Finnish IRL

The learning curve

How hard, how long, and what is worth doing. The honest numbers on learning Finnish, where the app stops helping, and what the hour counts leave out.

8 articles

200 Finnish subtitle words. Mä is not one of them
570 million tokens, and mä is not in the top 200 16 min read
Duolingo Finnish stops where real Finnish starts
Thirty-five units enter a coffee room. The textbook pronouns do not survive 10 min read
8 kinds of Finnish TV, ranked by how much you catch
Cartoons are the standard advice, and they are harder than the news 10 min read
Finnish grammar is the cheap part
The same budget as Greek. The bill arrives elsewhere 11 min read
Yes, Finnish is related to Hungarian. It barely shows
A Finn understands no Hungarian. Estonian is the one that pays 9 min read
Can you work in Finland without Finnish? 2,355 ads
Seven ads in ten are in Finnish. The other three are not spread evenly 10 min read
Is it rude to speak bad Finnish? 93% want you to
75 per cent draw the line somewhere else entirely 8 min read
Why Finns switch to English, and the four fixes
She gets answered in English before she has opened her mouth 11 min read

Finnish has a reputation it half deserves. The cases are not what stops people and the grammar is not either - what stops people is the A2 cliff, where the course ends and the language being spoken at you has barely started.

These are the measured answers: how long a year of full-time study actually buys, how many word forms get you half of spoken Finnish, the exact unit where Duolingo stops, and why putting the dictionary form on the flashcard is the wrong thing to put on the flashcard.

If the reason for the hours is a residence permit rather than a conversation, the target is a defined one: the YKI test and the level it asks for. This site covers the comprehension half of it and is not a course.