Bilingualism

I had this post greatly outlined until I started feeling frustrated, for this is a frustrating subject to me. But don't worry, I'll try to find the middle ground between my frustration and my first outline.

Finland is by definition bilingual, Finnish and Swedish. For most people it's only judicial. People (Finnish speakers) that live in Eastern Finland rarely hear Swedish spoken or at all and people (Swedish speakers) living in the southwest archipelago rarely hear Finnish spoken or at all.

Also by definition 92 % of the population have Finnish as their mother tongue, 6 % Swedish and the remaining part other languages, mainly Russian.

If you don't know it already my mother tongue is Swedish and when it comes to my living place you can say I live in the middle ground. I live in the only region on mainland Finland that has Swedish as its majority language, well 52 % and 48 % speak Finnish. You can call it a truly bilingual region.

This doesn't mean that all people in this region speak both languages or that all Swedish speakers speak Finnish because it's the country's majority language or that all Finnish speakers speak Swedish because it's the regions majority language. It's a varying degree of knowledge of the other language in both language groups. For some people the other language is simply a foreign language, it was studied in school but after that I has all been forgotten. Some are simply bilingual, mastering both languages. Most people are somewhere between those two.

Some of my Swedish speaking friends, well I only have Swedish speaking friends but the ones who know very little Finnish or anything at all think I can speak Finnish. They should only know the truth.

Since this is a bilingual region most customer related jobs demands a varying degree of bilingualism of their employees. My job requires me to take a few customer phone calls and communicate with other employs that doesn't know much Swedish. That works very well because I know my workplace language. But outside of that I'm lost without a clue, unless the topic of the conversation at the local night club concerns electricity and/or distant heating… I didn't think so either.

One of the great things about the Finnish language is that once you master the basics you understand it and can make yourself understood on basic subjects. However the road between basic knowledge and being able to call yourself bilingual (if you are a Swedish speaking Finn like myself) is long and narrow. I have even heard of Swedish speaking Finns being able to speak the Finnish language so well that they have been taken for native Finnish speakers. I don't think however I have met one.

The last remark was not meant to be ironic but some people that have Finnish as their mother tongue fail to realise how difficult Finnish is to master all the way when it's not your mother tongue. And yes we have all heard about exchange students who have learned Finnish perfectly before Christmas during their exchange year. I have also read some posts by a blogger from USA that learned Swedish perfectly here during her exchange year. We call these people language geniuses, they are rare. However most exchange students coming to Finland only learn the language here rudimentary, whether it's Swedish or Finnish. We call these normal people, they are common.

So I get away with only knowing a little Finnish. I know enough to handle my work. My social network consists of only Swedish speakers. They don't employ people in stores, shops, banks… here (in and around Vaasa) that are not bilingual. So I know the Finnish I have to know and I won't learn anymore unless I actively try to learn more.

But I would like to know some more. I do that by spending time on the net on Finnish sites. Chatting on Suomi24, reading news on Yle and keeping a Finnish blog besides my English and Swedish ones on Blogspot. However I find it very frustrating. The chatting goes well for a while if the Finnish is kept on basic level. But I think my fellow chatters easily get bored with me because I leave many things unsaid because I don't know how to say them and when I do say something I don't think I have many or any words correctly spelled or in the right form.

Blogging in Finnish is even more frustrating. I don't write too often and that is a good thing. But when I do write a series of posts I usually take a look at them a week later and the worst I have serious trouble understanding. At that point I get frustrated and write a frustrating post (probably in English because I can't write what I want to write in Finnish) which probably offend (at that point I have some not so nice things about Finnish as a language to say and I do write them down) all my Finnish readers if I had any to begun with because if I can't read my own posts written in Finnish, how are they suppose to do that.

After I blown of some steam in my "Finnish SUCKS"-post I realize a few days later that it is offensive (sorry) towards my Finnish readers and that my other posts in Finnish are unreadable so I delete all my posts and starts all over with my first post having the headline "Moi" containing the text "Moi" (=hi), I mean even I can't get that wrong. Then I leave it like that for a few weeks until I start writing a series of unreadable posts in Finnish again. The only thing we can learn from history is that it repeats itself.

I might master the Finnish language someday but my language studying technique is typically Finnish. I bang my head against the wall until I crack the wall. It doesn't matter that it takes a while and the skull fractures caught in the process because I will get my head trough the wall.

Reading Yle News is however pleasant. I just have to read it; I understand everything or mostly everything. I don't have to interact it in anyway and I like news. But I really don't learn anything; it's just a way of not forgetting what I have already learned.

Then again, why do I feel this need to learn Finnish and why do I feel like it's my duty to learn it? There are many Swedish speakers I know that doesn't care about Finnish. They are quite happy about living their lives in Swedish. But what happens if they want to leave Vaasa for a while? It works fine, going eastwards is like going to foreign country, and everybody speaks a foreign language. Luckily you don't have to say or understand much touristing in your own country, knowing the numbers so you know what you have to pay at the counter. And if all else fails most Finns (both Finnish and Swedish speaking) knows some degree of English. Going westwards is great; there are 9 million people speaking the same language as us all within 2 days travel. Well I have a shorter trip to Stockholm than people living in northern Sweden.

I acknowledge the fact that I live in country of five million people and 4 700 000 of them speak a language I do not master: For some people being part of a 300 000 people language minority is enough and that they can visit their neighbouring country where everyone speak their language. For me that is not enough. I am a Finn (although Swedish speaking) and I think I live in the greatest country in the world. Not being able to communicate with large parts of the people of my country and the difficulties in trying to learn that language are very frustrating.

Welcome to the dark side of being a Swedish speaking Finn in Finland…