Continuing on from my last post on the difficulties of learning colloquial Finnish, I thought it might be helpful to summarize how various introductory materials for English speakers handle the divide between the literary standard and popular speech.

• Leila White, From Start to Finnish (Helsinki: Finn Lectura, 2003). Teaches the standard language only. In the last chapter the author lists some general features of spoken Finnish.
• Lili Ahonen, Sounds Good! Kuulostaa hyvältä! (Helsinki Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura 2005). Teaches only the standard language. In the second to last chapter the author gives some general features of spoken Finnish.
• Supisuomea. Teaches mainly the standard language, but throughout lists colloquial forms when these greatly different from the standard. The DVD has some scenes which are as close to spoken Finnish as television speech gets.
• Eila Hämäläinen. Aletaan! suomen kielen oppikirja vasta-alkajille (Helsinki: Helsingin yliopiston suomen kielen laitos, 1998). Teaches mainly the standard language, but from early on each chapter features some dialogues in the spoken language.
• Fred Karlsson, Finnish: An Essential Grammar (London: Routledge, 3rd ed. 2008). Describes the standard language, but the last chapter gives some general features of spoken Finnish.
• Maija-Hellikki Aaltio, Finnish for Foreigners (Helsinki: Otava, 1989). Teaches only the foreign language.
• Terttu Leney, Finn Talk (London: Finn Guild, 2001). Gives all material in both the standard language and the spoken language from the very beginning. The author even suggests that some readers will want to learn only the spoken language at the time.

If you already have some handle on standard Finnish, then good resources for learning spoken Finnish are:

• Maarit Berg & Leena Silfverberg, Kato hei! puhekielen alkeet (Helsinki: Finn Lectura, 2004). This is a textbook on the Helsinki spoken language for students who have already completed two semesters of Finnish for foreigners (all text and instructions for exercises are in standard Finnish).
• Vesa Jarva & Timo Nurmi, Oikeeta suomee: suomen puhekielen sanakirja (Helsinki: Gummerus, 2006). A dictionary for the spoken language, with great coverage of contemporary slang and idiomatic expressions.

Whitney, Arthur M. Teach Yourself Finnish (London: English Universities Press, 1954).

It’s amazing how long it took textbook authors to realize that the most effective way to teach a modern language would be to equip the reader with how to handle himself in common everyday situations. The first incarnation of Teach Yourself Finnish, written by Arthur H. Whitney, was published in 1954, but its methods go back a century further.

Whitney’s approach is giving you a huge amount of vocabulary so you can read the little Finnish stories he gives you. In Lesson 1, you’ll learn such words as ‘clergyman’, ‘sparrow’ and ‘church steeple’, but you’ll see nothing of important initial phrases such as ‘Hello!’ and ‘How are you?’ There’s absolutely no English-Finnish translation exercises, so you’ll have no way to track your progress in producing good Finnish. The explanation of grammar assumes a good grounding in Latin, and even if you are used to classic grammatical terminology, Whitney’s shoddy organization of material makes it all hard going. The book is a complete disaster.

Or is it? The complete beginner in Finnish would do well to start with Terttu Leney’s newer Teach Yourself Finnish and (strongly recommended but available only from Finnish shops) the Supisuomea book and DVD produced by Finnish national television YLE. However, Whitney’s dinosaur textbook can still be useful for the student of Finnish. The language here is extremely old-fashioned, with every page of vocabulary containing words now obsolete in the spoken language. This makes it an excellent textbook for those who already have a good grasp of contemporary Finnish, but want to understand classic literature and old films. From the references to an antiquated telephone’s hearing tube, I suspect that the book was mainly written before World War II. I know of no other learning resources for the colloquial Finnish language of this time.

Whitney’s textbook only does so much with old talk. It doesn’t reach back to Agricola’s time, though for English speakers interested in that there is Francis P. Magoun’s annotated edition of Mikael Agricola’s Gospel according to St Mark (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1967). Nor does this textbook help you understand non-standard speech such as Savo dialect or the regionalisms in the Finnish Orthodox liturgy. Nonetheless, if you’ve reached an intermediate level in Finnish and want to learn more, seek this book out on the used market.

Austerlitz, Robert. Finnish Reader and Glossary (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1963). Routledge printing 1997, ISBN 0700708154.

Nowadays, a foreigner wishing to learn Finnish can choose from any number of well-designed courses, whether for classroom use or self-study, in print or on DVD, but it wasn’t always this way. Until just a couple of decades ago, Finnish was probably the most exotic of all the major languages of Europe (perhaps save Albanian). Robert Austerlitz’s A Finnish Reader and Glossary shows how the old school had to learn the language. Vol. 15 in Indiana University’s Uralic and Altaic series, the reader was meant for linguists willing to learn new languages from dry grammars and crestomathies.

The texts in the reader are a highly varied collection. As is usual with these sort of Uralic readers, they are based mainly on little folklore texts and easy newspaper articles. But you get more than just the basics with this reader, for there’s a text here on the use and care of a refrigerator (must have seemed intimidatingly high-tech back then), and an extract from a high school science textbook. There’s a newspaper crossword (with key). One even finds an example of the earliest Finnish writing with one of Mikael Agricola’s poems, which Austerlitz gives both in the original orthography and in the modern standard:

Oppe nyt wanha ja noori
joilla ombi Sydhen toori,
Jumalan keskyt ja mielen
iotca taidhat Somen kielen.
Laki se sielun hirmutta
mutt Cristus sen tas lodhutta,
Lue sijs hyue Lapsi teste
alcu oppi ilman este.
Nijte muista Elemes aina
nin Jesus sinun Armons laina.

Opi nyt vanha ja nuori
joilla ompi sydän tuore,
Jumalan käskyt ja mielen,
jotka taidat suomen kielen.
Laki se sielun hirmuttaa,
mut Kristus sen taas lohdutta.
Lue siis, hyvä lapsi tästä
alkuoppi ilma estettä.
Niitä muista elämässä aina,
Niin Jeesus sinun armonsa lainaa.

There are not many writings here of an informal and colloquial nature, but the foreigner wanting to know how Finnish was spoken earlier in the 20th century should seek out the deliciously old-fashioned first edition of Teach Yourself Finnish by Arthur M. Whitney.

I like Austerlitz’s approach to teaching vocabulary which he explains in the preface and implements in the vocabulary. He breaks down each word into its component parts, encouraging readers to assimilate each of them. That way, one can readily understand a word from its construction even if one hasn’t encountered it before. However, highly idiomatic passages are not glossed, which make the reader challenging to use unless you can consult a native speaker about any unclear points.

It’s ridiculous how big this book is. Out of 294 pages, over 200 form the glossary. Like many publications in this series, the book was set in cold type (typewritten?), which resulted in incredibly inefficient use of space. Since anyone reading this today will probably invest in a decent dictionary and can use that in tackling the readings, the buyer is really just getting 71 pages. For that reason alone, the price of US$220 that Routledge is charging for its reprint is ridiculous.

There are now many readers on the market, covering all kinds of written Finnish. Chances are, if you are a passionate student of Finnish, you already know how to get one. Nonetheless, if you are ravenous for reading material, seek an old copy of Austerlitz on the used market.