Poikanen

It's very important in creating a good first impression, for example. When you're writing something that's going to be presented to people you don't know, you should put extra emphasis on correct grammar.

I started learning English in 3rd grade. (in Finland, that's when I was 9 years old.) Then I started learning Swedish in 7th grade. Both languages were mandatory for everyone. Then in high school I added Russian too.

The order is like this for me: Speaking->writing->reading, from hardest to easiest. When you're writing, you can use help from books and translations etc. But when you are talking with someone, you have no time to check words and need to just improvise. That's what makes it difficult.

Man, this is definitely something I need to get rid of. I think I used to say LOL in real life sometimes too. It's just childish, I'd rather use smileys or something these days.

Maybe Japanese. Though it would require a lot of effort, compared to something like Spanish I think. So yeah, probably Japanese. I know some basics already, would need to learn to characters next I feel.

It was mostly about understanding different cultures. I think originally it came to me from travelling too. Of course, in Finland we are forced to study at least two languages in addition to Finnish. Those would be Swedish and English. But I was interested to learn more, so I studied Russian.

My big hobby is games. I spend a lot of time playing online games. Actually I'm sure I originally learned English so well thanks to games. I've been actually playing with Russians a lot to improve my Russian skills, and it's working. The only challenge is that I don't know how to write in Russian alphabet with the computer. Have to learn that one.

For sure. I think I've read so much text in English that I'm starting to have my thoughts in English too. My native tongue is Finnish. It's like It's easier to read in English to me these days. But for sure, there's always something lost in the translation.

Swedish is a pretty easy language, definitely. I think it's almost more close to English than to Germany, although I have studied only little Germany. But my point is, once you know English, it should be pretty easy to learn Swedish. (Not sure about people whose native tongue is English.)

It's the pronunciation definitely. I find Russian to be pretty easy actually - once you know the alphabet, it's fairly simple. Of course, there are lots of exceptions to the rules, but that's in almost every language. The one that is causing me problems (as a native Finnish speaker) is the pronunciation of the alphabets. All the different s-z sounds for example.

These are really useful actually. Thank you! I have found it pretty easy to communicate with russians with just basic knowledge of russian language. Just know the basic words like thank you, please and good bye. You can get really far with these.