kaamos (polar night) by Finland Emoji
You can celebrate all the way to Christmas by learning the language.
Don’t worry, it’s not as hard as you think. You can learn a new word every day with the Finland emoji Advent calendar.
Catch up on the previous days, starting from kaamos (polar night, the heart of the northern winter, when the sun doesn’t rise for weeks). And if, like my 3 year old niece did this December 1, you want to open every window, you can download all the images at once.
The Finland emoji were published by the foreign ministry to explain Finnish concepts and culture. Best of all, the descriptions are in 12 more languages, including Polish, Turkish, Arabic and Hindi. They’re also on the Android app store, coming to IOS and as Facebook stickers.
In fact, Finland is the first country in the world to have its own emoji alphabet.
It looks like English has some serious catching up to do. Love it or hate it, 😂 may be the Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year, but we’ve nothing like this. Maybe it’s because there’s no English independence day, though there are plenty of national holidays of independence from England. But that’s another story…
Today Finland celebrates 98 years of independence from the Russian Empire. It’s St Nicholas’ day too, and of course Santa Claus lives in Finland. Stick with the calendar and by Christmas, you’ll be speaking his language.
Hyvää itsenäisyyspäivää / happy independence day!
Translator, editor, writer, reader
found in translation 
Leave a Reply