AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: Mastering Finnish (Hippocrene Master) by Davidovic Mladen, Borje Vahamaki ISBN: 0-7818-0265-2 Publisher: Hippocrene Books Pub. Date: July, 1997 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 3.25 (4 reviews)

Rating: 3
Summary: Dry and academic, but well-designed
Comment: This is the text that is used in Lakehead University's Introductory Finnish (language) course. In the full-year course, we covered 10 chapters out of the book (it has something like 16 chapters in total), but also covered additional material prepared by the professor. I was a student in the course, and offer the following review from that point of view.

The good points: it is arranged conversationally. That is, each chapter introduces some new grammatical structure, but chapters are mostly divided by subject content - e.g. "A Visit to the Doctor", "Travel by Train and Bus", etc. I anticipate this to be incredibly useful for trips to Finland. As a class, we went to the local Finnish restaurant as a "Field Trip", and the Finnish-speaking waitress easily made herself understood to us, and we to her. I'm sure our grammer was simplistic, but the point of an introductory course is conveyance of information, not composition of epic poetry.

Another important point - the book avoids colloquial "Finnglish", which is apparently creeping into the language, especially in young people in the large cities (who are exposed to American/British TV, films, and music). The vocabulary is strictly "real" Finnish.

Unfortunately, there are a number of bad points. First and foremost is the lack of a universal glossary/word list - extremely frustrating!. Readers will require a Finnish-English dictionary. Secondly, the author uses grammatical terms that are not commonly known, at least to those that haven't taken a university-level course in English grammer or Latin. He throws around terms like "nominative", "genative", etc., without really defining what these terms are.

As a textbook, I think this is a fairly good one. As a stand-alone, teach yourself type book, I would be seriously hesitant about recommending it. Make sure you brush up on your grammatical terms beforehand, and get an English-Finnish dictionary, too.

Rating: 2
Summary: Tapes alone terrible!!!!
Comment: This is strictly regarding the tapes "Mastering Finnish." While amazon includes reviews of the text book, the tapes do not come with a book. I haven't been able to find the textbook on amazon. Alone the tapes are of no help to one new to Finnish. The tape I listened to included dialogues in Finnish with introductions in English. There was no introduction of simple words, no repetition of frases. Perhaps this would be a helpful tape for someone more advanced. For me, listening to Finnish radio online would be as good.

Rating: 3
Summary: A bit confusing
Comment: This is the first book that I bought in trying to learn Finnish. Along with this book I bought a Finnish to English dictionary. I found myself searching around the book and my dictionary constantly looking for words in the text. I got frustrated with this book and bought Teach Yourself Finnish by Terttu Leney, and it was a MUCH better book for learning Finnish. But still, there were gaps. I also bought Finnish, an essential grammer which filled in the gaps.

So my suggestion, is that if you want to learn Finnish, buy a Finnish to English dictionary, Teach Yourself Finnish by Terttu Leney, and Finnish: an essential grammer.