Reading Finnish

After a few months of looking at Finnish grammar books and doing all I could in my spare time to learn Finnish, I know I have made progress. Now when the 7A or 7B tram driver announces at Pasila station how long we will wait before resuming, I understand. When the cashier at the K-Market grocery store asks me if I want my receipt, I can reply. And when the clerk at Stockmann's Café Argos asks if I will also have a coffee with my sandwich, I don't have to confess my ignorance.

You gotta admire a guy who shoots
cars plunging off NY wharves.

But then I got cocky. I wanted to go beyond small talk and tackle Finnish literature. I assumed I could read Finnish. Not just signs and posters -- but whole groups of sentences. Of course I knew better than to start with the Kalevala, or any novel, of anything long, or -- well, just about anything that people more than seven years old read. So I bought a 96-page graphic novel: Nick Raider, New York City Homicide Detective. The title was "Mafian Tähtäimessä" and I correctly understood "Mafian" but had to rely on Google translate to tell me that "Mafian Tähtäimessä" meant "Mafia Sights." Taking off the "Mafian" got me "in sight." So the meaning I assume was somewhere between the two! Now I was reading! But my optimism was short lived. Every other panel was a struggle unless someone shot at someone else or a car sped off (I can understand a gun that goes "Bang!" and a ricochet that goes "Twiiing." Even a car that goes "Vroooom." I guess the translator didn't bother to put these into Finnish.). But not every panel can contain a gunfight or a speeding car chase; someone has to talk occasionally between shots and screeches. And it was making no sense to me. I was averaging one page per day, and that includes pictures. So I learned I could not even read a Finnish graphic novel. Yet I am not disillusioned and not giving up -- I just have to pick my Finnish texts more carefully (less words, more pictures?). Now I have invested in the most recent Garfield (aka Karvinen). The plot is easier (Garfield eating lasagna or swatting spiders). And I can finally say that I am reading Finnish.