Days 221 to 227: lots of things

These days I have a lot to read. I've taken too many courses this term which means less time to study Finnish or update this blog.
Anyway during last 6 or seven days I...

Finnish nursery rhyme

Today I asked a few finns to give me some nursery songs. A friend on facebook suggested this one. It's lovely! And I understand some parts :)

êtes-vous, accro aux nouvelles technologies?

créer des documents

to create

imprime des photos

to print

Jouer à des jeux vidéo

Je lui ai donné le livre. 

I gave the book to him/her.

il est toujours allumé

DAY 221: keskiyöllä

A couple of exercise from kappale 7 of Kuulostaa Hyvältä and a couple of pages from Aamu is all for today :)

Voittko autta minua? päästä

I can't get this verb completely.

päästä

It's defined as to get, to reach and to arrive in dictionary.  But it doesn't help me to understand the following sentences anyway.

In phrases like: "pääseekö sinne metrolla?"

"Sinä pääset kotiin aivan varmasti."

What is happening exactly? It seems like that it's a frequently used verb in written Finnish. I don't know if it is used in spoken language much or not. However if somebody came here and helped me with a few examples and explanations it would be great.

 Update: Soon after posting this Sakari sent me these explanations. Thanks to Sakari! 

"Can you get there by underground?" and "You'll surely get home".

Päästä means "to get somewhere / reach a place / arrive in" (Pääsin kotiin.) or "to get to do something / be able to / be allowed to do something" (Pääsin kuuntelemaan konserttia.) It mostly has a POSITIVE connotation to it whereas "joutua" is negative in tone and can be considered its opposite.

Yritin päästä kotiin mutta käännyin risteyksestä väärään suuntaan ja jouduin rakennustyömaalle.
I tried to get home, but in the intersection, I turned the wrong way and got to (arrived in) a construction site.

Hän ei koskaan pääse hyvään yliopistoon, ellei hän ala opiskella.
He'll never get to a good university if he doesn't start studying.

Sayings:

päästä perille (get to the destination), päästä pälkähästä (escape the consequences), päästä selville jostakin (find out about sth), päästä yksimielisyyteen jostakin (come to an agreement about sth), päästä eroon jostakin (get rid of sth) and many others.

Also metaphorically:

Harmi, etten päässyt lähtemään.
What a pity I wasn't able to leave (didn't get to leave).

Onneksi en joutunut lähtemään.
I'm glad I didn't have to leave.

Joni Mikael added these:

A simple explanation: the English word "to get" has (at least) 2 different meanings.

1. for example "to get a present" (you are given something)
2. to get out, to get there, to get in etc.

If you think about it, those two are totally different things, so Finnish has 2 different verbs for that. The first in Finnish is "saada" and the second is "päästä".

to get out = päästä ulos
to get in = päästä sisään
to get there = päästä perille
to escape = päästä pakoon

 

 

Mon oncle de Bretagne!

I just started learning French. The class is taught in Finnish and French and sometimes also English!. It's a chance to learn some Finnish there as all student are Finns and the exercises are also usually translations from Finnish to French. So I'm putting my French stuff here too :)

The book taught in the class is called Echo A1 - méthode de français - Éditions CLE International.

Mon oncle de Bretagne!
uncle

DAYS: 218-220

 

 

Naisihmisen jalat (jalka, jalat) wikipedia

During the 3 days (24,25,26 Jan) I've read the dialog in Kappale 7 of Kuulostaa Hyvältä. Then read a few pages from Kappale 4 of Suomenn Kielein Alkeisoppikirja. Also some pages from Kieli Käyttöön. I might have read even a couple of pages from Ammu, I can't say exactly...
It's noteworthy that on Jan 25 I started using a wonderful dictionary: Suomen kielen sanakirja maahanmuuttajille. It's a dictionary of Finnish for Foreigners. This the first finnish-finnish dictionary that the most definitions look understandable to me at this point.

What I learned...

DAYS 216 and 217: Taiteilija

Van gough oli taiteilija!

On day 216 I had a class at 8:00 so I didn't study Finnish when I woke up. Today I did for both days at once, 9 minutes in total.

I finnished kappale 6 of Kuulostaa Hyvältä and then headed to Aamu. It talked about different professions in the couple pages that I read today.

Here they are...

DAY 215: ujo

Hän on ujo. Photo: ellit.fi

Today I did a form sentences by these words kind of exercise from kuulostaa hyvältä and then did a few pages of Kielin käytöön. Here are today's stuff:

Oikeastaan, hän on oikeastaan ujo.
actually shy

Sopia, Nämä huosut sopivat minulle täydelliseti.

Sopiva, sopiva kengät.

Käydä kahvilla, minä pidän käydä kahvila!

Totta kai, certainly. I hear this totta a lot in movies and on radio these days.

Toivottavasti, hopefully

Shipon kookies maistuu hyvätä!. 
taste (it even means tasty)

Minä pidän pasta ja valkokastike.
white sauce

Mitä tämä Pölynimuri maksa?
vacuum cleaner

Mitä tämä hella maksa?
oven

Mitä tämä mikrouuni maksa?
microwave oven

Ota kynä käteen, ja mieti!
Take a pen and think!.

DAY 214: Arva kuka tuli?

Arva

Today I did a "Muodosta lause" sort of exercise from Kuulostaa Hyvältä. It's a time consuming genre of task, I couldn't even finish it.

DAY 213: rading room

Today I did another exercise from Kuulosta Hyvältä. And then a few lines from kieli käyttöön.

DAY 212: Paris on kaunis

Paris on kaunis! photo from wikipedia

Today I did an exercise from Kuulostaa Hyvältä. Then I read a small part of the parttitive rules from Suomen Kielen Alkeisoppikirja. That is it. And I headed to my new French class!. Yeah that sounds crazy but I'm going back to learning French again. It's not harder than Finnish anyway. Plus the course is taught in Finnish so it might do me good both ways.

Personal space in Finland

I don't know who took this photo but it's a good one. Look how separate from each other are the standing the people in the bus stop. It shows how Finns respect personal space. And I have to add I don't think it's much of a stereo type. I have seen it many times during autumn. Once in a rainy day in October I was waiting for a bus inside the stop. It rained like hell. Then a Finnish girl came to the stop but she didn't come under the roof beside me, she waited outside under the rain! It took about 15 minutes until she decided to my personal space and get under the roof and only when she was all wet!

DAY 211: Neljäkäs

Neljäkäs (wikipedia)

Today I did a few exercises from Kuulostaa Hyvältä and then did a few lines of AAMU.

Using the Finnish-Finnish dictionary is very time consuming but anyway I'm doing it. Sometimes I look up the word first in my Finnish - English dictionary and then do it in the Finnish - Finnish one to see how much I get from the Finnish only definition.
Here are today's stuff:

DAY 210: Presidentin mukaan

Today I only reviewed what we were taught yesterday at Suomi 4 class. I tried using my Suomi - Suomi dictionary but it got frustrating at some point and I switched to my good old Suomi - English dictionary.

Here are what I got today:

DAY 209: Partitivi moudolsa!

Partitivi moudolsa! V + a            V V and K + ta         e + tta
mitoa      Radiota, Puhelinta   Konetta

Today I started using an online Finnish - Finnish dictionary. I did the second half of the dialog in Kuulostaa Hyvältä and then went on to Kieli Käyttöön. I also went to my Finnish 4 class at university. It was great. Opettaja speaks Finnish almost all the time in the class and I'm happy that I have a chance to hear Finnish twice a week.

Here are what I learned by self study today:

Day 208: Hellalla on kattila.

Yesterday I was on trip to Tampere then no direct Finnish learning afford. Tampere was a beautiful city by the way. Today I took a look at Suomen Kilelen Alkeisoppikirja i.e. my grammer book.
It gave the best parttivi / nominitavi (I'm surely misspelling those two words) explanations I've seen ever.
 By the way I changed the language of my facebook interface from English to Finnish.

DAY 206: tauko

Tauko! Photo from here

Today I started kappale 6 of kuulostaa hyvältä, but just went through half of the first dialog. Then switched to AAMU and finished a couple of pages about class room.
My word of the day was Tauko. Meaning break. I spent about an hour on Finnish today.

DAY 205: Minun pyötä on suikonen!

Minun pyöta on soikunen!

I woke up very early today aka 05:20! Knowing that I'll be off to Tampere this weekend I had to work harder on my Finnish today.
I opened up Kieli Käyttöön. It was about adjectives and kitchen stuff. Too much words for a day...

DAY 204: Kirjoitustehtävä ja pörri orava

Today I started at 7:20 by doing the last 2 exercises in kappale 5 of Kuulostaa Hyvältää.
First one was watching the lessons video clip and answering some questions about it. The last task was a writing task (kirjoitustehtävä), basically answering some questions about myself. Then I moved to AAMU and read about one paragraph and looked up the word in dictionary.

By the way, we watched an old animation last night. My wife and I remember this cute japanese squirrel from or childhood. We find the Finnish dubbed version  at city library and rented it immediately. It helps us learn Finnish faster.

DAY 203: Mudosta lause...

Today I started at 07:10 by doing a sentence making task from Kuulostaa hyvältä. Most of the phrases I made with the given words were from the text itself.
Here are some:

- Se on oikein hyvä ajatus.
- Minä nukkun myöhään illella.
- Olohuone on valoisa.

DAY 202: Etsi uudet sanat sanakirjasta!

Today I did an exercise from kappale 5 of Kuulostaa Hyvältä. It was a reading task according to this kappale only with a few new words. Which I was supposed to look up at the dictionary: Etsi uudet sanat sanakirjasta. Only 3 more tasks and I'll be moving on to kappale 6.
Then I did a couple of pages from Suomen Kielen Alkeisoppikirja. It took me about an hour.
By the way, yesterday I talked to the university's language center. The teacher suggested talking both Finnish 2 and Finnish 4 and see what happens.

 Here are my efforts for today...

DAY 201: Kirjasto

Kirjasto (wikipedia)

Today I did a couple of more exercises from Kappale 5 of Kuulosta Hyvältä. I also read a few pages of Kiele Kätyyn. It took me about 75 minutes. Here are my notes from what I learned today.

DAY 200: Taivas On Sininen Kaikkialla

Taivas

Today I got stuck at a couple of exercises from kappale 5 of Kuulosta Hyvältä. I just don't get it. It's about when to use partitive form and when not to use it. For example:
 Jääkaapissa on maitoa. (here maito is in partitive form).
but
Keskustassa on ravintola. (the same kind of sentence but ravintola is not in partitive form.)
I'll get it one day, it doesn't matter.
Then I moved to my reading book "AAMU" and worked on a couple of pages.

DAY 199: Päästä

Today (Jan 5) I decided to take the daily time limit for studying Finnish more seriously. I read the books for 30 minutes and spent 15 minutes to summarize what I've learned here. If I want to learn Finnish 45 minutes for everyday I must not let it stretch further than that limit.
I did the first 3 exercises of kappale 5 in Kuulostaa hyvältä. I noticed a very important verb in the first exercise...

DAYS: 195 to 198 Eikö olekin?

In last three days (from Jan 1 to Jan 4) , I've finished lesson four from Kuulostaa Hyvältä and I'm also at the middle of Kappale 3 in Suomen Kielen Alkeisoppikirja. I also read a few pages of Kieli Käytoon. The new semester at university is beginning and soon I won't have my current focus on learning Finnish. Let's see what happens.
Here are what I've learned during days 195 to 198.