Week 4
Joensuu, Finland

Koli’s story (presented in October) serves its goal to make me practice Finnish. In addition, I have shown it a couple of time, and it seems other like it too.  🙂  So, I hope it helps!

Now it is time for the second story. This second story has vocabulary related to a hairdresser. This is not such a good story, but it has a lot of vocabulary that I know I need.

SIDE NOTE:  A personal goal is to be able to interact in Finnish in this 2017, thus I need to look for different support sources, To guide me on the language structure, I use an “old” book of mine entitle: “From Start to Finnish” by Leila White. I am NOT starting from zero. At the moment I am in Unit 5. Thus some exercises on my story are related to that particular unit.

To see the story on a full screen click here.

*** Vocabulary:
Leikata -to cut, to trim
Tarvitsen — I need something
Minun pitää — I need to (do something)
Lyhentää — to cut (hair )
Johdatus — introduction
varten — for
nopea — fast
käynti — visit
suositella — to recommend
usein — often
ennen — before
etukäteen — before hand
tapaaminen — appointment
lyhyt — short
halula – to want
vaalea — blond
Käyttää — to use

And the negative conjugation.

Week 42
Joensuu, Finland

For people who are native speakers of western European languages are,  some how, indulge to learn “easily” languages that are close to each other. For example, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, belong to a same family: Romance Languages. Without any expertise on linguistics, just as Spanish native speaker I know that those languages use the same alphabet and several words have similar roots. In the case of Finnish language, the only similarity I found with the other of western European languages is the alphabet because nothing else relates to it.

As native Spanish speaker, learning Finnish has been painful.  However, I am reaching a moment that I must learn it.

As a student of Finnish as second language, that frustrates me is the lack of vocabulary. I wish to have person who can read me over and over the same story until I get it and I memorize the words.   Yes, one can find exercises on several books to learn Finnish must of them are not meaningful for me or my needs. It is a bit frustrating because I need to learn the language and I cannot dedicate to study only the language and what I learn I do not feel it useful.

So, instead to complain I take action and I start this serie of posts: learning Finnish (oppiminen suomalainen) where I will write stories of what I learn in Finnish based on my activities in Finland. This exercise I know it will help me to learn the language, ans simultaneously I assume it will help others who are learning the language, to go through interactive stories that will help them to practice their language acquisition as well.

Wondering how will be my Finnish in one year form now! 🙂

Note: In the stories I assume reader have some level of basics on the language, i.e.  some verbs, prepositions. Taking into account my own level, it will be as being in the half of a book of any very first level of Finnish language.

Key words to remember:

• upea = magnificent, gorgeous
• maisema = landscape
• kuten = like

To see the story in a full screen window, click here.