This week I spent one hour per day to learn Finnish. Like anything, consistency is key. Ample evidence has shown that shorter duration but higher frequency produces better results than lower frequency and longer duration per session.
There are quite a lot of free Finnish online courses. The one I liked and studied with is the Introductory Finnish from Aalto University. I would say it's grammar focused, with staged but authentic feeling video materials. It came with sufficient exercies to test understanding. I completed the course in 4 and half hours over the course of one week.
What I learned
- Basic Finnish grammar: personal cases, plural forms, partitive form, local cases, negative form.
- Vocubulary: common verbs(want, be, eat, drink, go, come etc), numbers, days of the week, months, colors, seasons, food, meals, places, etc.
- A bit of spoken Finnish(quite different from written Finnish that's taught in the main course)
My favorite Finnish phrase remains to be : Minä en hualua!! I picked it up from the neigbour's kid and used it with my partner all the time. Somehow very satisfying saying it in Finnish.
For the remaining hour, I searched for more free online Finnish courses and found this page with a collection of Finnish courses. I picked extreme Finnish to learn next for three reasons:
- It teaches spoken Finnish. I'd like to start communicating in Finnish ASAP.
- It uses video material and comes with exercies to check understanding.
- It's structured.
I think rich form material like videos work the best for me in learning languages becuase it stimulates all sensors not just eyes. Language is a sound also.
I'll keep going with my one hour per day streak and see where I am when I finish Extreme Finnish.