Screw my neighbour

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One of the most incredibly frustrating things about trying to learn Finnish, aside from the folks who refuse to understand my Finnish and then gleefully exclaim how they can now practise their English on me, are the "Kysy naapurilta!" excercises in the classes. Ask my neighbour?! Ask my neighbour precisely what, motherfucker?! My neighbour could be anything from a clueless Brit whose pronunciation pains even me or some Karelian dude who is just slumming for easy credit and grammar. "Mikä on Helsingin paras disco?" the handout in class instructs my neighbour to ask me. Well, fuck, how in the hell am I supposed to know that? I haven't been to a disco since 1979! I get to ask, "Mikä on mielestäsi paras kirja, jonka olet lukenut?", to a guy who guy who tells me he doesn't read. At all. I'm starting to believe that it's a cruel torture device to whittle away at our resolve to learn the language. It does amuse me to think of going through Latin back in grade school with the nuns and forcing us to do these sorts of exercises in class. "Morituri te salutamus! Ausculta mihi! Tibi dico! Bene, cum  Latine nescias, nolo manus meas in te maculare."

It's like the blind leading the blind when we ask each other the questions and then try to answer them in any reasonably close to correct fashion. The people who are advanced stick together in the front of the class and the slackers tend to hang in the back, hoping not to be noticed. Even among those who struggle there are castes since noone wants to get stuck with someone who knows less than you do and so when the "Kysy naapurilta!" directive comes, and it will each and every day, the classroom turns into a country square dance hall before beer has been served to help make everyone look attractive enough to dance with. I usually just want to hide in the corner at that point and hope that noone notices me. In fact, of the few times I skipped class over the past year, each and every time it was the horrific thought of having to converse with my neighbour that drove me away. I'd almost rather go to the dentist or maybe get my skull trepanned since, clearly, I need another hole in my head.

There is a Finnish conversation class that is supposed to be on the schedule for the Fall term, but if it's just going to be a bunch of students and only one teacher/native speaker, fuck that as I can practise bad Finnish for free with my expat friends. I have met Finns whose English sucks, really sucks [albeit likely better than my sucky Finnish], and I've managed to patiently let them try since they're so enthusiastic and I somehow always get to be the target for English practise, but in spite of the fact that I love my native tongue, why is it so hard to find Finns who are willing to suffer our bumbling attempts to speak the language without fear that we're going to look like idiots and who will answer our questions of verity without a blank stare? Just about everywhere else in Europe, as I recall, speak English only if you're a tourist or if there's no other option and sometimes not even then. In Germany, I never had the recipient of my rusty German switch to English because they either thought it was rude or because, like anyone, they preferred their mother tongue. Perhaps the internet is to blame for this change to English as the bottom line for non-native speakers which is, of course, great for me since it is my native language after all, but it's a real handicap for those who aren't adept in the local language since so much depends on communication skills. We don't live inside the internet.