Finnish Study Resources for Every Lev­el

Study­ing the Finnish lan­guage is a major part of inte­grat­ing and learn­ing more about the Finnish cul­ture. There are var­i­ous Finnish lan­guage cours­es avail­able for free and for a cost in Oulu and online, and there are many learn­ing mate­ri­als online free to use.

Find the mate­ri­als and resources fit­ting for you to kick­start your learn­ing today!

Free cours­es

Mul­ti­cul­tur­al Cen­tre Vil­la Vic­tor offers free Finnish lan­guage cours­es, rang­ing from ele­men­tary to advanced lev­els, in var­i­ous groups both in-per­son and online. You can select a group that match­es your skill lev­el and sched­ule. Read more here.

Addi­tion­al­ly, you can find some free Finnish lan­guage cours­es at finnishcourses.fi, held both online and in per­son. Not all cours­es on this web­site are free, but there are free-of-cost options.

More paid cours­es all year around

• • Oulu-opis­to is a com­mu­ni­ty col­lege oper­at­ed by the City of Oulu, offer­ing a range of hob­by and lan­guage cours­es, includ­ing spe­cial­ized Finnish and Eng­lish lan­guage cours­es for for­eign groups. Read more here.
• Vuolle Insti­tute offers many cours­es in Finnish. Read more here.
• Sum­mer Uni­ver­si­ty of North­ern Ostro­both­nia offers var­i­ous cours­es all year round. Read more here.
• Finnishcourses.fi is a web­site, where you can find cours­es all around Fin­land and online for var­i­ous prices and for free.

Free Finnish lan­guage learn­ing resources

Learn­ing lan­guage does not only con­sist of going to lan­guage cours­es, but also prac­tic­ing the Finnish lan­guage in var­i­ous ways in your free time through speak­ing, lis­ten­ing, read­ing, and adapt­ing the lan­guage. If you are look­ing for var­i­ous resources to accel­er­ate or kick­start your Finnish-lan­guage learn­ing, check out these free resources!

Lan­guage clubs

• Café Lin­gua is a lan­guage club open for all. You can play board games and have cof­fee as you chat with oth­er peo­ple learn­ing or speak­ing the lan­guage you aim to learn more of.
• KOT­VA-lan­guage club is meant for immi­grant par­ents tak­ing care of their chil­dren at home. In the club, lan­guage is prac­ticed, and chil­dren can be brought along to play.

Mobile apps

• Puhu suomea is an app, that you can use to prac­tice your Finnish in real com­mu­ni­ca­tion sit­u­a­tions in Oulu’s var­i­ous loca­tions using ready-made phras­es or inde­pen­dent­ly.
• Duolin­go is a gam­i­fied lan­guage-learn­ing app, where you are encour­aged to learn lan­guage dai­ly.
• Suomi­pas­si is an app you can use to prac­tice using Finnish out­side the class­room. The app is cur­rent­ly unavail­able but will receive a new updat­ed ver­sion in 2024.
• Word­Dive is a paid sub­scrip­tion app to learn Finnish on var­i­ous lev­els.

Oth­er learn­ing resources

There are var­i­ous resources online relat­ed to Finnish lan­guage learn­ing out­side of struc­tured cours­es. To learn or prac­tice vocab­u­lary and phras­es on var­i­ous lev­els, fol­low­ing web­sites are good options to find learn­ing mate­ri­als:

• Yle: Basics of Finnish Lan­guage.
• Infofinland.fi: Impor­tant sen­tences in Finnish.
• Sano Suomek­si: A web­site con­tain­ing var­i­ous Finnish lan­guage resources for var­i­ous lan­guage lev­els, like vocab­u­lary exer­cis­es, video lessons, read­ing mate­ri­als and more.
• Kielibu­usti: A web­site con­tain­ing var­i­ous Finnish lan­guage learn­ing resources and mate­ri­als.
• Infofinland.fi: Var­i­ous online lan­guage and learn­ing resources

A good, casu­al way to hone your Finnish skills is to uti­lize media in the Finnish lan­guage. Lis­ten to pod­casts, read, lis­ten to music, and watch videos. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less! Here are some free resources to kick­start your immer­sion to Finnish lan­guage:

• Yle news arti­cles in basic lev­el Finnish (selk­ouutiset).
• Yle Kielik­oulu pro­vides you a pos­si­bil­i­ty to click on words in sub­ti­tles for lan­guage sup­port.
• Yle pod­casts (for advanced lis­ten­ing).
• Papunet pro­vides free online books with basic lev­el Finnish for chil­dren.
• Selkosanomat.fi is a web­site, where you can find arti­cles of recent Finnish top­ics in basic lev­el Finnish.
• Easy Finnish is a YouTube-chan­nel spo­ken in basic lev­el Finnish, help­ing you to obtain Finnish lan­guage pro­fi­cien­cy nat­u­ral­ly.

Note: If your orga­ni­za­tion pro­vides free learn­ing mate­ri­als for Finnish lan­guage learn­ers, please con­tact ihoulu@oulu.fi to inform the avail­abil­i­ty of your service/materials.