Why do Finnish ppl need to learn Swedish?

[Linkriina]

People, like my grandmother, uses Swedish every single day and she's almost 80 years old and she can't speak so good finnish because her relatives has all been finnish swedish for hundreds of generations. If she get's an official paper from the bank for example in finnish she doesn't understand it. And I've been to a swedish school and we had to learn finnish there. Those, who speak finnish as their mother tongue are not the only ones who are forced to learn the other language. I needed to learn finnish too.. And when Finland got independent, Finland made a law that Finland stays as a two languaged country.

[Söy]

i dont speak swedish or finnish; i win!

[TrashedLost]

Originally Posted by Linkriina

People, like my grandmother, uses Swedish every single day and she's almost 80 years old and she can't speak so good finnish because her relatives has all been finnish swedish for hundreds of generations. If she get's an official paper from the bank for example in finnish she doesn't understand it. And I've been to a swedish school and we had to learn finnish there. Those, who speak finnish as their mother tongue are not the only ones who are forced to learn the other language. I needed to learn finnish too.. And when Finland got independent, Finland made a law that Finland stays as a two languaged country.

Yeah, that's true. It sucks to study swedish.

[MeathookBodomy]

swedish are gay

[K_A]

Originally Posted by CadalMord

They do.

Fucking no all of them don't! Go to Ahvenanmaa and try to speak finnish, it's fucking impossible! About 15% of them will understand you! I mean you could go to Canary Islands and the percentage would almost be the same... Same goes with the cities in the westcoast of Finland, I always hate all the swedish language signs and stuff..

Originally Posted by ScandinavianMetal

Sorry I am not writing this in Finnish, but why does Finnish people such as I need to learn Swedish in school? what, 4% of Finland is Swedish. Besides, we go to Sweden, and this is what they say: "Du kan ju inte prata Svenska". There is a huge racist issue in Sweden. The percentage in Finland should learn Finnish! I would appriciate some feedback on the subject. And please, remain this in English. I want more than Finnish people to know about this, and can't we vote against learning Swedish in schools. FInnish schools are extremly tough. Swedish should be an option.

True. I never liked Swedish, luckily I only have 2 more courses and then it's done. No more for me, thank you.

Originally Posted by Jesse-

Its part of the liberal education. (Yleissivistys). Some areas are more populated with swedes, like Vaasa. In here, everywhere you go, you will bump into a swede. It is our second language, accept the fact And isn't the racist issue the other way? Don't we hate swedes here in Finland?

A lot of finns would like the second language gone, swedish is a dying language, it should go to Sweden to die and let us alone.

Originally Posted by MeathookBodomy

swedish are gay

Jag talar inte Sverige.

[almafiina]

Swedisg people are cocksuckers!!

Well well, I don´t believe that all of are but I really hate Swedish.
Why EARTH we finnish people are studying it in our native land??

If you live in foreign country, you study this country´s language(s).
I think that´s a fair thing.
Let´s think: random dude (maybe Russian) moves to Canada.
Now: 'cause he/she is outlandish everybody Canadian child studies Russian.
Eh, no way, you probably think.
Well, compare that with Finland. Oops!

[sleeper666]

I can understand, and sympathise with you guys' being pissed off that you have to learn another country's language in your own country, but I envy the way your education system emphasises the importance of learning languages other than your own, and that you start learning them at a young age. We don't have that in England, and I hate the way many English people seem to think they don't need to learn anyone else's language, as everyone should speak English - that really sucks! I'm hoping to go and live in Helsinki one day, but I'm having to teach myself Finnish as there are no courses for it where I live. I've been to Helsinki several times and the Finns' English-language skills are really impressive.

[Celeb]

I didnt like studying swedish, part of because I was so pissed off that we had to study it and part because I didnt like my teachers. Now, in upper-secondary school Ive actually started to like it, or better said tolerate it, because our teacher is great. And its kind of cool to know other languages than just english. I was in Italy for 3 weeks this summer and everyone was like woah when I told I can speak swedish too. And they were saying all the time how good my english was.
So I really appreciate that part in our education system, that we have to start to study english so young and swedish later. Its always nice to hear someone to say my english is good, especially from nativespeaker.

Whats frustrating is, that we study swedish even if all of us dont want to and swedish people dont even know that swedish is finlands other official language and we have to study it. Ive heard in some news or something that not all swedish people even know that finland used to be part of sweden

[the phenom]

Well there are 300 000 Swedish speaking Finns in Finland Also, I am raised with Finnish but because of the place where i live i had to go to a Swedish school so i actually have 2 "native languages". I like Finnish more for some reason but i talk fluent Swedish. The Swedish speaking Finns also have to learn Finnish and they complain equally much about how gay and hard it is...

Also...the 1 thing that sucks being raised with Finnish is that my English pronounciation sucks balls.

EDIT: And for gods sake people who think Swedish speaking Finn and a Swedish person is totally the same thing or anything like that are fucking retarded.

[valkokukka]

I think people hate studying Swedish because it's compulsorily. I would have preferred studying some other language than Swedish because it's not that useful language in global world. I mean when I talk with Swedish people we always use English so all those study hours were pretty for nothing. I feel that German or French studies would have been more beneficial (of course those are options in school also but I studied so much science that I really couldn't fit lot of language courses to my schedule so I never study them enough to be fluent).

[K_A]

[quote=the phenom;7632188]Well there are 300 000 Swedish speaking Finns in Finland Also, I am raised with Finnish but because of the place where i live i had to go to a Swedish school so i actually have 2 "native languages". I like Finnish more for some reason but i talk fluent Swedish. The Swedish speaking Finns also have to learn Finnish and they complain equally much about how gay and hard it is...[quote] Yes, but they are Finnish people who have to learn Finnish. It's totally different than a Finnish person learning swedish. And nort all Finnish people know how to speak finnish, even when they should.

Originally Posted by the phenom

EDIT: And for gods sake people who think Swedish speaking Finn and a Swedish person is totally the same thing or anything like that are fucking retarded.

With this you are referring to who??? The residents of Ahvenenmaa are almost all Swedish speaking Finns and most of them rather move to Sweden and stay there (could say become Swedes) than go to Finland, and a lot of them want to get independent from Finland, which would be fine by me by the way. But that's ot the point here.

[the phenom]

Yes, but they are Finnish people who have to learn Finnish. It's totally different than a Finnish person learning swedish. And nort all Finnish people know how to speak finnish, even when they should.

With this you are referring to who??? The residents of Ahvenenmaa are almost all Swedish speaking Finns and most of them rather move to Sweden and stay there (could say become Swedes) than go to Finland, and a lot of them want to get independent from Finland, which would be fine by me by the way. But that's ot the point here.

True, but since the other official language is Swedish i can understand that. There are so many Swedish speaking Finns that somekinda skills in Swedish are often a big plus.

What the fuck? I am refering to the Swedish speaking Finns that live around the West coast(where i live). I have NEVER heard one say they rather move to Sweden...then again Ahvenanmaa is almost Sweden so i don't know. To compare someone here to a Swede is almost grave insult F.e they would rather die than cheer on the Swedes in icehockey. What im trying to say is that A Swedish speakin Finn and a Swede is 2 totally different kind of persons and should not be mixed.

Also i find it brutal how you can get beaten up in a city just for talking Swedish. I usually talk the dialect they talk here so anyone doesn't understand what language im speaking.

[ShadowchildCOBHC]

well its common nature in todays society it just serves as a link language with alot of movement of population,but i can understand your anger,im from denmark but have to live in this other country for most of my life so now i know Chinese well 50/50 and malay and abit of german cause it used to be my mother tongue till i got pissed with the damn teacher and never went back so in a ways it prepares you for the outside world,i know i somewhat benefited cause if you get a real job in business whihc im aiming for,and with china expanding it gives me an advantage,just take it in your strides and learn as much as you can if not fuck it haha like what i did

[children of COB]

^Dunno about finnish and sweedish because they both seem quite hard to me and even though I've tried to learn a bit of finnish I still suck balls at it and my level is near to -1 , but about the whole learning another language thing I think it's quite important, but when you're forced to do it usually you don't like it, so I think that's why people hate those 2nd languages. Still, in civilized countries like Finland, even if you complain about it, you learn it and you have it there (maybe not perfect but there), whereas in countries full of assholes like my own dear Spain which I hope to leave soon we are ''forced'' to learn english (which is actually really useful later in our lives) but 90% of the population has a dreadful english level. It's just so bad. I mean, they spend like 10 years ''learning'' english at school and may of them after that can't even go to a bar and ask for a beer properly.

I think that the main problem is the fact that the learning of the language is compulsory, which makes people automatically dread it (or at least to almost all of the people). I was one of those when I was younger, but as soon as I started to realise it was useful I started to get addicted to it and I eventually ended up preferring english over my own mother tongue, and as I like languages quite a lot I've started a degree on translation at Uni. My goals are, by the time I leave Uni, to have learned (until a decent level to be able to use them not like a native or something but fluently enough to not depend on other people) Chinese, Russian and Finnish, plus German which is compulsory and English in which I already think that I have an ok level (I can certainly improve quite a lot, but it's ok to keep going and improving it during the at least 4 years of Uni), and of course my two mother tongues Spanish and Catalan (which is not going to be really useful except in a part of my country and a small region of Italy, but still, the more languages I know, the more chances I'll ahve to get a job.

Originally Posted by Nicola

Learning Finnish?

Online Language Courses + Information:

Finnish School
'The Finnish Language' @ Vitual Finland - information on Finnish in general, no proper lessons
'Tavataan taas!' - basic Finnish course w/ information on Finland
Finnish Grammar Bits
'Ymmärrä suomea!' - 'Understand Finnish' - reading comprehension exercise; only in Finnish
Venla's Finnish for Foreigners
Chiugate's Guide to the Finnish Language
Jukka Korpela's 'The Finnish Language'

Dictionaries & the like:

NOTE: Most of these online dictionaries have rather limited vocabularies, but they're useful nonetheless.

Webster's Finnish-English Dictionary
Downloadable dictionary from FreeLang
Verbix - Verb conjugator; conjugates verbs in a number of languages (even Old English)
Mikropuhe Live - Type whatever it is that you want to know how to pronounce in the window, click the 'Kuuntele puhe' button and it'll repeat it back to you. Comes in handy when you forget to order the audio CDs along with the instruction book.
YourDictionary.com Uralic language dictionaries
English to Finnish/Finnish to English Online Dictionary
Travlang's Finnish/English Dictionary
Travlang's English/Finnish Dictionary

'Colorful Metaphors':

The Alternative Finnish Dictionary
Marginaali - Advanced Swearing in Finnish

Book(s):

Teach Yourself: Finnish
by Terttu Leney
ISBN 0-07-145107-2
Available as a book/CD package or the book can be bought separately.

**If you're using Windows you can get the special characters by holding down the ALT key and typing '0228' for 'ä' and '0246' for 'ö'.

Hope that helps . . .

Thanks!

[valkokukka]

Originally Posted by children of COB

^Dunno about finnish and sweedish because they both seem quite hard to me

Swedish is not that difficult language, especially after studying English. There are lot of similarities in grammar and vocabulary. It's the compulsory thing as you mentioned. I have so called "government officer Swedish" degree (it's something that all university students has to pass and it should ensure that you are able fluently communicate also Swedish speaking population) so I have studied Swedish 7 years and I can read and understand it quite well but I never speak or write it.

Finnish is totally different story language is so different from other languages that it can take time to learn it. But as I have said to you Jose earlier (or at least I think I said it to you might be someone else too, lol), I know people that have learned to talk fluent Finnish quite fast, bigger problems seems to be that they think they can't speak it. I just talked this one Norwegian woman who said that her Finnish is so bad but when we started to talk in Finnish it was really understandable.

[the phenom]

Same also when talking Swedish...English is then easy language to learn. Unfortunately even if i talk fluent Swedish and talk it the majority of my time (school and friends) i still end up talking English like a typical Finn....FUCKING SHIT!

[zirco]

My father never had to study any languages in school besides Finnish (because back then foreign languages were not compulsory). My mother had to study Swedish. I believe that the reason why there are Finns who do not like studying Swedish, is that the people who are now like 40-60 years old were forced to study that because it was a law that you need to study Swedish, and they have told their children that it was just terrible that they were forced to study Swedish. They passed that way of thinking to their children who then have passed/will pass the hate of Swedish to their kids.

I think it is always a good thing to study languages. Be it Latin or any other language that you might need or will never need. Once you learn one foreign language the other languages you study will become easier and easier to learn. Especially if they are related languages, like English, German and Swedish.

[UnihawK]

In my oppinion... Swedish is a pretty useless language in my area.. Since there are not many people who speak swedish as their main language. But since my other favorite band Finntroll sings in swedish I want to learn the language to understand their lyrics.

[ashakilee]

FAEN!

[ashakilee]

...mm. sounds delicious.

[K_A]

Originally Posted by UnihawK

In my oppinion... Swedish is a pretty useless language in my area.. Since there are not many people who speak swedish as their main language. But since my other favorite band Finntroll sings in swedish I want to learn the language to understand their lyrics.

Ensiferum and Moonsorrow are way better


Anyway, the swedish being hideous for most finns is partly due to teachers also. In my whole life I've had one swedish teacher that was fun, and that one single course wasn't very long. During that I actually learned things, but when an old, wrinkled woman walks to the front of the class and starts blabbering about how she used to love swedish and how wonderful Stockholm is, this all in swedish of course, not a word of finnish no, that is out of question, it gets really awkward and really boring really quickly.

[shredtastical]

the same reason americans have a foreign language requirement in high school.

and the same reason most asian school systems require 6-8 years of english

[constantlyhigh]

Originally Posted by sleeper666

I can understand, and sympathise with you guys' being pissed off that you have to learn another country's language in your own country, but I envy the way your education system emphasises the importance of learning languages other than your own, and that you start learning them at a young age. We don't have that in England, and I hate the way many English people seem to think they don't need to learn anyone else's language, as everyone should speak English - that really sucks! I'm hoping to go and live in Helsinki one day, but I'm having to teach myself Finnish as there are no courses for it where I live. I've been to Helsinki several times and the Finns' English-language skills are really impressive.

I 100% agree with you on that. I feel the same way.