Omar asks:
What is the difference between the words "pilalla" and "raunio"? 

Hi Omar!

I think I see where the confusion comes from - when you look up the English word ruin or ruined, both of these come up as possible translations.

The ruin you were probably looking for is pilalla, which is the general word that means that something is no longer usable: 

Laitoin keittoon aivan liikaa pippuria. Nyt se on pilalla. 
I put way too much pepper in the soup. It's ruined now. 

Raunio, on the other hand, means a ruin of a building. Here's a raunio: 

Picture by Hasan Cilingir

​The word raunio is often used in the essive case, which is the case we use for states of being:

Rakennus on rauniona.
Rakennus on raunio-na. 
The building be-3rd person ruin-essive. 
The building is in ruins.

I've answered a couple of questions about choosing the right case to use (you can find them here and here). In each of these posts, I've been talking about the concept of ainesana,  but I haven't really devoted time to explaining what they are and how to recognize them. So here goes!

The word ainesana is composed of two words, aine 'material, element' and sana 'word'. Ainesana literally means an "element word" or "material word", and its English counterpart is the uncountable noun. However, unlike in English, in Finnish it's often less useful to think of these words in terms of counting. In my experience, it's often more useful to think about dividing, and some Finnish grammars use the term jaollinen, 'divisible' to mean the same thing - if you can divide it, it's an ainesana. Ainesanas behave a bit differently than other words, especially when it comes to using the partitive case. 

The following groups of nouns are ainesanas:

1) food and drink: kahvi 'coffee', juusto 'cheese', mehu 'juice', leipä 'bread'
2) elements and materials: vesi 'water', nahka 'leather', tuli 'fire'
3) abstract concepts and feelings: rakkaus 'love', ystävyys 'friendship', ilo 'joy'

Ainesanas are things that you can stick into a blender and mush up without them losing their essence. A mashed potato is still a potato, but stick your cellphone (not an ainesana) into your vitamix and what you get is a pile of broken plastic, glass and metal. Love remains love even when your heart is broken.

Another way to phrase the same idea is that with ainesanas, even the tiniest bit of the thing is still the thing. If you pour some coffee into a coffee cup, you now have coffee in a cup as well as in a coffee pot. Cut up a cake, kakku, and dish it out and you have lots of plates with cake. If you cut up a t-shirt in a similar way you end up with garbage, not a t-shirt, but the shards are still fabric, kangas, which of course is, again, an ainesana.  

If you can divide it without it losing its essence, it's an ainesana. If you can't, it's not. 

​

Every April, I'm amazed at how Finnish is spring is pretty much identical with Belgian winter. I grew up in Belgium, where usually April means green grass, leaves and flowers. In Helsinki, April means +7 degrees and everything being grey and brown. At the moment, it's raining. But we had some beautiful days last week, and Vappu is just around the corner! Can't wait! On to the question of the day: 

Omar writes: 
Mitä tarkoittaa "nimenomaan" ?!  What does "nimenomaan "mean?! 

Dear Omar, 

Great question! Nimenomaan is one of those words that emphasizes and defines meaning, and as such it's pretty hard to translate accurately. Nimeomaan can be translated as exactly, absolutely, totally, precisely, in particular. 

You can use it to say that someone understands exactly what you mean. In this example that I just made up, Maija and Aarne are having coffee. 

Maija:  Tää on ihana kahvila.
Aarne: Joo, mistään ei saa näin hyviä korvapuusteja!
Maija:  Nimenomaan!

Maija: I love this café (literally: this café is wonderful). 
Aarne: Yeah, you can't get korvapuustis this good anywhere!
Maija: Exactly!

You can also use it to single something out: 

Maija: Tää on ihana kahvila.
Aarne: Joo, nimenomaan korvapuustit on täällä tosi hyviä!

Maija: I love this café. 
Aarne: Yeah, the korvapuustis in particular are really good here!

To emphasize: 

Maija: Mihin me mentäis kahville? 
Aarne: En mä tiiä, oisko Cafe Laine mitään? 
Maija: Mun tekis nimenomaan mieli korvapuustia. 
Aarne: No mut hei sit mä tiedän hyvän paikan!

Maija: Where do you want to have coffee? 
Aarne: I don't know, how about Café Laine?
Maija: I'm really craving a korvapuusti. 
Aarne: Well in that case I know just the place!

In most cases, in particular works pretty nicely as a translation for nimenomaan, so if I had to choose one word to translate it with, that would be my favorite. 

Nyt tekee mieli nimenomaan korvapuustia, ei mitä tahansa pullaa!

Aina writes:

Hi! I am a PhD student at Helsinki University. I am originally from Barcelona. I am currently learning finnish at the classes offered at the university, but I would like to find some lessons that are more direct to speaking and getting vocabulary, rather than learning grammar (as the ones I am currenly in). Could you recomend me any? Kiitos paljon!

Hi Aina!

There are a bunch of excellent courses that you could attend, but I don't currently have a specific one in mind. For the Helsinki region, the options should all be listed on finnishcourses.fi. In practice, not everything is always there, so it's also worth asking around. For instance, I've never listed one of my own private courses, as my one woman business is such a small player in the field and I haven't yet had the need to advertise much. 

Look for a course that has speaking (puhuminen) right in the name of the course. However, most courses will have a lot of speaking and vocabulary involved even if they don't specifically focus on it, so it might be a good idea to contact the organizer and ask them about it directly. It sounds like your current course might be a bit of an outlier, so you might also want to check out what else is available at the uni. Maybe ask your current teacher for recommendations if you haven't done that yet. 

There are also several free clubs that you can attend to practice speaking and vocabulary, usually lead by teacher students or even professional teachers. For example, my part-time employer Helsingin työväenopisto hosts one on Mondays from 10.00-11.30 in Kallio, Helsinginkatu 26. In my time at the uni in Helsinki, we had several Finnish clubs going on, so that's another good place to start looking.  

Finally, there's of course the option of private lessons, which are an excellent way of focusing on exactly the aspects of language that you need. I'm one good option for focusing on speaking (even if I say so myself), but there are many excellent Finnish teachers in Helsinki who offer private lessons. I also organize Finnish courses for groups. Let me know if you're interested and we can talk more!

Readers, anything I missed? Do you have a specific course recommendation for Aina? Tell us in the comments!

This is the second part of my answer to Meri's letter. Part one is here.  ​Here's Meri's letter again:

Hi Mari,

I have some questions regarding the verb ostaa and the behavior of some nouns and the endings they take. Ostaako Peter bussilipun? Minä ostan maitoa/ jäätelöä. Assuming that the sentences are correct, which I think they are, why is it that with the same verb variations to the noun are possible? What is the difference? When do we know which variation to use? Here are my suggestions/ problems. I know that the partitive case is used for nouns that cannot be counted Maito is one such noun. You cannot count the milk, but the containers in which it is stored. However, as I see it, jäätelö can be counted, or am I wrong? One more thing. How do say that I want for example to buy tickets to a concert, for one, then the tickets to a particular concert? Would these be correct? Minä haluan ostaa lipput. Minä haluan ostaa lippuja. Thanks,

Hi Meri!

Why is it that with the same verb variations to the noun are possible? This is a question that one could write a doctoral thesis on, and actually, many have. I'll try my very best not to. 

You already gave the short answer yourself: with a verb like ostaa 'to buy', we need to look at the thing that we're buying. If it's countable, we use the genetive, just like in your example: Ostaako  Peter bussilipun.  If it's not countable, or in Finnish, an ainesana, then you use the partitive.

Ainesanas are things that you can't count: food, drink, elements and abstract things, like 

vesi, tuli, rakkaus  'water, fire and love'. 

Just like you said in your letter, ainesanas can be conceptualized as countables: instead of milk, which is an ainesana or uncountable, we can talk about cartons of milk and transform our milk into countable form: 

Ostan maitoa. 'I'm buying milk'
Ostan maidon.  'I'm buying a carton of milk.'

The same goes for jäätelö, and any ainesana for that matter. From you're letter, I'm guessing that you're thinking about individual ice creams. Think of big batches of gelato instead, or tubs of Ben & Jerry's. 

Ostan jäätelöä. 'I'm buying ice cream.'
Ostan jäätelön. 'I'm buying an ice cream.'

On a more general level, how do you choose the case? 

When you're first starting to study Finnish, the way we use our 15 cases may seem completely random and very confusing, but there's actually a method behind what may at times seem like madness. It has everything to do with the action you're describing, or, the verb you're using. 

Some verbs go strictly with one case, like tykätä  'to like'. Tykätä always goes with the elative case (Mistä?): 

Minä tykkään sinusta. 
Minä tykkää-n sinu-sta.

First there's the word minä 'I', in its nominative or basic form, then the verb tykätä 'to like'  in the form that goes with minä,  the first person singular: tykkään 'I like'. Then sinä  'you' in the elative form, sinusta. So literally: I like "from you", or my liking of you comes from the way you are. I like you.

Other verbs are more flexible, like the verb ostaa  that we started off with. Ostaa is a transitive verb, a verb that typically takes an object: you always buy something, and what case you should use depends on the thing you're buying: ainesana or not? If you're not buying anything in particular, there's a whole different verb for that: shoppailla. 

So, you might saying, it's another f***** learn it by heart situation isn't it??? 

Well, you're right, it is. On the other hand, it's also not - when you progress further, you'll start to grasp the underlying logic, and you'll start to see that verbs with similar meanings behave in the same way. For example, this thing about liking from may seem totally random at first, but when you learn more verbs you start seeing a pattern: 

tykkään suklaasta
'I like chocolate.'
pidän suklaasta
'I like chocolate.' (pidän and tykkään are synonyms)
nautin  suklaasta
'I enjoy chocolate.'
uneksin suklaasta
'I dream of chocolate.'
 
In my opinion, the trick in the beginning is learning slightly longer chunks of language. Instead of memorizing tykätä + elatiivi, use it in a a longer sentence or phrase and then memorize that. If you love chocolate like I do, it could be tykkään suklaasta.  

Once you know how to say you like chocolate, you also know how to say you like other things: 

tykkään suklaasta
tykkään kahvista
tykkään kesästä
tykkään Helsingistä (Helsinki : Helsingistä) 
... and so on. 

Tykkään mansikoista.

Meri writes: 

​Hi Mari,

I have some questions regarding the verb ostaa and the behavior of some nouns and the endings they take. Ostaako Peter bussilipun? Minä ostan maitoa/ jäätelöä. Assuming that the sentences are correct, which I think they are, why is it that with the same verb variations to the noun are possible? What is the difference? When do we know which variation to use? Here are my suggestions/ problems. I know that the partitive case is used for nouns that cannot be counted Maito is one such noun. You cannot count the milk, but the containers in which it is stored. However, as I see it, jäätelö can be counted, or am I wrong? One more thing. How do say that I want for example to buy tickets to a concert, for one, then the tickets to a particular concert? Would these be correct? Minä haluan ostaa lipput. Minä haluan ostaa lippuja. Thanks,

Hi Meri!

Thanks for the great questions! I'll start with the second one, which is easier and faster to answer: 

How do say that I want for example to buy tickets to a concert, for one, then the tickets to a particular concert?  Would these be correct? Minä haluan ostaa lipput. Minä haluan ostaa lippuja. 

Your suggestions are almost correct, just remember the kpt-change for the word lippu:

In a word like lippu (I call this the KATTO word type), if your have two p's in the nominative, the word loses a p in the plural nominative (t-plural) form: Minä haluan ostaa liput  'I want to buy the tickets'. 

If you use the plural partitive, Minä haluan ostaa lippuja, it means that you want to buy some tickets. In English, I'd say I want to buy tickets. 

With the plural nominative, Minä haluan ostaa liput, the sentence means that you want to buy specific tickets, and the English equivalent would be I want to buy the tickets. 

My completely unresearched, subjective feeling is that in English, I want to buy tickets  would usually be the way to go - in a lot of contexts, I want to buy the tickets would seem oddly specific, like you had some very specific seats in mind and no other tickets to the same concert will do. You'd use the tickets  only if you'd already been discussing some specific tickets already, like this: 

Anneli: I really wanna go see Maria Gasolina  next week! I wonder if there are any tickets left!
Heidi: OMG me too! 
Anneli: I'll find out and get us tickets if there are still some left. 
Heidi: Awesome!

 later:

Anneli: Guess what, I got the tickets! 

In Finnish, however, the default in many contexts would be Minä haluan ostaa liput, and Minä haluan ostaa lippuja  would be used to emphasize that the amount of tickets is nonspecific. So the same conversation would go something like this: 

Anneli: Mä haluun mennä Maria Gasolinan keikalle ens viikolla! Onkohan sinne vielä lippuja jäljellä? 
Heidi: Et oo tosissas, niin mäkin!
Anneli: Mä otan selvää ja hankin meille liput jos niitä on vielä jäljellä. 
Heidi: Upeeta!
 
myöhemmin:

Anneli: Arvaa mitä, mä sain ne liput! 

As you can see, for the Finnish version I used the pronoun ne  to emphasize that we're talking about specific tickets that have been mentioned before, whereas in English the article does the trick. 

Well, that was a lot of detail for a simple question! I hope I didn't manage to just make it sound even more confusing. The bottom line is, both are correct, and which one is better depends on the specific context, which you will start to get a handle on as you progress. You'll sound good and make yourself understood anyway. Feel free to continue the conversation in the comments if you need any more clarification on this.

 For your first question, I'll make a second post, coming up soon! 






 

In my opinion, the key to learning any new skill is finding a good teacher, and learning Finnish is no exception. The teacher-student relationship doesn't always have to be a formal one, but it's important to have someone to support you in your efforts to answer your questions. 

So when people ask me for advice, my first reaction is always to tell them to go find a teacher: someone teaching a Finnish course or giving private Finnish lessons, face to face or online. Every now and then, people tell me that they've tried this already, found it to be no use at all and decided to go on on their own. Of course, that may very well be the best option for them. People are all different, and sometimes, studying all on your own is indeed the best thing you can do for yourself and your learning process. However, for the vast majority of people, the problem isn't that they don't benefit from having a teacher. The problem is that they haven't yet found the right teacher. 

When I'm teaching a course (I currently teach at Helsingin työväenopisto in addition to my private lessons), I of course teach anyone who wants to attend. But when it comes to private lessons, I never take on a student if I'm not fully convinced that I have something valuable to offer them, and that I'm able to offer it. This is because I know that my success as a teacher is not just a matter of my skills as a professional, but also really depends on a variety of factors that are completely out of my control. The most important thing is just what you might call personal chemistry - people either click or they don't, and if they don't that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with the teacher or the student. 

We don't always get to choose our teachers, and in many cases you just have to stick with the teacher that you've been assigned and make the best of it. In Finland, the vast majority of teachers are highly qualified and passionate about their work, so even when you don't get to choose your teacher you have a very good chance of landing a great one. Yes, even the ones who look like they'd rather be anywhere else than in class usually turn out to be dedicated pros when you give them a chance. 

If you do get to choose, I encourage you to really make an active choice. If your course or private teacher isn't working out for you, try a different one. Ask your friends for recommendations. Also ask the teachers who it didn't work out with - chances are they feel the same way and have a vision of what you need. Obviously, be diplomatic when doing this, but don't be too shy either - a good professional teacher knows that sometimes they're just not the right teacher for a given student. The bottom line is, take some time to look around and see who your options are. 

That brings us to the question of the day:

How do you know that you've landed the right teacher? 

It's of course a plus if you like your teacher as a person, but don't make the mistake of equating a charming personality with skill as a teacher. Yes, in the ideal situation your teacher is a fun person to work with. However, I know from my own experience as a language learner that some of my best teachers have been boring as anything. The question to ask is, are you learning from them? If the answer is no, why is that? If it's because you get irritated at the very thought of attending yet another incomprehensible class, it's time to move on. If it's because you're not putting in the work, figure out why and try your best to fix any problems that are stopping you from learning. Remember, when it comes down to it it's you who has to take the lead of your learning process and do the work - the teacher is there to help you do it, not to spoon feed you at every step of the way. It's your process, so take charge of it. 

It's good to know what you want from a teacher and to keep looking until you find someone whose methods work for you. Not all teaching methods work for everyone, and as education professionals trained for a minimum of five years at university level your teachers know that very well. That's why most of us opt for lots of different types of ways of teaching in our courses, so that there's a better chance of there being something useful there for each and every one of our students. That means that there'll always be some part of the class that won't be optimal for you. If you're in my class, for example, you might be sick and tired of getting up to do yet another five minutes of moving around to Finnish punk music from the 80s, or me asking you to repeat the phrase of the day after me yet another time. If that's the case, please be patient: we'll usually be moving on to something else soon enough!

Whenever I get the luxury of focusing on just one student at a time (which is more and more often these days), I try to find what works for the individual student. In my opinion that's what every pro should be aiming at doing - to find what works for their clients and then doing that. So if you have a private teacher, don't be afraid to ask them for what you need! This of course goes for any courses as well - I love getting feedback, even when it's negative, because that's the best way of learning about the needs of my students and becoming better at what I do. 

It's also possible to have many teachers at once. Find ones that complement one another. I love co-teaching courses for precisely this reason.  

Have you found the right Finnish teacher or teachers? How did you find them? How did you know that you had come to the right place? I'd love to hear from you in the comments!





​

UPDATE, 20.8.2020: See my new post here for the updated version of this post! I'm leaving this one up because there's some useful conversation here on some of the older textbooks.

Gennady asks:
What are your top ten tips for the YKI-test?

YKI (from Yleinen kielitutkinto) is the language test that you have to pass at an intermediate level if you wish to apply for Finnish citizenship. The advanced YKI-test is a popular way for advanced speakers to show their proficiency to prospective employers and, for instance, when applying to universities. 
​
For the first half of my career so far, I was constantly teaching preparatory YKI-courses and also deeply involved in language testing and assessment through Testipiste, where I had the privilege of working for the first few years of its existence. However, the last time I taught a whole YKI course was in 2013, so I might not be completely up to date on the latest developments in the world of YKI. Those courses were great fun to teach, and I hope to get to teach one again in the near future.

As requested, here are my top ten tips for those planning to take the YKI test. I'll be focusing on the intermediate one (levels 3 and 4), because it's the one that most people take, but most of these apply to the advanced test (levels 5 and 6) as well. 

1. Start by assessing your current level in Finnish.  If you have access to a Finnish language professional to help you figure out what your current level is, great (you could even hire me to help you with this if you like). If you don't (and actually, even if you do), check out the criteria for the YKI levels and maybe also the self assessment grid for the CEFR, which is available in many languages here.  

2. Set a realistic goal. If you've only just begun to study Finnish, it'll take a year at the very least to get to level 3, and this is if you can study and practice daily. It might take much longer, because things like life and stress and insomnia and falling in love and spending all your time playing the guitar  have a tendency of getting in the way of language learning. But if you're a gifted learner and have all the right resources to study hard and learn quickly, it's possible to get there in a year. 

3. Read all of Hanna Männikkölahti's YKI tips on her excellent blog Random Finnish Lesson. Consider signing up for one of Hanna's online YKI courses, she's a real expert when it comes to YKI. 

4. Make some kind of plan. When will you take the test? Will you attend a course or hire a private teacher beforehand to help you prepare? There are many excellent teachers and YKI courses out there. 

5. Check out the book Hyvin menee 2. This book is meant for students on CEFR level A2 (YKI level 2) who want to reach level B1 (YKI level 3), and if there's a better book out there to prepare you for the YKI intermediate test I haven't heard of it yet. Which of course is always possible, as I do have a tendency of missing things sometimes.*

6. Do all the exercises in Yle's YKItreenit. If you plan to attend a course, you might also do these during the course, but some repetition never hurts. 

7. Get as much information about the test as you can. Get acquainted with the structure of the test, and if at all possible, do some kind of practice test. Most longer YKI preparative courses will include a practice test or even several. 

8. Study in the months and weeks before the test, but relax the day, night and morning before. Panicky last minute revision may work for some people doing some tests some of the time, but the YKI test is a test with the goal of assessing all of your knowledge of the Finnish language. The day before, if you're not ready then it's too late anyway, so you might as well spend your time doing something fun to take your mind off it and to balance out the hard day of testing ahead. 

9. Put it into perspective. Tests are never perfect, and they unfortunately never capture the whole truth about anyone's language skills. So if happen to fail or get a  worse level than you hoped for, don't despair - maybe you had a bad day or some bad luck with the topics assigned in the test. Take some time to figure out where the problem was and make plans to try again. 

10. Believe in yourself. You can do this, I know you can!

* EDIT (28.10.2018): Reader Harry pointed out that Hyvin menee 2 doesn't include answers to the excercises, which makes it a bit tricky for self study. Thank you so much Harry, I hadn't thought of this pretty crucial aspect of self study! The answers and lots of extra material are available in a separate teacher's guide (Opettajan opas). Also, the audio has to be obtained separately as well, and listening comprehension is a pretty important part of YKI prep, so you need to get your hands on that as well. If you're in Finland, all of this is available for free via your local library, but if you want to buy it new, it'll cost something in the neighborhood of 150 euros altogether. 

Another, much cheaper textbook option is Suomea paremmin by Susanna Hart, which includes the answers to the exercises and the audio for about 40 euros. I don't think that Suomea paremmin is nearly as good as Hyvin menee 2 for YKI prep (for one, the audio includes Finnish actors pretending to be learning Finnish as a second language, which... cringe!), but it has many advantages for self study. It's much more concise so it can be a lot less overwhelming to study with, but that can be a mixed blessing - a less overwhelming textbook may mean a much more overwhelming test experience, so it's super important that you supplement it with more demanding online materials. 

P.S.: My next YKI course is in August 2024, and we will be focusing on the writing part of the text. Here's the course page! If you're reading this at a later time, here are all my upcoming courses.