Written 21.4.2015

Languages. A topic that is close to my heart. Lately you've heard this and that about me, hopefully you won't get totally bored with this kind of posts that include mainly my (wannabe) deep thoughts... But back to the business - today I am going to talk about languages. I wrote a post about the subject in my previous blog a couple of years ago and I found it such a nice topic that I decided to do it again.

So, what do languages mean to me? They mean the whole world. A language can open totally new worlds, you can get into a different, weird, unknown culture. You can get to know people. You may understand history, traditions or habits of some group better. Language is a strong part of who we are, what we do and how we do it. It can be a from of art. I just love languages, but I admit it - I am totally too lazy to study them.

My mother tongue is Finnish and it's my strongest language. It's the language I am most comfortable to use, I read and I have read a lot in Finnish. My vocabulary is wide and I know how to use the language. There's nothing better than writing myself or reading or doing literal analysis. I just love Finnish. It's unique, beautiful and hard language. It's part of my personality, part of who I am and where I come from and I couldn't be prouder of my mother tongue. And now we could ask why do I write a blog in English instead of Finnish?

Well. English is my second strongest language and I could be considered as a bilingual person. I am a bilingual person and lately I've felt that my English has become so much better and I feel more and more comfortable using it. My English is not perfect and it doesn't have to be (even I would wish so). Right now I feel like I want to do as much as possible in English to learn it as much as I can. I also want my blog to be readable for a bigger audience. Finnish speaking population is a tiny one in the end. And quite a few people can understand English.

Other languages then. I've studied Swedish and I could actually manage with it, but I'd like to know it much better. I've studied a bit of Russian and I know very basics - and of course I can read the letters. Then I know pieces of German even though I've never really studied it. Those languages are all interesting and especially German I want to learn - and I will. It seems to be quite an easy language for me and I can understand simple things just by comparing with English and Swedish. I just should get started and decide what, when and how I'm studying.

I hope that some day I'll be able to say that I have (at least) three fluent languages, and I would like to have a job in which languages are needed. Languages overall are closely related to globalization and how important it's to be able to communicate with more than just one language nowadays.