Here's a look at three specialist dictionaries . Although we definitely don't want to urge anybody into unnecessary spending, one or two of them might be perfect for some students. To back up what was said in our earlier post about buying books for study; if you only buy one book, get a good pocket dictionary. If a second; get a big dictionary. If a third, get a grammar. After that, well, I personally would recommend a verb book. Ja niin edelleen. And so on. However, after checking out a variety of textbooks spotted in bookshops in Finland, and squandering money on a few of them, I've actually found myself making use of these three dictionaries, and I think it's worth drawing a student's attention to them. Oikeeta suomee Suomen puhekieli sanakirja (Vesa Jarva, Timo Nurmi 2009 Gummerus) is devoted to puhekieli , ie. spoken Finnish. It's definitely worth considering, or maybe another book doing the same job - I haven't seen one, but there must be other...

It's August - elokuu - and while you're dreamily lying on a beach somewhere, you suddenly remember that you were going to begin studying Finnish this year . And Finnish School starts up again in a few weeks' time. This article offers some ideas about books to look for; now's the time to decide if you really mean it :) This is about  basic reference books  which can support your study, whether that's at home or on a course. I'm not going to discuss  phrasebooks . They're great if you're going on a trip somewhere and you simply want something you can stick in your pocket, to help you recognise and understand some of what you see and hear around you, but they're not books you can effectively study with. And  coursebooks  are best left for another article. Any decision about a coursebook is best made together with your Finnish teacher. Don't be surprised if your class decides not to use a coursebook at all. They require a hefty investment and u...

Picture dictionaries! Although a dictionary is an essential purchase for a language learner, there's a lot to be said for getting a picture dictionary as well, so here are some thoughts about that, with special regard to what's available in Finnish. 1. Tuhat sanaa suomeksi (A Thousand Words in Finnish) pub. Kustannusosakeyhtiö Nemo, 2012 This seems to be a licensed version of the well known and very successful Usborne 'thousand words' series, so the words and scenes are generic ie. not specific to Finland. But it's very well done and ranges over most of the themes and categories you could want, even though the artwork is obviously angled more towards younger learners. You can visit the www.nemokustannus.fi/tuhatsanaa website and listen to the words spoken by a native speaker. Picture dictionaries can't list the sheer number of words standard dictionaries of equivalent size can, but they have other virtues, and also they can still feature a vocabulary s...