# Updates to my lingustic knowledge



## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Well, some of you already know that language is one of my areas of interest.

Anyway, got back to Sweden on Tuesday evening from a 2-day meeting in Helsinki on Event Safety (I'm the Swedish govt authority expert on event safety for this consortium). The meeting consisted of me + 3 Swedes + 3 Finns + 3 Estonians.

I made 3 discoveries about Finland & Finnish and in thus doing exploded 2 myths I've heard many times. I already knew that many people in Finland spoke Swedish & that in certain areas they ONLY spoke Swedish. It is a second language for many & is taught in most schools, and a first language for others. And there has been debate raging for years now in Finland about the need for Swedish.

1. I had no idea that all public signs, road signs and most shop descriptions were ALSO ALL in Swedish! As soon as the bus trip from the airport, I was shocked when I saw them all. I said to my colleagues, "Now I understand the Finnish nationalists, If I was Finnish and lived here, I'd be a nationalist too, with all this Swedish everywhere, I'd go around ripping them down"

2. MYTH I - regularly heard in Sweden & elsewhere: "The Finns don't understand Swedish & most of them don't speak it" *Absolute rubbish!*
EVERY SINGLE FINN I needed to speak to I started with (in Swedish) "I can speak Swedish or English" and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM, responded usually in Swedish, with words to the effect of "Doesn't matter which, I speak both" And I noticed in the hotel that even the receptionists that didn't speak Swedish, still understood the Swedish that was being spoken to them but responded to the Swedes in English. Then walking around Helsinki, I heard lots of Finns speaking Swedish & in one area school kids walking past me were alternately speaking Swedish or Finnish.

3. MYTH II - again regularly heard in Sweden & elsewhere: "Finns, Estonians and Hungarians all undertand each other & can communicate in a kind of mixture of their languages. *Absolute rubbish!* They speak English to each other. I spoke to the Finns & Estonians about this at dinner on Monday evening and while it is true that Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian are all Uralic languages and part of the Finno-Ugric language group, there is very little similarity between Finnish and Estonian, the grammar is quite different as is the vocabulary. Even the Finns and Estonians who know Swedish speak English to each other.


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## Langham (Nov 7, 2012)

Isn't it the case that a minority of Finns (5-10% I believe) are of Swedish origin? On the western side and on various islands. Their families have always spoken Swedish, in a sense they are Swedish. But it's not the only country where that happens - Romania has areas where Hungarian is the dominant language, in parts of Belgium they speak German, and in parts of southern Italy Albanian and also Greek have always been spoken. However, whether these places all have bilingual signs, I'm not sure.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Yes, that is correct. There are certain villages and towns where the people ONLY speak Swedish, and even some places where the people can only speak Swedish and don't even know Finnish.


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## Odradek (Sep 1, 2011)

Earl of Ormonde said:


> I made 3 discoveries about Finland & Finnish and in thus doing exploded 2 myths I've heard many times. I already knew that many people in Finland spoke Swedish & that in certain areas they ONLY spoke Swedish. It is a second language for many & is taught in most schools, and a first language for others. And there has been debate raging for years now in Finland about the need for Swedish.


Puts us monoglots to shame.
12 years of learning Irish in school, but few Irish people can speak it.
5 years of French in school, and I can't speak that either.

Working on a job in Milan a few years ago, and out for a meal one evening, I was the only one at the table without at least 3 languages.
At least my wife has fluent German and a good bit of French.


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## Shaver (May 2, 2012)

What do you call someone who speaks many languages? Multilingual.

What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual.

What do you call someone who speaks one language?

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English. :redface:


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

That's what comes of being island races unfortunately, but I'm completely fluent in Swedish & have been for many years.

Is fearr Gaeilge briste, ná Béarla clíste.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

For those who don't speak Irish that little proverb there says, "Broken Irish is better than clever English"  

So take solace from that Odradek


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## Odradek (Sep 1, 2011)

Earl of Ormonde said:


> For those who don't speak Irish that little proverb there says, "Broken Irish is better than clever English"
> 
> So take solace from that Odradek


Maith an fear.


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## WouldaShoulda (Aug 5, 2009)

The world would be a much better and more peaceful place if everyone just spoke English.

American English!! 



Holy Crap!!

When did my Country become Uganda??

Join DateAugust 5th, 2009Posts6,842CountryUgandaStateVACityAlexandri


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## Monocle (Oct 24, 2012)

Languages intrigue me. Being from the south where English is in decline (tongue in cheek), many know Spanish by osmosis. The hard part is the cultural nuance that only comes from regular use within the culture. Perhaps its the same in every multilingual area such as where you were. (Different levels of "knowing" a language.)

But if you don't have opportunity, what is the best store-bought method to learn a language. Have thought about Rosetta Stone for starters. Anyone try different tools?


Sent from the ionosphere.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Hi Monocle, you kind of suggested yourself what the best system of learning a new language is, i.e. living where the tongue is spoken as a first language.

But to answer your query, I've never found a "book" based system that has worked for me. The best way I've found of learning languages is to read newspapers, watch TV, listen to radio, speak the tongue, and visit the country in question. Also if possible study at evening classes, college or university, where you have a professional guiding you and others in your learning. Home study alone, rarely if ever works.


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## Tilton (Nov 27, 2011)

Monocle, I was just about to comment that a great many signs spanning from southern Florida all the way to southern California are in both English and Spanish. However, I believe the term most often used in America for what the Earl calls "nationalists" is "racists."


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## Gurdon (Feb 7, 2005)

As an Anglo-American I was raised in a monolingual English-speaking household and studied languages in school - Latin, German and Spanish. I am not fluent in those languages but I can manage to be polite and carry on simple conversations in German and Spanish. 

Growing up in the Southwest, mostly California and New Mexico, I appreciate the Spanish contribution to place names, language and history. California's first constitution was written in Spanish and English. It was replaced with an English language version just a few years after California became part of the US. I believe New Mexico still has a bi-lingual constitution. Notwithstanding some use of Spanish in the Southwest, and French in Louisiana, Generally, the US is monolingual. I think this is unfortunate.

It is unfortunate that nationalism, informed by racism has deformed our society, as polyglot multi-cultural living is fun, and it is good for people. 

In the United States I make a point of speaking Spanish when I have the chance, especially if the individual with whom I am dealing seems uncomfortable speaking English. My intention is to make people feel welcome. 

Although one can get by speaking English most /many places, I make a point of starting conversations in a local language - out of politeness and the desire to be seen as civil and well-intentioned. (But that's also why I speak Spanish in the US.)

Cheers,
Gurdon


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Whoa! Hang on a second, nationalism and racism are not synonyms, they are not part of the same ideology. Maybe they are in the US, but most definitely not in Europe. 

Nationalism as in Northern Ireland for example, and in Ireland, when it was still British prior to 1921, was and is about fighting for self-determination, government of oneself by one's own community, one's own people, one's own culture, this has nothing at all to do with racism.It doesn't exclude foreginers.

Granted some extreme nationalists extend to xenophobia and racism but those are fascists not true nationalists.

Racism is the open dislike or hatred of other peoples, sometimes also including xenophobia (the fear of the foreign) but not always, for example, I would suggest that the white people of the US South during segregation, that is, those who were racist were not xenophobic, far from it, they weren't afraid of black people, they were just racists.


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## Tilton (Nov 27, 2011)

I have a professional working knowledge of Spanish and previously had a job where speaking it was required as 95% of clients were Spanish-speaking and not very proficient in English. 

Personally, I think that the US is primarily monolingual due to size. In Europe, you are in close proximity to places that speak a different language. For the vast majority of Americans, that is not the case. Indeed, you are often thousands of miles from places where a different language is significantly more prevalent. Couple that with the fact that many Americans will never travel somewhere where a second language is necessary, and you have your explanation. Racism and nationalism don't necessarily play any part in the algebra for many, many Americans. 

RE: slave owners being racist, I am not sure you can call it racism for much of that time. Context is important. It was a generally accepted "scientific" fact that whites were intellectually superior at the time. If science told them so, why should they believe anything different? Any intellectual blacks at the time could be explained by expected standard deviations and the lack of access to education perpetuated it and probably made the rate of obviously intelligent black folks about the same as obviously stupid white folks. I would liken it to believing Indians or Latin Americans are shorter, on average, than white people right now. There is a lot of evidence proving that true, so you wouldn't necessarily be racist or believing in unjust stereotypes to agree. It is only after one should know better that it becomes racist or an unjust stereotype. Just my $0.02.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Tilton said:


> I
> RE: slave owners being racist, I am not sure you can call it racism for much of that time. Context is important. It was a generally accepted "scientific" fact that whites were intellectually superior at the time.


True, very true. But we are now looking back at it from 2014, not from 1814, and it was of course racism.


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## Gurdon (Feb 7, 2005)

Earl,

My views are mediated by my experience growing up in a racist country. One in which potato famine Irish were consideed racially inferior to the real Americans of largely English, German and other (non-Roman Catholic) European ancestry. Am I wrong to believe that the English subjugation of the Irish (as well as many others) was not in some measure undergirded by racism?

Post #9 above is a fairly typical example of American racism, and I was, in part, making an oblique reference to it in my post. 

Racism pervades American political discourse. Dog Whistle Politics, by the Boalt Hall law professor Ian Haney Lopez describes how Nixon's "Southern strategy" was designed to capitalize on resentment of white working class Southern Democrats towards African Americans who were belatedly benefitting from federal programs from which they had been excluded during the Depression. Jumping ahead, our Supreme Court has found that members of racial minorities complaining about mistreatment because of their race are, in fact, engaging in anti-white racist speech.

Getting back to language, we have a long history of suppressing the use Native American languages, as well as Spanish (in the West) and, not surprisingly, German during and after WW I. In Pasadena, California Spanish street names were anglicized by the folks (among whom were some of my great grandparents) who moved there following the Civil War, toward the end of the 19th Century and into the early 20th, because the foreign names were un-American. It was also this same cohort of the population who pushed Prohibition as a way of controlling the unruly Irish and other working class recent arrivals who drank too much and were Roman Catholic. A few years later, when California's Spanish history had morphed into something quaint and romantic, some of these same people decided it would be good to return to Spanish street names.

Mention of the Civil War brings up the obvious, still denied by some, point that the war was in some measure about slavery, an institution based on racial discrimination. Slavery was also good business. The recently published book, Capital in the 21st Century, documents the considerable wealth constituted by slaves, which pecularly supports the arguments of those who deny that the war was to a degree about slavery as racism.

In any event, I was not conflating Irish nationalism with racial prejudice. 

Regards,
Gurdon


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## Tilton (Nov 27, 2011)

Earl of Ormonde said:


> True, very true. But we are now looking back at it from 2014, not from 1814, and it was of course racism.


If it were happening today, yes. But that is not the case. History has to be judged in context, not by the ever-moving goalpost of "the present."


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Tilton, segregation was still in force in the *1960s!!!*

However, this is going too far off topic, I was simply using US segregation as an exmaple of when racists holding power are not xenophobes.


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## Tilton (Nov 27, 2011)

Earl of Ormonde said:


> Tilton, segregation was still in force in the *1960s!!!*
> 
> However, this is going too far off topic, I was simply using US segregation as an exmaple of when racists holding power are not xenophobes.


Right, and that is an excellent example of "should have known better." Taken in the context of knowledge at the time, segregation was racist. By that time, science had said, basically, "hey, those people we used to say were an inferior race... well, uh, our bad."

But, point taken - and I wholeheartedly agree: racism does not equal xenophobia. Xenophobia can certainly lead to racism over time, but they are not the same.


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## jackmccullough (May 10, 2006)

I haven't read the entire thread, but there is a core of truth to the misconceptions you have heard. Finnish, although geographically close to Sweden and Norway, is completely unrelated to the Scandinavian languages. For that matter, as a member of the Finno-Ugric language family Finnish is unrelated to all the Indo-European languages. If your informants were telling you that unlike speakers of Swedish and Norwegian, or Ukrainian and Russian, who have some ability to understand each other, there is no commonality between Finnish and Swedish, so a monolingual Finn would not be able to communicate with a monolingual Swede.


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## drlivingston (Jun 21, 2012)

Growing up in the deep south, I realized at an early age that many elders in my family viewed blacks as a different species yet harbored no real animosity toward them. I can still remember my grandfather telling me, "Some of the nicest people that I ever owned were blacks". Of course, he never "owned" any blacks. He just saw himself as being superior to them and viewed their employment under him to be a type of fiscal enslavement.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

jackmccullough said:


> I haven't read the entire thread, but there is a core of truth to the misconceptions you have heard. Finnish, although geographically close to Sweden and Norway, is completely unrelated to the Scandinavian languages. For that matter, as a member of the Finno-Ugric language family Finnish is unrelated to all the Indo-European languages. If your informants were telling you that unlike speakers of Swedish and Norwegian, or Ukrainian and Russian, who have some ability to understand each other, there is no commonality between Finnish and Swedish, so a monolingual Finn would not be able to communicate with a monolingual Swede.


Jack, you haven't told me anything I don't already know. My opening post, in which I mention my interest in & knowledge of languages should have told you that.

My discovery has nothing to do with the similarities or differences between Swedish and Finnish, it has to do with the fact that many Swedes here in Sweden, think that most Finns don't understand Swedish. My discovery was in fact that many Finns actively chose to learn and use Swedish and EVERY Finn I spoke to understood Swedish. As for monolingual, there are not many monolingual Swedes. I have lived in Sweden since 96 and have been coming here since 83, EVERY single Swede I ever met spoke at least TWO languages either Swedish & German (those born before the 1930s), Swedish & English, Swedish & Finnish - being the three most common second languages. Much the same prevails in Finland, with many Finns in the old Swedish towns and regions having Swedish as their first language, then there are very many Finns who have either Swedish, Russian or English as a second language. There are some Finns who don't speak Finnish at all, they only speak Swedish or up in the north one of the Sami languages.


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## MaxBuck (Apr 4, 2013)

I believe that Acta Polytechnica Scandinavica, the Scandinavian technical journal, is published in Finland in the Swedish language. Presumably that's to ensure broader understanding of the articles presented therein.

When I was a graduate student in chemical engineering, I cited several articles (fire research) from that journal. I speak no Swedish, but technical language is often understandable in a language one doesn't speak, and I found technical Swedish to be sufficiently like technical English to understand the articles pretty well. 

I found the same to be the case when confronted with engineering drawings written in French while working on a project outside Montreal. Once I got a couple key words figured out, I was set to go. Had to buy myself a new set of scales to allow distances to be scaled properly, though, since all the drawings were metric.


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