Dare to speak by Mira Helmiö

This summer I worked at Suomenlinna Sea Fortress in customer service. It was often that I was approached by native English speakers asking if I spoke English. “Of course I do!” I always thought. To me it seemed odd; is it not obvious that working in customer service at one of Finland’s most popular attractions, I should automatically be expected to speak fluent English. Not for foreigners.

We Finns take for granted being taught English. It is a privilege and an enormous advantage to be able to speak fluent English as most of us Finns do. In addition, we are also taught our other official language Swedish, and most students choose to learn a third foreign language, such as French or Spanish.  I speak four languages fluently; Finnish, English, Russian and Swedish. On top of that, I also am learning French, and would much like to learn Spanish. I have always thought of it as a natural thing for Finns to do; learn multiple foreign languages as our native language is not spoken anywhere else, and it is a disadvantage to not master more than two languages. I have found myself to be unaware of actually how much I should appreciate the skill I have in languages.

We have the skill, yet speaking is an issue. Even though we are given an excellent base in foreign languages, I feel like we Finns are still diffident about speaking up and using our skills. Working in an international environment has forced me to dare to use my knowledge of foreign languages to the best of my ability. At work I had to use all four languages I speak in the span of one day at best. And after a while, I even pushed myself to speak French in which I am not even adequate; I can barely count to 100! But still I wanted to use even the little skill I had, because I find that the only way to better yourself and become more confident in speaking a foreign language is if you actually use it in real life situations. No matter how many books you read or hours you spend sitting in class, you cannot gain the confidence to use the language naturally. When travelling abroad, one is forced to step out of one’s comfort zone and dare to speak. Making mistakes is only human and at least you are trying, right?

At 21 years, I now have the confidence to speak. Working and travelling have both taught me: do not be afraid to speak up. Most of us mess up in our first language too, so why are we so afraid to make a mistake in a completely foreign language?

Finns are given the incredible ability to speak foreign languages, so dare to speak; it is the only way to get better.

Wie viele Sprachen lernen Sie in Finnland? by Kirsimarja Blomqvist

Couple of weeks ago I participated a scientific symposium in Münster, a city that has been selected as one of the best cities to live and the best bicycling city in Germany.  I had made a very late hotel booking and ended up living in a hotel 8 km outside the city center.  Hotel rented bikes so I decided to try out how it is to bicycle in Münster. I took a small route by the channel “Kanalen promenaden” and on top of the fresh air and beautiful sights I got some exercise, much needed after sitting in the planes and trains! 

In the city I left the bike and started to walk around.  After couple of hours I had completely forgotten where I left my bike. As they say, getting lost is the best way to learn to know the city and the people…  It is for a long time since I have really used German language, but it was sure helpful when talking with the locals and finally finding my bicycle! For my surprise also young people seemed to be much more comfortable with German than with English. My broken German was not a problem, but even young people preferred speaking German.

When in China I have had the luxury of working with local people that has made work easy.Recently  I started a keynote speech to local academics and business people by saying “Nihao”. People clapped their hands and I was a bit embarrassed – but sometimes just a few words of the local language can make a big difference! 

Some of the languages that I have learned have become very rusty, as most of my work is in English and Finnish. Still, when in Spain I have this urge to talk with locals and also enjoy being able to read the signs, local newspapers etc. When in France I also use all my 20 French words (many of which may be Spanish), but that helps, too :)

This spring Veli-Matti Virolainen and I met Academics from Moscow Academy of Sciences who came to LUT to give a prestigious prize in physics to Professor Erkki Lähteenranta. I have learned some Russian in age of 13-15, but have forgotten it so completely that I cannot read the essays I have written! When listening to Russian presentations and feeling their eagerness and goodwill, I really would have wanted to be able to speak some Russian just to show how I appreciated their visit and the prize given.  Well, after this Veli-Matti and I decided to start learning Russian. I don’t expect to be fluent, but just to be able to socialize with the locals and know my way in Russia.

Swedish is pretty rusty, too. I used to use it when working with entrepreneurs in the Western part of Finland, but have not needed it in Eastern Finland. Tomorrow I will participate the Nordic Rectors’ meeting in Lund, so yesterday I brushed up my Swedish by listening to Swedish TV channel and a program on gardening.  Gardening is always a safe topic to start new cross-cultural relationships J

So you see that my level of ambition with languages is not very high. However, I believe we should worry much less if we cannot speak the languages perfectly, it is much more important to be understood and show the appreciation for people and culture.

Last but not least. I think it is very important for our international students to learn Finnish. Yes, Finnish a very small language but there are many opportunities for international experts knowing Finnish language.  A combination of Finnish and Russian would be even better! Even if Finnish people know English and it is easy to get by, Finns really appreciate if someone invests in learning Finnish. From what I have learned when talking about this issue with our former international students and people in business, small talk in Finnish around coffee tables and saunas could carry you quite far!  If you are really ambitious, learn so much Finnish that you can write your work application and do a work interview in Finnish! I believe it would be easier to find traineeships, master thesis jobs and work, when knowing some Finnish. Currently we offer some Finnish courses for foreigners at the university, but I hope we can offer some more Finnish courses in the near future.  In the meanwhile, enjoy the Finnish summer and people at their best!

Kirsimarja

Vice-rector for international affairs

Ps. If you want to follow what I am up to, you can find me in Twitter: KirsimarjaB

Do English and Internet bring us back to a time before the tower of Babel?

Many of us know the story of the tower of Babel. It went something like this: after the flood, Noah’s descendants travelled to an area of Iraq and started to build a tower in Babel. At that time, people had one language and one topic of conversation. This didn’t please God so God confused their language and scattered them all around the world. Since that time, people have had many different languages and a lack of a world language – according to the story.

There have been attempts to create world languages and one of them was in Poland in the late 19th century. At that time, Dr. Zamenhof published a man-made language which is today known as Esperanto. Esperanto was planned to be an easy-to-learn and politically neutral world language that would make communication between people with different national languages easier. However, for different reasons Esperanto didn’t become the world language. Nowadays, only 10 000 persons speak it fluently and only 10 000 000 persons have studied the rudiments of Esperanto world wide.

Anyhow, today, we have English. English is the most important language of science, business and culture. It’s estimated that English has about 320-380 million native speakers and 1.7 billion speakers altogether world wide. There are some reasons for the success of English; for example the British Empire which spread English language around the world. At the beginning of World War I, the British boasted that the sun never set on their empire, they had for instance areas of Canada, India and Australia. The second reason for the success of English was a rise of US in superpower after World War II and thirdly English has become a major language of the Internet.

Today, we are nearly in the same kind of situation that mankind was before the tower of Babel. We can speak about same news all around the world thanks to the Internet and satellite broadcasting. We can speak to a person who lives on other side of the world in real time via Skype or mobile phone. If you can speak English you can discuss at some level with a quarter of the world’s population. The world is much smaller nowadays than it was hundred years ago when our grandparents’ parents lived.

References:

Wikipedia

Text: Simo Keskinen, student of Independent Study in English -course

Before it’s too late

No one knows how many languages there are currently spoken, but common consensus is between 6000 and 7000 languages. Languages are highly concentrated and the 8 largest languages cover more than 40% of the number of speakers worldwide (Table1). 

Table1: Distribution of world languages by number of first-language speakers (Paul et al., 2013)

Other languages are spoken by small communities and many of them are endangered languages. According to some estimates, half of the endangered languages are going to fade away within the next 50 years. It is also said that one language dies every two weeks. A dying language can have thousands of living speakers but when the youngest speakers are grandparents and older, the language is in danger of vanishing. Intergenerational transmission doesn’t work when the parent generation understands the language, but they don’t speak it to their children or among themselves.

The endangerment of language is severe to culture because language is the basis of collective memory, values and identities. Therefore, international communities, like UNESCO, SIL International and Ethnologue are doing their best to save the endangered languages. Some of the international operators focus on statistics and codification on their research. It is said that reason for this development is globalization where the economically powerful languages dominate other languages.

Globalization affects to our daily life in many ways. Some of the effects are invisible and hard to comprehend and others are unambiguous. The development of technology is one of the most substantial consequences of globalization. Where tales and stories used to be for entertainment and a way to transfer knowledge, today it is technology and the Internet that is used for communication and entertainment.

Kenneth Goldsmith said “If It Doesn't Exist on the Internet, It Doesn't Exist”. This is true in the world of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google. Social media is a medium that combines enormous amount of people in a way that is never seen before. People can today connect around the world and they can work for the same cause. Everyone with a Facebook account can express their views to millions of people. Of course, your influence is in Internet as great it is in real life, but at least you have chance to say your opinion. Social media is also fair in the meaning that the content counts. Twitter or YouTube are only tools to share content, content that is created by users. Today, technology deals with tasks that were handled elsewhere before. It works like language in some way.

However, these tools can be harnessed as a solution. In endangered languages international operators have comprehended the power of social media and crowdsourcing. A great example of collaboration is the Alliance For Linguistic Diversity. They have launched the Endangered Language project as an online collaborative effort to protect global linguistic diversity. Their website is a place where you can suggest a language to the list of endangered languages. The actual list is an interactive map, which you can browse like any other map in Internet. You can also contribute the site providing material about the culture or actual language in danger.

Introducing the endangered languages project - a video

Technology is not the answer to all problems, but it can help people to keep their culture alive. Open your mouth and speak up before its too late.

 REFERENCES:

Endangered Languages. Alliance for Linguistic Diversity. [www-page] Updated 2013. [cited 22.4.2013] Available: http://www.endangeredlanguages.com

Ethnologue. Languages of the world. [www-page] Updated 2013. [cited 22.4.2013] Available: http://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/size

Paul L., Simons G. and Fennig D. (eds.) 2013. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Seventeenth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com

Text: Mikko Järvi, student of Independent Study in English course

Student exchange - English skills in practice

It was late summer of 2010. I had letter of acceptance to Kasetsart University in my hand. I was really looking forward to my exchange studies at Bangkok, Thailand.

My English skills were at a good level by then, but I was insecure when I needed to talk. Speaking went well when needed, but I hestitated with opening the conversations. One major expectation for the exchange period was to get some fluency in my oral English skills.

Finally, I was in Thailand. Everybody seemed to speak excellent English… until I stepped out of the airport. The reality hit me. Outside workers didn’t speak English at all when I tried to find the place where hire a cab.

Jani in Thailand

I was lucky with my Taxi driver. He spoke good English on the scale in Thailand. There was massive traffic jam on the way to my hotel so I had a plenty of time to chat with the driver.

Because of the traffic jam, I walked the last 1.5 kilometers to my hotel. I stopped every now and then to ask directions from the locals. Usually they didn’t speak English at all, but they understood the word ‘Hotel’ and the name of it. Finally I reached the destination after 27 hours of travelling.

On the first day of school, we met our tutor teacher. I had received emails from him earlier and those were written in fluent English. When he opened his mouth for the first time, reality collapsed. It was extremely difficult to understand nearly anything he said. His pronunciation was way different that we Europeans were used to.

At least all subject teachers spoke understandable English. Some of them like natives.

During my exchange period, I made notations that it varies enormously how well Thais speak English. Young generation and especially university students spoke at least that much so that you were able to have basic conversation with them. Naturally, people in the tourist business spoke understandable English. A little by little, my ear got used to Thai-accent and it was easier to understand them day by day.

In everyday life I developed a habit of speaking very simple English. When I bought some fresh fruits from a street shack I didn’t say: “I would like to have two water melons”. Instead of it, I said “two water melons” and pointed out what I wanted. It influenced my English skills in a negative way. Nevertheless, I was speaking English every day and I had various situations during the day I needed to use it so I got confidence to start speaking with foreign language without hesitation about words or bad pronunciation.

I was travelling around the south-east Asia quite much during the exchange semester. While travelling, I met a lot of other travelers which gave me opportunities to communicate with proper language. While communication with people from other countries, for example from Europe or middle-East I noticed that the level of English skills of Finnish people is in a quite high level comparing to them. We are just too dismissive about our skills.

After the exchange period, I kept travelling for a couple of months. I had the time of my life. I spent many nights in restaurants hanging out with other travelers just waffling on everything possible on earth. 

The last week I stayed in Thailand, I was travelling with a person from the States. I really enjoyed accompanying a person who speaks native English. Just within a week I expanded my active vocabulary enormously.

As an epilogue I could say, the trip was an eye opening experience. I got confidence in my oral English skills. It was cheerful to notice that in my summer job where I spoke daily English on the phone.

If you have an opportunity to go on exchange, GO!

PS. You can read more about my exchange in Finnish from my blog:
http://janimatkalla.blogspot.fi/2010/08/ensimmainen-viikko-takana.html

Text and picture: Jani Vehviläinen, student in the course Independent Study in English, spring 2013

ANDREA TULI TALOON

Monesti asioita suunnitellaan vuodesta toiseen, kuukaudesta kuukauteen ja joskus asiat vaan tapahtuu, vaikkei niitä edes suunnitella.

Maaliskuun puolivälissä saimme sähköpostin, jossa etsittiin meksikolaiselle vaihto-oppilas tytölle kotia. Vähän vitsillä juttelimme, että otetaanko meille. :) Niinhän siinä sitten kävi, että muutaman viestin jälkeen pohdimme asiaa jo vakavasti.

Kahden viikon kuluttua meillä olikin sitten jo tyttö talossa! Elettiin hetkessä päätöksen kanssa ja päivääkään ei ole tarvinnut katua. Tämä on elämys ja kokemus, jota ei varmasti olisi tapahtunut, jos olisimme tähän kauemmin valmistautuneet.

Sama peli, eri kieli

Meillä on kaksi poikaa - Elias 9 vuotta ja Eemeli 8 vuotta. Nyt myös tyttö, Andrea 17-vuotias. Hyvin on Andrea sulautunut meidän perheeseemme, vaikka meno on välillä poikien kanssa melkoista härdelliä.

Andrea on ollut meillä nyt kolme viikkoa. Elämä on ollut luontevaa, on eletty meidän normaalia arkielämää. Tehty töitä ja vietetty aikaa yhdessä. Käyty laskettelemassa, moottorikelkkailemassa, juoksemassa ja avantoonkin Andrea uskaltautui meidän mukana.

Saimaalla kelkkailemassa

Laskettelemassa Myllymäessä

Eemelillä oli 8-vuotis syntymäpäivät ja halusimme järjestää lastenjuhliin jotain Meksikosta. Andrea ehdotti, että askartelisimme Pinatan. Pinataa askarreltiin 12 tuntia, mutta oli se sen arvoista. :)

Piñatan tekoa pikkutunneilla

Ja sitten se Piñata valmiina, synttäreiden kohokohtana.

Leipuri Andrean suklaaleivokset

Aikuisille vieraille järjestimme meksikolaiset ruokakekkerit. Andrea laittoi ruuan yhdessä meksikolaisen ystävänsä kanssa, joka on myös vaihto-oppilaana Kotkassa.

Kolme viikkoa on lyhyt aika, mutta silti tuntuu jo, että Andrea on kuin meidän oma lapsi. Avoin ja iloinen tyttö osallistuu elämäämme niin kuin olisi aina ollut meillä. Välillä talossamme kuuluu iloinen kielien sekamelska. Andrealla on Skype auki Meksikoon, mistä kuuluu espanja, täällä puhutaan englantia ja suomikin siinä sivussa raikaa, mutta kaikki tulee ymmärretyksi.

Tietoliikenneyhteydet pelaa

Soitetaan Skypellä kotiin 

Sisko ja veli

Olemme siis Jokelaisen perhe Joutsenosta. Sami työskentelee yliopiston viestinnässä, Tiina on esimiehenä R-Kioskilla ja pojat käyvät koulua Pulpin ala-asteella. Elias 3. luokalla ja Eemeli  1. luokalla.  Andrea käy Kimpisen lukiota.

Voimme kyllä kaikille suositella vaihto-oppilaan ottamista, jos vaan mahdollisuus tulee. Elämä ei ole niin vakavaa etteikö joskus voisi heittäytyä hetkeen ja tehdä asioita hetken mielijohteesta.

Avoimin mielin syntyy uusia rikkaita kokemuksia. Ja nyt meilläkin on tyttö. :)

Kirjoitus ja kuvat: Tiina Jokelainen ja Sami Jokelainen, projektisuunnittelija, Viestintäpalvelut