ScribbleKing

10 Challenges update

High time for another update on the 10 challenges that I put myself some time ago. Yeah, amazingly, I am still working on them!

So, how good is my Finnish at the moment?

In case you are wondering if I am still trying to finally grasp the Finnish language: Yes I am. The 'Learning to Speak Finnish' blog may not be updated daily, but I do promise one or two updates a week to show you I'm still at it, as I am determined to this time crack at least a little bit of it. Throughout the years, I have given my studies of Finnish already many different tries. I started this right after I first met my wife, when I bought my first Finnish language course, only to be completely baffled by the complete incomprehensability of it. Nothing I saw on the pages of that book made any sense at all(well, except for of course the English translations), as the Finnish language seemed more like an exercise in squeezing as many letters as possible into a single word than something that people can actually speak.

Things didn't get a lot better when I made my first trip to Finland and I actually heard the people speak. Though it sounds very nice, almost like a cross of Italian and Japanese, it made as much sense as when people would just hum to me or make something up as they went along. Of course, most languages are like that to people who don't speak them, but in a lot of languages there are at least some words you could recognize. In Finnish, this was limited to the word 'sauna' (luckily they use that word quite a bit, since the Finnish people spend a lot of time in saunas).

Continue reading "So, how good is my Finnish at the moment?" »

In case you are wondering if I am still trying to finally grasp the Finnish language: Yes I am. The 'Learning to Speak Finnish' blog may not be updated daily, but I do promise one or two updates a week to show you I'm still at it, as I am determined to this time crack at least a little bit of it. Throughout the years, I have given my studies of Finnish already many different tries. I started this right after I first met my wife, when I bought my first Finnish language course, only to be completely baffled by the complete incomprehensability of it. Nothing I saw on the pages of that book made any sense at all(well, except for of course the English translations), as the Finnish language seemed more like an exercise in squeezing as many letters as possible into a single word than something that people can actually speak.

Things didn't get a lot better when I made my first trip to Finland and I actually heard the people speak. Though it sounds very nice, almost like a cross of Italian and Japanese, it made as much sense as when people would just hum to me or make something up as they went along. Of course, most languages are like that to people who don't speak them, but in a lot of languages there are at least some words you could recognize. In Finnish, this was limited to the word 'sauna' (luckily they use that word quite a bit, since the Finnish people spend a lot of time in saunas).

Let's change challenge 6

I'm glad that I gave myself until this Sunday to make any changes I wanted to this list of ten challenges. Yesterday, while playing Project Gotham Racing 4, I wondered how wise it was for me to enter a challenge where I would have to unlock 1000 achievements in one years time. Unlocking 1000 achievements on the Xbox 360 takes A LOT of time, and even though I was enthusiastic about the challenge, I just don't think I have the time to play that much. Besides which, if I just try to unlock challenges, then the fun of actually playing the games and enjoying them will be greatly reduced. Besides which, I'd have to start all over on some games that I've progressed pretty far in already.

So, exit challenge 6!

Still, as a replacement challenge, I do want to stay in the realm of videogames. And a great new challenge popped into my mind almost instantly after I decided to change things around. I want to make a website about videogames that is as 'successful' as the Dutch language gamesite I had quite a few years ago. Let me give you a little bit of background on this.