Depression and Finnish language

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Cinead
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Re: Depression and Finnish language

Post by Cinead » Tue Mar 12, 2019 3:18 pm

Thank you all for your answers.
Me and my partner talk about Norway, which does sounds lovely but it's hard for both of us to leave Finland. I do like the idea of Åland or Ostrbothnia, but it certainly would be difficult for both of us to get employment I imagine, even with swedish fluency.

One thing that also was problematic is the language of our children. My fiancée's mother tongue is finnish, mines are french and english. My mother and her family speaks french only. If I was able to learn finnish, no problem, we speak finnish at home, our kids grow as fluent finns who also would learn french from me, so they cam communicate with their grandmother back in France and the extended family. And they will anyway learn english with life.

If we end up moving to let's say Norway, then I envision : kids who speak norwegian outside, learn finnish from their mother, french from their father and at home hear english when mum and dad are talking to each others... (Because let's be real, we've been speaking english in our couple for so long now, even if we would both be fluent in norwegian we would still be using english as our main "home" language.) That sounds like a whole lot of languages for a developing child to take...
But yeah its all theoretical, I've seen kids who speaks many languages at home and in european schools, so who knows. For now I've settled that I will try to complete Suomen Mestari 3 and 4 before summer, and if I suceed, as a reward I will pay myself like a month of basic swedish or norwegian courses, whatever I can find...



Re: Depression and Finnish language

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browndude
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Re: Depression and Finnish language

Post by browndude » Tue Mar 19, 2019 9:32 am

Cinead wrote:
Tue Mar 12, 2019 3:18 pm
Thank you all for your answers.
Me and my partner talk about Norway, which does sounds lovely but it's hard for both of us to leave Finland. I do like the idea of Åland or Ostrbothnia, but it certainly would be difficult for both of us to get employment I imagine, even with swedish fluency.

One thing that also was problematic is the language of our children. My fiancée's mother tongue is finnish, mines are french and english. My mother and her family speaks french only. If I was able to learn finnish, no problem, we speak finnish at home, our kids grow as fluent finns who also would learn french from me, so they cam communicate with their grandmother back in France and the extended family. And they will anyway learn english with life.

If we end up moving to let's say Norway, then I envision : kids who speak norwegian outside, learn finnish from their mother, french from their father and at home hear english when mum and dad are talking to each others... (Because let's be real, we've been speaking english in our couple for so long now, even if we would both be fluent in norwegian we would still be using english as our main "home" language.) That sounds like a whole lot of languages for a developing child to take...
But yeah its all theoretical, I've seen kids who speaks many languages at home and in european schools, so who knows. For now I've settled that I will try to complete Suomen Mestari 3 and 4 before summer, and if I suceed, as a reward I will pay myself like a month of basic swedish or norwegian courses, whatever I can find...
I would like to still encourage you to keep learning Finnish. It may seem like a hard slog but it does get a lot, lot better when things start to click in place. However, if you are also keen to explore options in Norway etc.., I can tell you that kids are remarkably good at languages if they learn from their childhood. e.g. I know a couple, the mum is German, the dad is Hungarian, the kids go to Finnish daycare and they speak all 3 languages quite comfortably.
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Cinead
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Re: Depression and Finnish language

Post by Cinead » Sat May 11, 2019 10:04 pm

Sometimes I wonder why anyone would even bother moving to Finland when there's Sweden and Norway right next to it, with fairly similar culture and massively easier (and in my eyes prettier) languages... (If your mother tongue is indo-european)

Well, I'm almost at the end of Suomen Mestari 3, and still pretty much unable to form a single sentence without making a ton of mistakes. Today I wanted to say "Happy Mothers day", I said "Hyvää Äidinpäivää", turned out it was "Iloista Äitienpäivää" Oh yeah, I remember now, monikon genitiivi, which yeah I forgot how you were supposed to bend words ending with "I" and forgot that, I guess, consonant gradation doesn't apply... Or does it? I dont know... I'm probably just terrible at this... All of that brain twisting for the simplest of sentence "happy mothers day"...

Anyway, I'm rambling... It's just a scary though to spend the rest of your life isolated from people. There's a real shame to it too. Our flat's landlord is weirdly convinced I understand finnish, so every single day when I leave to and come back from work I do everything I can to avoid her so I don't have to "admit" that I don't speak finnish. Doesn't make sense, I know...

heretostay
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Re: Depression and Finnish language

Post by heretostay » Sun May 12, 2019 9:27 am

Don’t worry so much about being grammatically correct, just try to speak and make yourself understood. I am fluent but still make a ton of grammatical errors. Hyvää äidinpäivää is close enough.

Your landlord is probably speaking to you in Finnish to help you learn. That is the only way. I would suggest stop trying to avoid them and use the opportunity to practice. Yes some grammar knowledge is needed but it sounds like you are also working in that.

I feel that I have mastered Finnish as much as a foreigner really can (or needs to), but most of that came from working every single day on it by talking to Finnish people in Finnish.

necadam
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Re: Depression and Finnish language

Post by necadam » Sun May 12, 2019 1:21 pm

Cinead wrote:
Sat May 11, 2019 10:04 pm
Sometimes I wonder why anyone would even bother moving to Finland when there's Sweden and Norway right next to it, with fairly similar culture and massively easier (and in my eyes prettier) languages... (If your mother tongue is indo-european)
Depends what indo-european your mother tongue is. If it's some of the analytical ones with weird pronunciation that has not much to do with the way the words are written, such as French or English, then yea, Scandinavian languages might be closer. But if it's some of the synthetic ones that haven't lost most of inflection and their orthography actually corresponds with the way words are pronounced (such as Slavic), then the logical and clearly written Finnish makes much more sense, even if the vocabulary is quite foreign in the beginning.
Well, I'm almost at the end of Suomen Mestari 3, and still pretty much unable to form a single sentence without making a ton of mistakes. Today I wanted to say "Happy Mothers day", I said "Hyvää Äidinpäivää", turned out it was "Iloista Äitienpäivää" Oh yeah, I remember now, monikon genitiivi, which yeah I forgot how you were supposed to bend words ending with "I" and forgot that, I guess, consonant gradation doesn't apply... Or does it? I dont know... I'm probably just terrible at this... All of that brain twisting for the simplest of sentence "happy mothers day"...
I quite struggled with astevaihtelu, too. Until I learnt something about the etymology, and then the "exceptions" started to make sense. (In most textbooks, they don't explain these things at all.)
Anyway, I'm rambling... It's just a scary though to spend the rest of your life isolated from people. There's a real shame to it too. Our flat's landlord is weirdly convinced I understand finnish, so every single day when I leave to and come back from work I do everything I can to avoid her so I don't have to "admit" that I don't speak finnish. Doesn't make sense, I know...
It just takes some time. Any new language is hard if you are an adult and it isn't really close to something you already know.

necadam
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Re: Depression and Finnish language

Post by necadam » Sun May 12, 2019 1:24 pm

heretostay wrote:
Sun May 12, 2019 9:27 am
Don’t worry so much about being grammatically correct, just try to speak and make yourself understood. I am fluent but still make a ton of grammatical errors. Hyvää äidinpäivää is close enough.

Your landlord is probably speaking to you in Finnish to help you learn. That is the only way. I would suggest stop trying to avoid them and use the opportunity to practice. Yes some grammar knowledge is needed but it sounds like you are also working in that.

I feel that I have mastered Finnish as much as a foreigner really can (or needs to), but most of that came from working every single day on it by talking to Finnish people in Finnish.
This. You're in vitun Finland, be glad that people speak Finnish to you and take that as an opportunity to practice Finnish.
I actually hate the other way around (when people start to speak English as soon they notice any minor mistake or foreign accent), it's so humiliating!

necadam
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Re: Depression and Finnish language

Post by necadam » Sun May 12, 2019 1:29 pm

Cory wrote:
Sun Mar 17, 2019 5:33 pm
I just heard on one of the YLENews podcasts that if one is over 60 yrs old, the language requirement is waived for citizenship? Never heard this before. Can anyone confirm?
:lol:
Too lazy to check from Kansalaisuuslaki yourself?

Maeke
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Re: Depression and Finnish language

Post by Maeke » Tue May 28, 2019 8:34 am

I understand your frustrations. I will be moving to Finland permanently in about a month ago looking forward to learning this new language.
Any tips will be welcome!

Cinead
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Re: Depression and Finnish language

Post by Cinead » Sun Jul 07, 2019 2:01 am

heretostay wrote:
Sun May 12, 2019 9:27 am
Don’t worry so much about being grammatically correct, just try to speak and make yourself understood. I am fluent but still make a ton of grammatical errors. Hyvää äidinpäivää is close enough.

Your landlord is probably speaking to you in Finnish to help you learn. That is the only way. I would suggest stop trying to avoid them and use the opportunity to practice. Yes some grammar knowledge is needed but it sounds like you are also working in that.

I feel that I have mastered Finnish as much as a foreigner really can (or needs to), but most of that came from working every single day on it by talking to Finnish people in Finnish.
So the best one can hope to achieve with finnish is to "make yourself understood" while makimg tons of mistakes? That's not "living".... Thats "surviving" at best...
A language enthusiast I've been talking to recently said that talking with a good grammar and vocabulary was like wearing clean clothes in public: it's a matter of respect of the other and yourself. I would feel disrespectful towards finns if I would constantly butcher their language and make them go through me mKing tons of mistakes. They wouldn't anyway sit through it, since they switch to english as soon as they hear you're not 100% native sounding, effectively killing any possibility of ever feeling integrated...

And is it really what awaits me? A life of at best speaking in an improper way to people who would never consider me as one of them because of it? It would mean I could never truly be myself again...

I rally wish to know if it's possible to live with swedish only in the Vaasa area...? I don't want to leave Finland and I don't want my fiancée to leave her home country or mother tongue either...

heretostay
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Re: Depression and Finnish language

Post by heretostay » Sun Jul 07, 2019 7:29 am

You aren’t going to get very far at all with that attitude. The only way to learn to speak is by speaking! Finns themselves makes tons of grammatical mistakes daily and no one cares. They know their language is difficult so they see the effort you are making and accept you for that. They aren’t insulated at all even when I have made some SERIOUS errors in speaking. Out of thousands of Finns that I have talked to in my job, only once did I have someone upset with my lack of proper language skills and that was 4 years ago. I have integrated with my local community just fine and know others who have also had the same experience. So it will work if you put forth the effort. Keep making excuses why it won’t work instead of learning through making mistakes and I guarantee you will fail.

Upphew
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Re: Depression and Finnish language

Post by Upphew » Mon Jul 08, 2019 10:24 am

heretostay wrote:
Sun Jul 07, 2019 7:29 am
Keep making excuses why it won’t work instead of learning through making mistakes and I guarantee you will fail.
Word!

I thought learning is done by making mistakes once and then not repeating them. And even if you fail at that, you can always try again.
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agroot
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Re: Depression and Finnish language

Post by agroot » Wed Jul 10, 2019 9:07 pm

Cinead wrote:
Sat May 11, 2019 10:04 pm
Sometimes I wonder why anyone would even bother moving to Finland when there's Sweden and Norway right next to it, with fairly similar culture and massively easier (and in my eyes prettier) languages... (If your mother tongue is indo-european)
Because people don't expect you to learn since they know it's difficult? :lol: Most people speak perfect English here.

Caroline
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Re: Depression and Finnish language

Post by Caroline » Sat Jul 27, 2019 5:33 pm

I'm American and I speak Finnish fluently. I have been studying it since 1995, but it took years to feel confident enough to have a real conversation. I'll never be as good as a native speaker, but I got a passing grade on the national language exam to qualify for citizenship and I wrote a Finnish grammar reference book http://www.lulu.com/shop/liebenow-koivu ... 51920.html. I've always been interested in world languages, so that might have been an advantage. I used to be fluent in French in my teens. If you don't have a general interest in languages, it will be a lot harder for you to learn.

I personally do not think that Finnish overall is any harder or easier than any other language. Some things about it are harder, but other things are easier. If you let go of the expectation of trying to compare it to English or other Indo-European languages and just take it for what it is, that might make learning it a bit easier. Best of luck! :lightbulb:
Former expat in Finland, now living in New Hampshire USA.

Cinead
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Re: Depression and Finnish language

Post by Cinead » Mon Feb 03, 2020 3:17 pm

Hey. Sorry to bump up this old thread.

I was just wondering, does anyone had ever heard of therapy offered for immigrants that are unable to learn finnish?

FinlandGirl
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Re: Depression and Finnish language

Post by FinlandGirl » Mon Feb 03, 2020 6:49 pm

Cinead wrote:
Mon Feb 03, 2020 3:17 pm
I was just wondering, does anyone had ever heard of therapy offered for immigrants that are unable to learn finnish?
The usual therapy is a language course.


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