The life in Finland

[downhand]

and despite what they say, it's not a hard language to learn. finns just like to keep up that air of mystery and weirdness about themselves.

Any language can be learned by anyone, all locals have learned it as well (duh). The possible difficulty in learning Finnish comes from the fact that there are few commonalities with most other languages. So usually it's definitely something else than learning French for a Brit, Spanish for an Italian,...

Similarly Finnish is the easiest foreign language on earth to learn if you happen to speak Estonian as a native.

[beherenow]

nnickos,
you're well advised to invest time in learning finnish. i did, it didn't even cost me anything (it was CAISA in kaisaniemi - oh look, it still exists: http://www.caisa.fi/esittely).

Unfortunately no current finnish courses for adults. But thanks for the link, that's great to know about such organization!

[DMC]

Did anyone ever really truly meet a person who was fluent in, say, 1 year? Not a friend of a friend, but a real, live person?

The most amazing case I have personally encountered was a Polish guy. He runs a guest house in Poland where a group of us stayed. He spoke to my Polish colleague in Polish, to me in English, to our Estonian members in Russian and to my Finnish friend in Finnish. How come he spoke Finnish? He said before settling down at the guest house he had been a professional singer and had toured Finland a couple of times. Yet the Finnish he spoke was not just every day stock phrases. For example, my friend wanted to wash his car and the Polish guy apologised, in Finnish, that he had left his hosepipe out over the winter and it had frozen and the resulting splits made it unusable. How had he learned that level of Finnish while touring as a singer? Beats me.

[Jukka Aho]

Ah yes, picking up Finnish in a couple of years...... There were always those mythical people who picked it up in 6 months, everyone knew about them, but I don't recall anyone ever meeting one, and I never did. Did anyone ever really truly meet a person who was fluent in, say, 1 year? Not a friend of a friend, but a real, live person?

I've told the story of the Brazilian exchange student in my lukio class a number of times here...

Arriving at the beginning of the spring semester (or was it right before Christmas?), he only spoke English.

This went on the full semester, but changed with the onset of the summer holidays... which is when he demanded that his Finnish circle of friends (and presumably host families) only speak Finnish to him.

When I saw him again - this was in the fall when the schools started again - he was speaking pretty good casual Finnish with no noticeable accent. His vocabulary was probably limited, but the lack of an accent, his active attitude about using and conversing in the language, and being able to form coherent simple sentences with no obvious grammatical errors (most of the time) could have fooled people into thinking he's a native when he opened his mouth... save for the non-Finnish looks.

I recall he also had a favorite Finnish sing-along song... Tahdon rakastella sinua by Pelle Miljoona. ;)

His mother tongue was not Brazilian Portuguese but some local minority language, the name of which I have forgot.

I guess his "secret" was just the fact that he was in the position to demand that people speak Finnish to him full time, no exceptions... not even wanting to answer if someone addressed him in English, voluntarily subjecting himself to this immersive 24/7 language bath experience. And also being adamant that from now on, he only tries to express himself in Finnish, coping with all the communicative blunders and difficulties that may initially ensue and taking it as a learning experience.

[tuttu]

... This went on the full semester, but changed with the onset of the summer holidays... which is when he demanded that his Finnish circle of friends (and presumably host families) only speak Finnish to him.
...
His mother tongue was not Brazilian Portuguese but some local minority language, the name of which I have forgot.
...
I guess his "secret" was just the fact that he was in the position to demand that people speak Finnish to him full time, no exceptions... not even wanting to answer if someone addressed him in English, voluntarily subjecting himself to this immersive 24/7 language bath experience. And also being adamant that from now on, he only tries to express himself in Finnish, coping with all the communicative blunders and difficulties that may initially ensue and taking it as a learning experience.

this.

i don't like to show off, but rather want to inspire people learning finnish - i came to finland being 30+, and i've been in finland for 2 years when i started speaking only finnish.
and above is pretty much all the advice i was going to give.

i aslo heard that people who grew up bilingual (as i did) learn languages easier; i guess this is also true for that brasilian guy.

oh, one more thing: be sure to learn languages without translating.
i mean, learn finnish only using finnish.
at the beginning you might have to resort to some english/whatever, but your lessons and books should be one language only.
translating is not a good way to learn a language.