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 Skookum Jim
Messages: 4525
Registered: March 2006
Location: Burnaby, BC
4 Cups
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| Adam wrote on Tue, 12 July 2022 07:54 |
I have a friend from Finland who came over for a semester during my university days. His girlfriend was one secondment, so he just came along for the ride. He said that they had a choice of English or Swedish as their secondary language and he chose English because he hated the Swedes.
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Swedish is considered an official language in Finland (the other being Finnish), and doesn't count as a foreign language in school.
The requirement to learn a foreign language in school has been there since the mid 70's.
The article below says 77% of Finns can speak a foreign language and 69% more than one foreign language, of the foreign languages spoken.. 63% is English.
https://www.thenewfederalist.eu/foreign-languages-in-finland -s-educational-system?lang=fr
| Quote: |
Foreign-language skills in Finland
The Finnish find that they are rather skilled in foreign languages, 77% in comparison with the European average of 44%. But what does it really mean to be skilled?
Could it be related to the practices, such as subtitles on TV ? The subtitles can encourage and make it easier to learn languages, and the respondents of the Nordic countries appreciate the subtitles (93% of the Finns), so this would mean that they are used to hear different languages on TV.
It is true that Finns are good in foreign languages, for in Finland 69% of the population can speak more than one foreign language, 47% at least two languages and 23% even three foreign languages. In Finland the foreign language skills are above the European average. The fact that in Finland there are two official languages has surely influenced the language attitudes. Anyway, the mother tongue of most Finns is Finnish (92%), so the country is more homogeneous linguistically than most of the European countries.
What foreign languages are the most common in Finland? It is not a surprise that nowadays English is the most common foreign language with 63%, Swedish being in second place with its status of official language (41%), while German comes in third place with 18%, being traditionally the most popular.
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[Updated on: Tue, 12 July 2022 17:07]
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