How I Learned Finnish (Without Studying Grammar) - Part 1
*This blog is reader-supported. I may earn a commission for purchases made through links in this post. Read full Affiliate Disclaimer here.
Finnish is considered one of the most difficult languages in the world. Mainly because the grammar is so complicated. But also because the words don’t seem to resemble other languages. It’s like it is it’s own thing. And I’ve wondered why that actually is the case since so many languages are in some ways influenced by one another.
Finnish seems way less so than other languages. The closest language to it being Estonian and the structure of the language have things in common with Hungarian.
Finnish is also a very beautiful language with rich expressions. And it feels very magical to speak it. It’s just very different and unique, which is what I love about it. Polyglots like Stefano Suigo who speak 10 languages or so has even said it’s his favorite language to speak.
Whenever I’ve read blogs from people learning languages I’ve often found myself wanting to really know more of how a person learned those languages. The specifics, methods, routines and daily activities. Exactly what they did in the beginning, the middle and later on.
So my aim with this post is to really give you as clear of a picture as I can to how I went about learning Finnish. To give you an idea what the process can look like and hopefully be helpful to you - whether you’re learning Finnish or any other language.
The methods I’ve used have honestly been very simple and uncomplicated and to me they’ve worked like a charm to where I can now sit with my wife (who is Finnish) on the balcony and have meaningful chats about life, dreams and all sorts of topics. This is 2.5 years into me learning it.
It all started at IKEA…
For a long time I had wanted to learn Finnish. I’m actually part Finnish (like a 16th, but still) and grew up 1.5 hours from the Finnish border in northern Sweden. Something about the country was just appealing to me. Even though I had only been there once as a child and I certainly didn’t know the language or even much about the culture. Not much beyond some stories that my grandpa told me about our family roots there.
I was really into the Finnish band Nightwish as a teenager and I just thought the language sounded very exotic and interesting. Like a fairy tale language (The Elvish language in “Lord of the Rings” is actually heavily inspired by Finnish).
About 4-5 years ago I went to IKEA at the border of Finland and Sweden. I saw a lot of Finnish people there and somehow I felt something in my heart being drawn to them. I was single at the time and I remember thinking I wouldn’t mind meeting a Finnish woman.
Around the same time I started using the Flashcard app Memrise to learn some Finnish. I used it for a few months but didn’t learn much honestly. And I didn’t really know anyone from Finland so I wasn’t that motivated to continue with it. I also had no idea how to really learn a language at the time.
Fast forward another 2-3 years when I met my wife (I knew there was a reason for my feeling at IKEA hehe). We had been dating for a few months when I decided to learn Finnish. I had now been learning Cantonese for 1 year and I was gonna add Finnish into the mix.
And now things were different because I had a strong motivation and with the success I had had with Cantonese I was confident I would be able to learn it.
The first 6 months
When I started learning Finnish I kept it pretty casual. My main focus was still on Cantonese but I figured why not get started even if it was just a bit on the side. I wanted to be able to speak to my girlfriend’s (who I’m now married to) family.
I had already bought the ring at this point so I was definitely serious about it and I had a very strong “why” for learning it. This was in December 2018, 3 months after we met.
First I wanted to just get a basic grasp of the language so I bought the Finnish Pimsleur course.
Pimsleur is a beginner’s course where you’d first hear a short dialogue between two people and then that dialogue was broken down into a lesson.
I enjoyed it and I liked that part that it was that it was all audio. That way I could do it as I was doing the dishes and other things. And the cool part was that it was interactive too. You were asked to participate and being asked questions like: “A young woman enters the room. Ask: “who is she?”… followed by a pause where you were prompted to answer in Finnish: “kuka hän on?”
I liked this approach as you got to try and speak the language right away. That way get a foundation for the pronunciation as you mirror the audio of the native speakers. This is very important as to develop good habits that you won’t have to fix later.
These days Pimsleur has a subscription service, which is much more affordable than buying the whole course since you only pay per month of using it. You can get a free 7 day trial (for US, UK, Canada or Australia) or a free lesson (for all other countries) by clicking HERE.
I was living in Sweden at the time and my girlfriend in Finland. I remember driving from Sweden to Finland seeing nothing but roads and forrest and listening to these lessons and speaking along with it. Such precious memories.
The roads go on forever into the never-ending forrest of the mystical land of Finnish Lapland.
In the beginning I had a bit of a challenge with how strong the “r” sounds were. We have those same “rolling r” sounds in Swedish but they are a lot softer. And also how heavily pronounced the “h” sounds were. It would leave me a bit out of out of breath and my tongue a bit tired from the heavily rolled “r“ sounds
Pimsleur was a great way for me to get to practice those and it didn’t take too long for me to be comfortable with them.
Would you like to know my best secrets
to learn any language successfully?
A break & getting into reading
Once I finished Pimsleur I had a decent enough foundation even though I was still just a beginner. There was probably a month or two where I didn’t really do much of anything with Finnish.
I wasn’t in any rush to learn it since I knew I was about to propose to my girlfriend and I knew Finnish was gonna be with me for the rest of my life.
This removed a lot of stress and pressure for me and let me actually just enjoy the learning process.
I had heard about this language learning app/website called LingQ (get 37% off and extended free trial) and I had been curious to try it out for a while. At the time they didn’t have Cantonese though and I was still learning the characters so I hadn’t had an opportunity to try it out.
Finnish, however, was the perfect opportunity for me to give it a try.
There was something so appealing that I could just use whatever material I found interesting and use that to learn a language. And the color-coding of different words depending if they were “new”, “known” or ones you were “currently learning” I liked a lot.
As well as the fact that LingQ would count the new words you encountered and how many words you knew. It seemed to use the best of “gamification” and “leveling up” while actually doing activities that worked and were effective while using interesting content.
I was away working in Norway at the time when I got my LingQ subscription and my language learning has never been the same. I have used it every single day since.
LingQ had the beginner’s course “Suomen Mestari” available for free (yay!) so I got started with that. It was great because it was at the right level for me and had all the audio along with the text. It was a lot of dialogues and descriptions of people and situations.
So I learned new words and phrases by reading the texts from the lessons and I then listened to them while biking to work just to reinforce what I had read and to practice my listening ability. Slowly the language started becoming more and more familiar.
I have vivid memories of taking my bike to work in the beautiful Fjords of Norway and while I was admiring the stunning scenery I was listening to “Suomen Mestari” on repeat.
Some of these moments are why language learning is so special to me. Just like you might attach certain songs to certain seasons in your life, or places you’ve been. In very much the same way I remember using certain kinds of teaching materials while being in different parts of the world.
Seeing the majestic beauty of the Fjords of Sykkylven, Norway will always remind me of
”Suomen Mestari” and my beginnings of learning Finnish.
I absolutely loved this way of learning because it was very motivating to see the word count of “known words” go up with LingQ. So using the gamification that apps like Duolingo employ, but actually using useful content with an interesting story about different people in Finland.
I went through Suomen Mestari 1, 2 & 3 and listened to all the lessons probably a good 20 times at least. I remember my first goal was to get to 10.000 known words. It seemed like a good goal to have.
After about 2-3 months of this it was time for the next step on my Finnish learning journey.
It was time to get into real interesting content and what I did next is pretty much the only thing I’ve been doing until today (currently being 2.5 years into learning) with amazing results.
Read the 2nd part of the story: “How I Learned Finnish (Without Studying Grammar) - Part 2”
Would You Like my FREE Guide”Intuitive Language Secrets”?
