Kolumnit
Vapaassa Sanassa julkaistuja toimittajien kolumneja. Keväällä 2009 kolumneja on kirjoittanut Aku Karjalainen.

Toronto uudelle?
Mitä kaupungin perinteinen suomalaiskenttä voi tarjota tulokkaalle? Kaupungin "vanhat suomalaiset" varmasti yllättävät nykysuomalaisen, mutta kokemus voi olla kiinnostavakin.

Meille töihin?
Vapaa Sana ottaa vastaan Suomesta Centre for International Mobilityn kautta harjoittelijoita. Monikulttuurinen Toronto ja sen mediakenttä ovat todennäköisesti mielenkiintoinen kokemus. Muuhun palkkaamiseen VS:llä ei ole taloudellisia mahdollisuuksia. Hakemukset hoitaa CIMO Helsingissä. Lue tästä mitä Vapaa Sana edellyttää.

Mikä ihmeen Vapaa Sana?

Vapaa Sana on riippumaton viikkosanomalehti, joka ilmestyy kerran viikossa Torontossa. Lehden nimi periytyy 1930-luvulta.

Nimi johtaa joskus lehteä tuntemattoman pitämään Vapaata Sanaa ns hengellisenä lehtenä. Sitä se ei kuitenkaan ole.

Näillä sivuilla tarjoamme poimintoja sisällöstä, emme koko aineistoa. Vapaa Sana on tilauspohjainen lehti. Vuosikerta maksaa Kanadassa 100 dollaria ja GST-veron, nopeammin kirjepostina 150 dollaria.Tilaukset numeroon 1(416) 321 0808, klo 10-13 Toronton aikaa arkisin.

Yhtiömme

Kustannusyhtiö Vapaa Sana Press julkaisee viikkosanomalehtiä Vapaa Sana (Toronto) ja Canadan Sanomat (Thunder Bay). Yhtiön internetsivustot ovat www.vapaasana.com, www.canadansanomat.com ja www.finnishcanadian.com.

Yhtiön omistajapohja käsittää toistakymmentätuhatta kanadansuomalaista.

Kyselyjen johdosta ilmoitamme, että internetosoite vapaasana.net ei liity tämän kustannusyhtiön toimintaan.

Historiamme

Kesällä 2008 ilmestyi Lauri Toiviasen kirja Vapaan Sanan vaiheista. Tämän linkin takana voitte lukea myös VS:n 75-vuotisjuhlanumeron reportaaseja ja haastatteluja.

Prof Paivio seen in front of the building that houses also the Finnish Studies program. At the University of Toronto Finnish under the umbrella of Slavi languages, even though Finnish is not a Slavic language. But a language needs an administrative home.

Finnish expatriates are not a strange crowd to professor Päiviö, who has lived in Berlin and is married to a German, they have two children. But the Finnish scene in Toronto is something totally different. Now at the start of the learning curve, let us all make sure that her learning curve of everything Finnish here in Toronto, and further a field in Canada, rises fast.

A program such as the Finnish Studies at the University of Toronto would be serving two types of students. The linguistics - or future linguistics - wanting to study the structures of Finnish - with no intention of ever speaking the languages. And then, the few individuals who want to learn Finnish, or to patch up their command. Finnish is very different from English, in many respects, and one of them is the fact that Finnish is highly inflected. - As professor Päiviö puts it, englanti on köyhä kieli, English is a poor language, or should we say impoverished.
- There is little, if any, chance of misunderstanding an English sentence, she notes. But in Finnish you could in certain situations mistake the subject for the object, even.
Vapaa Sana takes up the practical problems of teaching Finnish, as a foreign language. You could possibly learn English without much of a dip into grammar, but Finnish certainly not?
- Grammar must be included, to some extent, she says. - But in such a sequence of introducing new things that it will benefit the process of learning.
- But we have to start in a way that students meet the language from the start.
- Asiat on esitettävä oikein, she says. If the structure and the way Finnish functions are presented in an optimal manner, the language opens up. The students will see what the logic of Finnish is.
- "Acting" practical situations helps in the learning process. The cases (or sijamuodot) of Finnish expressing positions and locations may suddenly click that way.
Teaching someone with a bit of Finnish in the background is different from teaching students with no previous history of Finnish. - In Indiana there were few “heritage students”, professor Päiviö says.
But here in Toronto certainly, and as we know Finnish-Canadian presence and input has been instrumental in the survival of Finnish studies, so far.
- A heritage student may need more guidance and teaching, she says. - He or she knows some Finnish, but may have it wrong and may not hear (or understand) the Finnish sounds.
Each language has its own phoneme structure, the distinctive frontiers between, say, a Finnish y and a Finnish u. In Finland, Finns have often problems with learning the Swedish u. Respectively an English speaker learning Finnish has to be able to unlock the Finnish sound structure.
The lauseenvastikkeet or abbreviated sentences, or infinitive and participle structures, are a problem to many foreigners learning Finnish.
Professor Päiviö says the participle structures and infinitive structures can be picked up quite fast, actually, in communicative situations. You can start, say, with puhuva papukaija. Of course, not all forms are used in spoken Finnish.
One of the changes in Finnish in recent decades has been the growing difference between the spoken language, in terms of forms and structures, and written language or language in formal use. Or perhaps one should say that much more is accepted in spoken language today than decades ago. The structures of Finnish used on radio network aimed at young people is different from a station supposedly serving all age groups.
- My conviction is that there is nothing wrong in the phenomenon that a language changes, says professor Päiviö.

JN