17-09-2020, 12:32 AM
I think the difficulty levels of Finnish and Korean as languages themselves are similar for learners who are familiar only with Indo-European languages, as many of us are. The U.S. State Dept. Foreign Service considers Korean a "Category 5" most difficult level of language to learn for English speakers (in the same level as Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic), while Finnish is just one of the more difficult "Category 4" languages (which include almost all non-Germanic and non-Romance languages).
I think part of the difficulty in learning Finnish is that almost any native Finnish speaker you are likely to come into any contact with at all, almost certainly has at least a decent command of English. So it is difficult to find situations where it is actually practically necessary to use Finnish instead of English. One clever Finnish language textbook presented a classroom scenario in Finland where one student spoke English, another student was Russian and didn't speak English, and a third student was a Brazilian immigrant who spoke only Portuguese (so they couldn't even cheat by communicating in Spanish)! Very clever on the part of the textbook authors, I thought. But in actual practical reality, it will be rare to find a situation where a foreign language learner's Finnish is even remotely near the level of any educated Finn's English.
(I had the rare and wonderful opportunity to take a year of college-level classroom Finnish language instruction at Columbia University last year. But alas, this year the university cut the program along with many other rarely taught small enrollment language classes I'm sure as part of the Covid-related cutbacks taking place across higher education institutions everywhere. It's a shame. At least Duolingo has a Finnish learning program now! It's not the same as classroom instruction, but it's better than nothing.)
With Korean on the other hand, there will be numerous opportunities to practice the language with Koreans who know little or poor or no English. So that will give the learner both extra motivation and extra practice in learning the language.
I think part of the difficulty in learning Finnish is that almost any native Finnish speaker you are likely to come into any contact with at all, almost certainly has at least a decent command of English. So it is difficult to find situations where it is actually practically necessary to use Finnish instead of English. One clever Finnish language textbook presented a classroom scenario in Finland where one student spoke English, another student was Russian and didn't speak English, and a third student was a Brazilian immigrant who spoke only Portuguese (so they couldn't even cheat by communicating in Spanish)! Very clever on the part of the textbook authors, I thought. But in actual practical reality, it will be rare to find a situation where a foreign language learner's Finnish is even remotely near the level of any educated Finn's English.
(I had the rare and wonderful opportunity to take a year of college-level classroom Finnish language instruction at Columbia University last year. But alas, this year the university cut the program along with many other rarely taught small enrollment language classes I'm sure as part of the Covid-related cutbacks taking place across higher education institutions everywhere. It's a shame. At least Duolingo has a Finnish learning program now! It's not the same as classroom instruction, but it's better than nothing.)
With Korean on the other hand, there will be numerous opportunities to practice the language with Koreans who know little or poor or no English. So that will give the learner both extra motivation and extra practice in learning the language.