Moi!

I vanished for a bit, but I swear I had a good reason. Between projects, the endless job hunt, and a few personal crises, life has been… a lot. But my latest hyperfixation has arrived to save the day: I’ve decided to learn a new language. And because I clearly don’t like taking the easy way out, I went and chose the one often dubbed “the most difficult language to learn”: Finnish (Suomi).

So, that’s what I’ve been up to. To my own surprise, the learning journey has been surprisingly smooth so far. I mean, I’m still a beginner, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves and jinx it.

Here’s the thing: since not many people outside Finland are brave (or crazy) enough to tackle this language, finding good study material can be a bit of a challenge. So I thought, why not just make my own resources to practice? That’s a perfectly sane line of thinking, right?… Right?

And that little spark of an idea brings me to the reason I’m back here writing: I ended up creating a game to practice my Finnish vocabulary.

So, I asked myself the real question: What game (that isn’t my boring GoodNotes flashcards) could actually be fun and help me memorize this vocabulary?

The answer hit me immediately: The Hangman game!

It’s a classic, right? I’m sure we all played it while desperately trying to ignore the teacher droning on about something “crucial for our future.” And honestly, it was way more fun trying to guess the word before the little stick figure met his doom.

I think that’s all there is to explain. If you have questions about the code itself, the whole thing is sitting in this GitHub repo: https://github.com/hernandezjaviera/HangMan-Game/tree/master

And if you’re wondering, “How did she even do this?” Well, the honest answer is: a potent mix of caffeine, StackOverflow, and AI. Because let’s be real, that’s what a lot of coding is about these days… or so I tell myself.

I’ll leave you with a little video of how it works. For me, it’s more than enough, it’s already helped me a ton with my Finnish, and of course, I’ll let you know what crazy (or, in the right eyes, brilliant) idea I come up with next. A little preview? It has to do with grammar. Wish me luck.