A taste of Finnish

The classroom was full of "remove and destroy" signs -

This coat rack was so wobbly that a it could barely stand - how did it hold coats for so long?

But the reason we were there had nothing to do with these signs - we were there for a short "taster" language course, one of a spectrum that City Lit has been offering. I chose Finnish, as I'd heard that in Finnish a whole sentence could be expressed in one word (agglutination). While in Finland in 1997 for an editing conference, I came across information on the linguistic history of the country - and here was a chance to find out a little about the language itself.

In three hours, we practised greetings and phrases, pronunciation and spelling (reading out a list of names of famous Finns, among whom I recognised only the architect and the conductor), dipped into the structure of the language, practised numbers 0-9 by giving phone numbers, learned words for a few foods and how to ask for prices (with further numbers to 100), and tried to keep straight the phrases regarding name/nationality/town/language. Just about enough to make the head spin...

Alvar Aalto - architect and designer
Martti Ahtisaari - 10th President of Finland, international peace worker
Tarja Halonen - 11th President of Finland, 2000-12
Sami Hyypiä - football manager
Mika Häkkinen - twice Formula One World Champion
Anna-Leena Härkönen - writer and actress
Mika Kallio - Grand Prix motorcycle racer
Aki Kaurismäki - screen writer and film director
Marja-Liisa Kirvesniemi - cross country skier, 1984 Olympics
Heikki Kovalainen - Formula One racing driver
Jari Litmanen - footballer
Karita Mattila - operatic soprano
Paavo Nurmi - middle and long distance runner, "the Flying Finn"
Matti Nykänen - ski jumper, 1988 Olympics
Kati Outinen - actress
Kirsti Paakkanen - designer who rescued Marrimeko
Kimi Räikkönen - racing driver
Esa-Pekka Salonen - orchestral conductor and composer
Tarja Turunen - singer/songwriter and composer
Martti Vanhanen - twice prime minister of Finland

In the big contest of which language is most difficult to learn, Finnish is a top contender; the session gave us only a hint of why this might be.

An unexpected spinoff came via colour names, a topic that wasn't covered ... which was quickly remedied by looking on the web, where I found this:
"There are some discrepancies as to what Finns think is blue/green and what Americans think is. This also occurs in red/orange/yellow. As far as I can tell, anything that is blue to an American and approaching turquoise is green to Finns. Also, orange usually becomes red or yellow, e.g. Finnish mailboxes, which are without a doubt orange to Americans, are yellow to Finns, although younger Finns tend to make a distinction between orange and red/yellow."

That led to further research about names of colours, more of which later no doubt - if you want to know more right this minute, start here for colour names, or with this list of colourful idioms.