Reddit reviews Colloquial Finnish: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series)

There are admittedly not many good resources out there for learning Finnish. I started with self teaching myself, but never really got very far until taking Finnish classes in college. Self study from things available on the internet isn't that bad once you already have a foundation, but getting that foundation is annoyingly difficult.

It doesn't help that almost every book out there for learning Finnish makes things needlessly complex. At some point or another, I think I've looked at almost every major resource (book-wise anyways) for English speakers learning Finnish. Here's some notes on some that come to mind, feel free to ask about others if you want.

• Kuulostaa hyvältä / Sounds good by Lili Ahonen. This is a 2 part series, one of which has the Finnish first in the title, and the other with the English first. Kuulostaa hyvältä features short texts in Finnish along with exercises, but is completely in Finnish. Sounds Good is to be used along with it's Finnish counterpart, and contains grammar and vocabulary explanations in English. This is probably the best book I've found for learning Finnish, though it might be a bit difficult to get started with.
  
• From Start to Finnish by Leila White. This is probably one of the better books for those who have absolutely no current foundation or understanding of Finnish. It's not too heavy on the technical details, and contains many useful examples. It is however grossly overpriced for being such a short book (only 180 pages or so), this being due to it being imported from a Finnish publisher.
  
• Teach Yourself Finnish by Terttu Leney. This book is one most people recommend, and for a complete beginner it's not a bad choice. You will not get very far in Finnish with this book, it just doesn't go very in depth. You will get the ability to interact with people in your stereotypical tourist situations, and it will help you get comfortable with Finnish's grammar system, but it has a very limited amount of vocabulary words and texts to learn with.
  
• *Colloquial Finnish by Daniel Abondolo is a decent reference book if you're attempting to write a linguistics paper about Finnish, but not so good to learn from.
  
  Non-book resources:
  
  
• Selkouutiset, a Finnish 'easy' newspaper. Bookmark this for when you get a decent Finnish foundation under you, it's very useful for helping expose you to Finnish once you hit the intermediate stages.
  
• Local Finnish programs. Check out the Finnish consulate webpage for a list of universities and other places which offer Finnish classes in the US.

Merry Christmas/God Jul/Hyvää Joulua!

This is actually quite common, this phenomenon is known as "Language Attrition":

>Language attrition is the loss of a first or second language or a portion of that language. Speakers who routinely speak more than one language may use their languages in ways slightly different from a single language speaker, or a monolingual. The knowledge of one language may interfere with the correct production or understanding of another.

Which seems to be what you're experiencing with Finnish, especially if your immersed in Swedish culture the majority of the time with school, the media, friends, family (even though you also said the speak finnish) etc.

To combat this I suggest attempting Finnish as if you were a novice...

Books:

1. Teach Yourself's Complete Finnish
   
   
2. Routledge's Colloquial Finnish
   
   
3. Routledge's Essential Grammar: Finnish
   
   Or if it's not too hard you could try something like "Suomen Sujuvaksi" or "Tarkista tästä!" Where Finnish is taught in Finnish, that might or might not help.
   
   Hopefully this helps :)
   

Also check out Colloquial Finnish. The Colloquial series is really good.

Pimsleur and Michel Thomas are also quite good but they're useless for reading and writing (which are honestly less important, especially for something with writing as simple as Finnish)