I am on exchange in Finland and at first I didn’t really had a feeling about their speech. I was never thinking about it or heard it at any films, YouTube videos or anything similar. When I started thinking about my exchange and what am I going to do in Finland, I started thinking about how will I talk to the locals or will I understand them too. I knew that we will be talking in English and they are mostly very fluent in English, but still, would I be able to learn some new basic words in new language or would it be too difficult?

I started exploring. Their language, words… everything. However, I didn’t listen to the spoken language and how it sounds, I only saw some of their long, difficult, complicated words written in a text. At first sight, the words were similar to German. I thought that this language is similar to Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. I was surprised; it is more like Estonian, not Danish.

First time that I heard the locals in Finland talk, I was very confused – I don’t know how to describe it, this language was so interesting to listen and even now it is still interesting to hear them talk. I believe I already heard this language before but at the same time, it is foreign to me. It is funny, but still something new.

I already learned a couple of basic words in Finnish language, for example thank you or hello and I like it quite a lot. I hope I will learn some more through the whole month.