact is that all the news about Russia, Ukraine, the Middle East, Syria, Libya, etc. represent only one pro-Western view of the situation. Often the Finnish news is just a lie. I will give you one illustrative example.

Since the news is stored in the archive for a couple of months, they can be listened to with a delay. That's what happened to me this summer. I came back from vacation and in the autumn I began to listen to the news for the middle of summer. I'm sure you remember that in mid-July a Boeing was shot down over Ukraine. By whom he was shot down, it is still unknown. However... Finnish news knows everything in advance. Immediately after the disaster, the Finns began to blame the militias from the southeast and even Russia. This is the second day after the disaster! At the same time, of course, the Finns do not have any reliable sources and references, so they simply write “many believe” or “many believe that the plane was shot down by militias with Russian support.” And this is simplified news for non-Finns!

In general, it is very strange for a developed democracy ... In my opinion, this is just stupid propaganda. And the results of this propaganda have already demonstrated themselves in Ukraine. Do the Finns really need a war?? More precisely, not to the Finns, but to those who manage them ...

However, read and listen to Finnish news yourself. I guarantee you that your Finnish language will improve, and you will also learn a lot of interesting things about Finland and, among other things, about the so-called "Western democracy"...

You can find out why Finnish only seems difficult to us, and read more interesting materials about the Finnish language.

Finnish is part of the Finno-Ugric group, which includes, in addition to Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian, Mordovian, Udmurt, Mari, Karelian and other languages. These languages differ from Slavic and other Indo-European languages.

First, let's talk a little about phonetics.
The meaning of a sound does not change depending on where in the word the letter denoting this sound is located. In Finnish, each sound is always written with the same letter. Long sounds are denoted by two identical letters and have a semantic difference:

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Vowels

Vowels divided into posterior a, o, u and anterior lingual ä, ö, y, e, i .

a	Open rear sound, almost like a Russian a in the word there.
o	Semi-bowed back sound, rounded lips. Almost like Russian about in the word elephant.
u	Bowed back sound, tongue lifts back up with force, lips are rounded more than in pronunciation about. Almost like in the Russian word here.
ä	Open front sound. The tongue is located in front of the mouth, low. like english a, in words bag, shall.
ö	Semi-bowed front sound. The lips are rounded and extended forward. As in the German word schon or when we pronounce a syllable BYO.
y	Bowed front sound. The tongue rises with force forward upwards. Lips are rounded and narrowed more than when pronouncing ö . As in the German word funf or French mur or in Russian syllable BU.
e	Close to Russian uh in the word this.
i	Corresponds to Russian sound and but deeper. The gap between the lips is narrow. like english i in the word hill.

You can learn and listen to the names of the letters of the alphabet and their pronunciation on the site
http://donnerwetter.kielikeskus.helsinki.fi/finnishforforeigners/ch1-en/ch1-gr-aakkoset.html.

There are many other audio files on this site, but they are loaded with difficulty. Therefore, I decided to record for you auto-generated words and phrases by Google translator. I hope they will help you in the process of training.

Now practice pronouncing simple words with single and double vowels:

a	aa	ä	ää
vap a	vap aa	tan ä	tan ää n
k a ri	k aa ri	sein ä n	sein ää n
r a ja	r aa ja	v ä rin	v ää rin
s a na	S aa na	t ä lla	t ää lla
e	ee	ö	öö
t e	t ee	Tool ö	Tool öö n
Ven e	Ven ee n	laht ö	laht öö n
ken e n	ken ee n	hop ö n	hop öö n
men e n	menn ee n	sop ö n	sop öö n
o	oo	i	ii
kok o n	kok oo n	t i li	t ii li
k o ta	k oo ta	l i ka	l ii ka
o tto	oo tte	k i vi	k ii vi
r o po	R oo pe	s i vu	s ii vu
u	uu	y	yy
tups u n	tups uu n	k y ky	k yy kky
luk u	luk uu n	sylt y n	syltt yy n
suk u	suk uu n	t y vi	t yy ni
t u li	t uu li	r y ppy	r yy ppy

The audio tag is not supported by your browser. Download text. The audio tag is not supported by your browser.

At the initial stage, I studied from a book and as a result I learned the pronunciation of the letter incorrectly e, I pronounced it like Russian E, but how should E. The melody of the words immediately changes. Many Russian speakers instead ä they say I, but instead y - Yu. It immediately cuts the ears. Pay attention to this.

Now practice pronouncing the front and back vowels:

a	ä	e	i
tana	tana	veri	vire
ala	ala	veli	vili
saa	sää	kelo	kilo
pelata	pelata	kepea	kipea
o	ö	i	y
kolo	koro	tiili	tyyli
lopo	lopo	tilli	tylli
luoda	lyoda	viihde	vyyhdet
tuo	tyo	siina	syyna
u	y	e	ä
suu	syy	seka	saka
kuu	kyy	elake	ala
luku	kyky	veli	Vali
tulli	tylli	veri	vari

The audio tag is not supported by your browser. The audio tag is not supported by your browser. Exercise:
- Practice saying the words from the previous exercises.
- Learn words

auto - car
bussy - bus
huone - room
talo - house
kissa - cat
koira - dog
huono - bad
hyva - good
iso - large
pieni - small
kukka - flower
kuva-painting
kello clock
kirja - book
musta - black
valkoinen - white
uusi - new
vanha - old
poyta - table
tuoli - chair