Learning Something Every Day

So, my new "thing" lately? I mean besides spending all my free time (and not so free time....) emailing or texting the re-acquainted former flame? I'm learning a new language. And of all the hundreds of languages for me to choose, I decided on Finnish.

Yes, I do have a reason other than just because no one else in the area would ever think to learn that one. I have friends who live in Finland. I decided that I'd like to be able to read it because when Riikka writes in Finnish, it's beautiful. And as I started teaching myself, I realized that it wouldn't be so terrible for my first trip oversees to finally happen sometime relatively soon. And I'm more likely to go where I 1) know someone and 2) somewhat speak the language.

So a week or two ago, I got online and find some sites to help me begin to read and hopefully eventually speak the lovely language. I've got a very limited vocabulary right now, consisting of not quite 200 words, none of which are verbs (unless you count the one word that can be used to say "be careful"). However, I know enough that if I were to somehow find myself magically transported suddenly to the middle of Finland, I would be able to ask for the trains (junat), the telephone (puhelin), the bathroom (wc), and the ingredients to make a sandwich (leipä - bread, kinkku - ham, and juusto - cheese). I could also tell the police (poliisi) that I need help (apua), a doctor (lääkäri) and a hospital (sairaala). I can count to ten (kymmenen) and say all the days of the week. And of course, the most important word for a Deema about town: shoes! (kengät). No, that wasn't actually the FIRST word I learned (but close).

The biggest problem I'm having is learning to pronounce the words. I've got a pretty good idea of the way the words sound (almost every language is easier to learn than English because most of them stick to the rule that each letter makes the same unique sound each time) but I have no idea how the inflections work. Also, I'm unclear on the meaning of "long" vs "short" sounds as both consonants and vowels can be either long or short (with English it's only vowels that we do that to). And I've yet to figure out the difference in sound from the "a" and "o" and the "ä" and "ö".

Since I have no verbs in my vocabulary yet, I'm not making full sentences yet, but once I do start, then I can see another problem teaching myself is going to give me. That's the problem of learning sentence structure. I barely understand how we form sentences in English and now I'm going to have to figure it out by myself in Finnish. Spanish sentence structure made perfect sense to me and German eventually started to click. I can only hope Finnish is as simple and straight-forward as those two.

Naturally, I had to choose to learn a language not taught at Clark (or any other institutions near here that I can find). But honestly, I think I will be better for it. I think the struggle will help me learn it that much better and hopefully this one won't leak out the hole in my brain that made me lose most my Spanish and German words.