Finnish for busy people

Useful Links for Learning Finnish

May 10, 2019
October 26, 2021
 uusikielemme

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.

Finnish in a Month: An app that builds sentences and teaches sentence structure by demonstration. Useful learning objectives and relevant vocabulary.

Beginner’s Finnish: A Memrise course with Finnish beginner vocabulary by toby1kenobi.

Osaan suomea: A great source for listening exercises, grammar explanations and interactive exercises.

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.

Vocabulary

Amme: This website is filled with pictures and words related to different professions, including cleaning, cooking, textile work and pottery. Though some of the words are very specific to a profession, plenty of them are useful words for any learner of Finnish looking to broaden their 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.

 

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.

Dailymotion: The user Nuumi has a large selection of Moomin videos to watch (Muumilaakso).

Dictionaries

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

 

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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