“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 612 (Thursday)

I'm no quitter.

Today is another milestone day … <insert drum roll> … Duolingo Day 500 of Finnish lessons. No, I am not fluent in Finnish. I can barely formulate a short sentence and am better at reading it than speaking it. If the actual Finnish speakers talk as fast as the speaker in the lessons, I’m in deep trouble if I ever meet a Finnish speaker who wants to chat. But it's still a "hyvää päivää" (good day).

It’s an interesting language. After 500 days of it, I can say that some of the words are long, but for a lot of it, the language feels very economical. There is often one word for something it takes several words to say in English. For example, “Do you live in that country?” Six English words needed! In Finnish, it’s three – “Asutko tassa maassa?” Economical! Sure, it’s the same number of syllables, but let’s not get picky. There are double duty words like “han” which means both “he” and “she” and “hänellä” which means both “he has” and “she has.” Talk about equality. Also, the letter “ä”seems to be very popular.

Ever so briefly, I was #1.

And credit goes to the Duolingo creators for working in some fun sentences. For example, “Missä kissa on? Kissa on kuusaa” is fun to say in Finnish. It means “Where is the cat? The cat is on the moon,” which is significantly less fun in English.

The app is very game-like with points and rankings and wagers, and I held roughly one full second of glory in the number on spot in the “Diamond League” last weekend. It just happened that mid-lesson the day in the app changed over and the lesson points rolled to the new day. The ranking as top diamond dog lasted only as long as it took to grab the screen shot, and in a blink, I was already demoted to number nine as points rolled in for other people. The highest I’ve ever ended a week’s ranking is third, so at least I got the screengrab proof of my fleeting glory for the first few seconds of a new ranking week.