Hi! or Moi!
Like most people who choose to learn a new language, I am hitting the point of being more concerned with the concept of being able to understand that new language rather than actually learning it. So I thought I would start a blog to keep track of things. I plan on updating weekly to keep myself going, and if anyone else wants to read, cool! If not, then I get this space to myself to try to keep on track.
I am learning Finnish because my mother is a Finnish citizen, which means all of my family on her side are Finnish and speak Finnish (my aunts all speak French and English as well, but we won't get into my tri-lingual jealousy today). Learning Finnish is something I've always wanted to do, but I was always waiting for an easy option like duolingo to show up and get me started. Taking initiative on my own to learn Finnish is somewhat difficult, as resources are scarce compared to, say, French (je peux parler un petit peu de français, mais j'ai duolingo et classe du lycée pour ça...).
I come into learning Finnish with knowledge of how to count to 10, how to say hello, how to ask for ice cream. I also have kind of an osmosis thing going on simply because I've heard my mom speak Finnish on the phone, and I did have some Finnish books and CD roms as a kid, in addition to visiting Finland as a child. I'm noticing that this is helping me a lot with pronunciation. I listen and repeat, and I'm pretty sure I'm close to accuracy, whereas my husband occasionally tries to repeat the same words and sounds completely wrong.
I am currently using an older edition of the book Complete Finnish, with the new recordings on the Teach Yourself website. This is because hunting down a copy of the current book while I live in the US is difficult and mildly costly, so I'm just doing the best with what I can. There are only occasional things that don't line up between the book and the audio thus far, so I'm alright with this.
Most of my posts are just going to be in the format of what is below:
Week 1
My current large goal is to get through Complete Finnish. My current short term goal is to learn the vocab from chapter 1, and be able to do the exercises at the end as a test.
This week I worked on: the preface and the first chapter of the book, which was primarily pronunciation, greetings, and saying where you are from and what language you speak.
Things that are going well: As I mentioned earlier, pronunciation for the most part seems alright. I feel relatively comfortable with saying "Olen Jessamyn. Olen ammerikkalainen ja soumalainen". Also, I've been watching my little pony in Finnish on Netflix, and it's really amazing how many more words I am catching just after one week of work.
Things I'm Struggling With: I ended up with more than 100 flashcards from chapter 1 alone, which is rather frustrating. Also, rolling my R's is a whole thing. I only just figured out that you're supposed to roll your R's at the front of your mouth, and not the back. I am only getting this somewhat consistently.
Things I am Supplementing With: An overabundance of watching culture videos rather than practicing the language. My little pony with Finnish dub.
Moi moi!
Jessamyn
