The Finnish grammar bible. Seriously, throw all of your other grammar books away. It reads like a math book, every piece of Finnish grammar is included.

During my Finnish classes at the University, all the other students were confused with some terrible blue book, meanwhile I followed along with this book and understood so much more.

And the best part is, it's entirely in English.

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Product Description

Here is the ideal reference grammar for anyone studying Finnish. It provides a systematic account of the structures of the written language and also features the characteristics of colloquial Finnish as spoken in Helsinki and surrounding areas.
It assumes no prior knowledge of the language and clearly explains grammatical rules in a jargon-free manner.
Features include: * pronunciation guide * thorough discussions of word and sentence structure * inflection tables * subject index.

This grammar was first published in 1983, and continues to be a favorite with students as well as professional linguists.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #786055 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 268 pages

Review
'Finnish: An Essential Grammar is an intelligent and effective introduction to standard Finnish... . A learner using any kind of approach for learning Finnish will also find it useful as a reference grammar. - Scandanavica

'The somewhat daunting task facing students of Finnish has been vastly simplified by Fred Karlsson's notably practical and supremely competent survey and guide. It amply merits a place in reference and lending libraries alike.' - Languages and Literature 14/1 [2000] 18-29

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Finnish, Swedish

About the Author
Fred Karlsson is Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Helsinki.

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Customer Reviews

This book is AMAZING!!
I bought this book a few months ago when I decided that I wanted to learn Finnish and had difficulty getting beyond the pronunciations. So, I switched to Terttu Leney's "Teach Yourself Finnish" to get into the language a little and then after a few chapters in that book, have picked Karlsson's book back up. Although I have no prior experience in the language and am teaching myself, I have gone from complete confusion to being able to write in Finnish fairly fluently in about 1 month as a result of what I have learned from this book.

As a complete beginner in the language, I would say that this book is a must have. While some of the cases, tenses, and word forms are confusing initially because they don't have any direct correlation to English, when you begin working with the language, the explanations by Karlsson make perfect sense.

I started e-mailing an acquaintance who is a Finn, and he was more than a little surprised that I was able to write that well in Finnish. His comment was: "I didn't know that you could write that well." This was confirmation to me that Karlsson's book was well worth its cost.

This book does not have any exercises in it, which was my initial frustration. So if you are a beginner like I was, you will need to purchase another resource that gives you exercises to practice with. However, once you begin learning, if you read the chapters in Karlsson's book that correspond with what you are learning, I think that you will find that his explanations are much more comprehensive. Hyva osaa.

A fantastic reference, beautifully organized, with copious examples
Well, the ground isn't exactly thick with Finnish textbooks, so I figured I'd give this one a go and see what happened. As it turns out, I was delighted - no, ecstatic - at the quality of this book.

The first couple of Finnish books I'd used were of the "teach yourself" variety. These were good for learning useful phrases - almost like a Berlitz book, but with more cartoons and some practice exercises - but were absolutely horrible for learning the nuts and bolts of the language. I learn languages in much the same way as I do logical or mathematical structures, and am lost without thorough explanations of grammar and syntax from the get-go, so I needed something better than (or at least something to go along with) these books.

This book is the one. It starts out with amazingly precise guides to pronunciation and word structure, and the first few chapters contain detailed explanations of phenomena that ABSOLUTELY NEED to be understood to make sense of word formation (i.e., consonant gradation and pre-"i" vowel changes). These first chapters immediately cleared up many of the word changes that had previously mystified me.

The rest of the chapters are just as good as the beginning ones.

What really stands out about this book, though, is the enormous wealth of examples - sometimes between ten and twenty for each grammatical point. (These examples are the main reason the book is 200-odd pages long instead of 100-odd pages.) There are so many examples that, after looking at the first few, I can cover up the Finnish text and translate the rest of them as "exercises."

Even more astoundingly, this book wasn't originally written in English. The quality of the translation is so good that this book appears to have been written äidinkieleksi in English.

If you get this book, some sort of "teach yourself" book (mostly for the conversational usage), and a bunch of flash cards for vocabulary (

Best Finnish grammar available
This book is amazing. There is a definite lack of Finnish language books available in English, and this is by far the most comprehensive grammar around. My only complaint is it could go a lot farther with more examples and more exceptions to rules listed, but with a language like Finnish, they could write volumes and still not get everything. The outline of the rules of the language is pretty complete.