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4.8.1 Finnish Grammars, primers, phrase books: p4




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This article is from the Nordic countries FAQ, by Antti Lahelma and Johan Olofsson, with numerous contributions by others.

4.8.1 Finnish Grammars, primers, phrase books: p4

John B. Olli: Fundamentals of Finnish Grammar (Northland Press, New
York, 1958)
This book concentrates mainly on long lists of declensions
and conjugations. The approach taken is not a very helpful for the
learner. [NOM]

Anges Renfors: Finnish Self-Taught (Thimm's System) with Phonetic
Pronunciation (Marlborough's Self Taught Series, London, 1910)
Quite a old one! It is really a structured vocabulary with a
brief grammar and a mini-phrase book. Very similar in many ways
to the modern Berlitz books. [NOM]

Thomas A. Sekeboed (?): Spoken Finnish
It seems to be good for having lots of conversational
stuff in it, though probably you need the tapes (and a grammar)
to make a good go of it [Robert Cumming]

Leena Silfverberg: Suomen kielen jatko-oppikirja (Finn Lectura,
Helsinki?, 1990)
An intermediate course. All in Finnish. Has vocab lists,
but no translations. [Lance Eccles]

Arthur H. Whitney: Finnish (Teach Yourself Books, Hodder and Stoughton,
1956)
Being available in the cheap Teach Yourself Series, this book
is easily and widely available. Which makes it such a shame that
it is so bad. It consists of 20 chapters each of which has a
grammatical section, a vocabulary, and exercises including short
reading passages. The grammar is dreadfully complicated with the
reader learning rare variations almost immediately. It is also
very poorly laid out with no attempt at making it even vaguely
easy on the eye and brain. The vocabularies seem somewhat
pointless - they are normally 4 or 5 pages long which is an
incredible amount of learning expected for a single chapter - it
would have been better to include them alphabetically at the end
of the work and then tell the reader "learn the words beigining
with 'a' today". The exercises and reading passages are short
and no great aid to someone working alone - as "Teach yourself"
implies. A replacement by Terttu Leney is now available in this
series. [NOM]
Yes, that book presents the reader with the most massive

vocabulary lessons I have seen in any text book. But, I liked
one thing about it; the reading passages form a real continuing
story. This is something most language books lack completely.
Personally, I also liked the fact that even the first passage is
far from trivial, not on the order of "Hello, Mrs. Paivinen.
That is a house." But as usually happens with me and language
books, I didn't assimilate the whole of the book. A
lot has stuck, though.
[ <konarj@eua.ericsson.se> ]

 

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