ÅgeKruger

It seems that it has been a week since i’ve updated this, but don’t worry, i haven’t been forgetting. I just don’t have much to say. The ground work is all finished. I have the sheets written, i have all the books, the tapes, the Tintin DVDs. All i’m waiting for is the academic year to start.

I have a job that is going to fill time between now and then and the friend with whom i’m doing this little project isn’t in town until September, so i can’t really do much if anything until September comes. Which sounds vaguely like a song.

Catch you on the finside, hommies.

that’s the present tense conjugation for the Group 1 Verb puhua meaning to speak. There are, however, five groups, four tenses (present, imperfect, perfect, pluperfect) and four moods (indicative, imperative, conditional, potential). And three infinitves, too. Thankfully, the verbs are very regular and follow nice patterns that build up like lego bricks.

Example:
sanoa (infinitive) -> sano (stem)
i – imperfect marker
n – firs person marker
stem add imperfect marker add personal ending = imperfect tense of verb:
sano add i add n = sanoin (i said)

Of course, there are other fun rules going on concerning vowel reduction and insertion of the letter ’s’.

Regardless, i have only done the Present and Imperfect tenses. Two more to go and then more fun stuff. I’m already infinitly moody.

I did some background work today as part of my “building blocks” method of learning. I often find that at the beginning, i want to say things that are a bit more complex than my knowledge allows. In order to over-come this, i make building block sheets with useful morphological and syntactical information on them. This way, i can make more advanced sentances and make better progress on general vocabulary.

So what do the sheets say?

I’ve made two sheets today: one is filled with conjunctions (coördinating, subordinating, and correlative), and the other has information on adjectives and adverbs (comparative, superlative, and a few irregulars).

Of course, with Finnish, these aren’t the only building blocks i need. I also require case declensions, pronouns, and conjugations of verbs for tenses and mood. I think that can wait until tomorrow. Don’t you?