I´d like to buy an Ä

Bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing...There you see. No, wait. I´m not talking about these blind German retards who insisted on dolling up all by themselves for their big moment of fame on Glücksrad. I´m talking about the unique nature of suomen kieli, the Finnish language. If you are from another European or English spoken country and you stumble over finnish noums like posti, grilli, bussi, taksi, etc. you might think that a) this is rather cute, b) this sounds all pretty familiar and therefore c) learning the language is gonna be a piece of cake. Well, you are terribly wrong. Forget everything you know. It ain´t gonna help you because you are fooled by loan words and here the similarity ends abruptly. In my first post I described Finnish as close to extraterrestrial, which was maybe a bit mean (Yours truly was in for a dramatic effect as usual). But it´s fair and more friendly to call it a secret language. The term is accurate because a) it´s spoken by 0,05 % of the global population, b) even if you learn it, spoken Finnish and its many dialects might differ so much from its written form that you´re still absolutely clueless and c) to further round off the mystique Finns sometimes start to whisper at the end of a sentence. They sound as if they are exhausted from carrying the burden of a dark, well-kept secret. And they can talk while inhaling! It´s like writing with magic ink or something...just miraculous! Today the first part of my intensive language course has endend. I like to imagine that I get a glimpse of light at the end of a long tunnel but quite much still looks like this to me:

Bon appétit!

Let´s face it, it´s not the easiest language on the planet. It doesn´t belong to either the indogermanic or romanic family and that makes it so difficult for many foreigners like me. Finno-Ugric, that´s what it is. Estonia and Hungary are linguistic relatives and while you can really see some similarities between Finnish and Estonian, love letters between Helsinki and Budapest will most likely be written in English. All of the above makes Finnish highly unique and interesting. I am surrounded by that secret language every day and I wanna crack the code to become agent 00 JottEff with the licence to spell. If you like to aim high I recommend you to try it yourself. You will find that Finnish sounds very nice (listen to a sample), the grammar is in fact very logical and it is one of the world´s best languages to curse in, perkele! You will start to like these funny details that make Suomi so adorable. For instance, there are no equivalents for the words he and she. Both is hän in Finnish, that´s why Finns mix up the English personal pronouns on a regular basis. Don´t be confused when you hear someone say "I was talking to my girlfriend and he said..." That doesn´t mean that his girlfriend is still a boy about to have a sex change. The more plausible explanation is that this person has made a common mistake, Finns are just not used to distinguish between male and female personal pronouns, the context tells them if the conversation is about a woman or a man. One thing you should always keep in mind when speaking Finnish is the pronounciation. Of course this is important in every language but the Finns are pretty uptight with it. Some words look almost the same but it´s a double consonant or vowel that makes the difference. The difference though might be enormous. For example, if I say: "Minä tapaan sinut kello viisi" I tell you that I will meet you at five o´clock. If I say: "Minä tapan sinut kello viisi" it translates to "I will kill you at five o´ clock." So if you confirm a date and she starts running for her life, you know that you screwed up the pronounciation. Quite interesting somehow that the Finnish verbs "to meet" and "to kill" are so close to each other. Wonder why...has anyone done some research about this? Another curiosity is the shortage of words at first sight. Sentences can manage quite well with only one or two words: "Oletko iloinen? -Olen." ("Are you happy? -Yes, I am"). Even one word alone can be bursting with information. If someone tells you for instance that he is "talossani" you have a quite distinctive description of his whereabouts. He says "house-in-my" or "in my house" without wasting too much breath. Then there are so many other interesting things like untranslatable words and verbs, or words that even the Finns regard as sounding funny like "lämpimämpi"(comparative form of warm, = warmer). The list is long and you should really take a look at it. Needless to say that I am still making many mistakes but at least I have heard some nice compliments about the way my poor broken Finnish sounds. Sometimes I´m a bit frustrated when the grammar won´t penetrate my thick skull but giving up is not an option! The quest continues next week.

The house of horrors, I´m in torture chamber No. 17 on the 3rd floor. Just kidding, of course...

I´m attending class at Työväenopisto in Herttoniemi, that´s just three metro stops from my place. Hopefully four times a week, three hours a day will do the trick in the long run. Part 2 of the course is ahead of me and the going is about to get tough. No easy way out anymore with explanations in English which was the habit in the first part. Our (very nice and friendly) teacher told us (very nicely) that from next Monday she will speak Finnish 98% of the time and expects us to answer in Finnish, too (not so very nice but more than reasonable). I know that the day will come when I´ll be able to communicate with people over here in their mother tongue, it is just a question of time. If I just wasn´t so impatient...