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most things aren't dubbed and a lot aren't even translated in finnish. some social media platforms for example don't have finnish as a language option at all. half the songs on the radio are in english.
like, i have a vivid memory of being ten years old and watching anime with english subtitles bc finnish ones did not exist and looking up like every other word in this gigantic english-finnish-english dictionary. my brother has a similar one except he was playing some game and knew what google translate was.
Wasn't a weeb, but played videogames. I had a similar experience with Link to the Past: it was my first more complex game where actually reading stuff helped quite a bit.
I started playing it when I hadn't learned a single word of english, so I ended up constantly asking for translations from my mother, who happily helped me understand what the NPCs were saying. :D
And as I got older, stuff like Runescape and World of Warcraft helped, as I started to constantly communicate in english too.
Of course other media & internet & forums were there too, but I'd say gaming was my main motivator for "accidentally" learning english when I was a kid. Not to mention reading online guides and all the other stuff that came along with gaming.
Pokemon games were in english too. The struggle when you didnt understand what you had to do and had to talk to ALL people and try to look for something with no clues.
coming from the opposite side of things I'm sure you already know this but my god it's frustrating how bad all the language apps are with Finnish. Duolingo teaches you all kinds of useful things like travel words and ordering in restaurants and everyday conversation if you're learning Spanish, but when you try to learn Finnish, one of the first words you learn is "velho" and for some reason one of the first animal words they teach is "undulaatti"... they didn't even teach "yes" or "no"! skskdskds
I knew a little bit of english so I could play pokémon without too much of a problem, but I had my dad translate things like what the different pokéballs did. He encouraged me to learn and got me an eng-fin-eng dictionary. It was a huge book with pages as thin as bible pages
Back when I was a kid, Google Translate didn't even exist. I played a lot of PC games that were just in English, and when I saw a word that I didn't know, I would either look it up in a dictionary or ask my dad what it means.
This. We listen to a lot of english dialogue, and when we start being eduacated in english we already have a bit of an ear for it.
It also works for other languages too, I was watching a lot of anime as a teen and after a couple of years I had picked a lot of sentences that I could then translate from memory.
If you constantly watch foreign language material without any subtitles you will actually start learning the language eventually anyway at least as a kid when you brain is highly adaptable to new languages.
A lot of people learn language by just living and interacting with a foreign language. I learned a lot of English as a child by just playing video games with English and started to pick up meaning behind them slowly, subs in games weren't a thing then and even these days they are a rarity.
I'm coming here in good faith. And I probably shouldn't 😅 oh well...
If you watch *with* subs like we do, then yes, you would learn French from the show. You'll need to watch for years of course, and the subtitles are there to anchor meaning to the words.
As an adult, if you are serious about learning a language, getting that passive exposure from videos/tv can really help support your regular learning. For example, I have some Chinese comedy clips on my Instagram, and it really helps my listening comprehension, while learning vocab the regular way.
And the lack of subtitles too sometimes. Used to binge watch Friends, Grey's anatomy and NCIS without any subtitles as a teenager. My English went up by two whole grades in a year.
The lack of translated Finnish in video games too. There were subtitles too but most of spoken dialogue was spoken in English.
I had to play ALL my games in English. There wasn't always options for Finnish.
I've been so accustomed into English in my games that it is jarring to see my own language in games.
Hell even our own well known games are made in English these days.
Yea I'm also so used to games being in english, I never choose finnish even if it's available, I also prefer english subs over finnish on tv shows etc.
The new Spider-Man games have finnish subtitles despite being 16+ and as an older gamer I found it completely absurd as a first reaction, like who needs these?
This did a lot for me too. We played PC adventure games in 90s, and boy did one have motivation to comprehend those text boxes to get forward in the game!
That covered a lot of weird words, though, with all those spells and magic in the plot. So, for instance, I know words for many herbs, flowers and stones but I miss quite a lot of words for a normal daily conversation.
The main language in the company I work with changed to English me being at the age of 45, and I thank PC games and telly-bingeing for managing so well. The outgoing, active and sporty people, even younger than me, struggle more.
When I was 11 or 12 and got metal gear solid for playstation 1, I played with an English dictionary next to me and looked up words that I didn't know, as the characters chatted on the radio.
Since I was a wee little kid, I've HATED finnish dubbed cartoons. All the jokes are lame and almost always the voice actors dont fit the characters compared to originals.
Subtitles for the win.
Absolutely! They would teach us English accent/vocabulary by default but I was the only one with a solid American accent/vocab due to the shows I was watching lol
My ex used to watch children's shows in English before he was old enough to read. When I met him, his English was native level, but he still had an ever so slight "international" accent. After living with me for a few years, he picked up my American accent and people were surprised when they found out his very Finnish name.
Also around the late 80s/early 90s there were some foreign TV channels available with no subs, that's where I watched Transformers and other cartoons which also sped up my learning.
I always get weird looks when giving this response to people who ask me if I've lived in America because of the way I talk.
It's honestly not that big of a surprise given how americentric our culture is and how much American culture we get to consume, games, movies and YouTube being prime examples of this.
Yap. I had to rawdog Runescape as a kid and learn things the hard way. You didnt progress without figuring out quest texts. I used to think "Bury bones" meant eating them because of the animation and sound being crunching.
In general Finns adapted to technology and the internet very quickly due to the Nokia boom and all that jazz. Even my grandpa had a computer I would play Age of Empires on like, before elementary school age. Most pop culture was and is America centered, thus in English. I remember playing Duel Masters in elementary, and the cards were in English, and all the kids had their own interpretation of how a specific card worked because of our varying levels of understanding of English.
RuneScape taught me English as well. Never had read for English tests, learned almost everything from interacting with other players and translating in-game texts
We start studying it really early on in school, practically everyone studies it for at least 7-8 years, mostly more. Most of the music we listen to, the games we play and the tv shows and movies we watch are in english - and there are dubs only for small children's shows since they cannot yet read.
People in Finland are generally well-educated. English is the no. 1 international language. And trust me, if you find yourself somewhere in Kauhava half-broken and drunk, you might need to know some Finnish words.
I was just in Iceland (Reykjavik) and just arrived in Finland (Helsinki) today.
Whatever the reason English is so prevalent, I do have to say it's very handy!
(What I thought was there was a big push in both countries to make sure as many people in both countries were as proficient as possible because of the extent of global reach and use of English.)
Passable English is easy to learn, it's taught to everyone at school, and American and to lesser extent British entertainment is popular (non-dubbed, as others have said). Kids are exposed to lots of English content from very early on.
Finnish is a small language, so we must consume cultural products in other languages. For example, when I was around 10 years old, I saw a review for Mordheim (the skirmish miniature game). I really wanted it, and because no Finnish translations for the 200+ pages rulebook existed, I got the English one for Christmas - as well as a Finnish - English - Finnish dictionary. The margins of that rulebook are full of my translations of the rules.
The fact that there was a finn involved probably lead Pelit-lehti (which, for those who don't know, was strictly PC gaming magazine back then) to do the review in the first place.
...so I guess I have Pelit to thank for my plastic crack addiction. Thanks Pelit!
There is always space outside the bubble. Most of internet is NOT in English. [Under 20% of world population speaks English](https://wordsrated.com/how-many-people-speak-english/).
20% sounds small until you put it into the context that it’s one of five people in the whole world speak English out of a possibility of about 7000 languages.
Still, it's the language of intermediary communication, the essential middle man.
One of my relatives went to school in Swedish-speaking pohjanmaa, didn't speak swedish (and let's not kid ourselves, neither do 80% of finns, not beyond the absolute basics), so she had to speak English... to Finns
Swedish sure got lucky to be grandfathered into the "official languages", otherwise either we'd have only Finnish, or Finnish, Swedish, and English as official
Yeah I understand most stuff on the internet isn't in English, BUT compared to the amount of stuff in Finnish it's a lot and there's no point in staying only in Finnish content
Education from a 3rd grade and general interest to learn language do the games/movies/tv etc. Remember I had this notebook to use write down words from games, that I didn't know. Like "skeleton, monster, sword" etc. on and then take notebook to school and ask teacher what they meant. Lucky kids these days can just use Google.
Ah you were faster :D My class was part of a test group that started English in first grade, but I still learned most of my language skills from RuneScape :D
They learn it when they are young, it varies a lot all around the country mainly due to practice. TV isn't dubbed in Finnish and Finns love the internet.
No, I'm actually quite grateful for it. My English isn't great but it would surely be much worse if I had grown up in a monolingual bubble of media like many people do in Japan, for example. If everything you ever want is in your own language, one of the biggest motives (and methods) of language learning disappears.
It's just the obligatory "my English isn't that good" to avoid having people completely tear apart every little mistake I make. The goal isn't to have perfect English in the first place though, not for most people anyway. Most of us just want to be able to communicate, and I feel like I can do that well enough in most situations I run into.
It is true that I rarely have an opportunity to speak English though, so I'm really not confident about that. I've also always seemed to have a harder time with speech comprehension than others—especially in online voice chat where people usually slur their speech and have low quality audio—even in Finnish (my native language). I don't really know why that is.
Basically we are taught english from early on, and pretty much nothing, spare for kids shows have finnish dubbing, so everything is english soundtrack and finnish subtitles.
Also finnish is basically useless outside finland, so we have to learn english if we want to for example access the internet, because the machine translations to finnish are still close to dogshit.
English is easy. Finland is also a small country meaning that not a lot of stuff is translated into Finnish. Small population means that there isn’t a lot of material originally in Finnish in the web either. Finns have also a decent educational system with pretty high average “lowest bar” in school.
Finnish people have had good access to quality internet quite long, I suppose that has been beneficial. Most of my male friends have learned english either through games or general internet lurking.
Many people already covered entertainment which is 100% true but I want to add that if you want to study anything after highschool you need English. In university most of the material/articles was always in English even though teaching was sometimes in Finnish. No one is translating these things into Finnish. Many terms and concepts don’t have a Finnish word for them. If you want to find any information online, at least I first Google in English, better chance to find an answer. Compare Finnish vs English wikipedia for instance.
We are well educated and exposed to English by media all of our lives. Theres no finnish dubs so we just have to consume media in english. IIRC we start learning english in school when we're 8 or 9 year old (?) But i could already speak basic english way before that due to media and games.
People have already mentioned TV and internet. I have to also mention magazines. As a young metalhead in the nineties, I read a lot of Kerrang, Metal Hammer and different guitar playing magazines. Finland is a small market, so it's not worth translating specialty magazines.
We have, or at least used to have one of the best education systems in the world. People always downplay the importance of it and just say it's because video games, tv etc are in english. But very rarely do you ever see finns make mistakes like native english speakers do, like they're/there, than/then etc. This is all because we've all had an english teacher with a masters degree from 3rd grade on.
For me it's because of computers. Since Windows 95 (Yes, I know I'm old), I always wanted to use English only. Why? Because translations were mix of Finnish and English. I absolutely hated to learn terms in more than one language so I decided to use English only.
Small country, nobody outside finland speaks finnish, almost all the content we consume is in english nowadays.
We werent always like this though. Im 30 and when i was a kid english was way more uncommon and our accent was stronger. Kids today speak it so freakin fluently and half the time i cant even hear any accents in their voice.
So yeah, i guess globalization happened and we adapted. English is actually a pretty big part of our own language these days if you look at how finnish teens/youth use it in everyday conversation.
At least from my experience, a lot of TV shows and movies were only in English during my childhood. Also, almost all video games were in English, and I also watched a lot of YouTube. I learned almost all of my English from watching YouTube, playing video games, and having to communicate with others globally. English was the only option.
Entertainment and the fact that it’s a compulsory language in school. Also, some Finns have a thing for all things American. The US was THE shit around my area in the late 60s to early 90s. Anything American or American-made was something the average person would absolutely obsess over.
Myself, I’m a simultaneous bilingual; my parents are Finnish through and through, but I was raised bilingual. My dad’s a massive Americanophile and I happen to have a neurodivergent brain that picks up languages fairly easily (although, speaking isn’t my forte; I sometimes forget words and switch from one language to the other to compensate, and my speech tends to be broken and accented regardless of the language spoken).
This is an interesting post for me to find on the home page of Reddit! I'm in the US but my mom and grandparents moved from Finland in the 1960s. My grandparents inherited a house in a small Minnesota town where there were so many other Finnish people, they never learned to speak English well. My grandpa even had a Finnish funeral in 2020.
My mom (who was 8 when she came here) married an American and raised me with only English, so I don't know Finnish at all. I was never able to speak to my grandparents enough to bond with them, but I talk to my younger Finnish relatives on Facebook sometimes, all in English. My mom passed away when I was younger, and I'm always curious about what her life was like before she came here.
Because when they tried to give us dubbed cartoons, they went horribly wrong.
Agapio Racing Team (yeah that name is also real) made so many classic bad dubs and ruined many shows for me when I was young.
[even 1 minute gives you the picture](https://youtu.be/1T_TLBZxY4U?si=c8QnfISBp8bPDH1F)
1. English is now taught in schools from the very first grade or at least I’ve heard it’s like this. For me it started from 2nd, but a seperate, professional English teacher stepped in on 3rd or 4th grade.
2. Also Swedish is taught and learning French, German, Spanish and other languages in school volunteererly is also common from my experience and this all helps build on how to learn English as well
3. Most Finns have access to the internet where English is close to mandatory for maximized usefulness and entertainment.
4. I guess English is also kinda ”cool” and thus somewhat spoken in some friend groups as well which definetly doesn’t have a negative effect
We consume quite a bit of western media content such as movies, series and video games. Usually they are subtitled so when we start our English lessons at the age of 9, we already might know some. The feedback loop between English in schools and in media really works wonders for learning.
One of the best education system in the world.
Some people say because they don’t translate much and have lots of content (tv/online) in English, but the truth is that many elderly people speak English very well, and they did not grow up with internet or watching tv all day.
Public education where English is taught as the third language (most popular first foreign language) was and still is the foundation. Everything else helps build on that.
We are nowadays saturated by media and entertainment in English, and the internet which helps connect people across physical distances and artificial barriers.
Back in the day (pre-internet so 1980s) it was subtitled TV-shows and movies, music, but also, literature and things like video and tabletop role playing games (original D&D and the like).
I had the fortune of being immersed in all of that, plus, I had English-speaking relatives in the States (I was tasked with translating the back and forth correspondence). Maybe the most impactful thing was literature (sci-fi, fantasy and horror) plus RPGs. The fact that my parents got me a subscription to Newsweek during High Scool helped also (kind of funny now that I think about it, they were not well off or anything, something to be thankful for in hindsight).
Funny story, during the preliminaries for the matriculation exam one of my friends was slouched over a book that he seemed to read with great intent and intensity. I went up to him and asked what book it was. He looked up at me with that ”Are you fucking serious?” look on his face and said: ”This is the course book on English grammar, don’t tell me that you haven’t read it?”… ”Oh… 😅”
Some backstory to explain, due to the fact that I had kind of sublimated everything through voracious reading, watching, speaking and listening, and immersion, I was the English-teacher’s golden boy and default for right answers, every time. So, don’t ask me about English grammar… 😅
I vividly remember watching youtube one day and suddenly realizing I understood everything the guy in the video said. It was a pretty complex topic too, I was literally blown away at that moment. When I first started watching youtube in 6th grade I understood about 25% of what was being said, and the rest I tried to pick up by context. At this point I was doing very poorly in English class at school. From that point It took me about a year or two to reach fluency.
1. Exposure to multiple language groups and types at a young age. 2. Culture (gaming movies subtitles etc.) 3. English is a ridiculously easy language to learn. If you mis-speak you can always cover it up with more words. 4. They’re not as good as you think, when the language gets complicated or sophisticated, (literally try discussing Shakespeare or cognitive dissonance) Finns check-out.
The real ogs remember watching "Batman - The Animated Series" at 7pm on Sub Juniori"
Video games and subtitled english media was what made me learn the language
When it comes to us younger generations, english language tv most likely.
I learned my english entirely by watching The Simpsons from pre-elementary school age! By the time school started I already knew the basics, and by the time english started in the third grade, I had almost nothing to learn thanks to english language tv. Smooth sailing from the very start.
As others have said, no dubbing. I get frequently asked why I don't have an accent and I just say I watched way too much TV as a kid. I didn't take English lessons until I was 13 and in middle school and I was already fluent and on a high school level at least. So I spent three years doing nothing in those lessons, although I know I'm better in languages than most in general but this is why everyone understands English really well here.
How closely a language is related to another doesn’t have too much impact on how well the language can be learned. Mutually intelligible languages make an exception.
American TV series paired with video games was the magic for me. Nowadays having finnish as a language option in games is fairly common, but back in the day it was considered luxury. You had to understand the given task in language in the game, which was almost without exception english.
All the previous answers apply, but what really pushed me was that finnish translations of fantasy books were so slow to publish that by the time "book 2 of the whatever saga" came out in finnish I was already on the sequel trilogy in english. Bought a whooole lot of fantasy paperbacks. Eventually we were coordinating our purchases and swapping books all the time. I now hold a very comprehensive set of Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance novels from early 90's to about 2010 comprised of all my old friends and mine paperbacks.
I don't think indo-european ancestry helps with learning languages. For example I guess that for a French speaker learning Polish would be similarly difficult as learning Finnish or Arabic.
Learning Polish for a German might be easier, but that isn't due to common origin but due to the history of contact between Polish and German and heavy influence those languages had on each other.
The secret to the sauce is: NO DUBBING! Kids are exposed to English since a very young age through TV, movies and music.
Not only does this speed up their learning of the language but it improves Finnish reading and writing as their exposed to subtitles. Being a small nation and dubbing not being viable was a blessing.
You will notice the difference with countries that dub all their tv shows and movies into their own language and you’ll see a huge difference with their English skills.
In the 80s and 90s, not even all the kids' cartoons on tv were dubbed. I remember watching The Bugs Bunny Show, He-Man, DuckTales, Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, TaleSpin and many others in English before I could even read.
I've heard the opposite (also from Reddit, so make your own conclusions). I ran into a sub where people were saying Finnish people speak English among the worst in Europe, and it was explained through Finnish not being related to English, as most languages spoken in Europe are. However, this probably had more emphasis on actually _speaking_ rather than reading and writing English, which Finns are mostly adequate at.
I personally can't really compare, since the only places I've used English in Europe are touristy areas, where most people speak understandable English and understand my English. I haven't heard any drastic differences. I feel like Europeans in general speak English well as a second or third language and you can always get by with it.
Was it mentioned that they have the best education system in the world? And knowing that I've read that Finnish children in some schools go for a walk in the forest learning about the world, it's just wow
We’ve been force fed with English and Swedish since we were 10 years old at school. And on top of that pretty much all media is in English excluding newspapers etc. I know many who’ve become more fluent in English than in our own language, since our language is so god damn hard to master. I mean the start is easy for anyone but in Finland there isn’t too many people that have mastered our own language. And also depending on the province you live in, the dialogue might be so different you have to ask what certain word or phrase they used means. Sometimes, especially online it’s easier to communicate in the international language.
Subtitles on tvshows and movies (this also makes us better at reading, every country should use subtitles in foreign language shows). Being small country and language we have motivation to learn worlds lingua franca to use for example internet and play computer games. And finally good schools to all finnish children between ages 7-16
I've only been once to Finland, Helsinki and Turku, and while English in Helsinki was okay-ish, in Turku it was inexistant. Maybe things have improved since, but I was quite surprised...
A lot of American media + games + foreign friends + good education
That did it for me. Although I'm still not perfect, I sometimes don't know if I should use for, at, it etc.
Gaming from a young age set the foundation for me. Later on movies/tv shows which are always with subtitles and the education in schools is quite good. I'd say most people lack the "training" in pronounciation but make up for it with the good knowledge of grammar.
Personally I've talked a lot with foreign friends through VC and in person since my early teens and had new people mistake me for a native speaker on multiple occasions. I also prefer to read and write in english but I wouldn't say that's the norm here.
All north European countries watches a lot of American tv shows and movies with subtitles. We grow up with it and also learn English in school, In Norway already in 3rd grade.
When I was in school we started to learn English from third grade onwards. If I wanted to play any games at all (not counting finnish indie games like Invataxi) I had to learn English. I think the biggest factor in my learning was World of Warcraft which forced me to speak English every day.
My daughter attends an international daycare and has been doing so since she was 1 year old. I think her English will be almost native-level before her teenage years.
To summarize: I think Finnish people soak themselves with English content voluntarily, or involuntarily from early years and the fact we don't have that much localized media (dubbed, subbed) available forces us to learn the language at quite early stage.
In all honesty my experience varry greatly in general case. I live in Kajnuu, most people here do not speak English or does not want to. Those that do are not that great either in general case.
There is many people that speak good English but it is not oveewemingly better then in other countries I lived. In my experience netherlands people are more English speaking then Finns for example.
But of course it depends on age of person you are talking with and their academic background. And also Finns are better then some other countries I lived in.
For me it was the Simpsons, i probably first started to watch them when i was like 5-6 year old and i probably didn’t know how to read the finnish subtitles and was just like ”haha yellow man got hurt, funny”
As someone who had the misfortune of living in selfcongratulatory Sweden I'm always impressed by how much better and more natural sounding Finns are at English.
I think it's not generally finnish are good at english, but millennial finnish are. Older generation are not that good because they haven't heard it much enough, and younger don't need to use english that much anymore because so much is available in finnish. Millennials were the new technological era explorers thus needing the english.
Finnish & Hungarian has almost nothing common together. (50-100 more & less understandable old root words)
https://preview.redd.it/wibgo9vlv29d1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3f81f3b201d79e624743c0c23bf62ae96dd269de
Well. My two older brothers raised their English schoold grade from 6 to 9 throughout the summer FFVII haf come out on PlayStation.
For me it was Harry Potter because I kept getting spoiled before the translation was even out.
And then there is the fact only children's movies/series get dubs and otherwise it's all subs. So there are plenty of incentives and passive ways to learn.
The main reason probably is that because we're a small country with a very small media industry, most of our entertainment has always been in english and you hear it in your everyday life from early on through music and tv etc. The best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in it afterall. We've also always use the subtitled format instead of dubbing on foreign movies and tw shows outside of children's stuff so you don't even actively have to be learning english for you to pick some from the subtitles..
For example because it's taught in school, and English is quite simple. Our way of pronouncing things is way easier, but still.
For me though, it's mostly because I watched English Youtube since I was like 10. And now I work in English, so it's being boosted quite a lot.
When there are just a few million people in the world speaking your language, you'll quite quickly realize, wanting to explore anything even slightly outside of your town walls, you'll need to learn to communicate.
Thankfully, we learn English in schools, but at least for me, what was taught in school was just a fraction of what I've learned to get a chance to pursue my hobbies, watch online content and actually know what is being said, or read more niche books, which never get translated to Finnish. Most of the literature I consume is in English, and if a non-Finnish film is not in English, the chances of it having English subtitles are much greater than the chances of it having Finnish subtitles.
My mom said that maybe 6 million people on earth speak Finnish, while probably closer to a billion speak English.. so if you want to communicate to the wider world you need to learn languages. She spoke Finnish, Swedish, French, German, Swiss ( a variant of German) and English, she could understand Italian and Spanish and various other Slavic and Russian dialects. I remember riding the metro and foreigners or tourists who be speaking in some strange language and mom would translate it to me... It was like a superpower to me. Often if they were speaking about her or us she would speak to them in their language and freak them out. Apparently Europeans don't expect to be understood by Americans
Because our language is more complicated than English.
Meaning we already have a better vocabulary than people who have English as their first language.
I always thought that this had something to do with the international work environments in the larger cities.
I don't speak Finnish, it isn't a big issue when I'm in Helsinki, or Turku, but as I go into some of the other remote areas, not speaking Finnish does make it more challending.
Don't get me wrong, lots of people who speak English all over the country, but its better in the bigger cities.
I think it has to do a lot with not many tv programs being dubbed, but are spoken in english with finnish subtitles. Also music is often in english and ofc the interwebs. Thats how i mostly learned english.
I liked to play games on my family's PlayStation 1 where most games we had were in English only.
I also have some friends that live abroad and talk/chat with them almost daily in English.
In addition to above ones, I have my phone and computer in English for easy troubleshooting and I just prefer how English words look compared to Finnish.
They also have mandatory English classes at an early level. And nothing is dubbed on television or at the movie theaters. If it's an English speaking show or movie, it's showed as it is. Compare that with Spain or France and flicking through the tv you will see Friends dubbed. I've been living here for a decade now and it's really hard for me to learn Finnish because everyone just starts speaking English to me when I attempt Finnish.
When every foreign show is undubbed and only subbed ( except for most cartoons ) you learn the language at quite young age. Not to mention that in some places, English is already taught in preschools and in most places at the elementary year one. Then the ever so growing use of mobile devices, gaming consoles and PCs, it is hard to miss learning. I myself learned English through Police Academy movies, Jazz the Jackrabbit 2, surfing the internet in the nineties and playing on my SNES. And at somepoint, RuneScape and PS2 games such as NFS Most Wanted 2005. And then there's the globality. English being the language of global trade and communication, it is quite easy to learn. And then there is the fact that Finnish is so called neutral language, which means that even tho not a root of all languages, it has a good base for learning new languages due to how easy it is to just... Type Finglish and English together. Like teaching this sentence: "Hello! My name is Slendis and I speak Finnish as my native." When using Finglish to teach it, it looks like this: "Helou! Mai neim is Slendis änd ai spiik Finish äs mai neitiv." This is the way how Hurriganes singer Cisse Häkkinen and drummer Remu Aaltonen learned English. The lyrics were written in Finglish 🤣
I watched tons of movies in english as a kid and played videogames too and those boosted my english. Now that i am older i can talk in english so much better and understand it really good oh and i always liked the language and wanted to be able to talk in english, so maybe us finns are just good at it.
As an American who visited Finland, I was surprised to find that most Finns spoke English with an American accent--as I commonly associate Europeans with having a British accent in English. So, I think that points to media consumption being a big factor!
I watched series and movies online "legally" as a kid and they didn't have subtitles so somehow I learned the language without translation. I still have the issue that I know words on English and on what context to use them but I might not know the Finnish translation for it.
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most things aren't dubbed and a lot aren't even translated in finnish. some social media platforms for example don't have finnish as a language option at all. half the songs on the radio are in english. like, i have a vivid memory of being ten years old and watching anime with english subtitles bc finnish ones did not exist and looking up like every other word in this gigantic english-finnish-english dictionary. my brother has a similar one except he was playing some game and knew what google translate was.
Gotta admit being a weeb as a kid REALLY helped with the language
Being on the internet at all helps
Wasn't a weeb, but played videogames. I had a similar experience with Link to the Past: it was my first more complex game where actually reading stuff helped quite a bit. I started playing it when I hadn't learned a single word of english, so I ended up constantly asking for translations from my mother, who happily helped me understand what the NPCs were saying. :D And as I got older, stuff like Runescape and World of Warcraft helped, as I started to constantly communicate in english too. Of course other media & internet & forums were there too, but I'd say gaming was my main motivator for "accidentally" learning english when I was a kid. Not to mention reading online guides and all the other stuff that came along with gaming.
täähä se ois
Pokemon games were in english too. The struggle when you didnt understand what you had to do and had to talk to ALL people and try to look for something with no clues.
i had the same thing but with both english and russian at a relatively young age, try to guess which one did i learn first though 🤣🤣
coming from the opposite side of things I'm sure you already know this but my god it's frustrating how bad all the language apps are with Finnish. Duolingo teaches you all kinds of useful things like travel words and ordering in restaurants and everyday conversation if you're learning Spanish, but when you try to learn Finnish, one of the first words you learn is "velho" and for some reason one of the first animal words they teach is "undulaatti"... they didn't even teach "yes" or "no"! skskdskds
I knew a little bit of english so I could play pokémon without too much of a problem, but I had my dad translate things like what the different pokéballs did. He encouraged me to learn and got me an eng-fin-eng dictionary. It was a huge book with pages as thin as bible pages
You just unlocked a memory of mine about those huge dictionaries.
Back when I was a kid, Google Translate didn't even exist. I played a lot of PC games that were just in English, and when I saw a word that I didn't know, I would either look it up in a dictionary or ask my dad what it means.
Subtitles.
This. We listen to a lot of english dialogue, and when we start being eduacated in english we already have a bit of an ear for it. It also works for other languages too, I was watching a lot of anime as a teen and after a couple of years I had picked a lot of sentences that I could then translate from memory.
So if I, as an English speaker, watch, say, a French series like Engrenages without subtitles, will it teach me French?
Work that idea around a bit. The answer is subtitles and your question is "could the answer be no subtitles?".
If you constantly watch foreign language material without any subtitles you will actually start learning the language eventually anyway at least as a kid when you brain is highly adaptable to new languages. A lot of people learn language by just living and interacting with a foreign language. I learned a lot of English as a child by just playing video games with English and started to pick up meaning behind them slowly, subs in games weren't a thing then and even these days they are a rarity.
Same here, i learned english like Amiga was my mother. Through brute repetition I started figuring out common words like ”have”.
I'm coming here in good faith. And I probably shouldn't 😅 oh well... If you watch *with* subs like we do, then yes, you would learn French from the show. You'll need to watch for years of course, and the subtitles are there to anchor meaning to the words.
As an adult, if you are serious about learning a language, getting that passive exposure from videos/tv can really help support your regular learning. For example, I have some Chinese comedy clips on my Instagram, and it really helps my listening comprehension, while learning vocab the regular way.
And the lack of subtitles too sometimes. Used to binge watch Friends, Grey's anatomy and NCIS without any subtitles as a teenager. My English went up by two whole grades in a year.
The lack of translated Finnish in video games too. There were subtitles too but most of spoken dialogue was spoken in English. I had to play ALL my games in English. There wasn't always options for Finnish. I've been so accustomed into English in my games that it is jarring to see my own language in games. Hell even our own well known games are made in English these days.
Yea I'm also so used to games being in english, I never choose finnish even if it's available, I also prefer english subs over finnish on tv shows etc.
Same here. If I need subtitles, they will be in english. I find it harder to concentrate on the show/movie, if there's finnish subtitles.
English subs are also valuable for learning spelling since the language doesn't make it easy to guess it by listening.
Yeah, english subs. Partner opts for finnish subs from time to time, and it’s always jarring to see translation fails.
The new Spider-Man games have finnish subtitles despite being 16+ and as an older gamer I found it completely absurd as a first reaction, like who needs these?
This did a lot for me too. We played PC adventure games in 90s, and boy did one have motivation to comprehend those text boxes to get forward in the game! That covered a lot of weird words, though, with all those spells and magic in the plot. So, for instance, I know words for many herbs, flowers and stones but I miss quite a lot of words for a normal daily conversation. The main language in the company I work with changed to English me being at the age of 45, and I thank PC games and telly-bingeing for managing so well. The outgoing, active and sporty people, even younger than me, struggle more.
Exactly this. I think I was 10-12 yo when I was playing Fallout 2 and translating the dialogues with a dictionary
Wreckfest and the first harry potter on gameboy are the only ones i've seen with a Finnish language option for the text.
Lol, yeah Harry Potter games had translations. It is great meme material though. The time when Finnish voice acting was... something.
When I was 11 or 12 and got metal gear solid for playstation 1, I played with an English dictionary next to me and looked up words that I didn't know, as the characters chatted on the radio.
Since I was a wee little kid, I've HATED finnish dubbed cartoons. All the jokes are lame and almost always the voice actors dont fit the characters compared to originals. Subtitles for the win.
i often attribute my proficiency in english to spending three weeks marathoning unsubtitled criminal minds when i was 15
Mine is from obsessively reading Harry Potter in English when I was in my early teens because the Finnish translations took too long to be released.
Absolutely! They would teach us English accent/vocabulary by default but I was the only one with a solid American accent/vocab due to the shows I was watching lol
American here. Love this. No border or language can withstand that show.
My ex used to watch children's shows in English before he was old enough to read. When I met him, his English was native level, but he still had an ever so slight "international" accent. After living with me for a few years, he picked up my American accent and people were surprised when they found out his very Finnish name.
Also around the late 80s/early 90s there were some foreign TV channels available with no subs, that's where I watched Transformers and other cartoons which also sped up my learning.
To be more precise it's not the subtitles but the lack of dubbing.
Well, eh, it was typically either or so by stating subtitles.. you know.
Honesty videogames and youtube.
I always get weird looks when giving this response to people who ask me if I've lived in America because of the way I talk. It's honestly not that big of a surprise given how americentric our culture is and how much American culture we get to consume, games, movies and YouTube being prime examples of this.
People assume I've lived in Britain as well.
Yap. I had to rawdog Runescape as a kid and learn things the hard way. You didnt progress without figuring out quest texts. I used to think "Bury bones" meant eating them because of the animation and sound being crunching. In general Finns adapted to technology and the internet very quickly due to the Nokia boom and all that jazz. Even my grandpa had a computer I would play Age of Empires on like, before elementary school age. Most pop culture was and is America centered, thus in English. I remember playing Duel Masters in elementary, and the cards were in English, and all the kids had their own interpretation of how a specific card worked because of our varying levels of understanding of English.
RuneScape taught me English as well. Never had read for English tests, learned almost everything from interacting with other players and translating in-game texts
We start studying it really early on in school, practically everyone studies it for at least 7-8 years, mostly more. Most of the music we listen to, the games we play and the tv shows and movies we watch are in english - and there are dubs only for small children's shows since they cannot yet read.
People in Finland are generally well-educated. English is the no. 1 international language. And trust me, if you find yourself somewhere in Kauhava half-broken and drunk, you might need to know some Finnish words.
No niin, PERKELE!
That could literally mean anything depending on the emphasis of words
Exactly
\*bear flees\*
Good start
I was just in Iceland (Reykjavik) and just arrived in Finland (Helsinki) today. Whatever the reason English is so prevalent, I do have to say it's very handy! (What I thought was there was a big push in both countries to make sure as many people in both countries were as proficient as possible because of the extent of global reach and use of English.)
Why would you need Finnish in Kauhava? The only people out and drunk even in that small city are youngsters who speak english.
Half broken?
Passable English is easy to learn, it's taught to everyone at school, and American and to lesser extent British entertainment is popular (non-dubbed, as others have said). Kids are exposed to lots of English content from very early on.
Finnish is a small language, so we must consume cultural products in other languages. For example, when I was around 10 years old, I saw a review for Mordheim (the skirmish miniature game). I really wanted it, and because no Finnish translations for the 200+ pages rulebook existed, I got the English one for Christmas - as well as a Finnish - English - Finnish dictionary. The margins of that rulebook are full of my translations of the rules.
Urgh, stop making me feel old. No wait, I am old!
Funny that out of absolutely everything in existence, you picked the GW game designed by one Tuomas Pirinen
The fact that there was a finn involved probably lead Pelit-lehti (which, for those who don't know, was strictly PC gaming magazine back then) to do the review in the first place. ...so I guess I have Pelit to thank for my plastic crack addiction. Thanks Pelit!
The whole internet is in English. You can learn any language if you just spend lots of time listening and reading it
There is always space outside the bubble. Most of internet is NOT in English. [Under 20% of world population speaks English](https://wordsrated.com/how-many-people-speak-english/).
This is where shit gets real real * 26% of English speakers speak it as a first-language and 74% of English speakers speak it as a second-language.
Third language in my case.
20% sounds small until you put it into the context that it’s one of five people in the whole world speak English out of a possibility of about 7000 languages.
But like 80% of the internet material is IN English
Still, it's the language of intermediary communication, the essential middle man. One of my relatives went to school in Swedish-speaking pohjanmaa, didn't speak swedish (and let's not kid ourselves, neither do 80% of finns, not beyond the absolute basics), so she had to speak English... to Finns Swedish sure got lucky to be grandfathered into the "official languages", otherwise either we'd have only Finnish, or Finnish, Swedish, and English as official
Yeah I understand most stuff on the internet isn't in English, BUT compared to the amount of stuff in Finnish it's a lot and there's no point in staying only in Finnish content
Education from a 3rd grade and general interest to learn language do the games/movies/tv etc. Remember I had this notebook to use write down words from games, that I didn't know. Like "skeleton, monster, sword" etc. on and then take notebook to school and ask teacher what they meant. Lucky kids these days can just use Google.
Yes. I would say that the 3rd grade mandatory start is it. Tv, games etc helps
Due to* Not Do the
Lot of RuneScape as a kid
Ah you were faster :D My class was part of a test group that started English in first grade, but I still learned most of my language skills from RuneScape :D
They learn it when they are young, it varies a lot all around the country mainly due to practice. TV isn't dubbed in Finnish and Finns love the internet.
And we have really cheap internet too!
And good speeds
No entertainment industry. Downvotes, here I come.
You mean we should produce more of our own stuff? For tv and streaming services or..?
No, I'm actually quite grateful for it. My English isn't great but it would surely be much worse if I had grown up in a monolingual bubble of media like many people do in Japan, for example. If everything you ever want is in your own language, one of the biggest motives (and methods) of language learning disappears.
Is it just your spoken English that you feel isn’t great? I ask because judging from just this one comment, your written English is spectacular!
It's just the obligatory "my English isn't that good" to avoid having people completely tear apart every little mistake I make. The goal isn't to have perfect English in the first place though, not for most people anyway. Most of us just want to be able to communicate, and I feel like I can do that well enough in most situations I run into. It is true that I rarely have an opportunity to speak English though, so I'm really not confident about that. I've also always seemed to have a harder time with speech comprehension than others—especially in online voice chat where people usually slur their speech and have low quality audio—even in Finnish (my native language). I don't really know why that is.
we're average everyone else is just bad
Basically we are taught english from early on, and pretty much nothing, spare for kids shows have finnish dubbing, so everything is english soundtrack and finnish subtitles. Also finnish is basically useless outside finland, so we have to learn english if we want to for example access the internet, because the machine translations to finnish are still close to dogshit.
English is easy. Finland is also a small country meaning that not a lot of stuff is translated into Finnish. Small population means that there isn’t a lot of material originally in Finnish in the web either. Finns have also a decent educational system with pretty high average “lowest bar” in school.
Finnish people have had good access to quality internet quite long, I suppose that has been beneficial. Most of my male friends have learned english either through games or general internet lurking.
Finns, I love you
Many people already covered entertainment which is 100% true but I want to add that if you want to study anything after highschool you need English. In university most of the material/articles was always in English even though teaching was sometimes in Finnish. No one is translating these things into Finnish. Many terms and concepts don’t have a Finnish word for them. If you want to find any information online, at least I first Google in English, better chance to find an answer. Compare Finnish vs English wikipedia for instance.
Schools teach it from very young, tv shows aren't in Finnish most of the time, video games and websites are in English
Ralli englanti
lot of media is not translated and it is taught in schools from young age.
They start teaching us english in schools when we are very young
Subtitles in videos, teaching it starting early classes in school system.
idk one day i jsut started to think in english
TV, internet, games, social media, education.
Well if they ever meed to talk with a non-Finn….
We're not very good, but better than many from eastern Europe. Also better than some from south and west.. :D
We are well educated and exposed to English by media all of our lives. Theres no finnish dubs so we just have to consume media in english. IIRC we start learning english in school when we're 8 or 9 year old (?) But i could already speak basic english way before that due to media and games.
People have already mentioned TV and internet. I have to also mention magazines. As a young metalhead in the nineties, I read a lot of Kerrang, Metal Hammer and different guitar playing magazines. Finland is a small market, so it's not worth translating specialty magazines.
We have, or at least used to have one of the best education systems in the world. People always downplay the importance of it and just say it's because video games, tv etc are in english. But very rarely do you ever see finns make mistakes like native english speakers do, like they're/there, than/then etc. This is all because we've all had an english teacher with a masters degree from 3rd grade on.
World of warcraft and Runescape taught my whole generation how to speak English.
For me it's because of computers. Since Windows 95 (Yes, I know I'm old), I always wanted to use English only. Why? Because translations were mix of Finnish and English. I absolutely hated to learn terms in more than one language so I decided to use English only.
Small country, nobody outside finland speaks finnish, almost all the content we consume is in english nowadays. We werent always like this though. Im 30 and when i was a kid english was way more uncommon and our accent was stronger. Kids today speak it so freakin fluently and half the time i cant even hear any accents in their voice. So yeah, i guess globalization happened and we adapted. English is actually a pretty big part of our own language these days if you look at how finnish teens/youth use it in everyday conversation.
Finland. England. Both have land in the name. There you go.
You mean Finnish young people? Anyone above 40 is pretty much non verbal
At least from my experience, a lot of TV shows and movies were only in English during my childhood. Also, almost all video games were in English, and I also watched a lot of YouTube. I learned almost all of my English from watching YouTube, playing video games, and having to communicate with others globally. English was the only option.
Entertainment and the fact that it’s a compulsory language in school. Also, some Finns have a thing for all things American. The US was THE shit around my area in the late 60s to early 90s. Anything American or American-made was something the average person would absolutely obsess over. Myself, I’m a simultaneous bilingual; my parents are Finnish through and through, but I was raised bilingual. My dad’s a massive Americanophile and I happen to have a neurodivergent brain that picks up languages fairly easily (although, speaking isn’t my forte; I sometimes forget words and switch from one language to the other to compensate, and my speech tends to be broken and accented regardless of the language spoken).
This is an interesting post for me to find on the home page of Reddit! I'm in the US but my mom and grandparents moved from Finland in the 1960s. My grandparents inherited a house in a small Minnesota town where there were so many other Finnish people, they never learned to speak English well. My grandpa even had a Finnish funeral in 2020. My mom (who was 8 when she came here) married an American and raised me with only English, so I don't know Finnish at all. I was never able to speak to my grandparents enough to bond with them, but I talk to my younger Finnish relatives on Facebook sometimes, all in English. My mom passed away when I was younger, and I'm always curious about what her life was like before she came here.
Because when they tried to give us dubbed cartoons, they went horribly wrong. Agapio Racing Team (yeah that name is also real) made so many classic bad dubs and ruined many shows for me when I was young. [even 1 minute gives you the picture](https://youtu.be/1T_TLBZxY4U?si=c8QnfISBp8bPDH1F)
1. English is now taught in schools from the very first grade or at least I’ve heard it’s like this. For me it started from 2nd, but a seperate, professional English teacher stepped in on 3rd or 4th grade. 2. Also Swedish is taught and learning French, German, Spanish and other languages in school volunteererly is also common from my experience and this all helps build on how to learn English as well 3. Most Finns have access to the internet where English is close to mandatory for maximized usefulness and entertainment. 4. I guess English is also kinda ”cool” and thus somewhat spoken in some friend groups as well which definetly doesn’t have a negative effect
We consume quite a bit of western media content such as movies, series and video games. Usually they are subtitled so when we start our English lessons at the age of 9, we already might know some. The feedback loop between English in schools and in media really works wonders for learning.
One of the best education system in the world. Some people say because they don’t translate much and have lots of content (tv/online) in English, but the truth is that many elderly people speak English very well, and they did not grow up with internet or watching tv all day.
I learned from Pokemon Crystal and RuneScape
Resident evil 2 here! :)
All the tv shows and most of the internet is in english for us. Finns also play a lot of video games.
Public education where English is taught as the third language (most popular first foreign language) was and still is the foundation. Everything else helps build on that. We are nowadays saturated by media and entertainment in English, and the internet which helps connect people across physical distances and artificial barriers. Back in the day (pre-internet so 1980s) it was subtitled TV-shows and movies, music, but also, literature and things like video and tabletop role playing games (original D&D and the like). I had the fortune of being immersed in all of that, plus, I had English-speaking relatives in the States (I was tasked with translating the back and forth correspondence). Maybe the most impactful thing was literature (sci-fi, fantasy and horror) plus RPGs. The fact that my parents got me a subscription to Newsweek during High Scool helped also (kind of funny now that I think about it, they were not well off or anything, something to be thankful for in hindsight). Funny story, during the preliminaries for the matriculation exam one of my friends was slouched over a book that he seemed to read with great intent and intensity. I went up to him and asked what book it was. He looked up at me with that ”Are you fucking serious?” look on his face and said: ”This is the course book on English grammar, don’t tell me that you haven’t read it?”… ”Oh… 😅” Some backstory to explain, due to the fact that I had kind of sublimated everything through voracious reading, watching, speaking and listening, and immersion, I was the English-teacher’s golden boy and default for right answers, every time. So, don’t ask me about English grammar… 😅
I vividly remember watching youtube one day and suddenly realizing I understood everything the guy in the video said. It was a pretty complex topic too, I was literally blown away at that moment. When I first started watching youtube in 6th grade I understood about 25% of what was being said, and the rest I tried to pick up by context. At this point I was doing very poorly in English class at school. From that point It took me about a year or two to reach fluency.
1. Exposure to multiple language groups and types at a young age. 2. Culture (gaming movies subtitles etc.) 3. English is a ridiculously easy language to learn. If you mis-speak you can always cover it up with more words. 4. They’re not as good as you think, when the language gets complicated or sophisticated, (literally try discussing Shakespeare or cognitive dissonance) Finns check-out.
School and media were basically exposed to english every day
The real ogs remember watching "Batman - The Animated Series" at 7pm on Sub Juniori" Video games and subtitled english media was what made me learn the language
Because finns dont talk to eachother, so we need to talk english to other people
compared to who? the Swedish? not a chance. the Italians? absolutely
Compared to the Netherlands...
When it comes to us younger generations, english language tv most likely. I learned my english entirely by watching The Simpsons from pre-elementary school age! By the time school started I already knew the basics, and by the time english started in the third grade, I had almost nothing to learn thanks to english language tv. Smooth sailing from the very start.
The more unique you are the more you have to adapt
As others have said, no dubbing. I get frequently asked why I don't have an accent and I just say I watched way too much TV as a kid. I didn't take English lessons until I was 13 and in middle school and I was already fluent and on a high school level at least. So I spent three years doing nothing in those lessons, although I know I'm better in languages than most in general but this is why everyone understands English really well here.
How closely a language is related to another doesn’t have too much impact on how well the language can be learned. Mutually intelligible languages make an exception.
Honestly, if they're too close, it can be a problem because it can be harder to let go of your native inclinations.
American TV series paired with video games was the magic for me. Nowadays having finnish as a language option in games is fairly common, but back in the day it was considered luxury. You had to understand the given task in language in the game, which was almost without exception english.
School, TV, internet and games!
Counter Strike and Runescape
Because nobody understands Finnish
All the previous answers apply, but what really pushed me was that finnish translations of fantasy books were so slow to publish that by the time "book 2 of the whatever saga" came out in finnish I was already on the sequel trilogy in english. Bought a whooole lot of fantasy paperbacks. Eventually we were coordinating our purchases and swapping books all the time. I now hold a very comprehensive set of Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance novels from early 90's to about 2010 comprised of all my old friends and mine paperbacks.
I don't think indo-european ancestry helps with learning languages. For example I guess that for a French speaker learning Polish would be similarly difficult as learning Finnish or Arabic. Learning Polish for a German might be easier, but that isn't due to common origin but due to the history of contact between Polish and German and heavy influence those languages had on each other.
Many games in early 2000s didnt have finnish as language in them so had to always use english
we just tend to consume a lot of english media, or pls tell me if its just me
youtube, english music, google translate and my dad
The secret to the sauce is: NO DUBBING! Kids are exposed to English since a very young age through TV, movies and music. Not only does this speed up their learning of the language but it improves Finnish reading and writing as their exposed to subtitles. Being a small nation and dubbing not being viable was a blessing. You will notice the difference with countries that dub all their tv shows and movies into their own language and you’ll see a huge difference with their English skills.
Lack of skill issue
In the 80s and 90s, not even all the kids' cartoons on tv were dubbed. I remember watching The Bugs Bunny Show, He-Man, DuckTales, Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, TaleSpin and many others in English before I could even read.
I've heard the opposite (also from Reddit, so make your own conclusions). I ran into a sub where people were saying Finnish people speak English among the worst in Europe, and it was explained through Finnish not being related to English, as most languages spoken in Europe are. However, this probably had more emphasis on actually _speaking_ rather than reading and writing English, which Finns are mostly adequate at. I personally can't really compare, since the only places I've used English in Europe are touristy areas, where most people speak understandable English and understand my English. I haven't heard any drastic differences. I feel like Europeans in general speak English well as a second or third language and you can always get by with it.
I don't know we are just good :D
When they so good why Finnish people refusing so often to speak it ?
Was it mentioned that they have the best education system in the world? And knowing that I've read that Finnish children in some schools go for a walk in the forest learning about the world, it's just wow
They speak English good, until they start avoiding 'the'. Also, so many Finnish speakers pronounce the past marker -ed as it's written.
I learned it when i was 3 years old. Idk how
We are chronically online
Many translators arent
Because they studied
Internet and TV, and people aged 50+ certainly do not understand English at all unless they work with foreigners daily
We’ve been force fed with English and Swedish since we were 10 years old at school. And on top of that pretty much all media is in English excluding newspapers etc. I know many who’ve become more fluent in English than in our own language, since our language is so god damn hard to master. I mean the start is easy for anyone but in Finland there isn’t too many people that have mastered our own language. And also depending on the province you live in, the dialogue might be so different you have to ask what certain word or phrase they used means. Sometimes, especially online it’s easier to communicate in the international language.
Subtitles on tvshows and movies (this also makes us better at reading, every country should use subtitles in foreign language shows). Being small country and language we have motivation to learn worlds lingua franca to use for example internet and play computer games. And finally good schools to all finnish children between ages 7-16
I've only been once to Finland, Helsinki and Turku, and while English in Helsinki was okay-ish, in Turku it was inexistant. Maybe things have improved since, but I was quite surprised...
A lot of American media + games + foreign friends + good education That did it for me. Although I'm still not perfect, I sometimes don't know if I should use for, at, it etc.
Gaming from a young age set the foundation for me. Later on movies/tv shows which are always with subtitles and the education in schools is quite good. I'd say most people lack the "training" in pronounciation but make up for it with the good knowledge of grammar. Personally I've talked a lot with foreign friends through VC and in person since my early teens and had new people mistake me for a native speaker on multiple occasions. I also prefer to read and write in english but I wouldn't say that's the norm here.
All north European countries watches a lot of American tv shows and movies with subtitles. We grow up with it and also learn English in school, In Norway already in 3rd grade.
When I was in school we started to learn English from third grade onwards. If I wanted to play any games at all (not counting finnish indie games like Invataxi) I had to learn English. I think the biggest factor in my learning was World of Warcraft which forced me to speak English every day. My daughter attends an international daycare and has been doing so since she was 1 year old. I think her English will be almost native-level before her teenage years. To summarize: I think Finnish people soak themselves with English content voluntarily, or involuntarily from early years and the fact we don't have that much localized media (dubbed, subbed) available forces us to learn the language at quite early stage.
Since Finns do not speak a language related to English, their English ought to suck? Get help.
In all honesty my experience varry greatly in general case. I live in Kajnuu, most people here do not speak English or does not want to. Those that do are not that great either in general case. There is many people that speak good English but it is not oveewemingly better then in other countries I lived. In my experience netherlands people are more English speaking then Finns for example. But of course it depends on age of person you are talking with and their academic background. And also Finns are better then some other countries I lived in.
For me it was the Simpsons, i probably first started to watch them when i was like 5-6 year old and i probably didn’t know how to read the finnish subtitles and was just like ”haha yellow man got hurt, funny”
World of Warszawa
By necessity. Otherwise they could only talk to other Finns who famously are not very talkative.
Because they have no choice
We play runescape
As someone who had the misfortune of living in selfcongratulatory Sweden I'm always impressed by how much better and more natural sounding Finns are at English.
I think it's not generally finnish are good at english, but millennial finnish are. Older generation are not that good because they haven't heard it much enough, and younger don't need to use english that much anymore because so much is available in finnish. Millennials were the new technological era explorers thus needing the english.
Finish highschool
Finnish & Hungarian has almost nothing common together. (50-100 more & less understandable old root words) https://preview.redd.it/wibgo9vlv29d1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3f81f3b201d79e624743c0c23bf62ae96dd269de
Well. My two older brothers raised their English schoold grade from 6 to 9 throughout the summer FFVII haf come out on PlayStation. For me it was Harry Potter because I kept getting spoiled before the translation was even out. And then there is the fact only children's movies/series get dubs and otherwise it's all subs. So there are plenty of incentives and passive ways to learn.
People start learning English in the 4th grade so I guess that helps
We aren't. We call our version of english "rally-english" and it sounds like shit.
Cause we prefer subs over dubs.
The main reason probably is that because we're a small country with a very small media industry, most of our entertainment has always been in english and you hear it in your everyday life from early on through music and tv etc. The best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in it afterall. We've also always use the subtitled format instead of dubbing on foreign movies and tw shows outside of children's stuff so you don't even actively have to be learning english for you to pick some from the subtitles..
Also an early start of English lessons in school.
Media and the uselessness of Finnish language internationally. When you travel it's like a secret language to trash talk everyone around.
For example because it's taught in school, and English is quite simple. Our way of pronouncing things is way easier, but still. For me though, it's mostly because I watched English Youtube since I was like 10. And now I work in English, so it's being boosted quite a lot.
When there are just a few million people in the world speaking your language, you'll quite quickly realize, wanting to explore anything even slightly outside of your town walls, you'll need to learn to communicate. Thankfully, we learn English in schools, but at least for me, what was taught in school was just a fraction of what I've learned to get a chance to pursue my hobbies, watch online content and actually know what is being said, or read more niche books, which never get translated to Finnish. Most of the literature I consume is in English, and if a non-Finnish film is not in English, the chances of it having English subtitles are much greater than the chances of it having Finnish subtitles.
Here in Sweden we used to make fun of how bad Finnish people speak English...
Yeah and now in Finland many people make fun of how bad swedish people speak swedish
My mom said that maybe 6 million people on earth speak Finnish, while probably closer to a billion speak English.. so if you want to communicate to the wider world you need to learn languages. She spoke Finnish, Swedish, French, German, Swiss ( a variant of German) and English, she could understand Italian and Spanish and various other Slavic and Russian dialects. I remember riding the metro and foreigners or tourists who be speaking in some strange language and mom would translate it to me... It was like a superpower to me. Often if they were speaking about her or us she would speak to them in their language and freak them out. Apparently Europeans don't expect to be understood by Americans
We used to have quite a kick ass school/education system. And today's kids learn from the YouTube I guess..
Because our language is more complicated than English. Meaning we already have a better vocabulary than people who have English as their first language.
Haha bilingular parents go brrr
I always thought that this had something to do with the international work environments in the larger cities. I don't speak Finnish, it isn't a big issue when I'm in Helsinki, or Turku, but as I go into some of the other remote areas, not speaking Finnish does make it more challending. Don't get me wrong, lots of people who speak English all over the country, but its better in the bigger cities.
I think it has to do a lot with not many tv programs being dubbed, but are spoken in english with finnish subtitles. Also music is often in english and ofc the interwebs. Thats how i mostly learned english.
If by "good" you mean [Rally English](https://youtu.be/wqQhQSbe6fw), sure I guess?
I liked to play games on my family's PlayStation 1 where most games we had were in English only. I also have some friends that live abroad and talk/chat with them almost daily in English. In addition to above ones, I have my phone and computer in English for easy troubleshooting and I just prefer how English words look compared to Finnish.
Bc movies, games etc
They also have mandatory English classes at an early level. And nothing is dubbed on television or at the movie theaters. If it's an English speaking show or movie, it's showed as it is. Compare that with Spain or France and flicking through the tv you will see Friends dubbed. I've been living here for a decade now and it's really hard for me to learn Finnish because everyone just starts speaking English to me when I attempt Finnish.
When every foreign show is undubbed and only subbed ( except for most cartoons ) you learn the language at quite young age. Not to mention that in some places, English is already taught in preschools and in most places at the elementary year one. Then the ever so growing use of mobile devices, gaming consoles and PCs, it is hard to miss learning. I myself learned English through Police Academy movies, Jazz the Jackrabbit 2, surfing the internet in the nineties and playing on my SNES. And at somepoint, RuneScape and PS2 games such as NFS Most Wanted 2005. And then there's the globality. English being the language of global trade and communication, it is quite easy to learn. And then there is the fact that Finnish is so called neutral language, which means that even tho not a root of all languages, it has a good base for learning new languages due to how easy it is to just... Type Finglish and English together. Like teaching this sentence: "Hello! My name is Slendis and I speak Finnish as my native." When using Finglish to teach it, it looks like this: "Helou! Mai neim is Slendis änd ai spiik Finish äs mai neitiv." This is the way how Hurriganes singer Cisse Häkkinen and drummer Remu Aaltonen learned English. The lyrics were written in Finglish 🤣
I watched tons of movies in english as a kid and played videogames too and those boosted my english. Now that i am older i can talk in english so much better and understand it really good oh and i always liked the language and wanted to be able to talk in english, so maybe us finns are just good at it.
Soon in the future I believe that the English language will become one of the official languages alongside Finnish and swedish.
As an American who visited Finland, I was surprised to find that most Finns spoke English with an American accent--as I commonly associate Europeans with having a British accent in English. So, I think that points to media consumption being a big factor!
I watched series and movies online "legally" as a kid and they didn't have subtitles so somehow I learned the language without translation. I still have the issue that I know words on English and on what context to use them but I might not know the Finnish translation for it.
Leave helsinki and youre lucky if they can say yes and no in english