Elämän suomessa - Life in Finland

As of today, I have been in this beautiful country for 3 entire months. It feels as though I just got here, but also that I have lived here my whole life at the same time.

As the previous blog post says, my language learning has steadily progressed, but I still speak terribly. Those rumors you heard are true: Finnish is hard! The language is so different from Germanic languages that sometimes I just laugh. I find I'm having to re-wire my brain as far as creating sentences goes. Until recently I've been trying to relate everything to English, French, or even German, but with no success. With Finnish, I have to start from square one: a blank slate.

For those of you that are curious, here is a list of some things that I've found particularly challenging or different in my language learning:

• Articles: they don't have 'em! This makes speech easier, but at first I was always saying "yksi", their word for "one" as my own little article. I got over this eventually.
• Prepositions: they don't have 'em. Their "prepositions" are either endings put onto words, or "postpositions". But even the postpositions don't live by themselves, you still have to put an ending on your word (usually an 'N')
• Gender: they don't have it! They don't even have "he" and "she", just "hän". Everything is totally neutral in the language. This is great for me, but can make learning English quite challenging for most Finns. He/she mix ups can be very entertaining sometimes!
• The partitive word ending: my arch nemesis. English has nothing like this, but it can kind of be related to a more complicated object direct in French. I get this wrong constantly.
• The alphabet: this was very challenging at first, but is now quite easy. Here is a video I've found of the Finnish alphabet. It's not perfect though. Note the very different pronunciation of the letters "j" and especially "y", as well as the additions of ä ja ö. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAc8Z4pfhFo&feature=youtube_gdata_player
• The nonsense words: every language has them! Finns are very partial to the word "niin"... No niin, niin, niinkö, eikö niin, ai niin are some of their favorite phrases. "No niin" is a word that can be used to mean... Almost everything. It can be "is that so", "really", "well well", "now then", "well then", "so", and "huh". When in doubt: no niin.
• Words are pronounced as they are written. There are no silent letters like you find everywhere in French. This is handy when someone says something I don't understand, because I can normally find it in the dictionary very easily.
• When you decide to learn Finnish, you're really signing up to learn two languages. They have written and spoken. Spoken is kind of like English internet slang. They just chop letters out if words, leave out endings, or just cut out words. Almost no one speaks "written Finnish", so my spoken sentences containing both written and spoken words often make my friends laugh. I go from toddler to president in a matter of words!

I know I seem to be 'thankful' for a lot of things, but I feel I cannot emphasize this enough: I am so thankful that the students in my school and town are so cooperative and helpful. I have many friends who are always willing to help me out, no matter how weird or confusing the question is. From attempting to explain Quantum Physics, to helping me translate todennäköisyys, to even showing me how to make coffee, every moment they help me is a moment they could be doing something else more productive. Every second anyone spends with me is thoroughly appreciated, and I hope everyone knows that. Minä rakastan minun pieni koulu Muhoksella, and I would not change it for anything in the world.