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.

The Bubble Theory of Life

Last weekend, I made a guilty confession to my husband.

“Lately I’ve been having a really hard time being in Finland.”

After two years here, the “honeymoon period” of life in a new place is completely behind me. I am well past the stage of traipsing happily through the Helsinki market square nibbling on fresh Karelian pies, and wowing myself with my ability to say “Kiitos”. Lately, I no longer feel ok about speaking English with shop assistants and with the teachers at my daughters’ schools.

I’m no longer comfortable being the Unassimilated Foreigner.

Lately, I’ve been knuckling down and trying harder to take on board the Finnish language and culture. As a result, I’ve started feeling the full weight of that challenge. I’m starting to understand how long it might take me to feel even reasonably proficient at living life in Finnish and among Finns. The language is difficult, but lately I’ve felt that mastering basic cultural norms is even harder. It is like playing a new board game that hasn’t come with any rules. My fellow players are experts who don’t always understand why I’m struggling. They are usually at a loss to identify or explain particular rules that have always been second nature to them - rules like “don’t get involved” and “don’t say ‘thank you’ too much”.

At the moment, I feel like much more of a foreigner here in Finland than I did in Japan. I might never have mastered Japanese to native level or lived a truly Japanese life, but thanks to years spent in the company of Japanese host families, friends and colleagues, in the vast majority of social situations I understood the rules, and even if I broke them sometimes, I usually did it knowingly.

Here in Finland, I still regularly make social faux pas and breach basic tenets of the social code, but without having a clue that I’m doing it - not until I see other people looking uncomfortable. By then it’s too late.

I am not a Finn and have no illusions that I will ever be truly a “local” here, but I do have a strong desire to integrate to the best of my ability, as a mark of respect for the country that has been kind enough to accept me as a resident.

And I’ve never enjoyed being on the outer. I crave acceptance now as much as I ever did as a nerdy teenager with bad skin.

I told my husband all this, in a big emotional rush, and finally I paused for breath. He took a moment to digest it all. I was keen to hear his thoughts. After all, he has spent longer outside his home country than I have outside mine. Before coming back here two years ago, he lived outside Finland for twelve consecutive years, and – something that always astounded me – he always seemed quite at peace living abroad, and never really homesick.

He finally said, “Well, I see things a bit differently.”

And so it was that I heard, for the first time, his Bubble Theory of Life.

“Wherever you go in the world, you should make your own bubble that contains your home and those who are closest to you.”

What? So people who move to another country don’t need to make any effort to assimilate?

“No, no! Whenever you move to another place, of course you have to build your bubble with what you find there. You have to obey local laws. You should try to follow basic social norms and learn the language. You shouldn’t do these things out of some sense of pressure or obligation, though. You should do them for yourself and the people in your bubble. The more knowledgeable you are about your surroundings and the more in harmony you are with them, the better quality of life you’ll have there.

If you’re looking to get encouragement and acceptance from the locals, you are going for the wrong goal. You might get positive feedback sometimes. Enjoy it when you get it, but don’t ever expect it. It was your choice to move to this new place, and people in your host country have no obligation to encourage you, to help you, or to make you feel at home. It’s up to you to do that for yourself. Remember that the only place where it’s important to work for acceptance is inside your own bubble.

If you don’t ever want to change yourself, then you shouldn’t ever move away from your own hometown. It’s totally unreasonable to expect that you could live exactly the same life in a different place.

On the other hand, when you build your bubble you still have to hold on to who you really are and what is important to you. It can be difficult to know what you should and shouldn’t change – what to hang onto and what to leave behind - but you will figure it out in time.

If you find that you can’t be at peace with your environment and also at peace with yourself, or if you find yourself constantly looking to places far away for elements that you feel are missing, then you are probably in the wrong place and should think twice about being there. 

Just remember, though, that there’s no need to be just like a local. You need to be polite and respectful and a nice person, but you can be all those things without being exactly the same as everyone else.”

But if you’re different from everyone else, wouldn’t you always feel like an outsider? Wouldn’t that make you feel sad?

“In my case? Perhaps sometimes, but never for long.

What matters to me is my own bubble and the people inside it. I absolutely need their love and acceptance.

As long as I have that, I’ll never be an outsider, no matter where I live.”

Here’s to spending less time fretting about correct Finnish grammar and social acceptance by people I barely know, and more time enjoying and investing in the people I love most in this world.

And here’s to my wise and loving husband and our well-travelled bubble. 

The Prodigal Sun

Part 1: Tuesday

Today, for no good reason, I’m feeling brittle and fragile and on-the-edge. I am full of rage and disappointment at no one and everyone, nothing and everything. It is early afternoon, and in an hour I have to go and pick up my kids. I should be doing my Finnish homework, but instead I am sitting in a café, looking out despondently at the falling snow. I don’t know quite why, but I’m just about at the end of my rope.

I started the day tired, after a bad night’s sleep.

(Little Sister is discovering dreams, and currently wakes up multiple times per night shrieking my name, exclaiming loudly about what she just saw, firmly believing that it was all true.

[sitting up in bed and sobbing with wild abandon] “Mummy’s not THEEEERE! She’s gone! Mummy’s GOOOONE!”

[sitting up in bed and yelling at high volume] “Someone BROKE MY SUNGLASSES! On purpose! They are brooookeeeen!”

[sitting up in bed in an indignant huff] “The new cow is called SNUNNY! That’s his name, silly. Hmph!”)

Then, for some reason (no doubt related to her own broken sleep) Little Sister decided this morning that she was going to opt out of day-care. Her initial efforts to implement this decision (engaging in fake coughing during breakfast, refusing to have clothes put on her, and calmly informing me of her Day-Care Embargo during the bus ride into town) failed, but Little Sister is not a quitter. For the entire fifteen-minute walk from Big Sister’s preschool to Little Sister’s day-care, she sat in her stroller and alternately cried and shrieked and shouted about how much she didn’t want to go to day-care, as I slid on the icy footpath and bent my head against the snow pelting stingingly into my eyes, trying to make soothing platitudes issue forth reassuringly from my mouth, but finding their calming effect was negligible because Little Sister could only hear me over the wind and the traffic if I raised my voice to a shout.

I finally got to my Finnish class, and had one of those days where I had to look up more words than I understood, drew a blank at words I knew we’d already studied, and nearly cried when I couldn’t conjugate a type-1 verb in the present passive. This was one of those days I could not summon any energy or patience; could not find any elation in learning a new foreign language one baby step at a time. I just felt overwhelmed and tearful and defeated, and as I walked down the corridor on my way out a couple of shameful big-girl tears dripped down my cheeks.

I opened the street door to find that during the hours I had been inside, the snow had not let up at all, and was now ankle-deep and rising. A sudden sense of blind fury rose in my chest, momentarily overpowering the despair and pissed-offedness already simmering within. Never mind that we’ve had it easy this winter. Only two months of snow so far, and not even that many days of temperatures colder than -15, and yet, I have just had a GUTFUL of the cold and the snow. I am sick of dragging deadweight strollers and sleds laden with children through thick, porridgey snow and over slippery ice; sick of having freezing snowballs thrown excitedly at me; sick of feeling cold despite layers and layers of clothes; sick of reminding my three year old multiple times a day not to reach out of the stroller and swipe at banked-up, dirty, dog-wee-covered snow and put it into her mouth; sick of trying to be a good mother and forcing myself to remain with my kids in the park long after I’ve had enough of standing there in the cold, knowing that no matter how long I remain stoic, the minute I announce that we’re leaving they will still cry and whine because they would stay, revelling delightedly in the snow and ice, for three bloody hours if I let them.

It does no one any good to rage against the weather, but to hell with it.

I am also angry (in no particular order) about the following: the fact that I love ice cream but lately it has inexplicably turned on me and gives me brutal stomach aches; the fact that I can’t manage to get my house key out of my bag and into the lock without taking off my gloves, and thirty seconds without gloves is a hand-freezing eternity when it’s -10; the fact that our building management has decreed that we must not leave anything in the huge, echoing expanse of space corridor outside our apartment door and that therefore our tiny front hallway is now crammed with a stroller, a sled, an enormous plastic box containing the kids’ outside toys, and the whole family’s winter boots dripping dirty puddles of melted snow endlessly onto the floor; the fact that I would love to work as a lawyer again someday – sooner rather than later - but I cannot for the life of me find a way to do that and still be there for my kids, let alone sleep, let alone have some kind of a life outside work and kids; the fact that I have so much to be grateful for and yet today I feel inexplicably low and cranky and cannot manage to shake it off.

Today it is a bad, dark day inside my head. It’s as though someone has turned the lights off and moved the light switch beyond my grasp, and the culprit is hiding somewhere in the darkness, taunting and mocking me in a soft, cruel voice.

Life may be wonderful and beautiful and a gift, but today I’m royally pissed off at it.

 

Part 2: Wednesday

I can’t quite believe the change that came over me this morning, when (noticing that the room was oddly bright) I looked out of the window and saw The Prodigal Sun rising in the sky.

Suddenly, everything was ok again.

It is gorgeously sunny in Helsinki today – clear blue skies, brilliant sunshine that actually feels warm, and temperatures above zero! This is weather we haven’t had for weeks and months, and everyone’s spirits are soaring. The air is full of hope; infused with the heady promise of spring.

It is early afternoon. I have an hour to myself before I have to go and pick up my kids. I should be doing my Finnish homework, but instead I am sitting in a café, defiantly eating ice cream as the sun pours in through the floor-to-ceiling glass window beside me. After months of bitter chill, right now I am toasty warm. I am actually sweating a little bit. It is thrilling in the extreme.

This day and this sun and the sense of hope in the air have literally given me a new lease on life. This time yesterday, I was the same person, sitting in exactly the same café as I am today, and yet today everything is different. Everything is better.

Life is strange like that.  

All you have to do is wait for the sun.

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.

Being My Own BFF (seriously??)

Recently, someone close to me commented that I try so hard to be kind to others, but am unkind, even brutal, towards myself. That comment (which was spot on) has been on my mind ever since.

If a mum friend is upset about her 2 year old’s behavioural issues, I am quick to sympathize and reassure – ah, the terrible twos; it’s so hard, isn’t it?; don’t worry, it’s just a phase and it will pass soon; you’re a great mum and are doing everything right; don’t beat yourself up.

If my own 2 year old is throwing epic tantrums, deliberately breaking and spilling and throwing things, biting her sister, and generally pushing more boundaries than I knew existed, do I treat myself as I would a mum friend? – take a deep breath and reassure myself that this is perfectly normal and no cause for real concern?

Hell no!

I review my parenting and find every instance of poor performance, curse myself for not being more consistent/patient/effective as a mother, and wonder in all seriousness whether going back to working 12 hour days outside the home, and substituting my parenting with that of a full-time nanny, would be far better for their development.

If I am trying to speak Finnish (the language spoken here in Finland, where I’ve lived for 18 months now), and I hear myself screwing up basic grammatical structures and grasping for words that should be more than familiar to me by now, do I cut myself some slack, thinking “Come on, it’s not an easy language, and at least you’re trying”, or do my thoughts sound something more like, “Oh, you’re pathetic! You know you aren’t putting enough time into learning this language, and you are humiliating yourself and your family with your half-arsed efforts.”

I have always believed in self-discipline and tough self-love, and that I should be my own harshest critic. If I am not there to keep myself in line and administer swift kicks up the backside when necessary, who will be? Without harsh self-criticism, surely I would quickly sink into a big pool of laziness and over-confidence.

The thing about “tough love”, though, is that ultimately it is supposed to be about love. I think about the way I talk to myself, and I realize, I don’t hear any undertones of love here (or even like, for that matter!) I am my own personal Gordon Ramsay. My own Horrible Boss. A person I would never be friends with.

Yikes.

So, how is it supposed to work? How do I keep myself disciplined and efficient and able to see and correct my own faults, yet not be so hard on myself that I am constantly disappointed in my own life performance? How do I learn to be a kinder and better friend to myself?