Multilingual, but not bilingual - yet

Finnish, Swedish and German are not in demand in Canada. If I had studied French and for example Spanish, my multilingualism would be in a totally different level. I would be bilingual with the official languages (English and French) and Spanish would be a great addition. Oh well, how could I have known 20 years ago - or even four years ago - that I will end up in Canada?

But it's never too late to learn. I hope. And that's why I've started French this autumn. I've always disliked French, and even when I had a French roommate in Austria for a year, in Toronto for a half a year and in Ottawa for couple of months, I never really wanted to learn the language. So far my French conversation skills have been limited to couple of bad words and "une paguette, s'il vous plait". I never understood how anyone is able to make sense of a language, where words might have 8 letters, but only half of them will be pronounced. Like "merci beaucoup" which is pronounced "merci boku" and not letter by letter, which I would prefer; "merci beaucoup". Not very graceful.

But now my "merci boku" is becoming more graceful, thanks to the French classes. Three hours a week I sit with other eager French learners and repeat after the teacher "a quelle heure alles-vouz au travail?" - "a kel öör alle-vu o travaij?" - "what time do you go to work?". To my surprise, Finnish has actually proven to be helpful when learning French, since Finnish has ö-sound in it. Couple of other students struggle with the sound a lot and when the teacher says "öööö", the students answer "oooo". Each week "öööö" -"oooo" - "öööö" -"oooo" - "öööö" -"oooo" dialogue goes on for a little while.

Another three hours a week I spend with an online program. Unfortunately the ears of the program are pickier than ears of another human being, and I constantly struggle with words like 21 (vingt et un), yellow (jeune) and tiny words like "le", "je" or "au". When the computer says "I don't understand you" for the 20th time in a row I jump to the next word and mumble my first French sentence to the computer: "Ta gueule!" - "Shut up!"