[mathieuh]

For an English speaker it would be difficult. It is a highly synthetic language (meaning the markers which tell you which parts of the sentence are doing what), compared to English which is an analytical language (meaning there are extra words like prepositions which tell you which part of the sentence is doing what). This is why Finnish (and other Uralic languages’ words) look so long to us, because where we in English would use prepositions and word order to denote object, subject etc., much of that is expressed in Finnish through suffixes.

Perhaps for a speaker of another synthetic language like Polish it might be easier to learn Finnish as their brain might would already have the wiring but even then, as the article notes Finnish is not an Indo-European language so it is further removed still.

[usr1106]

The joke goes: There are 3 kinds of people

The pessimist says: Finnish is too hard for an adult to learn, mission impossible.

The realist says: With 10 years of hard work, it's doable.

The optimist says: I can do it in 5 years.

Myself I was an optimist and I kind of did it in 5 years, but it was tight. However, after having spoken it daily for 25 more years I get more and more pessimistic: There are several aspects I will not master in this life.