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First discussion

Yes, there are a few of us out here :)

I am trying to build up my vocabulary........before I try to tackle grammar (which I know will be hard for me).

Well for grammar i know a nice site :) http://donnerwetter.kielikeskus.helsinki.fi/finnishforforeigners/parts-index.htm (Name of the course is Tavataan Taas) It has also pronuncations.

Terve Heija! I am working on my vocabulary as well. I don´t have much difficulty with pronunciation, for instance. But having examples of words used in simple sentences would make my day. Specially for the less common words. Spotting errors both typos and translations would also be appreciated. Not sure what others think.

That's cool arala! I will try my best to help you.

Yes, I second that. It seems a lot of the translations are off, mispelled, or unclear. It'd be great to have a native speaker review some of the courses.

Hi KaeTraen - Yes, good suggestion. The thing I've noticed, too, is that words that have more than one meaning appear in different courses, which gets a bit confusing (at least for me) when watering them.

Hei alanh, i have noticed that too and it gets confusing to swap between the courses. I guess it would be no different to learning english (australian)from a Suomi point of view. I love this site just as a hobby to learn some words of this KAUNIS language,i am visiting in kolme vikkoa for my second time in 2 years.Olisinpa on suomalaisia:)

Terve Nikinu! I agree with all that you say. I guess it's just something we have to live with if we are doing more than one course at the same time. When watering my plants, if I come unstuck because I have chosen (for example) "iso" for "big" when I should have chosen "suuri" instead, I try to remember to edit the Mem to show the additional meaning. Maybe one of the curators can suggest a fix. Have a great trip! Those three weeks will soon pass. I'm very envious.

I added suuri as a synonym for iso, so now both should work as an answer, as long as it's on the word I corrected. Unfortunately there are lots of words registered twice or more... I usually try to update words with their English and Finnish synonyms but it's a lot of work so it may take some time __'

@mekere Hi. Is this a spooky coincidence or a response to the discussion that I started a few minutes ago on the word "suuri" in the dictionary?

Spooky coincidence apparently :D In what list was your comment about suuri? I may have to correct it there too.

My point exactly... suuri appears 6 times in the dictionary. The first one already have iso as a synonym is quite complete (mem + vocal + part of speech) and can be found in 3 lists (basic adjective, finnish wordlist and beginner's finnish) but apparently it's not the one you commented :/ I suppose it would be better to keep only one definition but it means heavy modifications in someone's list.

@mekere

A pretty amazing one, you'd have to agree :D It's on Suomen Mestari 1 Chapters 1-6.

Another one that has been catching me out recently is "to appear", which comes up as both "esiintya" (on Finnish Baseline) and "ilmaantua" (on Beginner's Finnish).

Thanks for your help. It's really appreciated.

Ok, I removed the previous definition to keep the most complete one. I allowed myself to do that because the definition was kinda incorrect (spacious) and there was no mem or vocal registered. But that mean, people will have to learn the word again :/ esiintyä, ilmaantua and you can add näyttäytyä, all of them really mean "to appear" so there is nothing wrong there. I added the synonym so that all 3 words will be correct.

Thanks @mekere. Have you seen the post just added to my discussion thread by Ben?

Erf, no. And apparently removing suuri/spacious from the original list makes it inaccessible. What did he said?

Here it is:

benwhately Oddly this word doesn't appear to be in any courses, which suggests to me that it may have been added in error and then deleted by someone who didn't realise that it would stay in the wiki. So I have edited it as you suggest so now it can be used in the future. Does that sound right? Thanks Ben

I replied to Ben pointing him in the direction of this thread in the hope that it would help him understand what happened.

Alan

I'm afraid that's what happen when several person works on a wiki in the same time :p Anyway, I added a discussion in the Suomen Mestari 1 Chapters 1 to 6 course to explain what happened to the original suuri, hopefully it will be clear enough.

@mekere, Hey, what's the worst that can happen? :) Thanks, again, for all your help. Alan

You're welcome. If you see some other corrections to do, just ask. I won't be there for a few weeks soon (I'll let you guess where I'm going in holiday ;)) but I'll do my best to correct the cards quickly.

This is very interesting - I think I understand what has happened, but can I just summarise to make sure I have understood it?

• the word "suuri" appears several times in the dictionary, not always with the same or best definition.
• so @mekere deleted the word from the set and added a version of the word with a "better" definition. Is that right?

If so we should be able to solve this by just merging together the duplicate items in the wiki. Would either of you like to become a moderator so that you can do this? You can watch the intro video explaining how to do it here - http://vzaar.com/videos/895052 - and let me know if you have any questions. Also let me know if you would be up for doing the merging, and I will set you up with the right permissions.

Thanks and best wishes

Ben

The summary is good. I deleted the suuri/DontRememberTheDefinitionButItWasAWrongOne card and added the most complete suuri/large card I could find in the course instead.

Being able to merge would be really nice, I hate having to delete things in course I didn't create :/

Great, well I have given you the moderator permissions, so you can get started!

best wishes

Ben

And there goes my productivity at work! Thank you ;)

@Ben For completeness (and because I am now feeling kinda guilty), "suuri" came up as a new word on Suomen Mestari 1 Chapters 1-6 this morning, defined as "spacious". I was already familiar with suuri as "big" (which also appears elsewhere as "iso") from another course (English to Finnish Baseline). I checked "spacious" in my own dictionary and there was no mention of "suuri", only "tilava". "So I posted a comment in the discussion tab to ask if an edit was needed. By a remarkable coincidence, around the same time, @mekele posted the response above to an earlier comment. That's when the 'fun' started.... :)

I'll happily take a look at the moderator video but I think it's probably best if a native (or fluent) speaker took on that role.

Regards Alan

Yay, fun and no work :p Believe me, no need to be a native or even fluent to moderate and for what I saw.. there is a lot of work to do __ I tried to make a unique word list recently using only the most popular course, I had a lot of duplicate (more than 1000 and then I stopped trying :p) so if you're not scared by the amount of work (voi, Jomala) your help will be really useful.

@mekere, that is absolutely right - there are some questions that need a fluent speaker to answer them, but they are actually relatively arare. Generally speaking students of all levels can help with most situations. So your help would be hugely appreciated if you could give it a go!

Best wishes

Ben

OK, count me in. I'll give it a go.

The "Duplicate both" items in Moderation are easy, just merge and make sure all the informations are correct. I'm a little worried about the sound sample. I often see 2 of them after merging?

The "Duplicate words" are tricky :/

Great, @alanh, I have set you up as well, thanks!

best wishes

Ben

@mekere Thanks. I'll take a look at some and will let you know how I think it's going. On the 'double audios' you mentioned, I have come across lots of these. They are not a problem, just one male voice and one female. Have a good holiday! Alan

I did a little patrolling today (not in Finland yet :p) Nothing big, some logical merging that would (normally) not bother anyone. I added some informations (synonym, part of speech) and if I could complete and verify the card I validated it. I may have checked 200 cards maybe? Still 7000 more :p I noticed 2 things: a lot of duplicate are actually for other languages. It's difficult for me to verify the exactitude of the data, so I leave them as it. - A user have made a list with his words in genitive form instead of the usual nominative. I have left his list as it too, he may have a good reason to do so even if it's messy in the patrolling window.

It will take a lot of time and brain storming to figure out how to take care of everything I suppose. Let's do our best __

@mekere You have made a good start, then. Thanks for the tip about those cards that are in languages other than Finnish-English. I had spotted one or two of those, too. I am sure you are right to leave them. Like you, when I make a start, I intend to start with the more straightforward stuff! :)

@mekere, if there are words that are translated into other languages, then the issue is usually that entire courses have been created that have been put in the wrong wiki. If you can make a comment on the words, then I will move them to the right wiki.

For the list that uses the genitive instead of the nominative, it would be best to make a comment there as well, asking if they would mind if the list was edited to fit the wiki conventions; if they are dead-set on learning words in a way that doesn't fit the wiki, then I can move their list to another wiki for "misc. flashcards" so that they can keep learning like that. But the main wiki will work best if it is a group effort and we are all working with the same conventions.

Does that make sense?

Thanks very much!

Ben

@benwhately : From what I saw, we have some Finnish to Japanese, Finnish to Dutch and Finnish to Russian translations. Maybe there are some other languages that I have not identified yet __' I can comment a word, but usually the whole list is in another language than English.

• For the genitive only list, I agree, we should negotiate with the list owner. If the 'problem' is still here when I'm going back from holidays (3 weeks), I'll start the negotiations :p

By the way, I have troubles browsing the "Patrol suggestions" I'm stuck on the lasi/glass card and can't do anything more.

Great - if you comment on a few of the words, then I can find which courses they are in, and move the whole courses over to new wikis. So you don't have to mark every word in each course, just leave comment on a few words, ideally a couple in each different language, that should catch most of them!

I will check out that issue with the patrol, and I look forward to getting the discussion underway over the conventions,

Best wishes

Ben

Speaking of the convention, I'm not sure I have totally understood the English alternative part. For example let's take the puhua/to talk card. I got that one of the English alternative should be _talk, but another definition could be to speak, am I suppose to write _speak, _to speak or _speak + to speak ? And, is it even useful actually, I don't remember seeing theses data outside the card?

For languages where there are no tests that require you to type in the English word, the "alternative English" doesn't have much use. The "alternatives" field is used a) to show other meanings, and b) to make the marking of tests more flexible.

SO yes, it might not be worth adding all those extra forms in,

Does that sound right?

best wishes

Ben

It sounds right. It may raise the difficulty of the list a little but it may be more fun that way.

Thanks for sorting the lists to their rightful wiki, it's way easier to work on the Finnish/English cards now. Still... 6000 cards to validate __'

Haven't yet managed to find any 'duplicate boths'. Every list that I have looked at shows zero. Either I am looking in the wrong place or @mekere has already merged them all. Instead, I have made a (tentative) start at approving a few 'unmoderated' words, taking great care. It's going to be a slow job.

Probably not. It's quite random actually I can refresh the page 50 times with no duplicate both and sometimes one appears. But yeah, it's going to be a very slow job.

Anyway, I'm back from Finland! Oh wait, actually it is: I'm back from Finland :'(. Nice weather (Suomen kesä o/ ) and wonderful lakes.

I just found this site yesterday and am already quite fond of it - what a great way to learn vocabulary!

I'm doing a basic Finnish course at the university of Jyväskylä (starting Suomi 2 this year) and I would love to use this site, maybe even help improve it. I just spent a few hours creating a course with all the vocabulary from last year's course, but got a bit frustrated with seeing mistakes, but not being able to do anything about them... Maybe I could help as well?

Welcome @FinnishRose. Hope you continue to enjoy it on here.

When Ben Whatley (from Memrise) gets a chance to read your post above, he will probably give you 'curator' status for Finnish courses. This will give you editorial powers so that you can correct mistakes you come across.

what's up guys. I also don't mind editorial powers altough finnish is not my first language and don't have much time to moderate. I need this mostly to correct entries that are inside my courses. 1 of them is on-going and uncomplete (my personal exercise book), another one includes all "i" words that I could find http://www.memrise.com/set/10044505/i-sanat/ http://www.memrise.com/set/10044692/suomen-kielen-tikapuut-alkeistaso-1/

Also, I can't assign alternatives, such as lyijykynä - kynä, it makes me sad

Thanks to Ben I now how editorial powers, yay :-). The only concern I have is that when I click on "Patrol suggestions" the pop-up appears saying something like "unfortunately there's a problem, we're working on it, try something else". Apart from that, everything works just fine now