One explanation why we Finns are so odd must be the language.
It's been cited as the second hardest language to learn after Cantonese. Having never tried to learn Cantonese, I'm not sure this is correct. Besides, how do you measure the grade of difficulty? I suppose the 13 cases, and endings rather than prepositions make a difference. There must be a number of linguists who are at this very point shouting at their screens reading this, but not being one myself, it seems strange to me that you can be so specific about a human brain. (I must interject here that whenever I say the word linguist I always think of a particular James Bond movie. If you know the joke you know what I mean.)
That aside, Finnish is my mother tongue, and as those of you who have been reading my tale 'How I came to be in England' know, I learned Swedish when living there as a child. So really the only language I had to consciously learn was English.
But I find now, after hmm, 25 odd years here in the UK (how time flies), my Finnish is deteriorating. Sometimes I forget words and have to look them up. It's on these occasions when I feel almost a foreigner in my own language. Take for instance the word sinusitis. I could not remember what it was in Finnish. Husband suggested 'sinukkisia'. He has this theory that he can turn any word into Finnish by adding a number of k's and 'ia' at the end of it. Sometimes it works but on this occasion the proper word turned out to be, wait for it....
Poskiontelontulehdus
In Finnish the word sounds as painful as it is, but I know it's not onomatopoeic. It actually means inflammation of the cheek cavities. So now I feel really unwell.
PS. Antibiotics are on their way so normal service of the blog will be resumed within 24-48 hours.
