Finnish: The Final Frontier

An adventure in language learning (Part I)

Albert Edelfelt Summer Evening Kesailtana (1883)

I have long admired my father’s ability to learn languages. He spoke, besides his native Icelandic, German, English, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian: all well enough to write newspaper stories, speak on the radio, and give public lectures. He was able, moreover, to start using a new language, whether French, Italian, or Portuguese, within days of arriving in a place where it was spoken.

Still, he could not learn Finnish.

The reason for this grand exception, I suspect, had much to do with the genealogy of the speech of the Finns. All of the languages my father had mastered belonged to the Germanic branch of the great Yggdrasil of Indo-European tongues. Those he could use to order coffee (up to, and including, Urdu) also descended from the speech of the plaid-wearing, wagon-driving, clay-cording folk beloved of Tom Rowsell and Jackson Crawford. Finnish, however, was an entirely different kettle of fish.

I won’t bore you, Gentle Reader, with talk of post-positive prepositions. Suffice it to say that the cornucopias of cognates, similarities of syntax, and grammatical parallels that allowed my father to learn so many other vernaculars could not be found in Finnish. So, rather than strolling, Kant-like, across the bridges of Königsberg, he found himself entirely at sea. It was thus with great trepidation that, in the course of developing decision-forcing cases set north of Lake Ladoga, I rushed in where my all-time favorite polyglot feared to tread.

In making this leap, I enjoyed advantages that my father, who had been born in the year the Titanic sank, could barely imagine. I refer, of course, to machine translation, instant access to an extraordinarily wide variety of texts, and the comedy of Ismo.