My Journey With The Finnish Language - Andrew’s Story
Hey my name is Andrew! I was born in Maryland, U.S.A. but moved around quite a bit within the states. We moved to Tampere, Finland when I was 13. I am of mixed heritage; my father is Jamaican and my mother is from El Salvador. They both moved to the U.S. when they were young. Even though my mother is from Central America, I only speak a little Spanish. English is my mother tongue and I speak Finnish pretty fluently. I found that my knowledge in Spanish made it much easier to learn Finnish. I feel there are many similarities between the two languages.
Learning the language
When moving to Finland, I had minimal knowledge on the country and the language. At the time of my journey to Finland, my Finnish language skills consisted of “joo,” “ei”, “kiitos” and “omena”. I started school but it was an international school so it was all in English although I did still have to take compulsory Finnish language courses throughout my 2 years there. I think going to this school definitely helped me integrate and learn more about Finnish culture because even though it was an international school, there were many Finnish students that attended. During my time in that school I experienced so many new things. Sauna was one of the first things I can remember and although I didn’t care for sauna at the time, it has become a weekly tradition for my family and I now.
I didn’t really start to pick up on the Finnish language until I was about 16. I attended a vocational college for business for a year. The teaching was done completely in Finnish but the overall program was catered to immigrants that didn’t speak the most fluent Finnish. It felt like that was a great environment for me to improve my Finnish language skills because I would normally talk in English with my Finnish friends from my previous school. I realized that speaking Finnish with Finns was very nerve wracking for me. I felt embarrassed speaking to them in Finnish so it was much easier to talk to other foreigners who had about the same level of Finnish language skills that I had. The only downside to that which I learned the hard way, was that I started to pick up a sort of “broken Finnish” or I would end up using the “spoken Finnish” when doing school projects instead of using “written Finnish” (yes, there is a difference). I was learning the language to an extent but I was also skipping steps. Luckily that overall experience gave me the confidence to openly speak more Finnish to foreigners and Finns alike.
My connection to the language as an adult and a parent
I believe it is somewhat important to speak the language of the country you live in, especially if you plan to be there for the rest of your life or a very long time. Although I’m sure you can survive in Finland without speaking the language (at least in Helsinki), I think it is important to learn the language to help build that sense of community. When you speak the language of the country you’re living in, I believe it helps build a stronger connection with the country. That’s how it was in my case at least. I realized that I started to consider Finland my home after I learned to fluently speak the language. I started to have this sense of belonging that was not there my first few years of living in Finland. Now that I speak Finnish fluently, I have noticed that I tend to go out of my way to help individuals struggling with the language because I know how hard it can be to learn but also how big of a difference it makes when you can finally communicate with someone with the language you’re trying to learn.
I would say the importance of languages and my personal connections to them has grown much more since becoming a father. My daughter was born in the U.S. in 2020. My wife and I speak a mixture of English and Finnish at home, although it is mostly English. When our daughter was first learning how to speak we tried to have many different languages around her like English and Spanish music, Finnish tv shows and Swahili stories. We wanted to create an environment where she heard different languages so that would be the norm for her. Since then she is able to speak English fluently and she has now started to speak in Finnish on her own as well. Small things for now but that is great. She also understands certain Finnish words and phrases. This is all great because she will be starting Finnish day care soon and we wanted her to have some tools to get her started and make the transition to daycare easier on her.
It has been amazing watching my daughter learn to speak Finnish. Her excitement when figuring out certain things and what they mean is infectious and gets me excited as well. During my recent 4 years in the U.S., my Finnish language skills got pretty rusty to say the least. I had friends I spoke with in Finnish but I didn’t really do more than that to stay on top of things. Being back in Finland and studying with my daughter has brought a new level of enthusiasm to my own Finnish language learning experience. It feels like we are learning together when reading Finnish books and practicing with learning cards. I am sure my daughter will want to learn more languages based on her enthusiasm when learning Finnish and Spanish and these skills will help her with that.
I consider myself a global citizen because of my experiences and where life has taken me up to this point. I was fortunate enough to travel across the world and experience so many new things. I believe being a global citizen is so important. It can help broaden your understanding of others and the world around us which in turn facilitates a stronger, more unified world. I don’t think being a global citizen is limited to traveling. With the technology of today's world, there are so many ways to increase our knowledge of the world around us.
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Andrew Bryan, Customer & Community Support at Moi Panda
