Learn Finnish

Where to start

First contact is the Finnish course for anyone who has never used the language. If the look of the words still feels distant, this is the way in: the first greetings, then the sentences you need as soon as you arrive somewhere. The online course is 100% free.

The opening themes already give you something you can use. You greet people, you ask them to repeat, you introduce yourself. Before a trip to Finland, those scenes are the ones of arrival: a taxi or a platform, a table, a room, a request for help. You do not wait until you have “finished the course” to use them.

The course and its situations

The programme has seventeen chapters (the themes in the player), arranged in six levels, and a little under four hundred and eighty phrases. It is a course for travel and the first few days, aligned with CEFR level A1.

The themes follow the order of an arrival. You begin by saying hello and goodbye, answering yes or no, asking someone to repeat. Then come numbers and time, useful for a price, a platform or a room. Taxi and transportation let you say where you are going. Restaurant, bar and hotel cover the table, the bill and the booking. Family and feelings help you name someone close to you or say how you are. The last themes deal with the unexpected: you are lost, you are looking for someone, you ask for help.

Level A1, as the CEFR describes it

The Common European Framework of Reference puts A1 at the first step. An A1 speaker understands familiar expressions and very simple statements, provided people speak slowly. They can introduce themselves, ask and answer basic personal questions — a name, a place, the people they know. They communicate in a simple way if the other person is willing to repeat or rephrase.

First contact organises the work around those acts. The seventeen themes are the scenes where they appear. Super Memory, in the player, brings back the phrases that are still shaky, first as a game, then as a quiz, until they hold on their own. Finnish endings appear in these sentences, already attached to the word, without a separate chapter on cases.

A language heard first

Finnish is written in the Latin alphabet. Spelling follows pronunciation closely: one letter, one sound, double vowels that are held. The first lessons therefore put writing and speech together, on greetings you can already use.

The most frequent verbs in the course — olla, mennä, tulla — arrive in these sentences, already conjugated. Menen asemalle lets you hear mennä with a destination in a local case. Missä voisimme syödä? shows a question about place. Olen eksynyt puts olla into an immediate statement. The grammar of the course is the grammar these utterances already carry.

The six levels of the course

The levels use the titles from the player. Each one groups two or three themes from the Finnish list (list 329). The order runs from arrival to the unexpected. You can follow that order, or open first the theme you need.

Level 1 — First words

Say what you need on arrival. The themes Essentials, Conversation and Learning open the course. You greet people, answer yes or no, ask them to repeat, take your leave. Hei is short and already usable; Näkemiin is the leave-taking you hear when you step away.

Level 2 — Finding your bearings

Understand everyday landmarks. Colours, Numbers and Time tracking serve a room number, a price, a departure time. Yksi is the first figure in Numbers; it comes back whenever you need to count, pay or point to a platform.

Level 3 — Getting around

Move from place to place. Taxi, Transportation and Beach give you the sentences to say where you are going. Menen asemalle ties the verb mennä to the station; the ending on asemalle is the destination, already on the noun.

Level 4 — At the table and at the hotel

Order and stay. Restaurant, Bar and Hotel cover the table, the room and the bill. Missä voisimme syödä? is a first-evening question, complete enough to use as it stands, and clear enough for you to recognise missä.

Level 5 — Opening up to others

Make contact. Family, Feelings and Parting let you name people close to you, say how you are, take your leave. Minun isäni belongs to Family; the possessive appears twice, before and on the noun, on the same line.

Level 6 — Always finding a way

Handle the unexpected. In case of trouble and Looking for someone close the course. You ask for help, you describe a simple problem, you say you have lost someone or lost your way. Olen eksynyt is one of the most immediately useful sentences at this level.

Two paces, one course

The time given for First contact is forty-two to sixty-seven hours. That figure covers the whole path: the seventeen chapters, the quizzes, and the passes through Super Memory. A sentence is heard, repeated, then comes back later, sometimes several times, until it holds on its own. Nearly four hundred and eighty utterances, worked that way, occupy dozens of hours.

The gap between 42 and 67 hours comes from each person’s pace. At five to fifteen minutes a day, those hours spread over several weeks to several months, depending on the pace you want to give your learning and on how your memory works. That is the thread that builds A1 automatic responses: enough to greet people, get around, order and ask for help, while you still need the other person to speak clearly.

The player does not force you to follow everything in order. You can open the restaurant, the hotel or transportation first, according to the trip. Someone in a hurry can, in a few days, hold the expressions that really matter for their departure. That pick-and-choose path does not replace the 42 to 67 hours: it serves the urgency. After the trip, the same sentences are still there to revise.

How the course is worked

A session of five to fifteen minutes is enough to review a chapter or start another. You listen to the recording, you repeat the sentence, you read it again. Super Memory then tests the items that are still unstable. Listen mode lets you go back over the same sentences without opening a full lesson.

A teacher (italki, Preply, Superprof) or a conversation tool (ChatGPT, Gemini, Speak) can get you to reuse these sentences. Duolingo, Babbel and Memrise remain complements. The thread of the course is the seventeen themes.

Access to the course

First contact is followed online, free of charge: the lessons, the audio in the player, the quizzes and Super Memory. At Loecsen, that free access is neither blocking nor a source of stress. You can get a phrase wrong: you are not pushed to subscribe in order to keep progressing.

The only constraints are a limit on how many courses you can follow at the same time, and a generous but limited time to follow the courses even with an ad blocker.

An optional subscription adds a few extras: download the content as MP3 and PDF, obtain a course-completion certificate, remove the advertising, or choose your vocabulary. Online learning does not depend on those options.

When the A1 basics hold, the Independent in 6 months course continues the work towards A2–B1. The Finnish courses page presents the language and the full set of programmes.

Loecsen has published online courses for more than twenty years. Millions of learners have followed this method. First contact is the way in, for Finnish, at A1.