Suomen kieli/Suomen kieli käyttöön/englanniksi/

Johdanto

Who is developing this book?

This book began life as a project run at Timali, the adult education centre in Raisio, near Turku, in Western Finland. The Timali school teaches Finnish to more than one hundred foreign students learning the Finnish language every year.

Why is this book being developed?

Learning a language requires the user to develop many levels of understanding.

1. Knowledge of vocabulary

2. Grammar

3. Pronounciation

4. Listening Skills

5. Reading Skills

6. Spontaneous Speaking Skills

Using this book will help in the development of these skills and abilities.

How is this achieved?=

This book contains real life Finnish texts and some audio material. Pages in this book may also have a translation page in a foreign language. These translation pages are created by students who cross-check each other's work. We do not guarantee that these translations are error free but hopefully, as with other WIKI type projects, any errors will soon be ironed out by those who understand things better.

Each page begins in Finnish alone. Links are then provided to equivalent pages with explanations in a foreign language. This has been done as it is often easier to develop an understanding if it is explained in a familar language.

Texts are graded for complexity. Thus it makes sense if you are complete beginner to start with texts at Level 1 and work your way through the levels. This grading is done by taking an overall look at the complexity of the texts and assigning a complexity level. Because the texts are mostly from real life, some complex language may occasionally be seen in lower graded texts.

Formal analysis of texts is encouraged to point out grammatical features and highlight the special usages of words in particular contexts. Students will raise questions about the texts on the discussion pages. They can communicate with each other through the use of the discussion pages and help each other to improve the translations and the analysis. If the students collectively cannot resolve the issue, the discussion may move to the equivalent page on the Finnish pages where questions can be asked in Finnish about the material. Finnish pages will be verified by Finnish speakers who hopefullt can answer the questions raised. Readers of this book are therefore encouraged to log in and add pages they have read to their watchlists.

The ultimate aim it to provide people who are learning the Finnish language to understand how sentences are constructed, and how to determine the right case for a noun (not always easy for a person not used to using a language that has 15 different noun cases!), and how to understand and correctly use the various passive, active, infinitive and participle forms of verbs. On top of that, students will also be able to identify and learn the various forms of "rektio" (case form governance directed by a verb). These are undoubtedly the biggest problems faced by foreign learners of Finnish.

As readers get to understand how the language works, there will not always be the need to provide low level analysis of higher graded texts. Only the more complex elements will be analysed.

Important message to readers and developers of this book

Register and Sign in regularly

This book is constantly being developed. New material will be added all the time.

Getting Help

As this books develops, you will increasingly develop a better understanding of the language and become more comfortable at reading and listening to Finnish elsewhere and independently. If come across language that you find difficult to understand, especially in spoken language, please bring it to the development area for this book. Others may be able to help you understand it.

Help develop the book

As you the text can be added to the book.

that indicates that others might benefit from it. When you do get to understand something you read somewhere More advanced texts in this book will therefore contain only explanations of see how

This book will tie in with a general book on Finnish Language for Foreigners which is being developed alongside, and which introduces the grammar and other special features of Finnish. As this book is being developed, it is hoped to encourage the writers to develop the Wikidictionary. For speed of understanding and to facilitate readers' voabulary development, all the texts will carry a vocablary list.

The book is intended to show how Finnish is used and to enable learner of the Finnish language how to better understand Finnish and direct through practical to see Finnish texts in real life and

Readers are encouraged to provide new texts for this book and to