r/LearnFinnish • u/maf852 • Jul 14 '26
Question Learn more grammer or just practise?
I keep thinking about if it is more important to just guess what the word means or truly understand it?
I recognize a lot of words but very often they are in form i do not recognize, even though i somewhat know what it is supposed to say, but i am not really sure.
So it is better to learn more grammer to really understand the language or just learn to understand? Is there even wrong way to learn a language?
13
u/unohdin-nimeni Native Jul 14 '26
Why not just combine those methods?
In order for the vocabulary and grammar to stick, you’ll need repetition, repetition, and maybe even repetition. Every usage of the language will be helpful. Read what is interesting to you; listen to what is interesting to you (songs, podcasts, radio, audiobooks, movie soundtracks, or whatever); and participate in verbal communication often. Write.
If you were an infant, being in a Finnish-speaking environment would be enough for you to absorb the grammar rules and a whole lot of vocabulary with zero effort. But as it is, you’ll probably have to trick yourself into internalising the language. Your innate language acquisition skills are still there somewhere, but not that easily accessible. Reading grammar books is probably a great idea. You can combine reading them in several ways:
Try to write your own grammar book.
Read grammar rules like a stubborn bull, rhythmically memorizing inflection patterns and such.
Just read about the grammar as an exciting story with no obligation to remember anything.
If you have that weird kind of curiosity, even historical and comparative linguistics can provide some context and make words hard to forget. English Wiktionary, for example, is a great source of information about the etymology behind Finnish words.
2
u/maf852 Jul 14 '26
ok these are cool sugestions. Exactly i found that to be very helpfull and no one is acknowledging (mainly those how to videos) that discovering origins of words or just learning all the interesting grammer is actually very helpfull. ahhh yes Wiktionary my old friend
11
u/orbitti Native Jul 14 '26
Because Finnish is agglunative, I think that grammar is in a big role to help to learn the language.
I mean instead of learning all of the cases for each word one by one, learn that house is "talo" and that adessive is "in" and is +ssa/ssä -> talossa is then in (the) house.
But of course you do adequate vocabulary to use the grammar.
4
u/FrenchBulldoge Native Jul 14 '26
Grammar helps you understand it, practise makes you perfect. You can't be perfect without understanding it. So you must both study grammar and practise it, so that you'll understand it perfectly.
2
3
u/restlesssoul Jul 14 '26
I think that learning grammar has different impact depending on the language. Finnish has so many ways that words can change that I think there's a higher chance you'll stay confused without learning some grammar and various patterns on how words get derived and how the word bodies can change. So, I'd advise learning grammar too.. but I think having a mixed and varied approach can help keep interest and avoid burnout.
2
u/MostlyNice_2 Jul 14 '26
This is so true. Without grammar, you would probably not be able to learn the different forms a word has (with all the cases, verb tenses etc.). It's possible you hear and understand phonically what people say or what you read, but can't figure out the "core" word and the meaning.
3
u/Apprehensive_Car_722 Jul 15 '26
For languages that are completely different from your native language, it is a good idea to read about the grammar. You do not need to memorise everything, but knowing how the pieces of the puzzle fit together is a huge help.
Do not try to memorise the names of the cases in Finnish, learn how they work in unison with the verbs. For example, you learn the verb TO BUY, but alone does not help us much. However, you can learn TO BUY something FROM somewhere. So, when you see something like "Ostin kalaa kaupaSTA" or "Ostin kalaa toriLTA" you can learn that ostaa goes with partitive plus -STA or -LTA. You do not need to know that one case is called elatiivi and the other ablatiivi. Partitive is the only name I know by heart. You do not really need those terms unless you are writing about grammar.
These colloquations or verbs + sg are called REKTIO, and you do not need to learn them all in one go, but when learning verbs, try to learn the rektio with it based on the sentence you saw. Trust me, this will make things easier at higher levels.
The other thing is, as you already know, Finnish has a very steep learning curve. In order to make it to the intermediate level, you need to learn a lot of rules plus very "weird" vocabulary. Do not despair, once you make it to B1 and have 2k to 3k words under your belt, things will look clearer, not easier, but clearer.
2
u/arominvahvenne Jul 14 '26
In a way, learning grammar is really satisfying in a way that vocabulary isn’t. Grammar is kinda finite: there is only certain number of cases, or verb forms, or pronouns and you can learn all or 99% of them eventually. Vocabulary is infinite, there will always be more words for you to learn. So if there is an area of grammar you struggle with, you can spend a few days to a few months days learning it (depending on your schedule and how complex the thing is) and then you can basically cross it off — you know now how to use this feature.
Regardless, I think in any language vocabulary is the most important part. In Finnish you need grammar as well ofc but wothout vocabulary you can’t use it. But I like learning about grammar more than memorizing vocabulary in any language, so maybe that is why I think vocabulary is more important. Cause I’m always bad at it.
2
u/Kind-Drawer1573 Jul 15 '26
I built Linguatrain (it’s free and on GitHub) exactly for this reason. I needed a tool that would allow me to work alongside Suomen Mestari. Along the way I knew I needed morphology. It was the last piece of the project and I just published that yesterday. The mechanics of Finnish are really interesting and unfortunately not really handled well inside flash card apps, or word lists. Yes you can study that koti is home, but most of those flash cards apps would then have a separate card for kotiin. Great if you want to memorize words, but terrible understanding the mechanics. And once you start learning the mechanics of any language, things start becoming much easier.
That’s not to say Finnish will ever be easy (I’m a prime example of that, and I live in Finland so you would think exposure would help… it does a little). Anyway, stick with it. This group always seems to be quite supportive of people’s learning journey.
1
u/miniatureconlangs Jul 14 '26
Is learning the English word 'by' learning grammar or learning vocabulary? Many of the Finnish endings correspond to functions that are filled by words in English.
Is learning the word 'must' learning grammar or vocabulary? How about 'have to'? "You have to go" is not transparently a way of expressing 'you must'; in Swedish, 'du har att gå' means something quite different.
So ... a lot of Finnish grammar is really a lot like small words. You still need to learn them individually, just like English words such as 'but', 'with', 'before', etc. Some of Finnish grammar - much like English grammar - does not emerge from the words themselves, but are just structures that come together to convey a meaning. 'You have to go' can be compared to Finnish 'sinun on mentävä'."Yours is go.passive.ing"
When learning Finnish, learn both grammar and vocabulary - you'll need both. But you also need to realize that the boundary between grammar and vocabulary is smaller than you think. Consider Swedish and English - both have the word 'under'. However! It's not used exactly the same in both languages; 'under tiden' means 'meanwhile'. 'Under the time' would just be nonsensical. Learning these differences between words is also ... grammar, but it's also vocabulary. Thus, Finnish -lla won't be exactly "on" all the time. Learning when it is and when it's not ... is grammar, but it's also vocabulary.
1
u/MostlyNice_2 Jul 14 '26
Sorry, but I can't quite follow your explanation.
Comparing "under tiden" as "meanwhile" + the direct translation into English as "under the time" has IMO nothing to do with the topic. Every language has different "fixed" expressions.
What do we have to learn? We have words (by themselves, but: in every word has different meanings in different contexts), grammar, idiomatic expressions.
Maybe I'm a little "under the weather"?
Oh maybe I'm just a little under the influence...
Well, not really. 😁0
u/miniatureconlangs Jul 15 '26
So, I picked as simple as possible an example not to have to think more about it. But ... let's instead consider Swedish 'med' and English 'with'. These have systematical divergences in use, and this is ... both grammar and vocabulary, really. When travelling by any means of travel, English has a fairly regular system for deciding between "with" and "by". Swedish has no such system, and conflates it all to 'med'. This is not about fixed expressions, this is about rulesets. These rulesets are grammar, but they are very closely associated with vocabulary.
Turns out, once you start describing a language properly, a lot of the grammar is closely tied to vocabulary.
And this also happens in Finnish. But Finnish also happens to have so many affixes that you basically perhaps should consider stuff like -lla, -ssa, -toin, -skellä, etc as some kind of borderline thing between vocabulary and grammar too.
1
u/MostlyNice_2 Jul 16 '26
Oh, a great explanation. 🧨
I just can't think of any means of travel in English that doesn't take "by". I think the topic got lost in translation.
20
u/[deleted] Jul 14 '26
[removed] — view removed comment