Author: ftvalvoja

Update 14.3.2025: This post is about my small group YKI courses, which I haven’t been able to teach in quite some time. I still hope that I’ll be able to resume them at some point! Here are all of my upcoming courses.

N asks:  

Hi!
Just a few questions. How is your teaching focus on yki testi?
I enrolled in another course and because we are 16 not all are given time to speak up. 
Also most of materials are also from free resources which can be easily find online.

Thank you
​

​Hi N! 

Thanks for your message and great questions!

The main focus in Steps towards YKI is on speaking and writing, and especially on personal feedback for both. Each week, there’s a YKI style speaking task (that you record and send to me) and writing task that I give you personal feedback on. At the end of the course you also do a YKI style test in speaking and writing that I call the mini-YKI, which I assess as if you were taking the actual test, so using the YKI speaking and writing criteria and YKI levels (less than 3, 3 and 4). 

We meet on Zoom for an hour each week. Most of the hour is spent in breakout rooms practicing speaking with your peers (3-4 people) exactly for the reason you mention – a group discussion of 12 people would not allow for a lot of speaking time per person, and also it can be intimidating for many of us to speak up in such a big group (I know it would be for me, and I’m quite extroverted). I visit each room for personal guidance, but the amount of personal guidance during the lesson itself is of course very limited. However, the group is a maximum of 12, so that does still allow for personal contact and guidance. 

Then there’s reading comprehension and listening comprehension, the materials for which are a combination of my own and freely available online resources, like Gimara’s materials and Yle’s YKItreenit. However, I find there’s also a lot of value in having a professional teacher telling you which of the free resources to use each week, and also how to use them to your best advantage. The same goes for grammar, where I also supplement my own materials with freely available online ones. The proportion of how much of my own materials vs. freely available ones are used varies depending on the course, but I’d say on average 2/3 of all materials are my own and 1/3 is freely available. Especially listening comprehension exercises are often from free resources, as creating good quality YKI style listening comprehension exercises takes quite a lot of work. I do make some of those as well, but less than I’d like to if time and energy were unlimited.  

I’m also available for any questions you might have between meeting during the entire duration of the course, and having a group of peers around also provides structure and support. 

So, in short, the focus in Steps towards YKI is on speaking and writing and personal feedback for those, as well as personal support between lessons. The course includes quite a lot of independent work, as the homework is about 2/3 of the coursework altogether, depending on the student of course. 

A reader asks: 
​
Hey
i heard that you shouldn’t use you correct name, email or address when you are writing the yki test kirjoittaminen. for example if you are ending a letter and you write:
Ystävällisin terveisin

you should not use your real name after it… is that correct?

I’
My answer: 

The YKI test is really good about protecting their test takers’ personal info, so if that’s the part you’re worried about I’d say not to worry, your personal info is safe. The people who see your writing and your name are teachers specifically trained for YKI assessment, and they’ve all signed an agreement not to share any of the info they come across, including your name if you’ve chose to share it. Your writing and speaking may also be used for training and research purposes. 

However, the thing to take into account with sharing your real name in the YKI test is that names always contain information about where you’re from. We live in a racist world, and sharing your real name might affect the way your test is evaluated. I really wish this wasn’t true, but I can’t pretend that this never happens. I know many of the YKI test assessors personally, and I know that they are anti-racist people who work very hard to be as fair as possible, but unconscious bias and internalised racism are unfortunately very real even in people who make a conscious and constant effort to do better. The YKI criteria are quite good (though far from perfect) and the test has been studied extensively to make sure that it’s as fair and objective as possible. I’d say that even in the worst case, racisim can only play a very small part in how your test is assessed. Still, any time people are involved there’s all kinds of things that affect the process, including any predjudice that the assessor may have, so I can’t honestly say that there’s no risk of disadvantage here. 

If you decide to go the route of not using your real name, I’d suggest you think of the name you’ll use well in advance, so you don’t have to spend any of the precious time in the test on picking out a pseudonym. As it’s a Finnish language test we’re talking about, maybe something like Matti Meikäläinen or Maija Meikäläinen (the Finnish equivalents of John and Jane Doe), or a super common first and last name like Juha Virtanen or Laura Jokinen. This has the added benefit of showing off your knowledge about Finnish names, and can be fun, even if the reason for doing it is pretty bleak.

​TL, DR: It’s small risk, but it’s still real risk that’s very easily avoided in a way that allows you to show off your knowledge of Finnish language and culture at the same time. 

Edited 6.10.2021 to remove some typos and to add: 

It should never be on you to change yourself or your identity for the comfort of others, so please don’t feel like using a pseudonym is something you have to do if you don’t want to. Names are important, and changing your name can feel like erasing your identity, and that’s just not worth it for a language test. 

Edited 9.10.2021 to add: 

After reading this post, my YKI assessor friend pointed out that the test taker’s real name is displayed on test more prominently than I had previously realised (as I don’t assess YKI tests myself, I of course don’t quite know the details are like). So it’s probably not at all worth spending energy making up a pseudonym after all!

A reader asks:

Hi, how are you? I have a question. What do jo, vielä, vasta and enää mean? Can you write examples? Thank you very much and have a nice day!

Here’s the original question in Finnish:
Hei. Mitä kuuluu. Minulla on kysymys. Mitä tarkoitta jo viela vasta ja enää. Voitko sinä kirjoittaa esimerki lauset . Kiitos paljon. Hyvää päivää. Heippä

Hei ja kiitos kysymyksesta, hi and thanks for the great question! Jo, vielä, vasta and enää are small words that many learners of Finnish struggle with. Let’s dive right in! To write this, I referred to the excellent Kielitoimiston sanakirja to make sure that I catch the most important uses of each word. By clicking on the word in question, you can go directly to Kielitoimiston sanakirja’s definition and examples.


1. Jo means that something has already happened:

Tein kotitehtävät jo eilen.
I already did the homework yesterday.

Hän tykkäsi laulamisesta jo lapsena.
She liked singing already as a child.

Onko kello jo kolme?
Is it three o’clock already?

2. Vielä expresses that something is still going on:

Asutko vielä Helsingissä?
Do you still live in Helsinki?

Or that something hasn’t happened yet:

​Minulla ei ole vielä työpaikkaa.
I don’t have a job yet.

And as an expression of more:

Haluan juoda vielä yhden kupin kahvia.
I want to drink one more cup of coffee.

With the comparative:

Vanha kitarani on ihan hyvä, mutta uusi kitarani on vielä parempi.
My old guitar is good, but my new guitar is even better.

3. Enää. In negative sentences, enää expresses that something isn’t happening any longer:

En ole enää koulussa.
I’m not at school any more.

Ei enää koskaan!
Never again!

In positive sentences:

Meillä on enää kaksi korvapuustia jäljellä.
We only have two korvapuustis left.

Enää 100 kilometriä!
Only 100 kilometres to go!

4. Vasta can often be translated as just or only: 

Kello on vasta kaksi.
It’s only two o’clock.

Näin hänet vasta viime viikolla.
I saw him just last week!

Vasta also means the bunch of twigs that you hit yourself with in the sauna (also known as vihta), but I don’t think you were asking about that vasta!

Published: 21/12/2021

What a strange year we’ve all had! Despite the pandemic, I’ve wholeheartedly enjoyed teaching this year. Balancing running a small business and being the mother of a toddler is still a huge challenge, but my wonderful students and new 

Here’s Kärhämä’s beautiful song about the history of the Finnish word for Christmas or Yule, joulu. This one doesn’t have subtitles yet, but it’s well worth listening to even if you can’t understand the words. 

Hyvää joulua ja onnellista uutta vuotta 2021!

If you’ve already studied Finnish for some time, you’ll know that Finnish words come in many, many different forms. For example, here’s the word vesi, water:

Vesi on kylmää.
The water is cold.

Veden lämpötila on 5 astetta.
The water’s temperature is 5 degrees.

Saisinko vettä?
Could I have some water?

Sade tulee lumena pohjoisessa Suomessa ja vetenä etelässä.
The rain (sade = the precipitation) will fall as snow in the north of Finland and as water in the south.

The word vesi has four different stems (or forms that case endings are added to):

1. Perusmuoto: vesi
2. Partitiivi: vettä
3. Weak stem: vede-
4. Strong stem: vete-

Luckily, most Finnish words just have one or two different stems. Some have three, and just a handful of words have four, like vesi here.              

So when you come across a new Finnish word, how do you know what word it is and what form it’s in?

The answer to this is that, unfortunately, you have to look the word up and learn the different forms of the  word by heart. A superb tool for this is Kieli.net. Kieli.net is a simple online tool where you can enter any Finnish word in any form and get the perusmuoto (nominative for nouns, A-infinitive for verbs) and all other possible forms of that word as well. As with any online tool, take the results with a grain of salt (I’m looking at you, Google Translate). There are still sometimes mistakes and inaccuracies on Kieli.net, but all in all it’s quite accurate and pretty great overall!

Luckily, there are also rules and regular patterns that help you. For example, each and every word ending in nen works the same way:

1. Perusmuoto: suomalainen
2. Partitiivi: suomalaista
3. Stem: suomalaise- 

With words ending in the vowels o, u, ö and y just have two possible forms, the strong kpt version and the weak one

1. matto
2. mattoa
3. mato– / matto– (one t: weak, two t:s: strong)

And so forth. As you practice all this and progress in your studies, you’ll find that you’ll start to autimatically recognize all the different forms and be able to use them intuitively. There are also rules and patterns to help you with this, so it’s not all just memorizing word after word! 

What tools have you used to figure out the different forms of Finnish words? Which ones would you recommend?

The verb jankata means “to say the same thing over and over in an insistant manner”: 

Aina hän jankkaa sitä samaa asiaa!
= She’s always saying the same thing!

Kärhämä is a folk music group that sings about the etymologies or origins of Finnish words. Here’s their version of the origin of jankata, based on the brand new research article “Suomen Jankata” by Jeongdo Kim (2020), with subtitles in English!

“Stubbornly insisting, arguing, 
Harping on the same old barking
Yakking like a false sonata
​That’s the tone of the verb jankata!”

A student asks:

Which forms should I learn when I’m learning Finnish words?

In my last post, we talked about how to find out what different forms any given Finnish word has. But when someone is speaking to you in Finnish right here and now, you obviously don’t have the luxury of using an online tool to figure out what words they’re using – the forms already need to be in your head so that you can understand what they’re saying. So which forms should you be learning by heart when you’re studying Finnish vocabulary?

For nouns, the maximum number of different stems is four, and you can learn all of them by learning the following forms of any given word:

Vesi ‘water’

1. The nominative, also known as perusmuoto or basic form of the word: vesi
2. The partitive: vettä
3. The genitive: veden
4. The essive: vetenä

Luckily, a whole lot of Finnish words just have one stem: you stick all the case endings at the end of the nominative and you’re good to go.

1. Nominative: lasi
2. Partitive: lasia
3. Genitive: lasin
4. Essive: lasina

The difference between the genitive and essive is a regular phonological change called consonant gradation or kpt change. If we go back to water, veden has the weak version of the stem and vetenä has a strong version with a t instead of the weak d. I’m personally quite bad at consciously applying grammar rules as I speak, so my strategy is rather to learn the different stems by heart, but it might be easier for you to think of it as three possible versions of a word:

1. nominative: vesi
2. partitive: vettä
3. stem: vede-, which also has the strong kpt version vete-

If you’re just starting to study Finnish, all this can seem daunting. If you have any perfectionist tendencies at all, you might feel like there’s a ton to learn before you can even string two words together. This is not true: you don’t need to know all the forms perfectly to understand and to make yourself understood.

Mistakes are an unavoidable part of the journey when you’re learning any language, and with a language with like Finnish with lots of different word forms (in linguistic terms, languages with a rich morphology), they’re something to be learned little by little as you go, not something to be mastered completely here and now before you can progress to really expressing yourself.

When in doubt, just stick the case ending on the perusmuoto and see what happens. It’s very likely to be the right form. It also might not be, but nothing dangerous is going to happen if it’s not. As you keep going and adding to your Finnish skills, you’ll start finding the right form more and more often.

Hyvää uutta vuotta!
good-partitive new-partitive year-partitive
= Happy New Year!
(or, literally, good new year)

Cindy asks:

Hei!
Does the yki test require one to write/speak in kirjakieli? or can one use puhekieli?
Thx, Cindy

Hei Cindy!

Thank you for a great question! The answer depends on what level you’re aiming for, so I’ll be covering a few different levels in this blog post.

Written and spoken Finnish are quite different, which can be a real challenge when you’re learning Finnish. Standard Written Finnish or kirjakieli (also referred to as yleiskieli) is the form of the Finnish language that you’ll find in the newspaper, in formal messages and when listening to something pre-scripted, like the news or prepared speeches. Puhekieli or spoken Finnish is the form of Finnish that you’ll hear in everyday conversations and also in written form in informal messages, like on a lot of social media and instant messaging.

Like any language, Finnish is spoken differently in different social contexts and in different regions. When I talk about puhekieli in this post, I mean what is also known as yleispuhekieli or Standard Spoken Finnish.

So what does that mean for the YKI test?

YKI level 3 or CEFR level B1

If you’re aiming for a 3, which is the level required for Finnish citizenship, then you don’t have to pay much attention to whether you’re using puhekieli or kirjakieli. At level 3, the main goal is just to make yourself understood, and any version of the Finnish language is fine. What matters more is that you have enough language skills to manage in everyday situations. You don’t have speak or write elegantly and mistakes are very much expected, as long as your writing and speaking can be understood.

However, being able to show that you already know some of the differences between puhekieli and kirjakieli definitely won’t hurt. In the speaking test, it’s great If you can use some puhekieli, but just using written forms is also absolutely fine. For example, you might want to say mä for minä (I) and sä for sinä (you), and use the spoken language me-passive: mennään syömään, lähdetään and so forth. Likewise, if you can use kirjakieli for the more formal tasks in the writing exam, that’s great, but the main goal is to just write something in understandable Finnish. At level 3, you should also have a basic understanding of how to write formal and informal messages, for example, the phrases needed to open and finish a message.

YKI level 4 or CEFR level B2

At level 4, you should already be able to modify the way you’re speaking and writing according to the situation you’re in. So, for example, at level 4, you might be writing in casual puhekieli to a friend, but a more formal email would be completely in kirjakieli.

YKI levels 5 and C or CEFR levels C1 and C2

At levels 5 and 6 (YKI’s ylin taso or highest level), you’re able to really fine tune your lingustic choices to suit the situation you’re in. You can use and understand many different types of language easily and comfortably.

In my classes, I usually teach both kirjakieli and puhekieli, as I think that it’s important to know about the different forms and especially to understand both from the start. However, speaking in kirjakieli is absolutely fine, and writing in puhekieli already goes a very very long way. In the YKI test, if you’re aiming for level 3, use whatever you feel most comfortable with.

​

Update, 14.3.2025: This post is from 2020, when I was first building my online YKI courses. Here are my upcoming courses, tervetuloa <3

In the last few months, I’ve been working on my very own online intermediate YKI course series, Steps towards YKI, and I’m happy to announce that the course is finally online and up for registration!

Steps towards YKI is a series of nine Finnish courses that will help students reach B1 (YKI level 3) and prepare for the YKI intermediate test, which is a Finnish language test often required when applying for Finnish citizenship. The theme of the course changes each month, as do the materials we’ll be covering. It’s possible to participate in just one course, do the whole series of courses or just pick and choose the courses that suit the student’s needs best. I’ll be teaching in both Finnish and English, so the course is best suited for those who are fluent in English. 

We’ll be meeting on Wednesdays at 18.30-19.30 on Zoom and using Whatsapp to communicate between lessons.

For more advanced students (B1-B2), I have a speaking and listening comprehension coming up. It’s called Puhetta! and will take place online on Thursday evenings (18.30-19.30 Finnish time) in October. This will be the same course as the popular Puhetta! course that I’m teaching in August.  

As always, I’m also available for private lessons. My teaching calendar for August is full, as is my face to face calendar for the rest of the year, but I have a few online spots left in September. More about private lessons here.

Question: All my usual Finnish courses are on a break in July, but I’d like to keep up with my Finnish. Any ideas on how to do that?

What a great and timely question! Most schools and training providers are closed in July (including my own small teaching business), but otherwise the summer is a great time to study and practice Finnish. Here are some ideas on how to do that.

1. Speak Finnish in real life situations. I know that this can feel like jumping into the deep end if you’re still at the beginning of your journey (and even later on), but there’s no shame in just using the Finnish you have and then switching to English or another language when you need to. Even if you just know a few words in Finnish, there’s already a lot you can do with just ”Hei, kahvi, kiitos” (look at you ordering a coffee in Finnish just like a native speaker would). If you’re in Finland, there are countless opportunities to speak Finnish in everyday situations: cafés, shops, libraries, the market, museums… The list is endless! You can also find some great opportunities to practice online, like social media (especially groups and pages centered around your interests are great, though a bit more advanced of course). For example, you could join a online bookclub, chat about parenting or join a foraging group.

2. Talk to yourself in Finnish. Out loud or by trying to think in Finnish, at home, in the car, while exercising. Just switching your brain to Finnish (or trying to) once in a while is really beneficial for your overall language skills. Don’t worry about making mistakes, the key thing is to practice speaking or thinking in Finnish. 

3. Self-study courses. There are some great self-study courses and learning materials that you can use any time, many of them free of chage. For beginners, Superalkeet is great, and Työelämän suomea is excellent if you’re at a more intermediate level. Puhutsä suomee is a good introduction to spoken Finnish and suitable for many levels, depending on how familiar you are with puhekieli. The freely available material Kotisuomessa goes from 0 all the way to B2. Apps like Duolingo, WordDive and Glossika can also be great. This is another list that just goes on and on!

4. Series, books, podcasts, music. These are always a good idea, even alongside a course. Books in easy Finnish are a great idea at level A2 and up, watching tv in Finnish with or without subtitles is great at every level. Listening to podcasts and music in Finnish will help you level up your language skills even if you don’t understand a single word at first.

5. Clubs and language cafés. Many Finnish language clubs and language cafés still continue meeting up in the summer, both online and offline. For example, here are all the events organized by the public libraries in Helsinki, all over the capital city region and online as well. Once you’re at an intermediate level, the topic of the meetup doesn’t have to be about learning Finnish at all – think of what you’re interested in and find out how to do that with others in Finnish. It could be an open university course on a topic you love or a dance class. 

7. Attend a course or hire a private teacher. Luckily, not everyone is on a summer break in July. For example, my lovely colleagues Päivi Virkkunen and Liis Viks are available for private lessons all through the summer. 

Ihanaa kesää! 
ihana-partitiivi kesä-partitiivi
summer-partitive lovely-partitive
​= Have a lovely summer!