Quote Originally Posted by Eric C. View Post
Hanna, what about your Swedish? Is it really easy to learn? Is it MUCH easier than Finnish?
Hm... well I think the general consensus is that it is a waste of time to try to learn Finnish unless you plan to live there. I know a couple of people of Finnish origin in Sweden, who were not able to learn it at all and gave up.

Some of the native Swedish speakers there, don't actually know it well at all.
It's a language of "the (common) people" though; in Finnish history, the elites of the society there have been speakers of Swedish (mainly) and also Russian in the past. It's a Finno-Ugric language. Somewhere far into Russia is another Finno-Ugric language (people) that is somehow related to Finnish, along with Estonian and Hungarian.

Swedish has a few grammatical difficulties that English doesn't have, but it is a Germanic language so you get a lot "for free". For people who live and work in Sweden there is not the same degree of leniency with grammar and vocabulary as there is in English. This makes things hard for immigrants. There are some sounds that do not exist in English, mainly rolling R and and a sound like x in Russian. Plus three more letters in the alphabet.