Anyone speak Finnish?

oxist258

oxist258

oxist258

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Joined
22 Mar 2006
Posts
286
Hey,

As title really :) I've just started learning Finnish (via book/CD) and finding it very difficult at the moment, mainly because it is so different from most other European languages. I'm planning on giving it a month of concerted effort, then heading up to Finland for a long weekend to consolidate it (thank heavens for cheap Ryanair flights) - in the meantime, does anyone have any advice?!
 
Don't try to learn everything all at once. An hour or so a day is more than enough (I doubt the brain can even process a whole hours worth).

Being with people who speak the language is obviously the best way to learn and so your time in Finland will be worthwhile. As long as you know the basics then you should be ok as most young Finnish people can speak good english (although they always say their english is poor).

Don't sit and watch Finnish TV though as half of it is in a different language :p some German shows, Spanish shows, English shows...

Be thankful they use the same sort of character set we use ;) made Russian so much more difficult to understand when you have no idea how to pronounce the individual letters :p

Kiitos!
 
Smit said:
Don't try to learn everything all at once. An hour or so a day is more than enough (I doubt the brain can even process a whole hours worth).

Being with people who speak the language is obviously the best way to learn and so your time in Finland will be worthwhile. As long as you know the basics then you should be ok as most young Finnish people can speak good english (although they always say their english is poor).

Don't sit and watch Finnish TV though as half of it is in a different language :p some German shows, Spanish shows, English shows...

Be thankful they use the same sort of character set we use ;) made Russian so much more difficult to understand when you have no idea how to pronounce the individual letters :p

Kiitos!
Click to expand...

A sensible reply! :) Thanks for the advice. I've just been pottering around so far on basic phrases so I can carry on a conversation, but am building up a bit of network of Finnish friends who all speak reasonable English and I want to able to chatter back in Finnish. The general composition of the language is totally different from English though (ie, lots of suffixes etc) which I am sure will be fine when I get used to it, but at the moment is just a nightmare to get my head round. It is nice to have a new challenge though...
 
The language part of your brain stops developing almost after the age of 12, I wouldn't bother trying to learn another language :p
 
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