You will be in big trouble then, if your husband dies of an accident or illness, it happened to me, although my Finnish level is about B1, my Finnish wife past away (next week) 5 years ago from Cancer. Suddenly every thing where I need Finnish became difficult. Just only talk to the school is already a problem (in my case). Messages in the school app are all in Finnish and when requesting the teachers to make a small English summary of the message at the end, for foreign parents, is most of the time receiving the standard answer that the school is Finnish and if you want English, you kids should be on an English school (while my kids are Finnish first language speakers....WTF), incidentally there is one teacher that does message in English.latikajamal wrote: ↑Sun Aug 31, 2025 8:34 pmI see your point, but honestly it just hasn’t been necessary in my case. My husband takes care of the finnish/swedish side when needed and for everything else English has been enough. Between running our business and raising our son, I just haven’t had the time or the push to focus on language learning. Maybe one day I’ll get around to it, but so far it hasn’t really caused problems for me.
Yeah, I know a few simple words like thank you, etc..but I don’t really use them since I can’t have a full conversation. I just speak English everywhere and people always reply in English. Same with my son’s school, the teacher even sends the weekly activities in English, so it’s been easy to manage that way.
Honestly, I sometimes regret not learning because I know it would make things like citizenship easier. But I just haven’t been able to push myself to do it, I don’t really have the feeling or motivation since I’ve managed fine so far in my life here. Maybe that’s why I haven’t taken it seriously, because I never felt like I needed it.
That said, I find ChatGPT app in my phone the best translation solution for this school messaging now (google always made an incomprehensible translation) so it is no longer a problem, but it has been troublesome in the past 5 years.
Another very simple and mundane / stupid example:
I needed to renovate the drawers in the kitchen cabinet (the one where you keep your knifes and forks and spoons etc.) they were plastic on the inside and the house was build (so the kitchen as well) in 1982... Everything was a weird different than standard size so I could not buy a fitting replacement.
I needed to build the drawers from scratch so decided to build them from wood.
But then I needed new sliding irons for the drawers, they are correctly called "Drawer runners" in English. I have searched the translation for this but could not find any result that worked on a shopping website from for example Bauhaus or K-rauta etc.
I asked my kids what those things are called in Finnish, but they are either too young or not interested in renovating and building or such specific parts that they could not give me an answer on that. I called (non finnish) friends in Finland and they did not know..
Eventually after several hours wasting time, I called Piet form this forum an he told me the damn things are called "liukukisko" and I immediately found them at the K-rauta website.
My wife would have known instantly....
Well this might not seem trivial, but it is just a small indication of how difficult things suddenly become, even with a modest knowledge of Finnish language.
Other more complex issue might be searching for companies and comparing them for quality and price, that do for example ground work, build foundations, cut trees, repair your car, replace a roof. Lots of those priced modestly, will only speak Finnish (companies from over the City border in the more rural area).
Just a well meant warning for future risk, it is always good to invest some time in the local language,
(although I need to admit that Finnish is a language that is only used in Finland so a pretty waste of time to invest time in if you plan to leave this country again being it also one of the most difficult languages to learn).