How I have been learning Finnish language

December 2022

I started studying Finnish in Prague and shortly after moving to Helsinki I enrolled in a language school. There are plenty of Finnish language courses in Finland with very affordable prices. I chose an intensive course because I wanted to speak and understand Finnish as soon as possible. The classes were three times a week, four hours each. I was very lucky to have an excellent teacher who made me look forward to the classes. However, the beginning was a little bit intimidating.

The bible of all those trying to learn Finnish is the textbook Suomen mestari, meaning Finnish Master, which has several volumes and almost all language schools use it. In Prague we finished the course at the level A1.2, having still some chapters left at the first volume of the textbook. So, I signed up in Helsinki for A1.2, where we started with the second volume right away. The second book is sold in two editions, which are very different from each other. There are different texts and exercises. Of course, we were following the old version and I had the new one. Our teacher said "Vanha Suomen Mestrari on parempi, uusi ei ole hyvä" "The old Suomen Mestari is better, the new one is not good." And that was it. Our teacher spoke to us only in Finnish, including explaining the grammar. I left the first lesson feeling like I was not supposed to be there and that I should have taken a much lower-level Finnish course.

During the first class I was terrified and was looking around at the others to see if they weren´t catching on too. When we asked a question in English, we got an answer in Finnish. Only occasionally our teacher slipped a word in English, but for the whole four hours of one class we could count these English words on our fingers. I was telling my Petri at home that maybe our teacher doesn't know English and Petri laughed "You bet he does!" I googled whether one can learn a foreign language by listening to something one doesn´t understand. The conclusion was that in time one does understand, however, to actively use the language one must also study.

The course was really challenging. We had to go through four chapters in the textbook in four weeks. And in the follow-up course, four more chapters to finish the textbook. I had a very sympathetic cheerful lecturer who made the lessons fun and was able to work very effectively with time and limited options. Due to the number of people and the amount of grammar to explain, it was not possible for us all to discuss together. However, we still talked a lot as the teacher supplied us each day with the list of questions which we were asking in pairs. While we were doing that, our teacher was walking around the classroom, listening and helping us. The questions were usually aimed at practising newly learnt grammar.

Every class, we were bombarded with new vocabulary. Sometimes we played a great game in small groups, where each of us would pull a word card out of the pile so that the others couldn't see it. That person then tried to describe the meaning of the word without saying it and others had to guess. And so, on and on. That was great fun. For example, I guessed milky way, but translated it straight into Finnish as Maitotie. But it wouldn't be Finnish if there wasn´t something special. In Finland, they don't have a milky way, they have a Linnunrata. The translation is a bird road. 

When we started to lose our attention during the classes, our teacher took a paper and a pencil and was drawing different pictures which he was displaying on the wall using a projector. He was using the pictures to explain new words and we literally loved it. Every time he started to draw, we held our breath and waited to see what would happen. Simple pencil strokes made people, animals, or even a runny nose come to life. Anyway, four hours are long time, so when it was too much for us, about halfway through the lesson, the lecturer reluctantly shouted "Pitää tauko" "Take a break". Sometimes we had to remind him.

It is said that learning Finnish is very difficult at the beginning and then it gets easier. Like an inverted pyramid. Well, I hope it's not a fairy tale, because I've only been in the hard phase for a long time. Oppositely, English is like a classic pyramid. Easy at first and gradually getting more and more difficult. Our teacher gave us an example with the simple sentence "I like you." In English, one just puts together the three words as they appear in the dictionary. However, in Finnish, one needs to know already three grammatical rules (sanatyyppi, verbityyppi, rektio) to form the sentence "Minä pidän sinusta."

From my point of view, the most difficult thing about Finnish is that the words are unlike any other language. Everything is completely different. Our teacher told us that Swedes are admirers of France, so they borrowed a lot of words from them, which they phonetically write in Swedish way. However, Finns are admirers of Finland, so they have created their own words and adopt words from foreign languages only very rarely.

During this Christmas which we spent with my Petri, his mum and her husband, I realize that I made some progress. I wasn´t totally lost in the conversations and I at least knew what they were talking about. I was trying to say some simple sentences in Finnish, and they were speaking to me slowly and the way I could understand. It wasn´t always successful but it was definitely a huge step forward. It was also happening, that I understood the conversation, but before I figured out in my mind how to translate what I wanted to say, the topic of the discussion had changed. But it was much better compared to the summer when I was absolutely lost.

I still have a long way to go with learning Finnish, but these small results motivate me to continue.