Customer Reviews

Beginner's Finnish (Hippocrene Beginner's)(w/2 CD's)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm moving to Finland for school, and intend on living there for a while.. Beginner's Finnish has been an AWESOME tool for the crazy grammatical rules and conjugations that Finnish requires you to learn. Lots of dialogues you can read, with phrases and useful sayings as well. The vocabulary is not extremely extensive, but has plenty to learn for beginners. I would dare say almost all the grammatical rules are in this book.. but I could be wrong.. there's enough to keep you busy for a real long time. I would suggest buying a finnish-english dictionary along with this book to keep up the vocabulary.

I got this book and "Finnish An Essential Grammar" by Fred Karlsson, and this is the better book in my opinion, but using both together has been very beneficial.. like I said, I've used Beginner's Finnish way more than Fred Karlsson's book.

Dr. Risko has written an outstanding introductory Finnish book that helps make studying and learning a very difficult language both rewarding and fun. The book is composed of a variety of lessons that involve common everyday interactions one would have when visiting Finland. The author's style is easy to follow and it's quite obvious she enjoys teaching languages. I highly recommend this book to anyone who may need to learn Finn or just has a curiosity about the Finnish language. This is the book to read and study if you are planning a trip to Suomi.

The best help I've had yet in learning Finnish, excluding my Finnish native mother. Nevertheless, there are some faults with the answers to exercises, which are not always correct. This is not common though.

The layout is great -- Finnish on one page, English on the opposite page. The English is a non-literal translation.

I wouldn't say learning Finnish is hard, but it requires a lot of memorization. This book helps you not only learn Finnish, but gives you a wide range of commonly used phrases in Finnish. Don't expect however to just breeze through the book and know your basic Finnish, be prepared to spend a lot of time on each chapter, and go back every now and again.

The first reaction I had to this book was excitement at being able to understand a dialogue right off the bat. Some language textbooks take a long time to build up to a real text (starting instead with conversations such as: "Hi, how are you?" "I'm well. You?" "I'm well. Goodbye." "Goodbye."). This process can be tedious, and one feels for a long time as if they really know nothing. After the first lesson of Beginner's Finnish, though, you'll be able to read a two-and-a-half page dialogue and make sense of all the grammar. For me, this was a big confidence booster, and I got that "I can read Finnish!" feeling right away.

The format is solid and effective: a dialogue accompanied by a vocabulary list, a list of common expressions, and an explanation of new grammar points used. The grammar explanations are essential to making sense of Finnish, whose plentiful suffixes and consonant gradation make certain words almost unrecognizable ("to read" is "lukea" but "we read" is "me luemme"). There are also three pages of exercises in each lesson, which are doable but sometimes challenge you to bring together the grammar minutiae you've accumulated. At the end of the book is a Finnish-English and English-Finnish glossary for all words used in the dialogues, as well as two essential appendices. In my opinion, an auditory component is vital in the beginning stages of learning a language, so make sure to get a copy with the two audio CDs.

As might be expected, the dialogues use a few grammar points before they are explained (you can't explain the whole grammar at once), so you might find yourself wondering why there's an extra "a" on "ravintolaa" or what "siitä" means. Patience is key with this language. Most of these things will be explained in later lessons.

Overall, this book brings together vocabulary, grammar, and idiom smoothly for a strong start in Finnish. Because of the complex grammar, books that try to teach you by flashcard or common phrases alone will leave you frustrated and incompetent. This book both teaches and explains why things are. If you don't speak Finnish and want to, pick this book up first.

Agi Risko's BEGINNER'S FINNISH is one of the lesser-known contemporary textbooks for Finnish. The author presents some of the basic features of the language in twelve chapters, with the dialogues following a group of American students on summer holiday in Finland. I disagree greatly with the method Risko uses to present these dialogues, Finnish on one side and a facing-page translation into English. A complete translation of all the Finnish will act only as a crutch for the student. The book is typeset in Hippocrene's typical space-inefficient style and nearly 300 pages are needed for a work of fairly meagre content. Grammatical concepts are presented in the dry style of reference grammars instead of the vivid presentation necessary for teach-yourself books.

I suppose this could be useful if you just want a taste of Finnish. However, anyone looking to start towards proficiency in the language would best acquire a combination of other books. Probably the best basic textbook for autodidacts is Terttu Leney's Teach Yoruself Finnish. Leena Silfverberg's SUOMEN KIELEN ALKEISOPPIKIRJA and SUOMEN KIELEN JATKO-OPPIKIRJA (both published by Finn Lectura) contain further exercises that one needs to work through before leaving the beginner level. Finally, the DVD course SUPISUOMEA is an essential source of audio with fast dialogues.

Before I purchased this book, I had been using Teach Yourself Finnish. But that book left me frustrated and feeling as if I was getting nowhere toward truly understanding how Finnish works. While Finnish language materials are not common in the US, I thought that surely there must be something else out there. I saw that this book included audio CDs, so I decided to give it a try. What a great decision I had made!

First of all, if you're going to learn Finnish, I highly advise that if you don't have access to a native speaker who can help you, that you make sure to get a textbook with an audio CD to help you with pronunciation, as well as to help you understand Finnish spoken at a faster speed than the speed with which you will be able to speak. This will help ease the transition for when you go to Finland. Upon first hearing the audio CDs, I was somewhat startled by the speakers. They initially sounded a bit harsh/serious, but after seeing what this book has to offer, I do not mind if the speakers sound harsh.

Each chapter in this book begins with a dialogue in Finnish (with a corresponding audio track), with the English translation on the opposite page. The audio CDs also have a second track for each dialogue in which the speakers pause after every word or two to give the student time to repeat the phrase. Next, vocabulary words from the dialogue are listed in the book (again, with a corresponding audio track) along with their English translations, as well as the same for useful phrases. Then there is a grammar section. This is the truly amazing part of the book, to me. The author does a -fantastic- job of explaining grammar rules and nuances of the Finnish language. Concepts are explained in simple terms, and in a format that makes sense. I was so happy when I realized that it felt like I was in Spanish class in high school again, instead of trying to learn Finnish from a phrasebook (such as I felt from the Teach Yourself book). Finally, each chapter ends with the opportunity to fill out a few exercises based on what you've learned from the book up through the current chapter (I've rated the item 4 stars because the chapters seem a bit random [albeit useful] and the answers to the exercises commonly include mistakes. This book needs to be edited.) The book also includes a glossary and appendices for nouns/adjectives and verbs.

Overall, I am thrilled that this book exists. It's extremely affordable and an excellent deal for the clarity and information it provides. I also bought Finnish: An Essential Grammar to supplement my learning. Finally, if you already have the Teach Yourself book, you might wish to hang onto it. You can use it as a review once you've worked through this book.

The CD's that come with the make this one of the BEST learning resources EVER! It ties for the #1 spot with another book/cd combo I purchased. Not only does this give you a script to to read and practice, it goes step by step, move by move and gives you the explanations as you progress. So you do have some "rehearsed" material but it's not boring. You then get options on how you can mix things up while staying in the bounds of the conversation or concept being taught. You can practice by putting all the material on your ipod so you can take it with you. It's conversational and grammatical all at the same time. There hasn't been a draw back to this book and CD set yet. If you want to LEARN Finnish and really LEARN to SPEAK FINNISH... GET THIS!!!

This seems like a very well thought-out and organized book. I have already gone through the first few chapters, and am excited to complete it! Visually appealing, and great layout. Five Stars

As a student at Ohio State, I have had of the pleasure of learning Finnish from Dr. Risko herself as well as her book. Overall, the book is great: plenty of sample conversations, awesome explanations of grammar and lots of exercises to test yourself with. However, I have felt that the vocabulary is a little thin. I would highly recommend a Finnish-English dictionary as a companion. Also, there are a few spelling errors and a couple of the answers to the exercises aren't correct. These errors are minimal and don't pose too much of a problem since they are easily recognizable as being wrong. The CDs are great help for pronunciation and training your ear. Overall, I highly recommend this book and a dictionary! Onnea!