Thumbnail: how I achieved fluency in Finnish in just one year
Only around 2% of immigrants ever reach a C-level in Finnish; it's incredibly rare. But it is possible.
In 2022, I set a goal to reach full fluency, and I did it in one year; by pretending I didn't speak English for 12 months. It was intense, but it worked.
Now, I’ve launched How I Learned Finnish – with Ohe a (non-profit) limited interview series where I interview others who have also learned Finnish as adults. People in different life situations (single, married, young, old, with or without kids etc) who’ve all reached a high level of fluency. So listeners can pick which methods work best for them. Each guest shares exactly what they did: their routines, tools, and mindset shifts.
The idea is simple: if you’re learning Finnish, you can hear real stories and find methods that fit your life.
🎧 Podcast name: How I Learned Finnish – with Ohe
📺 Available on YouTube & all major podcast platforms
▶️ watch: I explain how I did it here
by pokumars
25 comments
Well done! You are an inspiration for others who are currently learning Finnish, including me!
Man, inspiring.. I need to do this..
Got to B, and then just stopped progressing… Need to kick off again. Great idea!
But the immersion is indeed key.. I went from my A1 -> A2 in the space of a few months as I got an offer to stay with the parents of a friend in the back end of Ostrabotnia… no one there spoke any english so it was a sink or swim moment..
not having the fallback is the key to learning..
This is truly inspiring. I’ve been here for a while, and I’m been struggling to learn the language. This is what I needed!!
Congrats! I had a meltdown just yesterday while studying Finnish, and I hope that your tips will inspire me.
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Congrats! My parent is C2 level, if would like to use their method, it is simple: 1. Build a time machine. 2. Go back to the 70s 3. Find a Finn to date 4. Move to Finland and get fully immersed all the time since people who are fluent in English are rare. 5. Profit 😅 Seriously, I don’t envy anyone who is learning Finnish in 2020s…
Well produced videos and great content. As a native, it feels great when immigrants put so much effort and time to learn our language well.
Did you achieve this while you had a job? Because for employed people, I can say that it is impossible to reach C level in 1 year. If your only job is to learn a language, C level may be difficult in 1 year, but B1 level can be easily achieved, I know many people like that.
Dunno, sounds like English to me.
You even seem to have Finnish accent while speaking English. Good job man, I hope this helps other people! 💪
B to C is the hardest in a way cause language courses disappear at that point and people usually get jobs and have no time, energy or incentive to keep learning.
Congratulations. 12 months is a huge achievement. I did manage to achieve a C level in about 4 years. Like you, the final key to the breakthrough was to spend time in an area where I had no recourse to English. This was 20 years ago in any case. But Finns are remarkably nice and pretty patient teachers of their language when they can see you’re getting it. My problem is that as I am a tall white guy of generally Northern European appearance they will first assume I am a Finn and then get a bit surprise when the first small error comes in…then they may ask me if I speak Swedish instead, but then I have to say no and explain I am an immigrant. They are usually pretty amused and so I try to play the game of “just how long until they realize I am not Finnish”.
This is a great idea, I don’t think people talk about this aspect enough and the angle of learning Finnish in various ways especially with modern learning.
The missionaries at my church are all very good at finnish. Their model works exceptionally well. 9 weeks in Utah to elsrn finnish, then they come here for two years, use finnisbcfrom day 1 , 1 hour of daily study and speak it daily on the street, first yrsr they are paired up with someone in their second year, then after 1 year they pair up with a junior who’s just arrived. Swap cities every 2 months.
Legit see 18 year old kids pick up fluency like this incredible model they have.
Wow! Well done!
I have to watch everything – need motivation. Living in Finland for 3.5 years, I haven’t learned it. Working in an international company, 100% in home office… isn’t really helping to learn the language when you speak English all the time.
I can understand a tiny bit by context and keywords (I would guess I know 100-150 words). I can introduce myself. Here it ends.
My best teacher is my small daughter, she is only speaking Finnish to me 😅
Have to sit down. Have to learn. Bothered by it. Would love to speak it at least a bit. 😞
Are there any introverts among the success stories? What were their approaches?
Congrats chale
Studying languages is hard work. I have tried to study German, French and Spanish and they all get extremely difficult after certain level. And then I lose my motivation.
Duolingo is also shit. In that app you should know what’s spoon in Spanish without no-one ever telling you that.
Immersion is the key. If someone lives abroad, its not possible to do for many even in a longer time. But if you.want to learn and all you hear if Finnish around and all you do is interract in Finnish then yes, its possible. I got B2 in a year (confirmed by yki) then attended a school meant for Finns and passed it. But I put shit ton of effort in learning every day, after every single day in the integration course I studied for 4+ hours at home. Its all about wanting. If someone doesnt want to learn, they simply wont.
Good job. I would be curious to know what it’s the original native language of that 2% that achieved fluency, because if you tell me they are from Estonia, it won’t be that surprising.
Good job! Alot of immigrants just say ” Kela ei maksa suomen kielen opettelusta” and then they never be real part of our finnish society.
Awesome! Every spoken language in the world is learned by small children who aren’t exceptional or remarkable in any way. It’s only adults and academic language learning that complicate things! Language learning classes around the world are generally so bad that literally any other method of learning a language will give you better results – you don’t need to enroll anywhere or sign up for anything to learn a language! Don’t let other people’s failure discourage you – any language can be learned quickly as an adult as long as you’re willing to do what it takes!
I hope your success serves as motivation for others and a reminder that while Finnish might be very different to your native language it isn’t exceptionally difficult!
As adults we want to look cool and smart while learning new things – but it’s impossible – if you want to learn something effectively you have to be willing to embarrass yourself and make yourself look like an idiot making hundreds of mistakes every day. And when you’ve made yourself an idiot for long enough you can achieve some pretty cool results!
I think the key is to have an actual interest in the language. I know quite a few people who are fluent in Finnish, not all of them even learnt it living in Finland. If your motivation comes from really wanting to understand Finnish songs, TV, culture in general, then it might take time but you’ll learn it and it’s not that painful. The issue is that for many people knowing Finnish is not the goal, they see it as a means to achieve a goal. They want the Finnish dream, the “happy” life, a well-paying job, a relationship with a local etc, and only want to know the language to achieve these, but they are actually fine never engaging with Finnish-language culture. That’s when learning simply sucks and you don’t progress.
This is awesome! As someone who’s struggling to even get to A2 level after a year living here, knowing that there are those who can reach a high fluency is really inspiring. I might need to figure out how to do full immersion at some point, but in the meantime I’ll stumble my way through learning Finnish as best as I can.
I needed 8 years of being exposed to the language and 3 years of actually using and talking in a Finnish working environment to reach fluency. I still get some grammar mistakes here and there and new long words feel off on my tongue but I would say that learning Finnish to fluency is not easy but also not impossible.
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