There’s an unspoken rule that the more Finnish courses you take, the better. I don’t like this rule. Here’s what we assume when we think another Finnish course is what we really need, and 5 helpful questions to help you decide if another Finnish course is what you really need.
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I learned the partitive by trying to study it, and when that didn’t really help me grasp it, I TOOK TO THE STREETS. No, really. I read all the ads on the street and I hunted down the partitive. This is one of my favourite ways to learn. In today’s video, I give you an in-depth example of how I do this using a Subway ad.
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Back when I first started learning Finnish, I thought of it as an exciting, intellectual, almost artistic challenge. I wanted to express myself in Finnish and I wondered about how I’d develop the ability to conjugate, inflect and live in Finnish! What I didn’t expect, was that I would learn a lot about myself on the way. I kind of just thought I’d learn Finnish. In the post I reflect on the 7 things I learned about myself and the world through this process.
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Today I’m excited to present you with a collection of 7 Finnish sounds! These sounds are carefully curated from real life and can be used at your leisure. Just insert them into different situations and watch what happens! 😉
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I believe every single person and being I come across knows something that I don’t know, and vice versa. For this reason, every interaction is a chance to learn something new, for ourselves and the people we interact with. This post explains my thinking and its far-reaching implications.
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In this post I’ll tell you a bit about how I wrapped up 2017, my fresh intention for the new year and three of the dreams I know we can accomplish in 2018.
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Miksi juuri tämä kysymys? Pari päivää sitten olin Helsingin junassa ystänä kanssa. Puhuttiin suomea ja vastapäätä istuva mies pahoitteli, että oli salakuntelemassa ja halusi kysyä vain pari asiaa minulta: mikä mun äidinkieli on, miten joudun Suomeen ja…kuinka kauan oon opiskellut suomea? Pahoin.kysymys.ikinä. Jos tunnet minut henkilökohtaisesti, ehkä tiedät, etten vastaa tähän kysymykseen selkeästi. Minun mielestä se…
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“Words are not important in themselves, but as resonators for a center. […] All language is a longing for home.” — Coleman Barks in The Essential Rumi (pg. 17) If all language is a longing for home, and we speak English in a sea of Finnish, we will always associate home with another time, another place and another people. We will always see ourselves as other. And guess what?
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Meet Maria Weidner: a native Berliner with an Indonesian soul. Maria is also a German teacher and artist. The first time I heard Maria speak Indonesian, time stopped. Maria, German a few moments ago, was no longer a German woman. She’d been transformed into an Indonesian woman, who is clearly Indonesian! Witnessing such a sense of ease, fluidity and joy when Maria speaks Indonesian (a language she learned as an adult) forces us to re-think all the things we thought we understood about culture, languages and ‘who we really are.’
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In this vlog post, I discuss why I’m not learning any new languages right now and what I’m excited about instead. I also touch on a few of the following topics: Learning for fun from home vs learning abroad for ‘need’ vs learning for a real need + studying vs. learning + The pull of curiosity vs. the push of obligation + timing of language learning (also vs studying) + Looking at language learning in the context of your life
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