Laughter is the best medicine - and I am in splits

As I browsed through the online Finnish national daily Helsinki Sanomat, I came across an article about a British professor David Kirby British professor takes on Finnish national myths: Professor David Kirby says Finnish is an easy language, and women are eager to prepare coffee.

I spat out my tea all over the computer when I doubled up in laughter (which was not prepared by my "emancipated" Finnish wife!).

The newspaper columnist, Annamari Sipilä in London, writes that Professor David Kirby speaks excellent Finnish.

"Professor David Kirby speaks excellent Finnish.

Best not to praise him much, though, and it's certainly not a good idea to wonder how a Brit has managed to master such a difficult language.

"Finnish is fairly easy. The grammar has clear rules. It is much more difficult to learn Swedish", Kirby confides."

I thought back to 1984 when we moved to Finland and our then Indian daughter, who was just 11 years at that time, was speaking excellent Finnish (besides excellent English and also Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam) in just less than six months.

Not a professor, she was!!

Then I thought of all the one and two year old Finns who speak fluent Finnish.

Then I thought of our two grandchildren, Samuel (9) and Daniel (2) who have been fluent in both English and Finnish (including various dialects) since they were just one year old.

Joanna implemented the Immersion Method of language education with her children which has contributed to their fluency in both these languages.

And in 1994, when Annikki and I wrote in our book "Hankbook for Survival in Finland", we wrote a chapter about learning Finnish where we said that Finnish was an easy language to learn to understand - but for different reasons than what the "professor" thinks.

Soda (15) from Thailand came to Finland just over a year ago. When I was at his school yesterday for the Parents - Teachers meeting, he and his friends did a special session of a medley of Thai music - and Soda was confiident enough to make a public speech in Finnish!

Finnish is not a difficult langauge - it is the method of teaching Finnish by some unimaginative teachers in Finnish schools and universities that has promoted the myth that Finnish is a difficult language.

Also the Finns want to believe this myth to given them some "Standing and Talking Points" in their self-promotion!!

What really shook me was David Kirby stating that former Finnish Prime Minister, Kalevi Sorsa, was a reluctant leader.

Maybe Professaor Kirby should look a little more carefully into the "Valko Scandal" and other similar corrupt issues that former Prime Minister Sorsa and his friends were involved in to understand how much he was there to grab power and wealth for himself!

Professor Kirby also states that the present Prime Minister, Matti Vanhanen, is another releuctant leader.

I think my Finnish wife of 62 (it is her birthday today, - God Bless Her) will strongly disagree as Vanhanen (of the Centre Party) engineered a bloodless coup of his own party leader (with the aid of male chauvinists Paavo Lipponen of the Social Democrat Party and Sauli Niinistö of the Conservative Party) to grab power from a woman whom they could not tolerate to be in that high office.

And for the last three years Vanhanen has been trying to undermine the work of the Finnish woman President, Tarja Halonen, in an effort to grab that power also!

Professor Kirby says he does not see Finnish women as particularly emancipated. He states: "Finnish women rarely take part in discussions as equal partners with men - not even in academia. Women have voluntarily taken on the role of preparing the coffee."

In my experience the only people with whom you can carry out an intelligent conversation in Finland are Finnish women as most Finnish men are the products of "an indoctrinated compulsory army service" which mentally castrates them to think as Finnish nationalists!

I think I lost all respect for Professor Kirby because if the views expressed.

His opinions can be put at the top of Finnish myths!