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Learn Finnish for travel in Finland? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4846 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 1 of 49 08 February 2013 at 2:52am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi all,
My wife and I are thinking about going to Finland for a few days in December. I hear that a lot of people in the tourist areas speak English. But would it be worth it to study some Finnish for a year in preparation for the trip? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| betelgeuzah Diglot Groupie Finland Joined 4400 days ago 51 posts - 82 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: Japanese, Italian | Message 2 of 49 08 February 2013 at 3:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Finns expect everyone to speak English. If you speak Finnish, it will be surprising. People might get tired of trying to communicate with you, since they'd just rather communicate in English.
That isn't to say learning some common expressions would be a bad thing, not at all. It shows that you care about our language and culture. Plus, Finnish is probably the hardest European language out there... the conjugation rules are a killer. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4846 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 3 of 49 08 February 2013 at 3:48am | IP Logged | ||
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@betelgeuzah - Thank you for the information! I'll try to learn some common expressions, then. I've heard about how Finnish is an extremely difficult language, but it seems to be popular here at HTLAL!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 49 08 February 2013 at 4:34am | IP Logged | ||
At the least I'd dip my feet in it if I were you. Not all signs there are in English, and so knowing how to at least make out signs (be they in Finnish or Swedish) can be useful. In addition knowing how to pronounce words or names can't hurt. If you were to describe some place or ask for directions, it would help if you could pronounce them in ways that Finns could pick up with little trouble (e.g. if you were to pronounce the city name "Tampere" as "Tam-peer" per some English convention rather than "Tum-pair-reh" which is closer to the Finnish pronunciation, the Finn may not understand readily that (mis)pronunciation unless you repeat or spell it out despite being fluent in English). In any case, Finland is a great place to visit. December can be nice (but cold and dark) because of Christmas and the chance to see the Northern Lights, but summer can be nicet too with very long days (and no night at all if you go far enough north), warm but not usually hot and humid, and the chance to see all sorts of festivals since Finns jam a lot of events in that season with the most daylight. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4846 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 5 of 49 08 February 2013 at 7:58am | IP Logged | ||
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@Chung - Yes, I wish I could go in the summer. But December may be our best chance this year because of our schedules. You are right; it'll be a good idea to learn some pronunciation rules, some words on signs, etc. Thank you very much!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4621 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 6 of 49 08 February 2013 at 9:41am | IP Logged | ||
How do Finns and Estonians communicate? Are their languages mutually intelligible to a certain extent? I would imagine that not many people over 30 in Estonia are able to speak good English due to that country being part of the old Soviet Union. Edited by beano on 08 February 2013 at 9:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 7 of 49 08 February 2013 at 2:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Even a language buff like me would question the usefulness of investing a year into a language for just a few days of use... However, it's certainly worth having a look at what the language looks like and how it works. Learn to read and pronounce it, and spot the most common and useful words.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Aquila123 Tetraglot Senior Member Norway mydeltapi.com Joined 5305 days ago 201 posts - 262 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Italian, Spanish Studies: Finnish, Russian | Message 8 of 49 08 February 2013 at 5:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Finnish is not more difficult than any other language, but finns like bragging about being able to speak the most difficult language in Europe (or was it in the world?).
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