There’s an unspoken rule that the more Finnish courses you take, the better. I don’t like this rule. Here’s what we assume when we think another Finnish course is what we really need, and 5 helpful questions to help you decide if another Finnish course is what you really need.

I learned the partitive by trying to study it, and when that didn’t really help me grasp it, I TOOK TO THE STREETS. No, really. I read all the ads on the street and I hunted down the partitive. This is one of my favourite ways to learn. In today’s video, I give you an in-depth example of how I do this using a Subway ad.

Back when I first started learning Finnish, I thought of it as an exciting, intellectual, almost artistic challenge. I wanted to express myself in Finnish and I wondered about how I’d develop the ability to conjugate, inflect and live in Finnish! What I didn’t expect, was that I would learn a lot about myself on the way. I kind of just thought I’d learn Finnish. In the post I reflect on the 7 things I learned about myself and the world through this process.

Today I’m excited to present you with a collection of 7 Finnish sounds! These sounds are carefully curated from real life and can be used at your leisure. Just insert them into different situations and watch what happens! 😉

I believe every single person and being I come across knows something that I don’t know, and vice versa. For this reason, every interaction is a chance to learn something new, for ourselves and the people we interact with. This post explains my thinking and its far-reaching implications.

In this post I’ll tell you a bit about how I wrapped up 2017, my fresh intention for the new year and three of the dreams I know we can accomplish in 2018.

Miksi juuri tämä kysymys? Pari päivää sitten olin Helsingin junassa ystänä kanssa. Puhuttiin suomea ja vastapäätä istuva mies pahoitteli, että oli salakuntelemassa ja halusi kysyä vain pari asiaa minulta: mikä mun äidinkieli on, miten joudun Suomeen ja…kuinka kauan oon opiskellut suomea? Pahoin.kysymys.ikinä. Jos tunnet minut henkilökohtaisesti, ehkä tiedät, etten vastaa tähän kysymykseen selkeästi. Minun mielestä se…

“Words are not important in themselves, but as resonators for a center. […] All language is a longing for home.” — Coleman Barks in The Essential Rumi (pg. 17) If all language is a longing for home, and we speak English in a sea of Finnish, we will always associate home with another time, another place and another people. We will always see ourselves as other. And guess what?

Meet Maria Weidner: a native Berliner with an Indonesian soul. Maria is also a German teacher and artist. The first time I heard Maria speak Indonesian, time stopped. Maria, German a few moments ago, was no longer a German woman. She’d been transformed into an Indonesian woman, who is clearly Indonesian! Witnessing such a sense of ease, fluidity and joy when Maria speaks Indonesian (a language she learned as an adult) forces us to re-think all the things we thought we understood about culture, languages and ‘who we really are.’

In this vlog post, I discuss why I’m not learning any new languages right now and what I’m excited about instead. I also touch on a few of the following topics: Learning for fun from home vs learning abroad for ‘need’ vs learning for a real need + studying vs. learning + The pull of curiosity vs. the push of obligation + timing of language learning (also vs studying) + Looking at language learning in the context of your life