Apparently on average, it's easier for Estonians to Understand Finnish than it is for Finns to understand Estonian.

One of those asymmetric mutual intelligibility things. Interesting video, that.

From what I gather from culture, I'd say Spanish is like a tiny bit more prevalent in the US than Swedish is in Finland. And this varies city to city, of course. I live in a city which used to be capitol while we were under Swedish rule: Turku / Åbo. I think the city actually having two such different names is a bit of a giveaway. The Finnish names derives from "marketplace", whereas the Swedish means "a dwelling by the river".

I don't much use Swedish either. I had to use it for customer service some, but even that was years ago so my vocabulary is pretty shit. A lot of the Western Finnish coastal cities are bilingual and have a somewhat significant Swedish speaking population, but it's honestly rare to even hear Swedish being spoken on the street. A few cities are mainly Swedish speaking people though, but not Turku. And from that side, Spanish is less prevalent in the States, as I can't think of entire cities which basically have Spanish as their main language, just cities with very large populations of Spanish speakers. Also, a huge difference is that in the States, Mexicans and people from even further South are often seen as socioeconomically lower generally, whereas we have a saying "Svenska talande bättre folk", meaning roughly "better people speak Swedish".

But yeah, all the media I watch is in a language I wasn't born with, so I'm always learning. Even with English, can always learn. Just reminded me of this sketch. German wants to watch a foreign films.

I love shows which have multiple languages. Like mainly English, but then there's significant bits with simple-ish conversations in other languages. It's like you get to have a bit of language practice in the middle of enjoying a show/movie.

I've gone a bit overboard with the glög in the past few weeks, lol. Tasted too good, and I'm sort of doing science here. I've been trying exclusion diets and finally figured out something that's bothered me my entire life, and now I genuinely don't even get a hangover despite drinking quite heavily. Very weird. If drinking was this easy when I was a kid, I'd have definitely abused alcohol. I could never drink two days in a row as a kid, just couldn't do it and didn't understand how others could.

Here:

I got these glasses, uh... mugs? which are like from my grandma (she's still alive though but moved to a home so we emptied most of the house). Real silver, I think, because of how it feels and how it's darkened. I tried polishing the other one with some toothpaste the other day, seemed to work, but didn't really make it shiny shiny. Just took a lot of the oxidation off.

There's so many delicious glögs on Alko (the central shop for anything above 8% in Finland, monopolised govt owned alcohol shops, "offies" basically.) Raspberry, bilberry, one which is brandy and mulled wine. All delicious. Add a bit of rum and were off. Cheers!

Given enough time and some sort of foundation to build on, like an understanding of a related language, I'm sure you could do it.

It's weird how most people just give up on language acquisition after acquiring one.

But not when theyre kids. As kids, you honestly are just a sponges for any languages you hear.

After 27 or so it's probably harder (neural plasticity seems to slowly down at 27, some sort of cause or correlation with culture idk, but it happens), but definitely still doable.

I have no idea how long it would take me, but when watching shows, I always have subs, so even if I don't know any of the language, you start picking up words. First it's just the proper nouns which you can pick up, names of places and people, then it's the words relating to those nouns, and soon it's common verbs and then you can basically form two word sentences (want beer, am hungry, go away, etc) and then it's just more and more exposure to the language and you'll get it eventually.