This school term went out on a difficult note. Unfortunately, it simply wouldn't be right to share the gory details.
I'm a tease, I know. Blame the fact that I egotistically chose to share too many personal details when I undertook this blogging project.
I can tell you that I reconnected with a few of my friends from the intensive course last Friday evening, and I can confirm that it was an incredibly good time. It was also a great chance to speak Finnish. See, the four of us - two Chinese women, a Hungarian woman and me - really only share one common language and, for once, that language isn't English. Throughout the evening, I kept wondering what a Finnish person might think of our little Finnish-language get-together.
I often overhear people of various foreign origins speaking English together; even if they've studied Finnish, I suppose it's easier to resort to the language they've likely spent many more years listening to, reading and perfecting. In our little group of expats, English ability varies from native proficiency to zero proficiency. Finnish is, therefore, our common language.
As an additional bonus, we don't feel self-conscious speaking Finnish amongst ourselves - we all make egregious errors, pause for long periods in order to recall a particular word or declension, and struggle to express ourselves.
The problem lies in that very openness, though. You should hear some of the absolutely ungrammatical crap that escapes my lips if I don't feel the weight of a native speaker's judgement bearing down on me. I sort of don't mind. I'm normally so exacting that speech becomes an analytical process rather than an act of communication. It's so nice to just let your lips go.
We did experiment with other languages a bit, though. One woman in the Chinese contingent recently had a baby girl, so we spent much of the evening getting to know the little one. When our host began cooing in her native Hungarian, the baby's face lit up in a smile. I've always thought that Hungarian is a beautiful language, and I set about to prove my theory. I let out a little English baby talk, but the baby's face registered no reaction. Then came both Cantonese and Mandarin. Nothing. Finnish? Nothing. Back to Hungarian and her little face was as bright as can be.
The baby's name is Minna. I think she'd better grow to love Finnish, too.
Glad to know you've managed to meet up with your classmates and have this kind of session. :-)
ReplyDeleteThat's very cute about what happened with the baby versus different languages he he he he he...
Btw, even though I'm more at ease in speaking Finnish face-to-face, I still feel nervous (sometimes VERY nervous) when I have to make phone calls to unknown people (like making a doctor or dental appointment). UGH. Don't like it at all. I avoid it at all costs he he...So it's still a huge challenge for me.
DeleteOne more thing, I'm sure with your love of grammar, you've actually learnt more things compared to me (plus the fact that our course was very short) and it's only a matter of time and practice until you can be at ease...I know you're shy, but you're making efforts, so just keep it up! :-D
DeleteI am definitely not at ease speaking face to face, but the phone is the worst! I can totally relate to your fear there. Body language is so important.
DeleteI was incredibly lucky to have the intensive course available to me almost as soon as I moved here. Not only have I learned a ton of Finnish from it, I've made connections and gotten work through the school. Yes, my love of grammar helps, too. But I very much doubt you're any slouch when it comes to your language skills. You speak Finnish every day at work. That's a level of proficiency that I still dream of! Don't worry, I know I'll get there. Still, be proud of your own abilities!
Don't worry...I do find joy in being able to communicate with people face-to-face 'coz even when there are things I don't understand, it's easier to ask and get explanation from them (they can use body language too). And it's nice as well to be able to go to the doc on my own (for example) and explain things and understand what is being said to me without hubby's help. :-)
DeleteMy slouch these days is in reading Finnish and brushing up grammatical tidbits ha ha ha ha...
Oh yeah, the reason why I wrote more comments here was mostly because I didn't want to give you the wrong idea about my Finnish fluency. There are still some things I'm struggling with and some more complex grammatical structures I don't know, but yeah, generally speaking I'm more at ease with speaking face-to-face with people though I've begun not to worry too much about making grammatical mistakes when speaking (it's actually something I don't want to do, but you can't help it when you have to think fast sometimes).
DeleteThat was also one reason why I think this line of work is good for me: it helps me in making me speak Finnish on a daily basis with people (it wasn't something I would choose as my first choice of job in Finland, though). So it was actually to my surprise that I could enjoy this line of work after some time though in the beginning I wasn't sure about continuing (you know me, I'm an introvert, too!) - most esp. 'coz there are so many nice customers who welcome me so warmly.
Ask another Hungarian to talk to baby, preferably scary man with beard and such ;) Babies usually pick up tonality, actual language and what had been said doesn't matter much.
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