The verb jankata means "to say the same thing over and over in an insistant manner": 

Aina hän jankkaa sitä samaa asiaa!
= She's always saying the same thing!

Kärhämä is a folk music group that sings about the etymologies or origins of Finnish words. Here's their version of the origin of jankata, based on the brand new research article "Suomen Jankata" by Jeongdo Kim (2020), with subtitles in English!

"Stubbornly insisting, arguing, 
Harping on the same old barking
Yakking like a false sonata
​That’s the tone of the verb jankata!"

My previous post about preparing for YKI was written over two years ago, and also at a time when I wasn't quite up to speed on the latest developlments in the world of YKI. Now, I'm regularly helping students prepare for their YKI exams again, so it's high time for an updated version!  

1. Start by getting on idea of what your current level in Finnish is.  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 skill levels. While your're reading the criteria, think about your current skills. Where are you on the YKI scale at the moment? The YKI levels correspond with the CEFR levels, so you might want to check out those as well. Helsingin aikuisopisto also has a test to help you with self-assessment. 

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. 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? Will you use a textbook? There are many excellent teachers and YKI courses out there, but some great options are my very own Steps towards YKI online course and my Puhetta! B1-B2 course on speaking for more advanced intermediate students. 

4. Practice with Yle's YKItreenit. If you plan to attend a course, you might also do these during the course, but some repetition never hurts. Gimara also has some great, free materials to help you practice for YKI. 

5. Read Hanna Männikkölahti's YKI tips on her excellent blog Random Finnish Lesson. 

6. Sign up for the test as early as possible. Before the current pandemic, you already had to be quick to secure a spot in the YKI test, especially in the Helsinki region, but now that some tests were canceled in the spring there is a real shortage of test spots, and I've heard that they tend to fill up in a few minutes. If it's a possibility for you to do the test in another city than Helsinki, that might be worth considering, as there's usually better availability in smaller cities. 

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. You can find a demo test with explanations here. 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!

Kuvan otti lil_foot_ (Pixabay).

In the last few months, I've been working on my very own online intermediate YKI course series, Steps towards YKI, and I'm happy to announce that the course is finally online and up for registration!

Steps towards YKI is a series of nine Finnish courses that will help students reach B1 (YKI level 3) and prepare for the YKI intermediate test, which is a Finnish language test often required when applying for Finnish citizenship. The theme of the course changes each month, as do the materials we'll be covering. It's possible to participate in just one course, do the whole series of courses or just pick and choose the courses that suit the student's needs best. I'll be teaching in both Finnish and English, so the course is best suited for those who are fluent in English. 

We'll be meeting on Wednesdays at 18.30-19.30 on Zoom and using Whatsapp to communicate between lessons. Click here to learn more and sign up! 

For more advanced students (B1-B2), I have a speaking and listening comprehension coming up. It's called Puhetta! and will take place online on Thursday evenings (18.30-19.30 Finnish time) in October. This will be the same course as the popular Puhetta! course that I'm teaching in August.  More about Puhetta! here. 

As always, I'm also available for private lessons. My teaching calendar for August is full, as is my face to face calendar for the rest of the year, but I have a few online spots left in September. More about private lessons here. 

The wonderful language learning community Gimara interviewed me yesterday! I talked to Gimara's Marja Ahola about teaching and learning Finnish, about my new online course in August and about building a small teaching business. The video is in Finnish, but Finnish subtitles are coming up to help you follow along if you should wish to! 

Gimara is a great resource for learning Finnish. They regularly post free video lessons for different levels from beginner to advanced on their various social media accounts, especially YouTube and Facebook. 

Time for another personal (and professional) update!

I've recently launched my very first publicly available online course (I've been doing some form of online teaching since 2010, and of a lot more of it in 2020, like most of my colleagues). It's a course for intermediate to upper intermediate (B1-B2) students and focused on speaking and listening comprehension. You can read all about it here in English and in here in Finnish. 

More online courses are coming up later this year, the first of which will be aimed at students preparing for the intermediate level YKI test or just wishing to get from A2 to B1, starting in September 2020.  I'll keep you updated! 

I signed the lease for my new workspace yesterday evening!

Global pandemic allowing, I'll be doing private Finnish lessons face to face in Kallio from August. There are still a few spots available in my teaching calendar if you're interested. Click here for pricing and more information, and to reserve your first free lesson! 

I'll also still be teaching online, and I'm planning my very first publicly available online Finnish course for August. It will be a short course on speaking and listening comprehension for intermediate to early advanced students (CEFR B1-B2 or YKI 3-4) with live meetings on Zoom, Tuesdays from 19:30 to 20:30. More info coming up as soon as I get all the details hammered out! 

Update: the course page is up and running! Click here for more details in English (the course page is in Finnish, as this is an upper intermediate course) and sign up here!

Doesn't it look pretty already? 

Hyvää juhannusta!
= Happy Midsummer!

As usual, I'm celebrating the shortest night of the year in the countryside by a beautiful lake. It's traditional to stay up most of the night, but last year and the year before that I was fast asleep before 10 pm. I suspect that tomorrow I'll do the the same, but we'll see!

Here's a great video from the brilliant Almost Finns about Finnish Midsummer celebrations. The video is in Finnish, with subtitles in Finnish, Arabic, Spanish and English. Do you celebrate Midsummer or Juhannus? 

A student of mine asks: 

I keep seeing the word "tarha" at the end of longer words: puutarha, eläintarha, lastentarha. What does "tarha" mean? 

 Here's a list of words ending in tarha with their translations to English: 

puutarha - garden
hedelmätarha - orchard
omenatarha - an orchard with mainly apple trees
mehiläistarha - bee farm
lastentarha - day care center or kindergarten
eläintarha - zoo

If you look at the list, you might see that the words all have something in common (besides ending in tarha). These words all mean enclosed spaces that contain something specific: trees (puu), fruit (hedelmä), apples (omena), bees (mehiläinen, mehiläis-), children (lapsi, lasten), animals (eläin). 

Tarha used all on its own usually means lastentarha, so a day care center or kindergarten. 

Lately, I've been spending a lot of time in Malminkartanon omenatarha, or the apple orchard in Malminkartano, where I also took the background picture: 

Who would have thought parenting would be so time consuming? Over a year ago, I seriously imagined I'd have the time and energy to update this blog at least once in a while, but the reality of it was quite different, as everyone except me knew well in advance. It's been a difficult and wonderful time, with all kinds of stuff (like teething and a global pandemic) going on. 

I returned to working full time on Monday, and resuming blogging seems much more realistic, at least at the moment! Send me your questions and I'll do my best to answer them. 

Before I switch my focus back to Finnish, here's a picture of my baby from two days ago:

Lapset kasvavat niin nopeasti!
= Lapse+t kasva+vat niin nopea+sti!
= Child+t-plural grow+3rd person plural so quick+ly!
= Children grow up so quickly! 

Happy Easter everyone! I've had a busy few months adjusting to parenthood, but we're slowly but surely finding to do things besides changing diapers. I've even been able to edit some new posts, so I'll hopefully be able to post something in the not too distant future!

In the meanwhile, here's another brilliant meme from Very Finnish Problems. Yes Finland has the best Easter eggs!