beginning to learn finnish

[cimorene]

dude, while looking for a missing squeegee i just discovered two bottles of nail polish, a missing green suede belt and a whole bottle of xanax.  i'm not actually feeling anxious right now, though.  except for how i can't find the squeegee.

yesterday was my first encounter with trying to learn finnish and my second attempt to get a textbook that really should have been at akademiska bokhandeln and wasn't.  the book i can order, the finnish, not so much.  i found japanese a lot easier.  i have never had such a discouraging first day of language learning, because i've never studied a language i had much trouble pronouncing.  (other than how i still can't roll Rs as spanish and swedish both require.) of course this could be because japanese and spanish aren't particularly difficult to pronounce, but i was cracking wax up for twenty minutes practicing short and long vowel sound words with my "cute little accent". 

i am telling myself not to despair yet because it's perfectly possible that i will learn to pronounce finnish fairly well, and i just won't be able to quite hear the difference between certain sounds until after the first lesson. 

also yesterday my relatively simple to-do list involved stopping at the copy machine in the central building for my faculty, ekonomiska statsvetenskapliga fakultet, to run off a single copy of one sheet of paper.  little did i know the copy machine would turn out to have had its copycard reader removed.  i had to walk right past a copy store on my way to the bank, but there was no money in my wallet. 

when i tried to call wax from the bank to set up a rendezvous downtown... my phone was mysteriously out of minutes, though i had never got a warning message, so i had to walk back home through the university to get her. well, i skipped the copy store and instead stopped to use the machine in the library... but their machine was out of order! and the last place i knew for sure had a copy machine was åhuset, but that was out of the way and i was in a hurry.  so no copies were made.  and then the bookstore didn't have my book.

Comments

[wild-boys.livejournal.com]

kein stress, dear.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

i'm making an effort to be mellow. thus a few hours of wading through eye-sporking phantom of the opera fanfic last night...

[wild-boys.livejournal.com]

that would stress anybody! the rage the rage! or i suppose the hysterical laughter might relax one.

and yeah, when photocopiers or similar start behaving like that, the only thing you can do is just say fuck it, really. füückkk ïtt.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

yeah, i think lilah might be scarred, but i can keep it up for a while before the tears of mirth turn to tears of despair for humanity. this is where anyone i'm talking to stops hearing "asdfaöskldf ahahah wtf?" and starts hearing "I HATE PEOPLE". i think i did reach the hate people stage last night, though. and the photocopiers didn't help. seriously, the university can't put a functioning photocopier with a copycard reader in all the main buildings? why not? they have two different card systems, too, one that's used only in the main library while the other is used in the other library branches. -.-

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Considering a good 90% of Americans who learn Japanese mangle it completely (not to mention all the Koreans in my classes), I don't think most people find it that easy to pronounce...

[cimness.livejournal.com]

oh, i know most americans suck at pronouncing japanese (or any foreign language for that matter). i was just speculating that perhaps the sounds involved in japanese are easier to form physically, like if you remove the "for americans" bias (because americans do seem to have an extra special problem with japanese, although that could just be because more of them try or something).

or of course it could have to do with the shape of my mouth or a bit too much spanish and japanese training or something.

[anglepoiselamp.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, Japanese is pretty much the only language Finns don't have terribly much trouble pronouncing. :D

[cimness.livejournal.com]

yeah, finnish has these EXTRA sounds. my main boggle is about y, especially yö and öy and yi. (although wax also doesn't like my 'u' sometimes, or rather, she likes it and cracks up.)

[emmuzka.livejournal.com]

Since you already speak Swedish better than me, I don't see why you wouldn't learn Finnish as well. And trult, accents don't matter, they just bring out more personality.

The copy machine episode sounds really familiar. I think that I still carry several copy machine cards with me, even though I havent use them for a year. Personally, I have had more trouble with printers. I managed with "the prayer method" (=pray that everything works) for four years until I finally got enough and bought a printer.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

i know that finnish will be harder for me than swedish was, but i expect i can learn it, like, adequately. i just hope you're right that accents don't matter. :)

(me: what, like, an american accent?
wax: uh, i don't know, i've never heard an american who could speak finnish.)