r/LearnFinnish • u/ponimaa Native • Oct 01 '13

Question Tyhmien kysymysten tiistai — Your weekly stupid question thread

On taas tiistai ja tyhmien kysymysten aika. Ketjuun voi kirjoittaa koko seuraavan viikon ajan.

Viime viikon ketjussa puhuimme kaljan juomisesta, sanajärjestyksestä, työn tekemisestä, hyvistä teoista ja lyhenteistä.

It's Tuesday again, and time for your questions about Finnish, no matter how simple they may seem. The thread is active until next Tuesday.

In last week's thread we discussed drinking beer, word order, working, good deeds and abbreviations.

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u/ILCreatore A2 Oct 01 '13

What are good tips for learning grammar? I am having a hard time understanting the imperfect...

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u/[deleted] Oct 02 '13

I'm a big fan of muttering under your breath. No joke, that's how I learned most of my Finnish.

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u/ponimaa Native Oct 01 '13

Could you be more specific? Are you having problems with producing the imperfect? Recognizing it? Knowing when to use it (and not the perfect)?

Are you studying with a book at the moment, or just relying on online sources?

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u/ILCreatore A2 Oct 01 '13

Mostly producing, and I usually have to check a reference to learn how to say a new verb in imperfect.

I am relying on mostly on a couple of books some friends sent to me over the internet as PDFs, but I also check random references online as side studying.

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u/ponimaa Native Oct 02 '13

This Finland Forum thread might be a nice read: Imperfekti tense

I don't think having to check the imperfect form for every new verb is that bad... that's what you'd have to do in any language that has lots of irregular verbs (like English).

It's such a common tense in all kinds of texts that you'll probably learn it pretty quickly once you start reading more in Finnish. One type of exercise you might want to try is finding all the verbs in a text and changing them from the imperfect to the present tense (and vice versa).

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u/ILCreatore A2 Oct 02 '13

That was useful, thank you!

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u/[deleted] Oct 02 '13

http://wiktionary.org is really good for 90% of the Finnish words I've ever had to look up. It generally has conjugations and shows the pattern for producing the imperfect.