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Have you ever struggled to learn a new word – only to forget it a few minutes later? You’re not alone! Remembering new vocabulary can be challenging, especially if you’re learning a language that is very different from any other language you already know. My tip is to make associations! The trick is to find…

Commands and prohibitions = the imperative. Istu alas, rentoudu ja lue, mitä kirjoitan.  Älä hermostu, sinä opit kyllä!  There are different endings for imperatives for one person (sinä) and for more than one person (te). Both forms also have negative forms. So altogether, there are four imperative forms in Finnish: singular commands, singular prohibitions, plural commands,…

The ending +ksi has many translations in English. It can be ”in” or ”to”, sometimes ”for” but sometimes ”by”. 🤯 Don’t panic- let me explain the meaning of the case ending ksi. Basically +KSI means SOMETHING BECOMES the word that has the +ksi -> isoksi ja vahvaksi (to turn big and strong) The +ksi is…

Many Finnish learners come across the word “YKI.” It’s a test — Finland’s official language proficiency examination. YKI can be taken in several languages: English, Spanish, Italian, Northern Sami, French, Swedish, German, Finnish, and Russian. In this blog, I focus specifically on the Finnish YKI test: what it is, how it works, and what you…

Is making friends in Finland difficult because Finns are difficult — or because it’s just difficult to make friends as an adult anywhere? Many articles about making friends in Finland quickly turn into “It’s impossible to make friends with Finns.” I wonder if that is just a myth. How many friends have you made as…

First, you learn that the possessive suffixes can be used together with the six personal pronouns: minun, sinun, hänen, meidän, teidän, heidän. Then you learn that the suffixes are not necessary. Some textbooks even say that these suffixes are not used in spoken language. That is not exactly true. What they mean is that possessive suffixes…