Come and hang out with us at our

A good place to start is the traditional Finnish Coffee Ceremony.

Master only 3 words: kahvia (coffee), maitoa (milk), and sokeria (sugar) -- maybe 4: pullaa (coffeebread), if you want something to snack on -- and you will be able to hold your own in any Finnish social situation, day or night.

Watch as one of our skilled instructors shows how traditional Finns drink their coffee through sugar cubes held in the mouth. This is to aid you in positioning your tongue and teeth for proper pronunciation of Finnish. When you have mastered this manoeuvre, you will be shown the ancient technique of drinking your coffee from the saucer. This aids you in positioning your lips for speaking Finnish.

Painlessly (without doing any homework), you'll find that you have learned the partitive case of the noun -- which means you'll have mastered 80% of Finnish grammar in one swoop.

The Finnish Cafe was invented by the people who run finnschool. We wanted a place where a few grown-ups at a time could learn Finnish, too, using some of the ideas we've tried out with children, and some new ideas we've discovered that work better with adults.

For example, we package the material to be learned into short "courses" of a very small number of sessions each (like 3), and aim at thoroughly learning a limited number of words and usages in these few hours.

We find that adults can commit to such short bursts, and can maintain their enthusiasm for the whole time, when they know exactly what they'll learn.

The Finnish Cafe is held here in Toronto, at times that are agreeable to the people in each session. The small size of each group makes this type of scheduling more flexible.

We try to run each session with two real Finn-speakers, so we get exposed to the different ways the language actually sounds. Often, this mix of Finnish accents and the different reasons for wanting to learn Finnish, cause each Finnish Cafe get-together to take on a life of its own. And, of course, we discuss everything over a fair amount of coffee--it wouldn't be Finnish, otherwise.

For other events in the Finnish community in Toronto,
click here: www.finnishcanadian.com