No Finnish line

When I first met my Finnish husband almost 17 years ago, I never planned to study his native language. In fact, he actively discouraged me from doing so, on the grounds that Finnish was such a minor and complicated language that it was hardly worth my while, and because English is widely spoken in Finland. 

And yet, after we finally moved here, I found that I couldn’t stand not knowing Finnish. I wanted so badly to understand and be understood, and being in the dark linguistically was frustrating and unsatisfying.

And so, here I am, nine months and three language courses into learning Finnish.

My Finnish studies thus far have caused me immense frustration and self-doubt. I still make several mistakes per sentence when I venture out of my comfort zone (read: when I try to have a *normal* conversation with any Finnish person). Sometimes when I try to read a newspaper or magazine article, I feel myself spiralling into panic and despair when word after word is unknown to me and must be painstakingly looked up. Yesterday, my daughter’s friend (aged 7) innocently asked me, “Why do you speak Finnish so badly?” Ouch.

Frequently, I have felt like a failure, and have caught myself wondering if this is a task that’s beyond my capacity.

But I'm not, and it isn't, and dammit, I will not give up! For years I’ve wanted so badly to know this language, and hard though it is, quitting now would only make me feel worse. And so, when I feel overwhelmed and oppressed and even slightly tearful about it all, I force myself to take a deep breath and reflect on some basic truths about mastering a new language:

1. It won’t happen overnight 

I started studying Finnish in January of this year. I don’t know why I expected to see dramatic results within weeks or months. I started studying Japanese in high school and 20+ years later I’m still not perfect at it. I started learning English at birth, and even now I still make grammatical mistakes and come across unfamiliar words. 

Languages are vast and complex. They have tens of thousands of essential words, and each one has to be committed to memory, along with the grammatical rules governing its use. No wonder language-learning takes time.

A lot of time, in fact, since: 

2. The task is never-ending 

Language-learning is a lifelong, cumulative pursuit. There is no finishing line – no “last” milestone that marks the perfect mastery of a language. You are forever either learning more, or reinforcing (and trying not to forget) what you have already learned. 

The news is not all bad, though. Every so often you will feel a sense of achievement – after constructing a grammatically-correct sentence for the first time, understanding the gist of a tv program, surviving a shopping trip, or managing to talk on the phone with someone. It is important to embrace and inwardly celebrate each of these moments, as they are validation that you are making progress. The sense of pride and accomplishment they bring are your reward for sticking with the task. While your journey has no end, each language-learning milestone opens up the path to bigger and greater milestones, and the further you go the easier and more rewarding your journey becomes.

You do need to accept, though, that:

3. Some days it will be two steps forward, one step back 

Sometimes it takes a while for new information to sink in. The older I get, the longer it seems to take! I find myself going over the same vocabulary and the same grammatical rules multiple times because they didn’t stick in my head on the first, second or even third try. There is no point in getting stressed or frustrated about this (or so I keep telling myself). You really can only try to keep calm and have another go. The main thing to remember is – the information will stick eventually, even if it takes three or ten or twenty repetitions. Some days, your brain will seem curiously resistant to new information. These are the days you should put down your textbook and go for a long walk. And then, on other days, inexplicably it all somehow gels. 

Some people (especially your children) will remember new information instantly and forever. Salute them and acknowledge their rare and enviable talent. Remember, though, that most adults simply do not have this talent, and have to work a bit harder to learn new things.

Which leads me to my next point:

4. Don’t compare yourself with others!
Language-learning is not a race – how could it be, when there isn’t even a definite finishing line! We all learn languages for different reasons, at different paces, and with different styles. Some of us are natural chatterboxes; others have beautiful pronunciation; others are naturals at reading and writing. You yourself know whether you’re trying hard or not. If you feel you could realistically try harder, do it! If you’re trying as hard as you can, congratulate yourself, and keep going - at your own pace and on your own terms. Force yourself not to think about that incredible Chinese girl you sit next to in class who has a prodigious memory for new vocab and progresses much faster than you. Try not to feel bad when a seven year old corrects your grammar. Being a beginner in another language, and being severely constrained in your ability to understand or communicate even the simplest ideas, can feel humiliating enough at the best of times. Don’t fuel that internal fire of self-doubt and low self-esteem. This is your own journey.

5. Practice Practice Practice
When I was about 15, my high school French teacher gave us a definitive how-to guide to learning a language:

1. Listen
2. Read
3. Write
4. Speak
5. Repeat steps 1-4 many, many times 

This is far and away the best advice I have ever received in connection with language learning. 

The only way you can progress and maintain your language skills is to USE that language, every single day, as much as possible (without doing your head in through over-immersion!) Talk to people. If you hate talking to people, try to write a diary. Read something – anything. Pay attention when people are speaking (in real life or on tv/radio) and try to decipher what they’re saying.

It’s always easier when you have a good teacher to help you learn to do steps 1-4. In the case of Finnish, unless you’re a child (or an adult with a brain that absorbs everything and magically figures out linguistic patterns all on its own), I think it’s virtually impossible to learn correct grammar without the help of an experienced teacher, or else a really good textbook and extremely high self-discipline.

6. Try to enjoy yourself!
Language learning unlocks linguistic and cultural doors, and bridges divides between people of different countries. It is also said that learning another language has powerful effects on the mind, creating new neural pathways and warding off Alzheimer’s disease. For all these reasons, language learning should be something positive – hopefully something that’s even fun and uplifting. Whenever you are feeling low or frustrated about your learning, go back to the stuff that truly interests you and fuels your passion for language, whether it’s talking with a friend, watching a particular tv show, or reading things that intrigue or entertain you. Lately, when I feel like throwing my Finnish textbook across the room in frustration, I’ve taken to swapping it for my daughter’s Risto Räppääjä books. The language is clear and the grammar straightforward, and to my great joy I can follow the stories, even though I can’t understand every word.

In the end, this is what we language learners need to hold on to in times of trial – those moments of great joy. Those moments when we know what it is to transcend the limits of our own nationality and our own native language. Those moments when the puzzle pieces come together in our head and we see, breathtakingly, glimpses of a whole new world that was hidden from us before.

Clueless

“Every day you speak Finnish better and better!”

Yesterday, after listening to my laborious efforts to talk to his 4 year old in Finnish, my neighbour offered this kind comment. He knows that I started an intensive language course earlier this month, and (like all my Finnish friends) he has been hugely supportive of my efforts to learn his language.

If it’s true, though, that my Finnish is improving, I wish I’d start feeling it myself.

The other morning I got a phone call from an unknown number. The woman’s first sentence was completely incomprehensible to me. She was unable or unwilling to speak in English. She powered on in Finnish, her tone firm and insistent – urgent, even. I strained to pick up some clue – anything – that might enlighten me as to who she was or why she was calling me. Was someone trying to deliver a package to our apartment? Had my younger daughter (at Finnish daycare) had some kind of dreadful accident? Was I in trouble with the police? Had I forgotten to return my library books? The possibilities were endless, and anxiety froze my brain and blocked all comprehension. I was spooked, too, because this woman knew my surname and had my phone number, and at some point she revealed that she knew my husband’s name, too.

Finally, she asked me a question that I understood: “How often do you recharge the credit on your [prepaid] cell phone?” And then it dawned on me, with angry relief – this was a bloody sales call.

It is times like this that I’m furious with myself – furious that I haven’t managed to learn better Finnish in the two years we have lived here; furious because whether or not I learn Finnish is completely up to me, and I wouldn’t still be in this state of frustration had I tried harder to study and learn; furious because I’ve been LAZY and have caused myself stress as a result. For years (even before we moved here) I have wanted to speak and understand Finnish, and yet for years I’ve managed to find other ways to occupy my time.

I do have moments that give me hope. Last weekend, I took my daughter to see a movie that was dubbed in Finnish. I fully expected to be lost within the first 5 minutes, but was happily surprised when I managed (more or less) to follow the story of Alvin and his chipmunk friends. Yes, I was able to get the basic gist of a movie intended for 7 year olds. 

Positive feelings were heavily overlaid with the realisation of just how far I still have to go.

I really should take a leaf out of my daughter’s book. Talking to her after the movie (hoping to get her to explain some bits of dialogue I hadn’t grasped) I realised, with interest, that she hadn’t caught everything either. In fact, in some ways she had missed more than I had, because not only was she unclear on the language in places, she didn’t have the life experience to give her extra clues. When I pointed out that perhaps she, too, was not quite sure what happened in places, she shrugged and said, completely unconcerned and unapologetic, “I don’t know ALL the Finnish words yet, Mummy.”

Her calm words spoke volumes, implying complete confidence that one day she would, in fact, know “all the Finnish words”, proclaiming that in the meantime she could manage perfectly well, and gently chastising me for being unnecessarily impatient about the organic process of language-learning.

The trouble is, though, that it’s harder for adults, because it’s assumed that we are not clueless; it’s assumed that grown human beings can handle a given range of tasks and situations without assistance. Yet, when not just the language but the whole way of life of a country and its people are new to you, there is going to be a lot that you don’t know and have to learn. You are in the weird situation of trying to act like a knowledgeable, responsible, socially-adept adult, even though in many situations you know less than a 7 year old. For instance:

* In Helsinki, if you are traveling on a bus with a baby in a stroller, you are permitted to enter via the back door, without paying. However (as I now know) this is not so if you’re traveling with a baby who is not in a stroller, or if it’s winter and the baby is in a sled. In my experience, if you try to enter via the back door in one of the latter situations, the bus driver comes and yells at you in front of your children, or simply drives off and leaves you standing in the snow.

* Some swimming pools have specific days on which bathing suits are not obligatory. If you use the pool at such times, you will find yourself doing 50m laps alongside (or worse - behind) people who are completely in the buff. You have been warned.

* When my daughter started Finnish daycare, in accordance with their guidelines I stayed there with her for several days. My daughter couldn’t speak Finnish, and the teachers expected me to guide her through the various routines. Talk about the blind leading the blind. At the time, I barely understood words like “eat” or “nap”. I half-guessed at what the teachers were saying. I couldn’t communicate with the other children. My kid cried a lot, confused and overwhelmed. I felt like doing the same.

* I come from a city where (to my knowledge) it has never snowed, and where we drive on the left-hand side of the road. When we left our Helsinki home this morning, it was 15 below zero with snow everywhere. Imagine you are me, and then try to (a) liberate your car from a cocoon of snow and ice with sufficient competence to enable you to drive the damn thing out of its parking spot; (b) on your return home, do a reverse (parallel) park on the “wrong” side of the road into a space bearing a car-shaped imprint bordered all around with half a metre of banked-up snow. With your two children whining in the back seat and your neighbour laughing at you from the side of the road.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m up for this, really. I want to make this Helsinki adventure work. Most days I see my cluelessness as a challenge – my chance to extend myself. Most days I can even laugh at myself if these things – which, in the end, are just minutiae after all - don’t work out perfectly.

On days of lower optimism, though, I just feel humiliated in my cluelessness. I wonder if this steep learning curve will ever taper off. Some days I long to feel capable; confident I can tackle daily life with some degree of basic competence.

I have spent 36 years learning to be an adult, only to find myself, constantly, in situations which make me feel like a child. Some days I just want to be a grown up again.

Defeating the skinny bitch

When I see people who are painfully thin, my heart goes out to them. Chances are they are seriously ill – physically or mentally. I feel especially sorry for those who are anorexic. I have never experienced full-blown anorexia myself, but I've had a taste of what it might be like.

The year I turned 18, I went to live in Japan for half a year. It was not a “proper” student exchange – something that my parents had actively discouraged – but somehow I’d managed to win a trip to Japan in a national Japanese Speech Contest, and this convinced my parents that I had earned the right to my coveted exchange. Teachers at my high school were kind enough to liaise with teachers at our Japanese sister school. I would be allowed to attend classes there and live with students’ families.

My first host family was one of 5 host families in 6 months—planned this way by the school, so that no one would be unfairly burdened with a foreign student visitor. The K family was kind and welcoming, but they spoke almost no English.  

I was immediately in over my head.

Every single aspect of life was suddenly a struggle. I had studied Japanese throughout high school—I had won a national Japanese speech contest, for God’s sake—and suddenly I found I knew almost nothing of any practical use, especially in a rural part of the Kansai region where the local dialect was nothing like “textbook” Japanese. I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying, and they could barely understand me. Sometimes we spend a long time with dictionaries and pen and paper and sign language trying to establish what time breakfast would be, or what I should do with my dirty laundry; sometimes we just mutually called it quits and I allowed myself to be led (almost by the hand) through the day.

The middle sister of the family, who was my classmate, was always in an impatient hurry, and I soon started to feel as though I was an unwanted piece of baggage that she’d been instructed to carry.  I remember the first school day of my stay there. It was 7am, and apparently we were running late.

Yuki: “Now [incomprehensible]. Have [nope, didn’t catch this either]?”

Me: [blank look]
Yuki: [impatiently] “Now go. You have keiki?”
Me: [do I have cake? what cake? is she asking me if I want to eat cake? we just had breakfast! or is she asking me if I have cake with me? where would I have gotten cake, and why would I need to take it to school with me?] “Cake?”
Yuki: [pulls open my bag and looks around; finds my purse and opens it; sighs theatrically when she sees my train pass there]
“TEIKI-KEN!”
[Aha. “teiki”. Not “keiki”.]
Yuki urged me out of the house, and we sprinted down the road together to the train station.

The lack of comprehension, and uncertainty of what life would bring from one moment to the next, became a source of huge anxiety. Every time communication was difficult, I felt that I was inconveniencing people and making their lives harder than necessary, and all this when they’d been kind enough to take me on as an exchange student. As well as that, because I couldn’t understand what people were saying, I frequently imagined that they were talking about me, and not in a positive way. If two girls looked at me and said something, giggling, I guessed they were laughing at my acne. When people repeatedly commented on how “big” I was, I assumed they meant “fat” (turns out that Japanese say “big” when they mean “tall”, though to be fair, at 173 cm and 68 kg I was probably also “fat” by Japanese standards). Most of all, I felt so inadequate academically. I had been an A-student in Australia. Now, by failing to communicate effectively, I looked like a dumbass, and felt like I was letting down my teachers in Australia, who had advocated and supported my coming here.

I became miserable, though I never allowed my smile to slip in public, and saved my tears for my bedroom at night. I had brought different kinds of Australian candy to share with my classmates at some point; now I broke into the packages and comfort-ate at night in bed. I gained a few kilos, which of course made me all the more miserable. I didn’t know how I could keep going when it all felt so hard. The worst part was knowing that this was what I had asked and begged for. Pride (and stubbornness) stopped me throwing in the towel and leaving.

And then one day it dawned on me. Maybe I couldn’t control my language ability (at least, not in the short-term) but I could certainly control other parts of my life. In particular, I didn’t need to be “big”. This would be the perfect time to start a diet and lose some weight. I could understand enough about lunchtime conversations among my classmates to realize that diets and weight loss were a big deal here. A diet could help me fit in, in more ways than one.

And so it began.

At first I just cut out high calorie foods, and started exercising (I got myself a skipping rope and jumped around in my host family’s tiny garden). By the time I moved to my next scheduled host family a month later, I had lost a little bit of weight — not much, but enough to encourage me. I started cutting out more foods — meat, eggs, anything relatively dense in fat or calories. I told people I was on a diet, and no one seemed to mind.

After another month, when I moved to my fourth host family, I was making great progress, and had already lost some 8 kg. This host family already had three children and both parents worked, so everyone essentially made their own breakfast and lunch from ingredients that Mum provided every morning. Perfect! I took tiny amounts of food for both meals, and even at dinner I ate the smallest amount I could get away with [not] eating. I drank hot water spiked with pepper in the hope that it would boost my digestion somehow, or at the very least suppress my hunger in a zero-calorie manner. I claimed that I was vegetarian so that I could cut out an entire (high-calorie) food group. We all rode bicycles to school every day, and as it was quite a long way, this helped my weight loss efforts no end.

At this point, I went to visit the older sister of an Australian friend, who lived in a nearby city. She was shocked at the amount of weight I’d lost— at least two dress sizes. I assured her that I was fine, and just dieting, but I’m sure she realized something was wrong. I barely ate, and even refused cake she had bought for my birthday. I weighed myself constantly—several times a day. I could tell that her flatmate thought my behaviour was odd and rude. I didn’t care. I weighed less than 60 kg – a weight I hadn’t been since primary school.

This should have been enough for me, but my now I was on a roll. It was so easy to keep going. And so I did.

I remember going shopping with my host sister during the summer holidays, and for the first time ever being able to fit into Japanese women’s sizes without having to look for XXXXXL. It was such a rush.

Counter-intuitively, though, losing weight actually made me more anxious — anxious about losing control over food and gaining all that weight back again. I became even more obsessive about calories and exercise. My body started to rebel. I found myself sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night to scoff low-fat yoghurt, because I was literally starving.

At the end of 6 months, I had lost something like 17kg and was down to 53 kg – my all-time low. I thought I had conquered the world, but found that unless I ate almost nothing, exercised like a fiend, and indulged my cravings strictly on caffeine-free diet coke, I could not help but gain weight.

My arrival home was a shock to everyone. Family and friends thought I looked skeletal, and the horror showed clearly in their faces. I was devastated – I was so thrilled about being thin, and their disgust was a disappointment beyond words.

With no one supporting my efforts to stay thin, I felt lonely, and as though the world was united in a conspiracy against me. It made me sad, but it also made me tough. I ignored all kindly-meant advice and pleas. I lapped up the admiration of unknown men who whistled at me on the street.

It took a very long time to break out of this mindset. Meanwhile, my body continued to rebel. One morning I woke up with two delicious, high-calorie biscuits beside my bed. In my state of crazed hunger I had craved them so badly that I had apparently sleep-walked to the kitchen, retrieved them, and placed them comfortingly beside my pillow. I remembered nothing of this when I woke up, but I do recall feeling, for the first time, that perhaps I had a problem.

When I was in my second year of university (still determined to stay super-thin) I took a very challenging Japanese language class. I realized almost immediately that it was way beyond my ability, but I refused to give up. I spend more time preparing and studying for that class than for any other class before or since – literally hours and hours looking up and memorizing kanji characters, and committing to memory obscure Japanese phrases.  The stress and the time investment were so demanding that I found I had to divert my dieting energy to studying. I no longer had the mental fortitude or the physical energy to resist my cravings, and I started binge-eating. It was fairly horrific. I found myself eating so much at a single sitting that I felt physically ill and as though I might burst. I gained weight at a rate of knots. It was horrible, and my self-esteem hit an all-time low. I could not believe how fat I was getting – the kilos were literally piling themselves on my body before my very eyes.

However, a few of my course-mates and I, united in our struggle to conquer Japanese From Hell no matter what, became lifelong friends. And somehow, I had also managed to find and hang onto a boyfriend who was fiercely and blindly and utterly loyal (almost to a fault). If these people noticed what I looked like or how quickly I gained weight that year, they didn’t say a word, and I love them all the more for that.

That year, two major victories were mine - I scored an A+ in that super-challenging Japanese language course, and I beat my eating disorder.

The first victory was incredibly important to me at the time. I was overjoyed; elated; proud of myself.

The second felt like anything but a win – at the time, I felt like I had lost a long and hard-fought battle – but looking back now, I believe it was one of the great victories of my life.

The path of an anorexic (or would-be anorexic) is lonely and hard, and victory over bodyweight comes at the price of obsessive thoughts and behaviour, socially-odd eating habits, and constant anxiety. Some people can't give it up; don't want to give it up; cannot see that their need to be anorexic ultimately has nothing to do with food or thinness.

I am sad that I spent such a long period of my life wasting energy on an eating disorder. I am sad that I spiralled so far down into self-hatred and negativity that I ended up in that dark place in the first place. I am exhilarated, though, that I found my way out and have never again fallen that far.