How to learn Finnish by reading

Finnish has a fearsome reputation, mostly because of its cases. But it’s also one of the most regular languages in Europe to read. Spelling is almost perfectly phonetic, every letter is pronounced, stress always falls on the first syllable, and there are no articles and no grammatical gender: hän means both “he” and “she.”

Finnish is a Uralic language, unrelated to the Germanic languages around it, and it’s spoken in Finland, where Swedish is also an official language. Its literary landmarks run from the Kalevala, the epic Elias Lönnrot compiled from folk poetry in the nineteenth century, through Aleksis Kivi’s Seven Brothers and Väinö Linna’s The Unknown Soldier to contemporary novelists such as Sofi Oksanen. (Tove Jansson’s Moomins, Finland’s most famous books, were written in Swedish.)

What makes Finnish hard to read

• Fifteen cases. Endings carry what English says with prepositions: talo (house), talossa (in the house), talosta (out of the house), taloon (into the house), talolla (at the house), talolta (from the house), talolle (to the house), talona (as a house), taloksi (into a house, becoming one), and taloa, the partitive.
• Consonant gradation. When an ending is added, a consonant in the word often changes: katu (street), but kadulla (on the street); pankki (bank), but pankissa (in the bank); jalka (leg), but jalan (of the leg). Sometimes it works in reverse: hammas (tooth), hampaat (teeth). The form in your book may look nothing like the dictionary form.
• Vowel harmony. Endings match the vowels of the word: talossa, “in the house,” but metsässä, “in the forest.”
• Length matters. Single and double letters are different words: tuli (fire), tuuli (wind), tulli (customs).
• Suffixes stacked on suffixes. Possession and small particles attach to the end: taloni (my house), talossasi (in your house), talossakin (in the house too), and the question marker -ko/-kö: Onko?, “Is it?”
• A verb for “not.” Finnish negates with a verb that conjugates: en tiedä (I don’t know), et tiedä (you don’t know), ei tiedä (he or she doesn’t know).
• The partitive. Juon kahvia, “I drink (some) coffee,” but join kahvin, “I drank (all) the coffee.” The ending tells you whether something is partial or whole, unfinished or complete.
• Two Finnishes. Novels are mostly written in standard Finnish, but modern fiction often uses spoken forms in dialogue: minä olen becomes mä oon, sinä becomes sä, and me menemme becomes me mennään.

Finnish reading at each level

What the CEFR levels mean for Finnish text:

• A2, elementary. Short sentences in the present and the past, the most common place cases, the partitive in everyday phrases, and the negative verb.
• B1, intermediate. All the common cases, the perfect and pluperfect, the passive, the conditional (-isi-), possessive suffixes, and longer sentences joined with että, koska and kun.
• B2, upper intermediate. Participles that replace whole clauses, the passive in compound tenses (oli myyty), and longer sentences with more literary vocabulary.
• C1, advanced. Lightly condensed, and otherwise close to the original. C2 is the complete book.

See CEFR levels explained for the scale itself.

The Call of the Wild at A2 and at B2

Jack London’s novel takes a California dog north to the Klondike. Two moments, written for this page at two levels:

A2

Buck on iso koira. Se asuu lämpimässä talossa Kaliforniassa. Eräänä päivänä mies varastaa sen ja Buck päätyy kauas pohjoiseen.

Buck is a big dog. He lives in a warm house in California. One day a man steals him, and Buck ends up far away in the north.

B2

Kun Buck oli myyty rekikoiraksi kauas pohjoiseen, se joutui oppimaan, että lumisessa erämaassa selviää vain se, joka ymmärtää nuijan ja hampaan lain.

Once Buck had been sold as a sled dog and taken far north, he had to learn that in the snowy wilderness only those who understand the law of club and fang survive.

The A2 text uses se, “it,” for the dog, where English says “he,” and shows gradation at once: lämmin, “warm,” becomes lämpimässä, “in a warm…,” with mm turning into mp. Eräänä päivänä, “one day,” uses the essive case. The B2 sentence adds a pluperfect passive (oli myyty, “had been sold”), the translative rekikoiraksi, “as a sled dog,” literally “into a sled dog,” the infinitive in joutui oppimaan, “had to learn,” and two genitives in nuijan ja hampaan lain, “the law of club and fang.”

How to practice reading Finnish every day

1. Listen as you read. Turn on the narration and follow the text as it’s highlighted, word by word. Double letters and first-syllable stress are clear in the audio, and long words fall into their parts.
2. Read the ending, then the word. When a word looks unfamiliar, cover its ending and look for the stem. Remember that gradation may have changed a consonant.
3. Tap for the base form. If the stem is new, tap it: kadulla leads straight back to katu. Then keep going.
4. Reread. Endings and gradation patterns repeat on every page, and a second reading is where they become automatic.
5. Learn the common spoken forms. Modern Finnish fiction often uses them in dialogue, so learn to match mä with minä and oon with olen; it makes the step to contemporary novels much easier.

Why start with adapted books? Paul Nation’s well-known estimate (2006, “How large a vocabulary is needed for reading and listening?”) is that unsimplified English novels require a vocabulary of around 8,000 to 9,000 word families. Nation’s figures are for English, and in Finnish each of those words also appears in many forms, so recognizing a word you know is part of the challenge. Our guides to how many words you need to read a novel, extensive reading and reading while listening go further.

Classics to start with

• The Call of the Wild is short, fast and full of snow, with strong, simple sentences at B1.
• White Fang tells the reverse story, a wild wolf-dog drawn toward people, in the same northern landscape.
• Andersen’s Fairy Tales include The Snow Queen, whose heroine travels north through Lapland. Short and complete, at A2 and B1.
• A Christmas Carol is short and perfectly shaped, a good B1 read for winter evenings.
• Treasure Island moves quickly and talks a lot, which makes it a good first novel.

How Lexo helps with Finnish

In Finnish, the dictionary form is often the hardest thing to see on the page, and it’s the first thing Lexo’s word card gives you. Tap a word and you get its meaning in that sentence, its base form and its part of speech: kadulla leads back to katu, hampaat to hammas. Phrases and idioms get explained as a whole, a full translation into English is a tap away, and your Words list keeps whatever you save.

Every word can be played on its own, so you can hear a double letter as often as you need, and the whole book is narrated, with different voices for different characters and the text highlighted word by word as it’s read. For slow, careful reading, sentence-by-sentence mode puts one sentence on screen with its audio and translation.

You can read any book at A2, B1, B2, C1 or C2. If you’re the first to ask for a book in Finnish at your level, Lexo writes the edition for you: chapter 1 is ready in a few minutes, the app can tell you when it is, the rest follows while you read, and you keep a dated “First edition” mark. Books download for offline reading on iPhone and iPad, and there’s no account, no email, no sign-up.

Finnish’s distant relative on this site is Hungarian, and Finland’s other official language is Swedish.

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