From: walver@kielo.uta.fi (Ville V. Walveranta)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
Subject: Re: Pakkoruotsi Suomen kouluissa
Date: 12 Nov 92 05:17:17 GMT
	<ksand-101192180814@wintermute.apple.com>
Reply-To: walver@uta.fi (Ville Walveranta)
Followup-To: soc.culture.nordic
Organization: University of Tampere, Finland
In-reply-to: ksand@apple.com's message of 11 Nov 92 02:10:22 GMT


) It sure is practical to post in a language that only a minority in
) Norden understands... :-)

        Why not? I've seen number of threads here in soc.culture.nordic
        in Swedish about Swedish matters - so why not occasionally in
        Finnish? Whether or not Swedish should be taught (mandatorily)
        in the Finnish schools should be an internal affair in Finland.
        The forced Swedish teaching has too long been promoted by the
        Swedish party in Finland.

ksand@apple.com writes in soc.culture.nordic:
> ...especially when this guy most likely was teached Swedish in school
> :-). I will always have a hard time understanding people that complain
> about learning a new language. You know, I studied German in High School
> and college, and yes I have never had a need (with the exception when I
> bought a camera in Wienna). However I feel really bad about the current
> situation when my German skills are slowly disappearing.

        Nobody is complaining about learning a new language. The
        complaints are rather about the *lack of a choice* of a language
        to learn.

        As I wrote in Finnish in my previous posting, many Finns -
        including me - are forced to waste their resources to Swedish.
        It's is true that Swedish might be useful for people who do
        trade with Sweden, however, most Finns won't have a career in
        foreign trade. For an average Finn it would be much more useful
        to know, for instance, German or French or Spanish, which they
        could utilize while traveling abroad. Swedish can be used only
        in Scandinavia while any of those other languages can be used
        all over the world. Of course, there could also be an option of
        'advanced English'. I found the English lessons in the High
        School totally useless since the level of the teaching was
        adjusted accordinly to those who knew least English.

        Motivation is also an important issue. If you don't want/aren't
        at all interested in learning something, you won't. I'm sure
        many people would still select Swedish even though it was one of
        the options. And after they'd selected the language themselves,
        they'd be much more interested in learning it. I studied Swedish
        some six years (7.-9. grades + High School) and nowadays can't
        speak any of it (I just know a few random words, that's all). On
        the other hand, I consider my English skills very good and
        continuously getting even better because I am motivated to learn
        more.

        Of course, the importance of Russian is also quickly increasing
        as Russia slowly emerges from the ruins the communism left
        behind.

> One reason I appreciate European high school education is the level
> of language training. If someone wants to kill that, they don't
> realize the consequences. Especially if they want to kill the teaching
> of Swedish, and at the same time the economy in Finland is in shambles
> and their most important trade partners are in the West, not in the
> East. It's a good sign of narrow-minded thinking, IMHO.

        As I said, we're not discussing about killing the language
        education in Finland, rather making it possible to *select* the
        language you're learning (one or two foreign languages could
        still be mandatory, but you could select yourself what those
        languages would be).

        And as far as foreign trade is concerned... why do the Swedish
        companies always expect their Finnish trade-partners to speak
        Swedish? A few times I've visited Stockholm, for instance, I've
        found that the behaviour of the [Swedish] people towards me is
        much more polite should I speak English (so that they can't
        figure out I'm from Finland).

        Furthermore, it's kind of strange that the Swedish-speaking
        people always get on defensive when the language-eduaction in
        Finland is discussed. Why do you care? Finnish is neither spoken
        nor taught outside the borders of the country and nobody feels
        badly about it. Sweden/Rest of Scandinavia will lose nothing
        (rather it would gain, I should say) if Swedish was no longer
        mandatory in the Finnish schools.

        -- Willy
--

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Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic