Finnish course - why can't school always be so much fun?

Today was our 3. lesson of our "finnish course for exchange students". During the first two lessons Nina and me already learned a lot of words and sentences in finnish. Now if we hear people talking finnish it doesn't make no sense to us anymore. It's quite strange for me to not understand a word. Now I can imagine how it feels like for people who don't speak a latin language hearing Rhaeto-romanic. I could never imagine that.


 Back to finnish course. I mean finnish language is funny indeed, only if you read or hear it. Here some examples: (Tipp: read the sentences as it would be one word - that's how Finns speak ;) )

Moi! Moi Moi! Mikä sun nimi on? Mun nimi on Pekka. Hauska tavata! Kiitos samoin. Mun nimi on Kaisa. Mistä sä olet kotoisin? Mä olen kotoisin Helsingistä. Mistä sä olen kotoisin? ...

So, you unterstood everything, right?! =)

Back to our finnish lesson from today... First we had do write a dictation. That was an experience! Try to write something you can't even define as a language and you don't really know what letters do exist in this language... ;) But hey Nina and me, we weren't that bad. I think we are really talented for finnish language.  ;)
After the dictation we spoke about the text the teacher dictated to us, so that we knew what we actually wrote on our papers. Eventually someone of our class asked about the pronunciation and the difference of different letters: y, i, ä, a, e, ö, o. For Nina and me it's not really a problem, because we know these letters from german language BUT think about english-speaking people... Then the entertaining part of today's lesson began. Our teacher wrote all these letters on the board and showed how to pronounce them.

Then we had to practice them. We had to stand up and do the same moves as he did and with different voices - deep deeper and high, higher, which supported the pronunciation: Iiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeäääääääääääääääääääeeeeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiii. Uuuuuuuuuuuooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeääääääääääääää. yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyöööööööööööööööööyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. iiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeäääääääääeeeeeeiiiiiiii. Äääääääääääääääääääaaaaaaaaaaaaaääääääääääää. (a=leave your arms behind your back, ä=move your arms forward) And so on... I really felt like being in a theatre course! =)

So that's briefly what we learned today at our third finnish lesson...