> What languages did you speak before learning Finnish
In order of skill, or chronological? C: German, Swedish, English, and French. S: Swedish, English, German, and French.
> and what level are you currently at?
"Level"... Lived and worked here 26 years (longer than in any other country), usually speak only Finnish with colleagues. (Exception: my previous job, 2014-18, at an unusually international company; quite a lot of English there.) What number is that, on whatever scale you were thinking of?
[EDIT:] IOW, it's gotten to the point where I fear my actual native language is only my fourth-best any more, Finnish having pushed it off the podium. [/EDIT]
Anyway, my point was: I may have improved a bit since, but was probably quite close to my current "level" after two or three years. It really isn't all that humongously difficult as it's made out to be.
The logic of a multi-inflected agglutinative language may feel unusual at first, but once one gets used to it, it's just that: logical. The orthography and especially the pronunciation of Finnish is the most straightforward of all the languages I've dabbled in (smatterings of perhaps half a dozen more besides the ones I speak). And I think, above all, it has the fewest cases of "this is the rule, but the exceptions are this, that, and the other", where you just have to learn by rote that "this word works that way, but that word works this way", of any language I've come across. Learn the rules and you know it; no exceptions to learn.
