Young Finns snub their mother tongue by reading in English | The Guardian

by elfransat

8 comments
  1. This is how I learned English as a teen (english books and fanfiction).

    But I like to read books in finnish as well – if the translation is good. Sometimes even I can tell that it has been done poorly and it really puts me off.
    So if they are going to start using AI translations more and more it will just make it worse.

  2. If I can read an English-speaking author in English why would I want it translated? And I don’t know how it is in Finland, but where I’m from the translated books are way more expensive as well.

  3. Article seems a bit clickbaity. Also:

    > One in four titles sold in Finnish bookshops.

    The key here is “sold”. I guess because all the Finnish books are available in libraries. I’m pretty sure the kids are not “snubbing” Finnish books.

  4. Helsinki you can find teenagers born in Finland with Finnish-speaking parents who speak English to each other.”

    This is soo true that I’ve actually witnessed on the metro.. english with American slang..

  5. Almost none of the books I read are available in Finnish or their translations are so low quality that it hurts the intellect to read. Also the translation time table is super slow to some genres like fantasy and scifi, it may take years to get the books in Finnish. No snubbing here just realities of life. Furthermore, Finnish authors don’t author enough or actually it is almost nonexistent in the genres I read so there are also very few original books. I haven’t even used a Finnish libraries for a long time due to availability issues of books. Ebooks directly from foreign libraries and shops is the way nowadays.

  6. I want to read a book in the original language if I can and from what I have heard and read that applies to the vast majority of people. I would never read an English translation of a Finnish book.

    English skills in Finland have improved greatly over the decades so naturally more and more people are reading books in the original language.

    I don’t think that reading foreign literature in a foreign language will doom our own language. It will only be doomed if we stop producing and consuming media in Finnish.

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