Finnish is not hard its just different

"If you declare yourself lost before you fight you are bound to failure"

In the time that I have been here (over one year), I have been studying the finnish language. Many things are said about the language on the web. One of the things for instance being that it is the hardest (or one of the hardest) languages to learn in the world. I find this statement difficult to believe given that people who speak all the languages are hard to find.

I have to admit in any case, that the Finnish language has not been te easiest for me.



Here are a few of my own observations keeping in mind all the foreigners that I know that have had success learning the language.

• The most commong success has been in taking one of the "integration finnish courses". Courses that last 3-6 hours a day and may last up to 1 entire year. Not everyone is able to take participate because some of need to study and/or work. But if you can, do it.
• It is important that you know that there is a formal language that is tought in the language courses, and there is also the spoken version. In many cases it changes quite a lot. You should put pressure on your teacher(s) to focus also on the way normal people speak. At least if your goal is to communicate.
• Finnish is not a difficult language, however the structure of the sentences and the logic is very different than Roman and Anglo-rooted languages. Therefore you need to keep an open mind and not ask rhetorical questions like "but why is it like that?".
• Finnish is a very primitive language. If you begin to identify the common traits and the relationships of some words you will be able to guess many other ones.

I myself do not speak Finnish very well yet. But I am on my way :)