Customer Reviews

Mastering Finnish, Third Edition

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

 

 

I submitted a review for the accompanying product, which read: I am a native Finnish speaker, and my husband is not. We purchased both the book and the CD, which I would highly recommend. Even with me being a native Finnish speaker, it was really useful for my husband to be able to hear the dialogues in Finnish, spoken at a normal conversational rate. I would highly recommend both the book and the CD.

The book and the CD are invaluable as a set. Also, the book has enough grammar to make sense but not so much as to be overwhelming.

This is an extremely poor introductory work for attaining even a basic understanding of the Finnish language. The problem is that it assumes that the student is already fully proficient in the language. Instead of starting out slowly, the book launches into fast-paced conversations, with no repeats. The author should have broken the conversations down into small pieces, and provided slow pronunciations of each word.

Professor Vahamaki's approach to language instruction reminds me of a piano instructor who is trying to teach a five-year-old child the rudiments of music. Instead of introducing the child slowly to the various notes, he simply sits the child down at the keyboard, points to the 88 keys, and tells the child to start playing Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" at full speed. This approach doesn't work for the piano, and it certainly doesn't work for a language as difficult to learn as Finnish.

This book is barely useful. It does not have essential charts telling you how to inflect nouns, or clear explanations of what the cases mean. Its focus is on strong-grade and weak-grade consonants, and theoretical conversations. This book was recommended by a teacher but I have found even stodgy old Finnish:An Essential Grammar much more useful and accessible. It's as if neither author has any explanatory competence in the English language.

This is a very good introductory work in attaining proficiency in Finnish. Since Finnish is practically a minority language, there are very few course materials available in it and this is a valuable work. The one weakness I would say this text seems to have is that it doesn't seem very directed towards students in terms of the situations of the dialogues and the vocabulary worked on. A few chapters with more high frequency phrases and vocabulary useful for students laid out clearly (and voiced on the CDs) would be very useful.

This is the companion book to the CD. I would suggest purchasing both to fully get the most out of the materials. The best way is to listen to the CD while following along in the book, then just reading the narratives by themselves and then working the excercises at the end of each chapter. In no time, you'll be able to answer the questions and continue on to the next chapter. I find it helps if you review all the previous chapter excercises each time you want to move forward. It helps with the language proficiency and to recognize language patterns. A most excellent tool to master Finnish. Kiitoksia!

I have been to Finland twice now, and I plan on going back many times. I bought this book and CD in order to increase my ability to communicate with my friends in Finland. I think that this book provides the basic vocabulary and grammar necessary to understand the basics of the Finnish language. It is an excellent beginners resource.

This book has a lot of information in it about Finnish, but it is hard to use by yourself. It is very dense text and very few graphics. It is unlike any other foreign language book I have ever seen. It starts you off immediately with conversations in Finnish and you have to translate each one word by word in order to understand what they mean. I have also found that their guide to pronounciation guide is good for some sounds, but leaves something to be desired for others.