Suomi ei ole vaikeaa, suomi on erilaista!

"Finnish is not difficult, it is just different" is one of the phrases used to encourage those who start learning Finnish. Apart from being enthusiastic, new pupils tend to be suspicious so the statement is "proven" with various examples. Bus in Finnish for example is bussi, museum is museo. Who claimed Finn-Ugrian vocabulary was difficult!? And with a few tricks you are able to understand even more words. As soon as you know that the B in foreign words often changes to a P, you can easily decipher words such as pankki and pallo. A bank and a bal, indeed.

Those saying that Finnish is difficult refer to the 14 and a half cases Finnish has. But that is a statement only made by people who are too much set in their own syntax language. Case are not difficult, but very practical. Certainly, since (almost) every case has its own unique ending. So, as soon as you know that the vocabulary is quite easy and the cases are practical it should be no trouble learning Finnish, right?

Alas. No. Finnish ís a difficult language. In the beginning, I was also enthused by the language and agreed that Finnish was just different. Until my teacher demystified this claim. She said, right away in the first lesson: “some say that Finnish is just different but I don’t think so: Finnish ís a difficult language”. That’s not quite the encouraging pep talk you’d hope for. But why is Finnish difficult?

The main difficulty in studying Finnish is the vocabulary. Those easy examples are carefully chosen by the publicity department. Almost all of the very basic words are very alien to non-native speaker. Äiti and isä, for mother and father or valokuva for photograph, to name a few. If you want to speak Finnish you’ll have to learn every single word by heart.

Cases are handy indeed. Having studied Latin and Greek I learned to value cases and certainly those with unique endings. It does pay having to bother learning yet another different ending. In the middle of a text you’ll be happy to be súre what case the word is in. There’s one thing the publicity department forgot the mention: switching letters and awkward stems. Knowing the word and the case ending is by far not enough, you have take into account vowel harmony, consonant switching and probably some more things I haven’t heard of yet.

So, why am I studying Finnish then? If it is indeed a difficult language! Well. Doing difficult things is highly rewarding and I am extremely motivated. Being able to communicate with people who are not used to see foreigners who speak their native tongue is equally rewarding. It is a beautiful language. Forget about the passionate southern tongues, try listening to the melodic and intriguing northern languages and be convinced. And if you’d be put off by the vocabulary you have to learn by heart, try using Jmemorize. You can download it for free, it’s an open source program and it is very, very useful tool to learn basically anything by heart. If you’d be interested in the Finnish-Dutch files I have already made for the program ask me about it. I’ll be happy to share them with other brave souls!