Colloquial Finnish: The Complete Language Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series (Multimedia))

Rating:
Summary: So far, so good!
Review: I own a couple other books on Finnish and so far this one seems to be the most practical. It's great to learn the proper way to speak, as well as the colloquialisms of the language -- this is the only book of mine which covers this aspect. Had I had this book when I lived in Finland for a year, I'd probably have picked up a lot more of what around me was being said!

Rating:
Summary: The best!
Review: I own a few other Finnish language books. Actually, all of the books that the local bookstore I visit had, which was like 5 or 6. Routledge's language courses are the best you can buy, I know because I've bought an array of books for an array of languages. But this one takes the cake; Author Daniel Abondolo delicately blends the professionalism or language books with the speech or normal people to create a very conducive environment for learning, especially with such a diffucult language. Abondolo teaches you the essentials of the language, as no single volume book could teach you an entire language. By the end of the book, you will be speaking the language seemingly as if you've known the language all your life, without the accent though. The authors credentials are confirmed by his other books, namely the Uralic Languages(editor+author), a highly technical book dealing with the language group with which Finnish is part of. The tapes provide a very useful tool, that is, hearing the spoken language through native speakers.

Rating:
Summary: Not very useful for students
Review: Take the title of this book seriously: it really _only_ teaches colloquial Finnish, and the colloquial Finnish of only one region at that!

While this might be of use to someone interested in learning to converse ONLY, it is of no help to anyone who actually wants to learn to write and read Finnish. The problem is that the written form of Finnish is not spoken in any particular part of Finland. The usual approach is to learn to speak this written form (which everyone does understand, even though no native speaker uses it in daily life) while learning grammar rules. Once a student has done that he/she goes on to learn the colloquial Finnish of a specific area. A student who uses this book is going backwards...and will be hurt by that approach. Not only does the book contain almost no clear explanations of some of the most complex grammatical systems in the world, it also offers no introduction to standard written forms of some very common words.

A student who completes this book will be able to chat in a Helsinki bar (maybe?), but won't be able to read a newspaper or understand a radio DJ...nor will he or she have the basis to continue on to other books, which presuppose an understanding of Finnish grammar. The books recommended by other reviewers are better choices, as is Suomen Kielen Alkeisoppikirja by Anna-Liisa Lepasmaa and Leena Silfverberg.

Rating:
Summary: A native speaker's view
Review: The word "colloquial" in the book title must be taken quite literally. The language as taught here is Helsinki street slang, which differs substantially from the literary standard. This need not be a shortcoming, because the traditional way to stick to the standard is frustrating enough for the communicatively (not academically) oriented learner who prefers to be able to speak a language instead of primarily writing and reading it.

A more severe fault is the fact that the book sometimes clearly violates the standard rules about writing compound words, sometimes rather haphazardly printing a compound word as two separate words. However, even this is a kind of error which would be committed very readily by a native speaker lacking in education.

Even the vocabulary incorporates some very vulgar colloquialisms not normally taught to learners.

All told, this book, rather bizarrely, teaches Finnish as it is spoken and written by Helsinki skinheads. This could be, of course, a caustic commentary about the kind of Finns the foreigner is most likely to come into contact with. However, pedagogically it does not seem too bad, and I cannot dismiss its peculiar innovations out of hand.

Rating:
Summary: Beginners: keep away.
Review: Very frustrating to use. The book doesn't allow the reader to become comfortable with Finnish slowly and build a decent bedrock of vocabulary and grammar. Instead, even in the very beginning it mentions all sort of pedantic asides and exceptions to the rules, making the whole thing appear very daunting right from the start. Its layout is unclear and it doesn't have enough examples. You'll probably find yourself having to read the same sentence several times to absorb the rule the author is trying to lay down: a book on a difficult language that's written in poor English is the kiss of death for the beginner.