Studied Finnish, but still can't follow two Finns talking? SaunaSpeak teaches puhekieli, the Finnish people actually speak, in short daily sessions.
I've been learning Finnish for a while, and I kept hitting the same wall. Every course started with "minä olen" and "onko sinulla", and then the Finns around me said "mä oon", "onks sul" and "emmä tiiä". It felt like learning two different languages.
No account or card needed. All lessons are free.
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SaunaSpeak gives learners a practical way to hear, understand and practise the spoken Finnish they will encounter in everyday life. This kind of independent practice can build familiarity and confidence that can then be taken into real conversations. SaunaSpeak is the only tool I have found that is dedicated specifically to real spoken Finnish. It is a great tool for learning real-life Finnish.
Yes. All lessons, daily sessions, reviews, flashcards, audio and checkpoints are free, and so is one guided Situation. You can also preview 3 of the locked Situations: the scene plays and stops right before the mission starts. Löyly+ (€4.99/month) adds open AI conversation, every Situation, AI feedback and weekly insights.
Puhekieli is spoken Finnish, the way people really talk. Finns say "mä oon" instead of "minä olen" and "onks" instead of "onko". Most courses only teach the written language (kirjakieli), so learners often get lost when someone talks to them normally. There isn't just one puhekieli. Words change from town to town, but the short forms are used almost everywhere: "minä" might be "mä", "mää" or "mie", but it gets shortened somehow. SaunaSpeak teaches those short forms first and always shows the written form too.
Yes. SaunaSpeak teaches the everyday spoken Finnish of the capital region, the kind you hear on TV and in cities, and people all over Finland understand it. You won't understand every dialect right away though. Savo, Oulu and Tampere all sound a bit different, and even simple words vary: a tram can be spora, ratikka or raitsikka depending on who you ask. The bigger problem is usually that Finns switch to English when you hesitate, so the course also teaches phrases for keeping the conversation in Finnish.
Yes. The course starts from zero and teaches new words one at a time. Each sentence gets a little harder as you go: first you work out what it means, then you build it from word tiles, say it from memory and finally write it down by ear. If you already know some Finnish, the placement quiz skips the first lessons. You can try a few sentences right now without an account.
Five to fifteen minutes a day works well. A short session every day does more than one long session a week. On a busy day, a 2-minute session keeps your reviews and streak going, but nobody learns Finnish in 2 minutes a day.
No. You also need real conversations with people who talk at normal speed. A lot of apps mostly teach vocabulary. SaunaSpeak also has full-speed listening, roleplay and chat, drills for Finnish word endings, and spoken Finnish from the first lesson. Use it together with a course, a teacher or Finnish friends, not instead of them.
From zero to good everyday spoken Finnish: ordering, small talk, getting things done and understanding what people say back. In CEFR terms that is about A0 to B1, plus some harder lessons (idioms, workplace Finnish) that go further. Getting past B1 takes a lot of real listening, reading and conversation on top of any app.