Colloquial Finnish

The Complete Course for Beginners

Daniel Abondolo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317305439
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Colloquial Finnish provides a step-by-step course in Finnish as it is written and spoken today. Combining a user-friendly approach with a thorough treatment of the language, it equips learners with the essential skills needed to communicate confidently and effectively in Finnish in a broad range of situations. No prior knowledge of the language is required.

Key features include:

• progressive coverage of speaking, listening, reading and writing skills
• structured, jargon-free explanations of grammar
• an extensive range of focused and stimulating exercises
• realistic and entertaining dialogues covering a broad variety of scenarios
• useful vocabulary lists throughout the text
• additional resources available at the back of the book, including a full answer key, a grammar summary and bilingual glossaries

Balanced, comprehensive and rewarding, Colloquial Finnish will be an indispensable resource both for independent learners and students taking courses in Finnish.

Audio material to accompany the course is available to download freely in MP3 format from www.routledge.com/cw/colloquials. Recorded by native speakers, the audio material features the dialogues and texts from the book and will help develop your listening and pronunciation skills.

Unit One

Tutustutaan

Making contact

In this unit you will learn:

• how to say what country you’re from, what you do, and how to ask the same about others
• how to ask and answer yes/no questions
• one way to express possession
• how vowels in a Finnish word cooperate with one another (vowel harmony), and how consonants fight (consonant compression)

Dialogue

Esittäytyminen Introducing Yourself (Audio 1:10)

Juuso and Paul Introduce Themselves to Each Other.

JUUSO	Hyvää päivää. Juuso Virtanen.
PAUL	Hyvää päivää. Paul Smith. Hauska tutustua.
JUUSO	Hauska tutustua.
JUUSO	Good day. (I’m) Juuso Virtanen.
PAUL	Good day. (I’m) Paul Smith. Pleased to meet you.
JUUSO	Pleased to meet you.

Language Point

(Audio 1:11)

To introduce yourself in Finnish, you say your name. It’s polite to preface your name with a greeting such as

Hyvää huomenta!	(lit. ‘Good morning’), said in the morning
Hyvää päivää!	(‘Good day’), said throughout the day, until it’s time for
Hyvää iltaa!	(‘Good evening’), said in the evening

and to offer to shake hands. Usually, the phrase Hauska tutustua ‘Pleased to meet you’ gets thrown in, as well. Here’s another example, with the ‘I’m’ (Mä olen) explicitly stated:

(Audio 1:12)

IRMA	Hyvää päivää. Mä olen Irma Ojala.
SOPHIE	Hyvää päivää. Sophie Grant. Hauska tutustua.
IRMA	Good day. I’m Irma Ojala.
SOPHIE	Good day. I’m Sophie Grant. Pleased to meet you.

(Audio 1:13)

In less formal contexts, the greetings hei or moi are used, and surnames dispensed with:

MASA	Moi. Mä olen Masa.
HANNU	Moi. Hannu.
MASA	Hi. I’m Masa.
HANNU	Hi. (I’m) Hannu.

Follow-up will usually consist of saying where you’re from and what you do for a living. Let’s go back to Paul and Juuso:

JUUSO	Oletteko te englantilainen?
PAUL	Olen.
JUUSO	Are you English?
PAUL	Yes. (lit. ‘I am.’)

Here’s the follow-up to the conversation between Irma and Sophie:

IRMA	Oletteko te opettaja?
SOPHIE	Olen.
IRMA	Are you a teacher?
SOPHIE	Yes. (lit. ‘I am.’)

Formal Finnish doesn’t really have a word that works like English ‘yes’. Instead, the key word in the question is repeated. See also below, ‘Answering “yes” to yes/no (-kO) questions’.

Exercise 1

Build short dialogues in which the Finns and foreigners listed below introduce themselves to each o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations and Symbols
• The Sounds of Finnish (CD2; 1:1)
• 1 Tutustutaan Making Contact
• 2 Ei, Kiitos! No thanks!
• 3 Ole hyvä! Help Yourself!
• 4 Paikasta Toiseen Getting Around and About
• 5 Mitä me ostetaan? What'll We Buy?
• 6 Mennääks kiskalle! Let‘s go to the Kiosk!
• 7 Eiks Ookki Ihana Päästä Kotiin Joulunviettoon! Isn't it great to get home for Christmas!
• 8 Huonosta vielä huonommaksi From Bad To Worse
• 9 Aika ja tila Time and Space
• 10 Mitä tehtäs tänään? What'll we do today?
• 11 Yhä nopeammin More and More Quickly
• 12 Maton Alla Tuntuu Olevan Jotain There Seems to Be Something Under The Carpet
• 13 Mikä Laulaen Tulee … Easy come …
• 14 Karhut voi kai olla vaarallisiakin Bears Can Be Dangerous, I Suppose
• 15 Vakavia Asioita Serious matters
• 16 Älköön sanottako! Let it not be said …
• Key to Exercises
• Appendix A Overview of Finnish Verb Inflection
• Appendix B Overview of Finnish Nominal Inflection
• Appendix C Finnish Names
• Finnish–English Glossary
• English-Finnish glossary
• Glossary of Grammatical Terms
• Index