On Definiteness: A Study with Special Reference to English and Finnish Book

It's amazing how long it took textbook authors to realize that the most effective way to teach a modern language would be to equip the reader how to handle himself in common everyday situations. The first incarnation of TEACH YOURSELF FINNISH, written by Arthur H. Whitney, was published in 1954 and yet is a very old school effort.

Whitney's method is giving you a huge amount of vocabulary so you can read the little Finnish stories he gives you. In Lesson 1, you'll learn such words as "clergyman", "sparrow" and "church steeple", but you'll see nothing of important initial phrases such as "Hello!" and "How are you?" There's absolutely no English-Finnish translation exercises, so you'll have no way to track your progress in producing good Finnish. The explanation of grammar assumes a good grounding in Latin, and even if you are used to classic grammatical terminology Whitney's shoddy organization of material makes it all hard going. The book is a complete disaster.

Or is it? The complete beginner in Finnish would do well to start with Terttu Leney's newer TEACH YOURSELF FINNISH and, strongly recommended but available only from Finnish shops, the SUPISUOMEA book and DVD produced by Finnish national television. However, Whitney's dinosaur textbook can still be useful for the student of Finnish. The language here is extremely old-fashioned, with every page of vocabulary containing words now obsolete in the spoken language. This makes it an excellent textbook for those who already have a good grasp of contemporary Finnish, but want to understand classic literature and old films. From the references to an antiquated telephone's hearing tube, I suspect that the book was mainly written before World War II. I know of no other learning resources for the Finnish language of this time.

Whitney's textbook only does so much with archaisms. It doesn't reach back to Agricola's time, though there is for English speakers interested in that. Nor does this textbook help you understand non-standard speech such as Savo dialect or the regionalisms in the Finnish Orthodox liturgy. Nonetheless, if you've reached an intermediate level in Finnish and want to learn more, seek this book out on the used market.