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Brief Guide to Finnish vol. 1 — Basics

They say Finnish is one of the most difficult languages in the world. It’s obviously the easiest one for me since I was grown into it but I sort of see the point. It’s like the Perl of spoken languages given it’s amazingly flexible and powerful while being mostly logical at the same time.

Using Finnish puts you into a different mindset. Whereas English is mostly about doing things, Finnish is more contextual and we prefer a different kind of expression. It is difficult to explain without teaching you the language first so I’ll try to give you a brief guide to Finnish so you can get along better while visiting Future Frontend.

Note that when you try to speak Finnish with a Finn and they realise you aren’t a native, they’ll switch to English as soon as possible. This makes it difficult to learn the language properly. The best result you can expect is an awkward smile as they try to be polite with you.

Since the grammar is the size of Godzilla and it would take a long post to explain it and this is supposed to be a short one, I will cover some common expressions.

Greetings and Customs🔗

Food🔗

Programming🔗

Conclusion🔗

The nice thing is that you don’t have to learn Finnish in order to participate in the Future Frontend conference! We will speak English with our beautiful Finnish accent (also known as tankero or rally English) with you.

If you want to know more about the language, continue to the part two.