Zak Allal on Huomenta Suomi
"Is there a shortcut to learning Finnish?", interview about the Finnish Companion app, with University of Helsinki lecturer Lari Kotilainen
The full interview is available on MTV Katsomo and via the Huomenta Suomi Facebook page.
About this Segment
Aired on MTV Finland's Huomenta Suomi morning show on October 20, 2023, this segment opens with a familiar Finnish question: is the language really as hard as everyone says, and is there a shortcut? The host invites Zak Allal, an Algerian-born physician, researcher, and entrepreneur living in Finland, alongside Lari Kotilainen, university lecturer at the University of Helsinki, to answer it.
Kotilainen pushes back on the "Finnish is too hard, just speak English" myth. Zak, who learned Finnish in roughly fifteen months, fast enough to do this very interview live in Finnish, describes the tool he built when nothing else worked.
What the Segment Covers
Why Zak built Finnish Companion
Zak needed Finnish for his work in a Finnish hospital and university. Finns, being polite introverts, default to English. Existing books and methods left big gaps. He drew an analogy to learning piano or tennis: practice through repetition until it becomes second nature. So he built a tool that lets a learner do exactly that.
Translator, dictionary, and method in one
Live on air, Zak demonstrates the app: real-time transcription and translation from his phone in his pocket. Unlike Google Translate, which Kotilainen and Zak both note handles Finnish poorly, Finnish Companion is built specifically for the Finnish case system, conjugations, and the lived reality of an immigrant trying to use the language at work and on the street.
Why it matters to learn the local language
Kotilainen cites research showing that even in highly English-friendly professional fields, candidates who don't speak Finnish are harder to hire and harder to retain. Zak adds the cultural angle: speaking Finnish is how you understand how Finns actually think.