Why is the government publishing such a crap video:
http://www.mol.fi/mol/fi/02_tyosuhteet_ja_lait/02_ulkom_suomessa/07_flash/Tyoministerio_WEB_ENG.html

I don’t suppose there are many jobs you could get away with being only Swedish-speaking in the south. But in many parts of Österbotten you could do so; and there are immigrants that do. There is (or was at least) a Chinese restaurant in Ekenäs where the Chinese owners could not speak Finnish but could get by in Swedish and there are quite a lot of agricultural workers immigrants in Österbotten who have learnt Swedish only, not Finnish. So, it is possible. That said, to get a “good” job, it would be very hard, next to impossible. It’s actually quite hard for me to judge though, as I really don’t know any Swedish-speakers, apart from a very few elderly people here in the south, who can’t speak Finnish fluently. Perhaps that fact answers the question though!

Hello, how can Finland remain competitive if you have hig ranking bureaucrats spouting nonsense like this one?!!!

“Cronberg said on Sunday that Väyrynen is living in a bygone world. The Minister of Labour notes that nursing and caring work cannot be moved away from those who need the services. She notes that as the population ages, workers will be needed especially in the service sector.“

Smart lady, yes…after all, is Finland going to move all senior Finns to, say, Philippines, so they can be cared for professionally by low wage but highly skilled nurses?

With this debacle, one would think Finnish government officials lived in a secluded forest in Finland oblivious to the outside world…especially in light of comments made on Russia by Defence Minister Jyri Häkämies. Tsk, tsk…these guys should take a crash course on public speaking and international relations!

Ms Cronberg should first raise salaries to those who cannot be replaced easely by cheap labour. That will push more people into these type of work in the next few years and bring back home the one that have fled the country due to low salary and rising cost.

And while I understand, somewhat, the whole “I can’t believe you’re living in Finland and speaking my language” deal, it remains a catch-22 as people won’t speak it if you always cut to English as just as the Swede offended you by merely saying how good your Swedish is, just imagine how humiliating it is to have someone cut to English after you’ve managed only to say two words in Finnish. What it boils down to is that it is unrealistic to expect the vast majority of immigrants over the age of, say, 30, who move to Finland to speak the language very fluently in five years, if ever.

I have a far greater appreciation for Mexicans in the US in that there were many times in Finland that I felt like one.

How many jobs do you suppose are available for Swedish-only speakers in Finland?

It is true it is harder to understand certain accents in other languages (even within your own– SkÃ¥nska for me is harder to understand than a lot of Norwegians for instance!). I think that is just natural, I still find it harder to understand Indians/Irish/Scots speak English as you point to. It’s not me being deliberately discriminatory, it’s just a fact.

But of course, I do see the paradox you point out. But, I would say that I don’t think it is often actually an “unwillingness” to listen to people trying to improve their Finnish. It is more sometimes a sympathy, I think we think it is easier for us to change to English (or even a kind of duty for us) because we have some back-of-the-mind thought that no-one would really be wishing to try to learn Finnish and that therefore we should change to the default lingua franca of the world rather than you trying to speak Finnish (which we assume is harder for you, than for us to speak English – not always a correct assumption). So, it is more out of disbelief than unwillingness! I hope that makes sense, but I realise it is bad because there are people who naturally do want to learn Finnish (or Swedish) if they live here! And rightly so. Do you ever explain this to them?

HFB, you can use Swedish on a daily basis outside Åland! Although not in so many places and not really in any “big” places where it is easier for immigrants to get a job. But, move to Österbotten or Ekenäs even. But, of course, here in the south it is impossible to live one’s life 100% in Swedish and certainly not in the huvudstadsregion!

Yesterday, I bought ice cream from an Australian girl who worked in the Siperia shopping mall in Tampere. Her Finnish vocabulary was small but she was practically accent-free. She switched to English herself after she found out she just couldn’t express herself in Finnish to say that the soft ice machine was not being used because of overheating problems. I did, however, try to speak Finnish with her as much as possible.

As an aside…maybe it’s the lack of diversity in Finland that leads to the difficulty with accents as I remember quite a few Finns mentioning the English curriculum in school and how much they hated the audio portions of exams where speakers from India, etc. would speak and they’d have to show that they understood what was said. Particularly frequent mention of loathing for the Indian and Irish or Scots accents were made. It’s curious as I adapted to hearing Finnglish fairly quickly and didn’t have much problem understanding all but the most horrible speakers. I still giggle at certain trademark idioms, too. Accents aren’t what signal a firm grasp of a language, it’s the idioms especially in English. Then again, I also seem to recall that Finns complained reasonably often about how they couldn’t understand half of the (native) people outside Kehä III. It does seem odd that the tolerance for various accents in Finnish is so low and I have always wondered why that is.

The naïveté of the Swedes might just be disbelief since it doesn’t sound anything at all like swedish except for a few kind of recognizeable words here and there. I remember first hearing it on some TV show on a Saturday and couldn’t for the life of me figure out wtf it was until my husband enlightened me.

If I could have used Swedish on a daily basis in Finland, i.e. not just a second language on paper and in the books and Åland, I would have been functional in about 2 or 3 months given that with my German I was already able to read cookbooks without much effort. Unfortunately, I suspect Finns would sooner suffer an English invasion than really admit that a far smaller number of Finns can speak Swedish very well at all since they spent more time in English classes knowing that it was far more widely spoken language.

Our country does have small languages by global comparison, so it is of course necessary for us to have a strong knowledge of foreign languages as well. However, to suggest that more workplaces should switch to an English working language would be dangerous for the robustness of the national languages in Finland. A living language has to be present in all the variety of domains to remain dynamic and fresh. We can already see in academia that some students (in university) must use English language text books because there is no adequate material in their domestic language available. That is a sign that Finnish/Swedish are being eroded as academic languages in some disciplines already.

Finns speak English anyways
Many do, yes. Many do not. Many of us that do are not as confident in English or do not have the same degree of ability to express ourselves in it. It is sometimes quite limiting to expression (and thus consequently the flow of ideas) when you have to rely on a foreign language that does not come as naturally.

Not to mention all the times I tried speaking Finnish only to have the Finn immediately change into English to either practice their English or to signal that my attempts were too horrible to bear.
That I am afraid is a fair criticism I think. I think that those of you who have English as a mother tongue are very used to hearing all sorts of nationalities with all sorts of accents speaking English. So, a foreigner speaking English (such as us Finns, or a Chinese, or Indian or whoever) does not sound particularly odd or incorrect to you. Whereas for us with Finnish/Swedish as a mother tongue, we essentially only really hear our languages being spoken with “native” dialects; thus any “non-native” dialect can sound wrong and sometimes mistaken for that the speaker has a poorer command of the language than they in fact do have. That combined with a slight back of the mind disbelief that anyone foreign would concern themselves with learning Finnish/Swedish often leads us to switch to English. In a similar scenario, it has been known even for the Swedes to switch to English with those of us who speak finlandssvenska! Or indeed, I have more than once been congratulated by a Swede on “my good Swedish”. Patronising in the extreme, but born out of a complete naivety on the part of (a surprisingly high number of) Swedes that there is such a thing as finlandssvenska.

This force immigration is a way to get labour with cheap salaries.

I just question the idea. First it’s out of question for those people to work in Helsinki or surounding as the cost of living and housing are so high or unnafordable.

Sad to say that Finland has been unable to control the cost of living thus inflation is out of control(ok it’s not their fault as they can’t control interest rates) and has become a very uncompetitive.

another thing…Fins (Government?) seems to think that they are smatter and will import labour to cover things that fin won’t do:
-Cleaning
-Bus Driving
-Taxi Driving
-Security

There was a time where it was reserved for Estonian/Russian/Somalian
As time goes those people got educated and wealthier and are now trying to compete in higher paid job..sometime in vain (as the usual finnish protectionism/patriotism surge).

So now they need to get emerging country (while it’s still emerging ..oot for long) i.e philipine and China

It is as well to say to the low income finnish worker that don’t ask higher salary (even if cost of living is spiraling or overshooting) ’cause we can inport cheap labor… They did that with the IT people.. now they try to do it with nurse/metal worker/ship builder….