Thank you, this is wonderful. I’m only up to 130 words but still, its been great.
Since it seems like feedback is welcome here are some items:
Lesson 4. If “menna” is “to go” why is “Miten menee” translated as “How are you doing?”? It makes it harder to remember that “men” means “go”. And “How is it going?” is a perfectly normal phrase in English that matches up.
Lesson 2. If “voida” is “to feel” wouldn’t “Kuinka voit?” be better translated as “How are you feeling?”? And then within that translation I have another question that applies to many translations. When a Finn says “Kuinka voit” are they thinking "How are you feeling or are they thinking “How feel?” (while looking at someone) If the answer is that Finn’s are thinking “How feel?” or “How feel you?” why do we not translate it that way? I know it sounds like broken English when said that way, but when you are trying to learn having the actual word order match and be 1:1 seems to make understanding what the phrase is saying much easier than memorizing that “these 4 words in English correspond to these 2 words in Finnish and in a different order”. I am listening to some Pimsleur CDs from the library also and occasionally they will say “Now say ‘How’s it going’? Literally, say ‘How go you?’” They sometimes give the regular English and the literal broken English translations in order to help. So having both is an option also.
I’ve got some similar ones if this is good feedback but I won’t bother if it is already how you want it to be. And again 99% awesome and very appreciated.
Terve, @KyleWillkomm15!
I had trouble logging in, because I was redirected to the app. I had to delete the app.
“How is it going?” - That is a good suggestion. Thank you.
“How are you feeling? - This one is a bit more problematic, because there are expressions in Finnish that are more accurate translations. There are several verbs in Finnish that can be translated as “feel”.
- tuntea - to feel; to feel an emotion (sadness, joy, etc.) or a sensation (softness, coarseness, pain, temperature, etc.) as a subject. Ex. I feel anger. I can feel the softness of your skin.
- tuntua - to feel; to have an emotional or sensory reaction because of something that is happening “outside you”, or because of your actions. Ex. This feels really good. The stove feels hot.
- voida - to feel; used to inquire politely whether someone is well. I noticed that you are studying Swedish. The Swedish equivalent of this verb would be må. These verbs are polite, because they are ambiguous. The person who answers the question can choose with how much information they are willing to part.
“How are you feeling?” would be translated with the first verb, because it is a more personal question. Translating Kuinka voit? with the same expression would be misleading.
If my explanation was not clear enough, please let me know.
Thanks for responding! I thought you were talking about Duo Lingo when you said over there you couldn’t log in. Ha. Also I am not learning Swedish, Duo Lingo forces you to choose a language on login and to be at level 2 to comment in the forums…
For “voitte” then I guess it is fine as is if the goal is ‘reminder definitions’ in Memrise and more detail in the lessons. But if it was possible to have more detail in Memrise maybe, “How are you? (polite inquiry on feeling/state of being)”. Probably not space for that kind of thing? I feels important that the root be in the definition somewhere and match in both languages.
If you have time I am still curious about the word order and amount, if I am the only one who thinks translations in broken English would be superior when the goal is to learn/memorize. I can memorize and match up “How going?” much easier to “Miten menee” than “How is it going?” And am also curious how Finns think the words cause it seems best to try to think like they would. When they say “miten menee” Do they think “How going?”, “How going you?”, something else? Thanks!
As another learner, I don’t think it a good idea to memorize translations with broken English. It might work for you maybe, but not for everyone. I wouldn’t like it.
It’s useful to have the literal translation in the lesson as an explanation (to understand how the phrase is built), but when memorizing, you need to get the correct picture in your mind, the meaning of the phrase. If I learned using broken English, I fear the learned phrase would sound broken to me too, while it is not. Maybe try to think of the phrase as a whole, not the separate words.
I think this is mostly a problem just with these introductory phrases we learn at the beginning without knowing the grammar yet. Later on, when we know Finnish more, we get used to some stuff being phrased differently.
Hi, and thank you for this course. I’m struggling with chapter 3, as it says Huomenta and Hyvää Huomenta to be both Good Morning but when I’m prompted for Good Morning it only accepts one of the two (likely at random), so sometimes I pick the wrong one and tells me I’m wrong.
Consider that menee is 3rd person, so “Miten menee” is literally “How does it go?”
Huomenta and Päivää are now marked as informal to separate them from Hyvää huomenta and Hyvää päivää.
Glad to see you here! 
Hi, I wanted to let you all know that Finnish is now in the Duolingo Incubator: https://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/fi/en/status
Whoever who want to contribute, please come forward 
I applied yesterday. Fingers crossed!
That’s great! 
I’ve been going through this course for some time now and I’d like to report 2 translation errors:
linja-auto is translated as “bus” where “coach” is a more appropriate translation. Bus would be “bussi”
More alarmingly I’m just doing Chapter 82 and for some reason they have “lukio” translated as “gymnasium” which is wrong. Lukio means “high school” while gymnasium can be translated as “kuntosali”. This one at least should be corrected.
Edit: I just noticed the follow up sentence that says “opetan lukiossa historiaa” which the course has translated as “I teach history in the gymnasium”, surely it’s not just me to whom that makes no sense.
It may relate to this:
I’ve worked in a Lukio for a semester 20 years ago and I can tell you no one there referred to it as “gymnasium”. That’s the first I hear of it. The Finnish school system is broken down into 3 main levels: ala-aste (primary, or “grade” school). yläaste (middle, secondary, or “junior high” school) and lukio (upper secondary, or high school.
While I can’t speak for other nordic countries, the term gymnasium isn’t used in Finland to refer to that level of education in my experience. Or at least it wasn’t, maybe it’s a new thing. Either way, to a learner of Finnish it makes far more sense to translate lukio as “high school” as this is the term generally understood in English to mean the last stage of pre-university education
Hello.
Most people do indeed translate lukio as high school. Unfortunately this goes into the same category as translating mustikka as blueberry. Aka common misconceptions that exist due to the influence of American English and American culture. Gymnasium is much more demanding than high school. Calling it high school is quite simply misleading. Just like calling bilberries blueberries is misleading. They do not taste the same.
The bus/coach thing is also related to American English. Couch is a colloquial word for bus. All other varieties of English use bus.
I can see your point regarding berries, given that this will be a specific native species (I guess that’s something to look forward to). However “gymnasium” means something else entirely, as in it being a place where people practice sports. I understand that some places use the word Gymnasium to refer to that stage of pre-university education, however looking at it from the perspective of a learner whose source language is English (ie. those for those this course is aimed at) the word in itself is very misleading. Is this were a course for German speakers, we would not be having this conversation.
I understand the difficulty in mapping one education system onto another. I’m accustomed to one very different to the one my wife went to which is itself different to the one my daughter goes to. And despite the perception that “High School” is an americanism, it is in fact used pretty extensively in the UK as well. In other words, despite it not mapping exactly what you understand “lukio” to be, “high school” is the most logical translation for a learner to memorise the word. You can use “upper secondary school” if that sounds like a better compromise but gymnasium is not going to be understood as being a place to go to school for most English speakers. In other words, translating “lukio” as “gymnasium” is what’s misleading here.
I understand your point, but I disagree. However, based on your comment, I now think that high school should be an alternative translation and I will add it into the system once I get my tech situation under control. I’m currently unable to edit, so it will, unfortunately, take a month or two until I will be able to do so. I’ve left myself a note on my things-to-do list If you’re still around a month from now and there has been no change, make a comment here to notify me about it. Just in case I have forgotten about it.
Edit: I’m currently one of the contributors of Duo’s Finnish course. Just in case you haven’t noticed, yes, we’re building one!
Aha! After some fiddling about, I found a way to add the alternative translations in Chapter 8A (Yay!). If you find similar words that need alternative translations in other chapters, let me know.
P.S. I’m a dumbass. 
An alternative translation would certainly work, and be in line with some other vocab in the system, thank you!
I’ve been making my way through the course daily for almost a year now so I expect I’ll still be around in about a month and will try to remember to post a reminder in early October if nothing has changed.
I’m aware of the Duolingo Finnish course being in the incubator, I even considered joining as a contributor but I’m not sure my Finnish is good enough yet (hence why I’m practicing with your course). I can’t wait for it to be released in Beta.
I should have edited instead of writing a new comment. So. I found a way to edit and have added the alternative translations to 8A. If alternative translations are needed in other chapters let me know and I’ll add those too.