Arturo comments : Hello, I am a Spanish exchange student in Finland. I only wanted to point out a mistake in this post: Finnish is not derived from any German tongue, but it is part of the group of so-called Finnic-Ugric languages, the same as Estonian and Hungarian languages. Regards from Otaniemi, Espoo.
PD: make sure that no Finn realizes that you have said that Finnish comes from Swedish!!!
Todd Nolen comments : Howdy Maa'm, and other folk distressed by a language designed exclusively for the Finns. The relationship of Finnish to Hungarian is a close as English is to Persian (Farsi). With 16 cases of the verb and vocal harmony and no prepositions it becomes a language best absorbed through the unconscious mind. Grammar comes before half-baked fluency, the opposite of the Latin/Germanic tongues. It is quite unfortunate that English is not the second language of both the Swedish speaking Finns, and the Finns. Most Finns take (or have taken) Swedish at school, but afterward they do not (mostly cannot) speak it, and some take pride in never having learned anything but to check the appropriate box on the multiple guess final exam. There is some emotional roots to not learning their previous masters' language as well. You may be interested to know that the Sa'mi language is also Finn-based, with a horrible grammar forest to be snuck through. Russian is easier to learn.
