Tuesday evening I began attending a course in Finnish. It’s simply named “Intermediate Finnish”, It’s for people that now some Finnish but want/need to improve it. About 25 people had shown up. About half are Finland-Swedes, ¼ are Russians, a woman from Ukraine, a guy from Africa and a couple of Finns that have lived abroad the last decade or longer and an Englishman. Since we only speak Finnish at the course he also could be American since I can’t hear his English accent.
We where asked to present ourselves in Finnish and tell a little bit about what and why where/we need to improve our Finnish skills. Almost everyone needed it for either work or their social life. Me, it’s a bit of both. Except for the Englisman. He stated (in Finnish) “I really don’t need Finnish to live here but I think it would be nice to know.” As a Finland-Swede I would never make that statement, I know some who would but you get the sense that they been living under a rock all their life and are quite happy to die there too. It can be difficult to live one’s life in Swedish in Finland but it has worked well for me the last 32 years. But I do see the need of Finnish.
However this guy’s native language is English and his statement the he doesn’t need Finnish made me think about it. He’s probably right; most Finns know some level of English, some perfect, some just a few words, but it’s a world language the Finns have adapted. English is The World Language. So I think he’s doing better than many Finland-Swedes in using his native tongue.
So with that in mind I think that it might be a good to introduce English as a third official language in Finland. It’s a language that most people know, it’s used as the only official language in many work-places, the University world are practically using it as it’s official language, people have a positive attitude towards English, it’s easy to learn, it’s probably the largest common language that different language groups in Finland have.
I don’t want to abandon Swedish or Finnish culture, I’m just saying that a common language would be nice =).
It was Monday...
ReplyDeleteHey Boris,
ReplyDeleteShawn and I were both VERY impressed with the amount of English spoken, or at least understood, when we were in Finland. But, I agree...it would be sad to not have the country's namesake language spoken! I think the family in Vasa speaks Swedish!? It was like "low German", sort of a mixture of English and German slang....but English/Swedish slang?! I found it fairly easy to pick up and I wish I could have that musical language ringing in my ears more often!
Good for you for working to be fluent in THREE languages!! Something we just simply don't do in Canada! :-( Sure, we have Quebec French...but not many in British Columbia use it! We take French in school, but it is not Quebec French, it is France French, or something that used to be like it...
Hey Kristin
ReplyDeleteI think that we in the Nordic Countries understand that our native languages are small and for us to be able to communicate with people outside our countries we need to know a world language. Large European countries like France, German and Italy have languages spoken by a lot of people in Europe but not outside Europe, Advocates of French and German may claim that French is the language of diplomats and a noble language and German is the largest language in Europe when it comes to native speakers. French and German WERE world languages but French lost the top spot after the Napoleonic wars and German became the new world language. Again languages seem to be tied to military success and English became the new world language after WW2. They still teach Latin although it hasn’t been a world language for 2000 years and no one has had it as their mother tongue for 1500 years.
One other thing that teaches us better English is that we use subtitles on our TVs. In mainland Europe they dub their TV broadcasts. Imagine the guys in Mythbusters speaking German; well they do on German Television…
Yes they do speak Swedish but it’s an old dialect. It’s an earlier form of Swedish and may have things in common with other Germanic language that have disappeared out of common Swedish. We use gender like in German. Things are not only “it” but can also be “hi” and “her”. I would call a car he not it. I took a few German courses and our teacher said that she really doesn’t have to teach us the difference between die, der, das because our dialects gender largely follow German. There are differences but not as much as we wouldn’t pass a test with the German gender.
I think we have the same problem in Finland. Finns are being thought the Swedish spoken in Sweden. A Finn can teach himself perfect Swedish in school but the first time he meets a Finland-Swede he doesn’t understand him. The same goes for us Finland-Swedes. We are thought the book language, the written language of Finnish. The problem is that there are huge differences between the spoken and the written languages of Finnish. Again we have the same problem, the first time we hear a Finn speak we can’t understand him because he doesn’t speak the way we where thought in class.