When people learn that I'm 51% Finnish, they often ask if I speak the language. It's a crazy question. Who speaks Finnish, apart from the five million or so multilingual Finns? Finnish is one of the hardest, most obscure languages you can learn; it's in the Fenno-Ugric group and thus counts Estonian, Hungarian and a handful of minor languages spoken in Russia as its nearest cousins. Don't think, however, that the idea of learning Finnish never crossed my mind; I attended one of the few (I'm assuming) universities that offer Finnish and I'm sure I dog-eared that page in the course catalog. But, you know, it was just a whole bunch of credits and a whole bunch of work and most inconveniently held what seemed like all day on FRIDAY, when I purposely confined my classes to Monday through Thursday, so to my everlasting shame as a 51% Finn, I stuck with Latin, a language spoken by even fewer people.
But! I know a couple of important words. Kiitos is thank you. Hei is Hi. Spider is hamahakki (mentally put umlauts over all those a's because I don't know how). And bunny, as in this adorable fellow that I bought at a flea market in Helsinki: pupujussi.
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