Living in a land full of linguists

In the United States most children are not given a choice to begin studying a second language until high school.  Sure, English is the national language in the US, but doesn't it make sense to start exposing our children to more languages at an early age?  I have to admit that I do have some regret about not having been taught any additional languages in my early years.  I was not exposed to any other languages until I started learning Spanish during my sophomore year in high school.  There are proven studies that learning a second or third language is much more effective when it is started before age of 7 or 8.

In Finland, it is mandatory for all kids to start learning a second language in 3rd grade.  In elementary school, most children learn both English and Swedish (Finland's 2nd national language) as second and third languages, respectively.  The third language is usually started at the 7th grade, and many children elect to start a fourth language at 8th grade.  So, by the time most children graduate from high school they are usually fluent in 3 or more languages. Since they start taking these language classes when they are fairly young, they build a solid base and much of the learning is preserved.  It is much harder to learn and retain a language when you start much later in life.  I am amazed everyday at how easily people switch between languages.  In my workplace we have several people who speak English, Swedish and Finnish in their daily interactions and they don't struggle at all. I also have some co-workers who speak German, Spanish, French, Romanian and Dutch.

In the United States, educators and parents might think that there is no point in learning additional languages because our only official language is English, but I think they are missing the point. There is strong learning and growth in the brain when we study and pick up additional languages and that training has been proven to facilitate other areas of learning.  There are only positive benefits of learning additional languages, and I think many American educators and parents might be short-sighted in their way of thinking.  Hopefully, in the future things will change and there will be an increased acceptance of learning additional languages in the United States.  I know that Spanish is becoming increasingly more important to learn, especially in my home state of California.  They really should require a second language like Spanish or French in grammar school; I think the benefits would be priceless.

My son, who moved to Finland at age 5 has learned the difficult Finnish language fluently after just under one year of living here.  He had heard a little bit of Finnish as a child, but had never spoken a word before we moved to Finland.  We basically did the immersion method, just placing him in an all Finnish school.  The teachers were very good about first explaining things in English and then switching to Finnish.  But, after 7 or 8 months they no longer had to use any English and switched to only Finnish.  Knowing how difficult the Finnish language is, I was amazed how quickly he learned.  He is even twisting most of the words correctly and in Finnish they have approximately 15 different cases for nouns.  One neat thing is that if you learn 2 languages early enough you will not have an accent in any of the languages and they will both sound natural and native.   At age 5 the brain is a sponge absorbing everything that is thrown at it, and kids learn fast.  I am glad that he was able to have this experience of learning another language at a young age. 

So you want to learn Finnish?

There is one topic I have avoided writing about in my blog. That would be in regards to my painful struggle with the Finnish language.  In the past I have always considered myself to be engaged and truly interested in learning foreign languages. However,  Americans like myself are a bit crippled in this respect and the majority of the US populous are monoglots.  Language learning just isn't supported in the United States the same way it is in Scandinavia and Europe.  We are not required to take languages in school and usually don't even start to learn them until High School (which is much too late).

Excuses aside, Finnish truly is a difficult language to learn, and some say it is one of the most difficult in all of Europe if not the entire world.  You might think why is Finnish any more difficult than most European languages?  First of all, Finnish doesn't belong to the same language tree as the other Germanic Scandinavian languages and it isn't really related to any other languages.  Finnish belongs to the Finno-Ugric language tree.  In fact the only other major languages in the Finno-Ugric tree are Estonian and Hungarian.  So, it is a truly unique language.   What makes it super difficult for Americans and other native English speakers without language backgrounds is the fact that the pronunciation is so difficult and there are so many different cases.  The Finnish alphabet uses a few special characters like the ö and the ä.  These have distinctly different sounds from the English o and a.  I won't get too deep into pronunciations, Finnish words, or grammar cases because that would be an entirely different post.  However, I do want to give an example of the twisting of words in Finnish.  For example, in English when you use a noun in a sentence like "glass", the word stays the same.  The spelling of the noun never changes.  However, in Finnish depending on how you use "glass" in the sentence, the word changes.  So if you drink from the glass, throw the glass, break the glass, put the glass on the table, etc.  The word will change in each case and you must remember how to twist the word in all the cases.  This is by no means an easy learning experience. I find it hard enough just to learn all the new verbs and nouns and then having to worry about twisting words up to 15 times is just mind boggling in my opinion.  You throw the difficult pronunciations on top of that and you are in for a very challenging language learning experience.

I had taken some Finnish lessons several years ago before moving to Finland, so I had some knowledge of the language and knew some vocabulary.  Also, now living here for 9 months I have obviously had more exposure to the language.   But, to be totally honest, Finnish is not a language you just pick up while living here.  You don't just string a bunch of words together and speak slowly in Finnish, you pretty much either know Finnish or you don't.  There really isn't much in between, because if you attempt to speak Finnish and you can't be understood by the locals, in 95% of the cases, you will get English spoken back to you.  Their command of the English language is very impressive to say the least.    It is very frustrating knowing how many Finns can speak perfect English, when I am in their country and can barely string 2 Finnish sentences together and make sense of it.   The Finnish language has been compared to a triangle, where one must learn the most difficult and challenging part at the base and then work their way up to the top of the triangle where mastery takes place.  The bottom of the triangle or base is very difficult and takes a long time to master, however once the rules are learned, the learning curve gets easier. Where in English, the language has been compared to an upside down triangle where the rules of learning in the beginning are easier and one can learn to speak basic English fairly fast.  However, as they climb up the triangle, the challenges grow with the different rules of English words and tenses.  So, basically what I am trying to say is that Finnish is extremely challenging in the beginning and English not so much, but in the long term Finnish gets easier where English can get more difficult.  It is a combination of the initial difficulties and complexities of Finnish combined with the fact that so many speak English which makes learning Finnish a difficult but not impossible proposition for any expat living in the Helsinki area.