How to Fail at Being Finnish: A Diary #3
Isi ❤️ Samuel
Welcome to my ongoing diary of life as a Brit living in Finland. Each week I write about the things that colour my days and the, occasionally weird, ways this country keeps surprising me.
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Wil
#3
MONDAY
What I’d really love to know is what I sound like when I’m speaking Finnish. Well, obviously I know what I sound like, I can hear myself, after all. What I mean is I’d love to know what I sound like to someone fluent. A Finnish person.
Do I sound like a toddler? I wonder. A drunk? That’s probably closer to it.
But, judging by how things go in Monday’s first class of the week, I sound rather more like someone with all the existential angst of an Ingmar Bergman character.
I am called on first to talk about my weekend, likely because I made a big point of telling everyone what my plans were last Friday afternoon. Our kids have, for the first time, spent the weekend away at their grandparents’ house.
Now, the way I would like to report this to my teacher and classmates is something along the lines of:
“The flat really did feel disconcertingly quiet without our two little ones running around asking to play Pokémon cards and for me to give them horseback rides.”
Directly translated, what comes out is something more along the lines of:
“MY CHILDREN HAVE LEFT ME AND I FEAR THE SILENCE OF MY HOME.”
Maybe I’m just more existentialist in Finnish. Could be a strong look for me.
*
Because I finish school earlier than my wife does work, I’m on pre-school collection duty. Sam remains engrossed with a collection of orange papers he is drawing and scribbling on while I get the routine feedback from his teacher (didn’t nap, ate well, no notable injuries). I notice that Sam’s papers are stapled together into a sort of book. And, in his beautifully manic handwriting, I see Sam has titled it Isi ♥️ Samuel (trans: Dad ♥️ Samuel).
“What’s that?” I ask the teacher.
“Oh, they are working on making their own books this week.”
“About their fathers?” I ask.
“They chose the subject themselves.”
I have no words.
It doesn’t seem all that long ago, when Sam was just a baby, that it all felt so different. I was by no means an absent father when he was born, but I was a full time chef. The weekends and evenings away were many and I’d had to get used to the sound of his screams whenever I, returning home and stinking of grease and charcoal and turbot guts after a lunch shift, tried to take him from the arms of his mother.
I don’t need a book to tell me how close we are now, but that he’d choose to make one is joyous all the same.
TUESDAY
After a brief appearance last week, the snow has relented. In its place, the cold has hit. What you learn quickly from life in Finland is that snow not only brightens the world but seems to warm it as well. I don’t know how it works, it just seems to keep the cold from being too brutal. At least some of the time.
Today’s clear and baby blue skies mean no such warmth.
For the first time this season, I dig deep into the corner I am allotted from the cupboard I share with my wife in search of my single pair of Long Johns.
*
Having arrived at school, the lack of feeling around my knees reminds me I really must stop buying important pieces of clothing from discount German supermarkets. Nevertheless, now I’m in the warmth of my school, there’s something deeply comforting about this particular item of clothing. The support from waist all the way to ankle. The involuntary memory I’m afforded from wearing them is that of wearing leggings in the role of Frederic in my all-boys’ school production of Pirates of Penzance aged 10, a creative achievement I have failed to surpass even to this day.
*
If you’ve been reading my diary since week one, you might remember that, on account of his never laughing at my jokes, I’m convinced my teacher doesn’t like me.
Yes, yes, I know. Those sensible, level-headed types among you likely think I’m being “neurotic” or “over-thinking” this.
Luckily, I know better.
This is why, good little English sycophant that I am, I’ve decided a well-placed compliment is in order to grease the wheels of our stuttering relationship.
And today, I come prepared with a good one.
Yesterday the teacher spent a good 10 minutes trying to explain the difference between the three words in the Finnish language for which in English there is only one: “there” (in Finnish, “there” can be one of either siellä, tuolla, or täällä).
With him at my table handing back last week’s test, I tell him that his explanation was very clear and very interesting. And with it, I offer a warm and brotherly smile.
The way he looks at me I can only describe as the look I imagine Meryl Streep would give me if I said to her:
“Hey, Meryl, you know, I once played Frederick in my all boys’ school production of Pirates of Penzance once and, I have to say, you’re pretty good at acting as well.”
The stuttering relationship appears to continue…
WEDNESDAY
Last week I learnt from my four year old daughter’s pre-school teacher that her Finnish language skills, being ranked as B1 level, are as good as if not better than my own.
This week’s reason to be jealous of her comes from my own teacher. He tells us that the average 4 to 7 year old can learn up to 10 new words a day. No effort needed.
After a week of it appearing on my Finnish vocab flashcard app, I still can’t remember the word in Finnish for depression.
*
Every day after school, I’m supposed to be doing at least 2 hours of study a night. This includes homework as given by my teacher, in addition to reading a Finnish book for 10 minutes, watching the news in Finnish, and working on learning 20 new words (hence my flashcard app). Because of this workload, I tend to have my homework open throughout the evening so I can jump in and out of it while keeping an eye on the kids. At one point, Lego monster in hand, Sam asks me what I’m doing, and I tell him I’m learning Finnish.
“I can teach you to speak Finnish”, he tells me.
“Any chance you can teach me by tomorrow?” I ask.
He pauses a moment before saying, “Yes, let’s start with this.” He turns and picks up something from the coffee table that, in the warm glow of the candles illuminating the apartment, I can’t make out.
It’s an odd experience, knowing your six year old is so much better than you at something you care so much about. It feels like the kind of thing I shouldn’t need to know until I’m hunched over my knees, Sam having run rings around me on some distant football pitch a decade from now. I suppose this sense of obsolescence is one I’ll simply know sooner than most fathers.
Sam holds up the object and I ask what it is. He carefully enunciates a previously unknown Finnish word. It’s Blu Tack, my wife tells me.
I may forget a great many things on this language journey. I may struggle to ever remember the word for depression.
But how could I ever forget the word for Blu Tack that my son taught me on a candle-lit night here at home together?
THURSDAY
I have forgotten the Finnish word for Blu Tack.
FRIDAY
After a long day of language classes, I am blessed with a relatively relaxing night cooking at my part-time job at a local brewery. As I’ve said before, it really is like a holiday after the struggle of school. And, more importantly, it’s an opportunity to put my new skills in action. That is why I tell my colleagues at the start of the shift to keep our chat in Finnish tonight.
Everyone is happy to oblige.
*
After 20 minutes of stilted conversation and one misunderstanding over what the word “normal” means in context to two types of tomato sauce we have on the menu, we revert back to English.
*
A particularly favourite colleague of mine, A, enters the kitchen from the dining hall. Her hands bear a dustpan full of broken glass and her face a look of profound annoyance.
“Idiots,” she says.
“Who?” I ask
“This group of guys in there.”
“They broke something?”
“Yeah, they’ve drunk too much, making such rude jokes as well.”
“Rude jokes?”
“Yeah, you know…” she pauses for a moment. “What is the word? They’re joking about dicks. Loudly. I don’t know the word. Standing dicks. You know, standing dicks?”
She gesticulates elegantly and obscenely with her hand an arm.
“Riiight, yes,“ I say. “Standing dicks.”
I may not know what I sound like when I’m speaking Finnish. But if I ever sound as poetic as this dear colleague of mine, I know I’ll be doing something very right.
SATURDAY
Having been at work last night, it was my wife’s job to pick up the kids from pre-school. That means it’s only now I find Sam’s completed edition of Isi ♥️ Samuel on the hallway table.
The pages are full of pictures of me and him, his mum and sister and our little dog as well. It is like… well… it is like nothing. It is beautiful. I go to his room and tell him just how beautiful it is and how lovely it is that he wrote it about the two of us.
And then, because I want to hear him say how much he loves me, I ask him why, of all the countless stories he could tell of the countless things he is interested in, he chose to tell one of us.
“Well,” he says, negotiating a few pieces of Lego in his hands that appear stubbornly stuck together.
“I couldn’t remember how to write mummy in Finnish.”
The diary continues next week…
Thanks for reading.
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That made me laugh out loud 😘
Do you remember how your teacher explained “siellä”, ”tuolla” and ”täällä”? Just out of curiosity, I instantly started to think how I would explain them.
Heartwarming to read about Isi ❤️ Samuel book.