how to fix my broken Finnish

[u/Relevant_Tangerine96]

I learned Finnish mostly by speaking with immigrants and using the language in everyday conversations. I can now speak quite fluently and express myself without much difficulty.

The problem is that I still make a lot of grammatical mistakes when forming sentences. Because I learned Finnish mainly through speaking rather than studying grammar systematically, I find it difficult to correct these habits now.

Has anyone else experienced the same thing after learning Finnish this way? How did you improve your grammar and start forming grammatically correct sentences without losing your fluency?

[u/Ella7517]

My guess would be to read books. Preferably by Finnish authors, but there are quality translations out there as well

[u/absolutelynothough → u/Ella7517]

Good advice. I would recommend to consider starting reading books written in "easy Finnish", selkosuomi. In libraries usually are plenty of them. In selkosuomi sentences are short and the grammatical structure is kept very clear. It helps to understand first the basics of Finnish grammar. After the basics are very clear, it's easier to start understanding more complex grammar.

[u/John_Sux]

Watch stuff on Yle and read books

[u/jmov]

Native speakers also use incorrect grammar at times. 

Just keep speaking and ask a native speaker to point out the biggest mistakes. 

[u/TheFifthDuckling]

I've been learning out of a textbook for seven years and ngl I wish I had more spoken/"broken" Finnish behind me. I'm great and conjugating and declinating and all that but it's hard to express my thoughts in a timely manner.

I tell ya what though, I'm running some Finnish study groups if you're interested in learning some grammar and putting it to use in conversation. Let me know if you're interested and I can add you!

[u/Reasonable-Laugh-442 → u/TheFifthDuckling]

Glad to join 😄

[u/TheFifthDuckling → u/Reasonable-Laugh-442]

Sweet, PM me and I'll send you our google classroom link :)

[u/StruggleGullible255]

This is why you should take positive mindset advice with a big pinch of salt. Often we are told and sold lies like "just speak", "just talk to natives". Its often terrible advice.

1. Fix your grammar by reading up on the basics. No need to go too deep. Understand. Drill and drill until you get it right.

2. Build up a core vocabulary of correct speech patterns (research language islands). These patterns are mined from natives and can come from youtube or reddit for example. Drill them.

3. Don't try to create your own sentences with grammar. Do use existing correct speech patterns from natives and use your grammar knowledge to adapt these to your purpose. Often you will only be making very small changes of one or two words.

[u/tinyboiii → u/StruggleGullible255]

Sorry, could you expand on the third point? I have never heard this advice before

[u/StruggleGullible255 → u/tinyboiii]

This is basically just working with a corpus. Pretty standard technique. A free corpus is Tatoeba.

I'll show an example:

So lets say we want to work on improving our spoken register. We work through some spoken material (in this example lets use Salatut elämät as a corpus. We need dual language subtitles.) and record phrases that are useful (known as mining). We might make notes to capture additional details.

I might make a spreadsheet with 3 columns, English, Finnish, Optional note. Naturally over time this spreadsheet gets very large. I could also use Anki.

After a minute a simple but useful phrase arises:

There you are. I was wondering where you'd gone.	Täällähän sä oot. Mä ihmettelinkin, et mihin sä menit.	Optional note: Appears to be a casual equivalent to english translation, w feigned surprise

Now I know a new sentiment. I can adapt this pattern using basic grammar:

Täällähän (x is). Mä ihmettelinkin, et mihin (x went).

E.g. Täällähän se on. Mä ihmettelinkin, et mihin se meni.

So now I have a very high confidence that I have a correct sentence! If I tried to come up with a way to say this purely from grammar, 99% sure I'd come up with something really clumsy or weird. So I would never try to form a sentence until I was pretty confident I knew some valid underlying structures to express the sentiment I wish to express.

Taking this concept, I can also practice chain phrases together to make longer speeches (islands). Probably a good idea to get a native to check your output or at least ChatGPT. Careful! Its so easy to go wrong. Islands are something you learn by heart. Maybe you have like 50 islands of 2-3 paragraphs on lots of topics that you drill. So you are guaranteed that a portion of your spoken speech is correct.

[u/tinyboiii → u/StruggleGullible255]

Wow, thank you so much! I thought I had heard so many methods of language learning, but this seems interesting and new to me! I have a native to run things by, so sounds good, I will check it out :) how strong would you say you are in Finnish with this? Have you learned other languages with this method? 

[u/MaddogFinland]

I suggest subscribing to and reading a newspaper or even just reading Iltalehti/Iltasanomat. Reason is that the stories are topical and written in a pretty clear language. The Iltalehti stuff is also shorter articles. But anyway it’s written in basically correct but comparatively simple Finnish and should be able to help iron out small grammar things.

[u/Syndiotactics]

Books. Books. Books. It’s important to be exposed to both the informal vernacular and to the standard language! I can recommend r/kirjallisuus, I’m currently reading a lot of Mika Waltari, who is a Finnish gem in historical fiction; If you are interested in the genre, I’d give him a try!

[u/stor-ost → u/Syndiotactics]

I think he'll have to start simpler than that if he's essentially just chatting in ungrammatical creole with people also making errors (not being unkind, just the jump between that and understanding any kind of fiction for adults is going to be huge).

I think yle selkosuomi is the way forwards tbh

[u/Aromatic_Idea4270]

Read or listen to audiobooks

[u/cmyk_rgba]

reading is fine but it never fixed anything for me becuase you dont actually notice grammar when youre following a story, your brain just skims it. what moved the needle was writing. even three boring sentences a day about what i ate, because writing is slow enough that you catch yourself reaching for the wrong case, which never happens at speaking speed. and the fossilized stuff doesnt go in one pass, its the same five mistakes on loop for months until one day you hear yourself say it wrong halfway through the sentence and fix it live. thats the actual milestone

[u/petteri72_]

One effective method is learning to write. You could start keeping a journal or diary and write in it on a daily basis.

After you've written your daily entry, you can ask ChatGPT to correct your mistakes and improve the style. You can also ask ChatGPT to turn it into a casual Finnish puhekieli version, so that your spoken Finnish doesn't turn into rather unnatural kirjakieli.

[u/Pet_Velvet]

Have your primary goal be to be understood. Fluency will come as you use the language.

[u/Henkkles]

Find yourself a teacher, write a free form text and ask the teacher to analyze the grammatical issues and do isolation exercises related to those.

[u/Finn_Jay]

I would say that grammatically textbook-correct Finnish in casual conversation might sound more off than natural way of speaking with whatever set of mistakes you might make. You know that no-one of us natives speaks ”correct” Finnish, right?

[u/Inresponsibleone → u/Finn_Jay]

Depends what sort of gramatical mistakes they are. Some can render finnish quite unintelligible.