its been thirteen months since i started to learn finnish. not once over those thirteen months did i ever feel as if i was beginning to master the language. every time i think i am beginning to get a handle on it, something crops up to upset things again. today was one of those days. the finnish we are learning is formal finnish, its the written language. what people speak is completely different, and today we spent some time looking at the spoken finnish.

in the spoken version, words are shortened, skipped, changed for russian/swedish/english variants and ofter just ignored. some examples: “missä sinä olet?” (where are you) becomes “mis sä oot” when spoken. “oletko sinä kotona?” (are you at home?) becomes “oot sä himassa”. (‘hem’ being the swedish for ‘home’)

so after 13 months of language tutition it is still incredibly difficult to actually take part in a proper converasation. (that being said, it still an incredibly amazing language to learn, but i wont be anyway usefull with finnish for another three of four years yet)