She went from almost zero to speaking flawlessly with barely any accent in just 2.5 years. This feels like almost impossible.
https://yle.fi/a/74-20205376
Posted by Gxeq
She went from almost zero to speaking flawlessly with barely any accent in just 2.5 years. This feels like almost impossible.
https://yle.fi/a/74-20205376
Posted by Gxeq
14 Comments
Some natives should take a lesson from her.
I meant to talk about how fast she learned the language in such short time, so i used another headline.
That’s impressive. It took me half a year from 0 to B2 in the YKI examination but I’m Estonian so it doesn’t really count lol. Estonians know A1 Finnish by default without learning lol
Its impressive but i wouldn’t say almost impossible, this is literally like the best way to do it. Be young with young brain, dropped in middle of nowhere where everyone can (and likely will) speak Finnish to you in the best (only lmao) place in Finland to make friends (high schools).
She speaks better finnish than most of people in Pori
She lives in North Karelia — people will come and talk to you just because there, so she can practice her Finnish. It would be a lot harder elsewhere.
She doesn’t even have an accent. Impressive.
Finnish is not an extremely difficult language, even if people keep repeating that idea. It is much easier than say Arabic, Chinese, Japanese or Korean. Same level as Greek, Hindi, Russian, Polish, Turkish etc. at 1100 hours for learning it as an English speaker.
[https://effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty/](https://effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty/)
Motivation, motivation, motivation.
It’s quite common for exchange students to learn the language within their year! Not everyone ofc since many schools adapt to using some English, but the ones who put an effort to speaking it at school and with their host family and friends. Full immersion does wonders. Most immigrants don’t have the chance as they study / work full time in English and live alone or with family who also moved from abroad.
Really is inspirational and just shows that it definitely is doable
The trick is really just practice everyday followed by tons of immersion
If all you hear and speak everyday is Finnish then its a lot easier to get going and also stay motivated. Immigrants who come to work in Finland have a bit of harder time just because the immersion is usually an expat bubble
Really gives you perspective when you meet people who have been here over a decade and don’t know any finnish at all
I doubt the zero accent part, but you can definitely get to fluent in 2.5 years. But you have to work for it!
I managed B2 in 1 year (with yki testi being B2 at the end of that year to confirm it), but wasnt fully fluent until a few years later when I learnt more vocabulary. So 2.5 years is very doable to be fluent in most everyday situations. I was 27.
I teach in a lukio and it’s pretty common that exchange students living with a Finnish family become fluent during one school year.