Daily Archives: October 21, 2016

We are learning Finnish – Me opimme suomea — 001

Week 42
Joensuu, Finland

For people who are native speakers of western European languages are,  some how, indulge to learn “easily” languages that are close to each other. For example, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, belong to a same family: Romance Languages. Without any expertise on linguistics, just as Spanish native speaker I know that those languages use the same alphabet and several words have similar roots. In the case of Finnish language, the only similarity I found with the other of western European languages is the alphabet because nothing else relates to it.

As native Spanish speaker, learning Finnish has been painful.  However, I am reaching a moment that I must learn it.

As a student of Finnish as second language, that frustrates me is the lack of vocabulary. I wish to have person who can read me over and over the same story until I get it and I memorize the words.   Yes, one can find exercises on several books to learn Finnish must of them are not meaningful for me or my needs. It is a bit frustrating because I need to learn the language and I cannot dedicate to study only the language and what I learn I do not feel it useful.

So, instead to complain I take action and I start this serie of posts: learning Finnish (oppiminen suomalainen) where I will write stories of what I learn in Finnish based on my activities in Finland. This exercise I know it will help me to learn the language, ans simultaneously I assume it will help others who are learning the language, to go through interactive stories that will help them to practice their language acquisition as well.

Wondering how will be my Finnish in one year form now! 🙂

Note: In the stories I assume reader have some level of basics on the language, i.e.  some verbs, prepositions. Taking into account my own level, it will be as being in the half of a book of any very first level of Finnish language.

Key words to remember:

  • upea = magnificent, gorgeous
  • maisema = landscape
  • kuten = like

To see the story in a full screen window, click here.