Finnish: An Indecipherable Language

Many European languages are either in the Germanic or Latin-based ("Romance") categories. Examples of the former include German, English, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish. French and Spanish are among the latter group. Since the two of us know some French and German, when we're in almost any European country we can generally understand (or at least make educated guesses about) the content of written materials such as signs or menus.

Finnish, like Hungarian, has no connection to the Germanic or Romance languages. These two languages belong to the Finno-Ugrian language family. As a result, we are totally clueless when we see signs in Finland (and we have had the same experience during earlier trips to Hungary). It’s reminiscent of our bike trip last year in Japan, when we had no idea how to interpret written or spoken Japanese.

The difficulty we're having with Finnish is a common problem. The Foreign Service Institute categorizes languages into 5 categories according to how easy it is for native English-speakers to learn (1 = easiest, 5 = most difficult). Finnish and Hungarian are both in category 4 (and both are noted to be more difficult than most other category 4 languages). By comparison, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, French, and Spanish are all in category 1.

Fortunately, this is somewhat moot, since most Finns (over 60%, according to a European Union survey) speak English, making it fairly easy for us to communicate in this country.

A sign on a wall where we parked our bikes for lunch today. Hopefully, it doesn't say "No bikes allowed".