Survival Finnish

Even though we have only had 4 class periods so far – by this we mean four meetings of Survival Finnish and no meetings of any other classes yet – we actually have been learning a good bit of Finnish (Suomi, pronounced “swoh-mee”). We’ve learned the basics, like “hey” - moi, “bye” - moi moi, and “thanks” - kiitos (“key – tohs”). Today we worked on numbers, and we are proud to say that we can successfully count to ten. We can also tell you our birthdays:

Jaimen syntymapäivä oon kaksikymmentayksi helmikuu tuhotyhdeksansatakahdeksankymmentakahdesksan. (Jaime’s birthday is 21 February 1988.)

Elizabethin syntymapäivä oon yhdeksan elokuu tuhotyhdeksansatakahdeksankymmentakahdesksan. (Elizabeth’s birthday is 9 August 1988.)

But our favorite part of learning Finnish is definitely pronouncing a few certain words that are just really fun to say. Some examples of these words inlclude Nuppu ("noo-poo"), the name of our Survival Finnish teacher, and Korppi (“core-pee”), the name of our online course management system - the words always have two syllables, and the really fun part is that you pause between the first and second syllable, and then your voice jumps up about half an octave to say the second part. Or at least that’s the way we like to say them – and we’ve been having way too much fun around the flat using those words as much as we possibly can – but we were also reassured today when the Irish guy sitting a row or two in front of us totally pronounced one of our new vocabulary words the same way.

PS – We love your comments!! :) If there’s anything you’re curious about or would like us to talk about, let us know!