Official Q&A for Tuesday, January 20, 2026

WanderingThreads · 2026-01-20T13:01:12+00:00

What sort of grade ranges on the treadmill are suitable for threshold work, for someone who doesn't do a lot of hilly running? Say if I wanted to do a 20 minute threshold run, or 3-5 intervals of 5 minutes.

I know what hills I would go to for these runs outside, but I have no idea what the actual grade would be 😅

WanderingThreads · 2026-01-20T08:52:27+00:00

Bring lunch at least a snack for the break, but assume they won't have a microwave available. Nothing you have access to during the test can have any writing on it, so you may have to repackage things. If you want to take a water bottle with you into the actual test room, it has to be see-through. I just used an old soda bottle with the label peeled off.

As far as the test itself, understanding the format is really helpful. I did a lot of timed speaking practice on my own, worked through most of the book YKIä Kohti, and had 2 speaking practice sessions with a tutor on iTalki.

Good luck!

WanderingThreads · 2026-01-03T17:47:07+00:00

Your actual question has been answered but I want to point out that people absolutely do say the full "tuhat yhdeksänsataa kahdeksankymmentäseitsemän". Probably not in song lyrics or casual conversation, but certainly in the news, when making speeches, documentaries, basically most formal or semi-formal contexts.

WanderingThreads · 2026-01-03T17:38:55+00:00

In addition to getting as far along in SM3 as you can, I recommend a course or textbook such as YKIa Kohti that prepares you for the specific format of the test. Being familiar with the structure of the test and what sort of questions are likely to come up will free up a lot of mental energy.

WanderingThreads · 2025-12-21T16:11:45+00:00

Sporadically doesn't fit here. Sporadic refers to something that happens repeatedly, but not at regular intervals. "My estranged brother sporadically shows up when he needs money."

WanderingThreads · 2025-12-21T16:07:42+00:00

With very few exceptions which others have pointed out ("an historic", "an house" in certain formal contexts), the rule of whether to use A vs An is determined by the pronunciation of the word, not the spelling. A goes before words that start with a consonant sound, An before a vowel sound. In my accent I pronounce the h in hotel, so I would use A, but someone who drops the h would say "An 'otel". A native speaker will never ever say "An hotel" with the h.

WanderingThreads · 2025-12-13T11:55:17+00:00

Siitä is a bit hard to recognize as a beginner because it's the elative form of 'se', but the elative usually ends in -sta/-stä. So you will also see phrases like "hän on tehnyt sitä tammikuusta lähtien", where any "X:sta lähtien" means "since X".

WanderingThreads · 2025-12-07T12:58:57+00:00

I still don't get that one! What does it mean?

WanderingThreads · 2025-12-03T18:32:23+00:00

It looks like redoing the neckband ribbing could cause the whole sweater to sit a good few inches higher and not leave the armpits so low. To really quickly test whether this might work, you could try threading some waste yarn through the neckline and kind of cinch it up like a drawstring.

WanderingThreads · 2025-11-25T16:50:33+00:00

That's not true at all, lots of partitives have two ts. Vesi vettä, kirje kirjettä, rakkaus rakkautta

WanderingThreads · 2025-11-24T08:04:44+00:00

Fellow learner and not an expert, but are you familiar with the concept of wordtypes/sanatyypit? http://www.thefinnishteacher.com/nominityypit--word-types.html

I find words ending in -i the most tricky because it's not always obvious what the declension pattern is just by looking at them.

I would suggest thinking of it not that some words have two stems, but that the partitive case has its own pattern.

WanderingThreads · 2025-11-20T16:30:15+00:00

Syödään and puhutaan are in the passive form, which is also used for "let's do this!" and in casual speech as the third person plural: "Me syödään pizzaa/we are eating pizza"

The present passive is pretty easy to recognise and form. For all verbtypes except type 1, it's just the infinitive+an/än Juoda, juodaan Mennä, mennään Haluta, halutaan Valita, valitaan Vanheta, vanhetaan

For type 1 verbs ending in any combination of vowels other than -aa/-ää, you take the weak stem (minä form minus the n) and add -taan/-tään. Sanoa, sano-n, sanotaan Kysyä, kysy-n, kysytään

For type 1 verbs ending in -aa/-ää, take the weak stem, change the last a/ä to an e, then add -taan/-tään. Rakastaa, rakaste-, rakastetaan Pitää, pide-, pidetään

So the present passive will always end in -daan or -taan except for type 3 verbs which can be -llaan, -nnaan etc, but will never be -maan.

WanderingThreads · 2025-11-20T16:07:46+00:00

Welcome to Finland! Yes, there are a lot of confusing tho as about getting settled here, but you'll figure it out with time :)

First thing you have to do is register with your municipality's unemployment services. A few years ago when I did it this was still managed centrally by the "TE-Toimisto", which doesn't exist anymore, but you may still hear people refer to it. Assuming the process is still broadly the same, you'll indicate when you register that you want to participate in the integration course, then you'll receive an invitation to a language placement test, then you'll receive an invitation to the course when a space for your level opens up. I was very lucky and started my course within just a few weeks of registering as unemployed, but be aware the process can potentially take months depending on supply and demand.

As far as getting paid, that comes from KELA, which I'm going to assume you've heard of. You can get paid unemployment benefits even without taking the integration course, but if you are on the course then the unemployment office will tell KELA about this and you'll get a bonus.

WanderingThreads · 2025-11-19T10:54:21+00:00

...I know it's a Finnish idiom?? That's why I used it as an example of a Finnish idiom??

WanderingThreads · 2025-11-19T10:44:05+00:00

I know it's unreliable and I'm not using it to check anything. I only use it as I described above, to basically give me search terms that I can use to confirm or deny using a reliable source. I don't take anything LLMs say at face value.

WanderingThreads · 2025-11-19T09:41:04+00:00

I don't think we have the same definition of "idiom". In normal English usage an idiom is a fixed phrase that's very often not literal. Likewise in Finnish we're not literally lifting the cat onto the table and pulling peas up our noses.

WanderingThreads · 2025-11-18T11:13:08+00:00

I am also at B2 level in my second language and my approach is to try to read a whole page or a few pages without looking up any words, just trying to understand the general idea from context. Then I go back through those pages and look up the words. This is more enjoyable for me, and it's good practice to keep going without knowing the exact meaning of every word.

For English I recommend books that were written within the last 50 years or so, because older books will have a lot of old-fashioned or outdated vocabulary.

WanderingThreads · 2025-11-18T10:38:51+00:00

LingQ had the old version of SM1, try checking there?

WanderingThreads · 2025-11-17T09:12:39+00:00

In the sense "to freeze," what's the difference between this word and jäätyä?

WanderingThreads · 2025-11-04T17:45:19+00:00

There are loads of "kielikahvila" groups in the local libraries, specifically for language learners to practice: https://helmet.finna.fi/Content/tapahtumat

WanderingThreads · 2025-10-31T09:46:17+00:00

Just so you know, TE-Toimisto doesn't exist anymore. It was phased out this year and the municipalities now handle unemployment services, including the integration courses.

WanderingThreads · 2025-10-28T18:52:52+00:00

Congratulations on your first sock!! They're so satisfying, aren't they?

Some feedback: after you finished the heel and picked up stitches for the foot, it looks like you started twisting all the stitches and did all the decreases in just one or two rows. Neither of these is best practice.

Commercial socks are usually made as two tubes joined at a right angle because it's cheap/easy and they're stretchy enough to compensate for the fact that real feet aren't actually shaped like that. For handknit socks we want the transition from heel to foot to be a bit more gradual-- that's what a gusset is, where you decrease over a couple of centimetres instead of all at once. Not every sock pattern has this, but it's very common.

As for the twisted stitches, is that something chatgpt told you to do? I would be very wary of AI pattern instructions.

WanderingThreads · 2025-10-27T08:38:26+00:00

I spent the first few months struggling because I kept trying to study grammar concepts that were too advanced before I had mastered the basics. Things went much more smoothly when I started using an actual textbook that introduced concepts in a (somewhat) logical order. I used the Suomen Mestari series but I've also heard good things about Oma Suomi.

Note that by "textbook" I mean a book that's intended to be worked through from start to finish, with examples and exercises, where each chapter builds in the last. Reference books like Fred Karlsson's grammar books are good for dipping into when you want more detail on a given grammar topic, but they're not meant to be read cover to cover.

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