People would often ask me: “How did you learn Finnish?” and I wouldn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how I did it, it seemed like a random smørrebrød of ways.

Then a couple months ago, Cory, a high school friend of mine, came to visit me in Helsinki. He’s always been excited about languages and he was looking forward to picking up a bit of Finnish during his time here. It didn’t take me long to figure out that our ways of learning were quite similar…