Last Friday, my online Finnish language course came to an end, and I am now supposedly at level A2.1 in Finnish. I say supposedly because I have not yet taken any sort of official test that evaluates a person’s language level. However, the last course I took had a starting level of A1.3 and was presumably supposed to advance me to A2.1, which is the starting level of the next course in the series.
Read more about the language proficiency levels:
Now, I want to detail my journey getting to A2.1 and how much I can understand at this level, because I myself am always wondering what it takes to advance up the language levels and how much a person can actually understand at the various levels.
How many hours did it take for me to get to A2.1 Finnish?
So far, I’ve probably put in around 400 hours of active studying and passive learning (through comprehensible input) to get to where I am now.
I suppose you could say my studies began 1096 days ago (which turns out to be exactly 3 years ago) when I first downloaded Duolingo, but I think it would be rather misleading to say I’ve been studying Finnish for 3 years considering that I have been using Duolingo for only 3 minutes a day. In my opinion, that hardly counts as studying.
I took my first real Finnish course in April 2024 after a little bit of self-studying, around a year after moving to Finland. However, I think it’s more useful to measure my efforts in terms of the actual hours I spent learning the language, because I have had many months between studies where I was not using the language at all, apart from the 3 minutes of Duolingo a day.
A breakdown of my study time (including homework):
- April 2024: A1.2 -> A1.3 Course at Helsingin Aikuisopisto (~50h)
- May 2024: A1.3 -> A2.1 Course at Helsingin Aikuisopisto (~50h)
- June 2024: A2.1 -> “A2.1+” Course at Helsingin Aikuisopisto (~50h)
- Although I really liked the teacher I had, I realized that we had not actually been learning at the A2.1 level. By the end of this course, we still had not covered all the grammar concepts in Suomen Mestari 1. I still learned a lot — I just had not been learning at the levels I thought I was learning at during this particular course series at Helsingin Aikuisopisto. This is why I continued my studies at Helsinki Summer University back at level A1.2 (what my actual level probably was at that time).
- December 2024: A1.2 -> A1.3 Course at Helsinki Summer University (~55h)
- This course covered the first half of Suomen Mestari 2. I got a perfect score at the final exam at the end of this course.
- February 2025: A1.3 -> A2.1 Course at Helsinki Summer University (~80h)
- This course was significantly more difficult than the previous course, but I also learned quite a lot. The final exam was also much more challenging, but I still got the 3rd highest grade in my class despite feeling underprepared during the exam.
- March 2022 – March 2025: Duolingo (~55h)
- I never found Duolingo to be much useful, but I’ve still been compelled to do a 3 minute lesson every day just to maintain my streak. I completed all their Finnish modules a while back and have been repeating the same lessons since.
- Other time I spent self-studying before or between courses: ~60h
Total time spent learning Finnish: ~400h
How much Finnish can I understand at A2.1?
Media
At my current level, I can understand simple children’s shows and podcasts. For example, I can almost fully (95%) understand Metsän Eläimet, even without any subtitles. Metsän Eläimet is a cozy children’s show with slowly spoken narration, simple grammar, and simple vocabulary. I have also been enjoying the podcast Opi Suomea!, a simple and slowly spoken podcast for beginners. The podcast introduces some unfamiliar vocabulary, but I can still understand most of what I hear and guess the rest from context, which makes it an excellent source of comprehensible input for me. I have actually been listening to this podcast at 1.2x speed.
Other children’s shows I’ve been enjoying are Pipsa Possu, Arvaa kuinka paljon sinua rakastan, and Tulipop. I’ve been watching these shows with Finnish subtitles turned on. These shows are definitely a level or so up from Metsän Eläimet, using more vocabulary I’m unfamiliar with. I can still understand a fair bit of these shows, although I have to reference the dictionary more often while watching them.
Another good simple podcast is Kuulitsä?. This podcast uses more puhekieli and is a step up from Opi Suomea!, but I can still understand a fair bit of what is being spoken.
On the other hand, Yle Selkouutiset is still too difficult for me. The vocabulary it uses is too advanced for it to be a good source of comprehensible input at the moment, but I think I will soon get to its level with more active studying of new vocab.
I am also not able to understand the lyrics of most Finnish songs yet, although I still enjoy listening to them. I noticed Finnish songs often use a lot of puhekieli and thoughts may be expressed more poetically, which make them more difficult to understand. I can recognize a lot of words, in a scattered manner, and have translated and memorized a few lines of some songs, but I can’t string everything together and comprehend the entire lyrics of new songs on the first listen. If I could at this level, that would be an impressive feat!
You can see a full list of my favourite comprehensible input sources here.
Conversations with actual people
At A2.1, my ability to have conversations with others is still quite limited. While I can have simple back-and-forth conversations with my peers and husband, I struggle to formulate grammatically correct sentences in real-time. I also struggle a lot with comprehending puhekieli and regular speed speech when I interact with strangers.
If I’m given the time to think for a moment, I can express a fair amount of simple thoughts and questions in Finnish. For example, I can talk a little bit about myself, my day, what I need/plan/want to do, things in the past, and express some opinions and feelings.
Spontaneous conversations where I have to react in real-time are more difficult. I may just barely be able to get by while running errands if I have to have interactions in Finnish. For example, I may be able to get through a short interaction in Finnish without the other person switching to English, but I’ll feel like I’m faking understanding the whole time. I won’t understand everything that is being said, but I may be able to guess enough of what is being said to give appropriate and very simple replies (e.g. “joo”, “ei”, “kiitos”). But as I’ve said before, I can be much more expressive if given a moment to think. The anxiety of trying to use Finnish in a social situation can also cause my brain to short circuit a bit.
Final thoughts
Despite still struggling with real-world interactions, I am happy with how I’ve been progressing. I feel like I’ve learned quite a lot the past month, hitting new milestones like getting through interactions in Finnish despite struggling through them. I find it exciting that I can now listen to and understand simple Finnish podcasts, and noticing myself understanding more and more has felt extremely rewarding.
Leave a Reply