Finnish for busy people

Useful Links for Learning Finnish

Below, you can find some useful links to other sources that you might want to check out if you’re learning Finnish. This page contains links recommended by Cass, Lohikäärme and Taikelenn from our Discord server.

Useful Links to Blogs

Random Finnish Lessons: You can find grammar topics, reading texts and vocabulary lists on this blog-style website. I don’t find it super easy to find anything on the website directly, but this website ranks high on Google, so by googling you can find specific content. Of course you can also just click on random articles to read them!

The Finnish Teacher: A source that explains grammar topics in English. Both from beginner materials until advanced things.

Venla – Finnish for Foreigners: A language course for beginners in 16 lessons with the help of English. I especially like the blog on this page. From level A1.1 to A1.3.

 

Useful Links that are Interactive

Ammattisuomea: A game to learn vocabulary related to four professions: office work, health care, car repairs and hairdressers. Again, it’s easy to just click through these pages, but they’re worth spending some extra time on. From level A2 and up. Finnish only.

Kotisuomessa: This interactive page is huge, and might seem overwhelming. I can understand that you end up clicking here and there; instead of really studying on this website. However, it offers a wide range of reading text, as well as listening and vocabulary exercises. Take your time with this one! From level A1 and up. Finnish only.

Suomea työssä: Read and listen to the dialogs, and answer questions about them. The theme of all the text is Finnish working life, which is approached from many different perspectives. There are also grammar exercises attached to some chapters. Worth looking into! Finnish only. Level A2-B1.

Supermarket suomi: Learn vocabulary related to working in a store on this interactive site.

Osaan suomea: A great source for listening exercises, grammar explanations and interactive exercises. This website includes lots of dialogues that you can both read and listen to. It also has some grammar sections, and exercises for the grammar.

Superalkeet: A nice package of beginner content, with light spoken language features. The material comes with explanations, links to exercises and lots of videos. Definitely a useful resource!

A taste of Finnish: This website contains 10 chapters with useful beginner lessons. It has been designed for exchange students, so the type of texts included fit that context.

Tartu toimeen: This is the only source on this page which isn’t free of charge. Finn Lectura has been expanding their materials with online exercises in addition to just books. Most of these are directly attached to a textbook, but Tartu toimeen is a stand-alone exercise package. It’s meant to learn and practice rections.

 

Listening, watching and reading

Hauska tavata: Listen to the texts on Soundcloud. Scroll down a little further to download the PDF version of this book for free. Levels A1.1-A1.3.

Helppoa suomea: Streamed audio for the course book with the same name. The level of the audio does quickly become fairly hard. Level A1.1 to A2.2.

Supisuomea: Learn Finnish through this video series, which focuses especially on practical situations where you can use Finnish. It contains the texts of all the videos and some grammar explanations. Finnish only. Level A1 to A2.

Selkouutiset: Reading and listening to the news daily is great practice. The typical terms used in news reports might seem hard at first, but they keep reappearing, which allows you to broaden your vocabulary. From level A2.

Selkosanomat: Similar to Selkouutiset. You can also order the physical newspaper to your home in Finland or abroad. From level A2.

Yle.fi YKI-treenit: Study for the YKI-test you have to pass to get the Finnish nationality! On this page you can mainly find listening and reading exercises. From level A2.2.

Asiointisuomea: Scroll down to find videos which will help you communicate in Finnish in different situations (e.g. in the library, at the doctor’s, while on the phone with emergency services and when buying clothes). Finnish only. Levels A2-B1.

Iltasatu: You can find some free children’s books on this website. You can read them both in your browser or download the e-book. From level A2.

Eila ja Ossi: A PDF that contains materials to study Finnish with. Different levels combined.

Meillä päin Suomea: Listen to and compare Finnish dialects to one another! From level A2.2.

Panttivanki ja muita kertomuksia äänitteet: Listen to stories! From level B1.1.

Akuuttihoitoa kolmella kielellä: Interesting dialogues and vocabulary phrases for an ER setting in three languages: Finnish, Swedish and English.

 

Vocabulary

Loecsen: Pretty cool website with the option to listen to and record phrases! From level A1.

Goethe-Verlag: Guess at the translation of phrases and then read them and listen to them! Useful for both level A1 and A2, with the occasional useful phrase for B1.1, too!

Textbook of Finnish 1983: An awesome collection of phrases, with each page covering a certain part of Finnish grammar. No explanations, but lots of examples.

Babadada: Visual dictionary for the very basics of Finnish.

 

Videos

Kuulostaa hyvältä: This video series on YouTube with 39 parts is very old, but it is still a fun way to learn Finnish. From level A1 to B1. Finnish only.

Gimara: There are almost 300 videos on this YouTube channel, starting from very basic ones to fairly complicated ones. The focus on these videos is the language of everyday language situations. There are also some very informative grammar videos.

Finnishpod101: These videos and audio tracks can help you with listening comprehension. It has lots of conversations at a good pace with clear speaking Finns in easy Finnish, but not dumbed down. There’s a subscription that lets you listen to only the audio tracks. Part of their materials are on YouTube too.

Kielibuusti: You can find vocabulary videos with phrases organized by topic as well as videos related to Finnish grammar here.

Finnish With Anna: Anna has videos for both grammar and vocabulary topics.

Finnished: In these videos, you will be able to listen to Finnish-related speech in natural Finnish. These videos have subtitles in both English and Finnish.

KatChats Finnish: Kat speaks in English in her videos to explain grammar topics and vocabulary. She speaks in slow and clear Finnish with lots of repetition.

Napaketku: Nice grammar explanations in Finnish, with Finnish subtitles available.

Ope Jori: Jori has both videos with the basics explained in English and intermediate topics in Finnish only. The audio isn’t always great, but the videos are easy to understand.

Finnish Flow: The videos on this page are spoken in calm Finnish and come with subtitles in Finnish and sometimes also English. There are podcasts, vlogs and Finnish stories.

Kielinuppu: This channel contains musical videos with very simple Finnish words and sentences. While they are mostly meant for children, I think anyone who wants to learn Finnish through music would benefit from these.

 

Dictionaries

Kielitoimiston sanakirja: This is a great Finnish-Finnish dictionary.

Glosbe: Many languages available, contains example sentences for each word from authentic sources such as subtitles of tv shows.

Wiktionary: English-Finnish dictionary with information about the inflection of words as well as their etymology.

Wikisanakirja: Finnish-Finnish version of Wiktionary.

 

Linguistic sources

Iso suomen kielioppi: A theoretic source for Finnish linguists. I’ve used the information on this page as the base for many articles. You will only benefit from this page if you’ve advanced far enough in your Finnish studies. Finnish only.

Suomen kielen analyysiohjelmat: A tool for finding the base form of a word (lemmatization). Its output is very technical and probably not useful to all people, but it’s also very efficient.

 

I hope those were some useful links! Let me know if you’ve found another source that I definitely need to add!

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Oscar

Learn Finnish with Comedy ei ole katsotavissa enää.

Inge (admin)

Voi, harmillista! 🙁