Love for Languages

Some of you might not know that I am also a qualified Finnish Teacher, and worked as so for 17 years. Well, I actually still do, but I can't make my living out of it living in the States, so I am more than happy that I decided to learn a new profession in my late thirties. But if you ever need someone to teach you this special, interesting and a bit challenging language, I can, and will,  definitely help you! Currently I am giving private lessons through Skype and it works really well.

All this also means that I am a Master of Arts in Finnish Language and I have minors in Pedagogy, Adult Education, Psychology and Russian language. If I can count right, I have studied basics of 12 languages in my life. Don't get excited, I only can speak 4 at the moment, and most of my studies were introductory courses that you need to take when you study languages at the university.

I do love my own tongue and am doing all I can to keep both my oral and written skills in perfect level (I read most of my books in Finnish) and suffer that my English will never be as good as my Finnish. I know that most of you don't see this as a problem, but it is for me. I'm too good a writer in my language to accept bad English... but there's no classes in Charlotte to help me with this! I don't want to take a written English class because I know how to structure texts and the courses wouldn't serve me well. I'm also too lazy to take advanced English grammar courses (my basic grammar is probably just fine and I don't want to read Shakespeare) because I don't think that grammatically perfect text is necessarily the most interesting. So what can I do?

I think I have learned the most of my vocabulary by listening and speaking to you. A big  part of  learning is to be okay with making a lods of mistakes and challenging yourself. By this I mean that sometimes you need to use phrases and vocabulary that you're not 100 percent sure that are correct in that situation. You need to trust your brains to make the connections and the expression in your friends face will show how did it go! I'm also lucky to have close friends from who I can ask specifications and try my homemade vocabulary and expressions with. I also listen to a bunch of books by Audible, so I really read and listen  in separate languages. At the moment I understand my novels and short stories perfectly, the trouble comes with political language and legal and 'governmental' terms.



For me living is learning and at the moment I'm learning, surprise suprise: a new language! I started to study Spanish in CPCC just for fun and it's amazing how your brains process new vocabulary to a low understanding level in a short time. I started from zero (I really didn't know the difference between tortilla and quesadilla), but the most interesting and fun part starts when you can truly start putting understandable sentences together. Understandable doesn't mean at all correct, but collecting the structure of the language bit by bit. How cool is that!? Well, don't expect me to understand what you speak to me in Spanish quite yet.. it'll come a bit later. Hopefully. After one and half semester of studying I still can't tolerate to watch Spanish speaking tv shows because it's just too annoying not to understand anything!

I'm making my living at studying the languages of a human body's functioning  and well, that's sometimes pretty unknown territory. In balancing bodies you also need to trust your guts: sometimes your brains take the control but sometimes you need to trust your thumbs and let the sensation lead the way. I'm constantly searching the connection  between my hands and brains to find the Balance. Because this is Kata's Way in searching Balance and Painless! 

If you're new to this: you're warmly welcome to my treatment and my life.