we are already speaking a mix of finnish and english. I wonder when english will be an official language. It probably should be, because finnish is too impossible to learn. Many peepo fail at this treacherous task of learning finnish.
Science is usually done in English.
Imagine doing a computer science degree in Finnish, I speak Finnish well enough but I’d rather off myself than doing that.
Finnish is not a language of science, and having higher education done in English helps the international scientific community immensely with sharing knowledge and workforce.
90% of books / articles / journals you need to study for your degrees have been written originally in english/german or french and are never gonna be translated to finnish.
The further you want to educate and specialize urself, the more you have to rely on english source material.
There was a time when the language of science was greek, latin, german.
This is absolutely ridiculous. What is wrong with these students?
Finland needs to be LESS stuck up when it comes to Finnish. That’s the only way Finland will have a future. Finland has the same issue Japan and Korea has and that’s ridiculously hard language. The difference is though that those countries managed to make their language attractive for non-natives to learn via popular culture. Finland doesn’t have that.
So expecting foreigners to learn insanely difficult language with no motivation is a doomed effort.
It’s also the case that teaching assistants on many courses are PhD students who don’t speak Finnish
[deleted]
Something I feel we don’t talk enough about is what forcing everyone to use a second language is doing to the quality of science, and scientific dialog, in a country. Finnish people speak good English, sure. But not native level. And we all argue and explain better in a native language.
I don’t mean a lot of the study material won’t be in English. But we should value truly free dialog, which also means free from the constraints of the speakers language skill.
Even as a native Finn the language is ass. There is too many little shitty details that nobody gives a shit about. Like why tf would an employer care if your Finnish isn’t perfect. I kinda get it if you’d be working with documents in Finnish, but most Finnish companies do most of their business with other EU countries conducted in English. Then don’t even get me started on the accursed Swedish needed to pass higher education. IMO if you know your field and can put it into words, maybe not perfect, and text, to understandable level there shouldn’t be problems. Like if you can put it into English that’s already good enough. If you use the argument “but the uni is for people coming and staying in Finland!?” yes, so? If you’re already paying tuition who the fuck cares what you do with the language aspect of it. If the Uni is unhappy with people just getting their degrees and leaving, raise the fucking tuition. Although that needs to be done on a govt level to give the unis a little bit of leeway with that
Science transcends the realm of humans. It is universal. We must have maximum cooperation with scientists around the globe. To facilitate that, a common language is key. English is the best option for this.
Privatize universities, and this won’t be a problem.
9 comments
we are already speaking a mix of finnish and english. I wonder when english will be an official language. It probably should be, because finnish is too impossible to learn. Many peepo fail at this treacherous task of learning finnish.
Science is usually done in English.
Imagine doing a computer science degree in Finnish, I speak Finnish well enough but I’d rather off myself than doing that.
Finnish is not a language of science, and having higher education done in English helps the international scientific community immensely with sharing knowledge and workforce.
90% of books / articles / journals you need to study for your degrees have been written originally in english/german or french and are never gonna be translated to finnish.
The further you want to educate and specialize urself, the more you have to rely on english source material.
There was a time when the language of science was greek, latin, german.
Now it’s english.
[https://scientific-publishing.webshop.elsevier.com/manuscript-preparation/why-is-english-the-main-language-of-science/](https://scientific-publishing.webshop.elsevier.com/manuscript-preparation/why-is-english-the-main-language-of-science/)
This is absolutely ridiculous. What is wrong with these students?
Finland needs to be LESS stuck up when it comes to Finnish. That’s the only way Finland will have a future. Finland has the same issue Japan and Korea has and that’s ridiculously hard language. The difference is though that those countries managed to make their language attractive for non-natives to learn via popular culture. Finland doesn’t have that.
So expecting foreigners to learn insanely difficult language with no motivation is a doomed effort.
It’s also the case that teaching assistants on many courses are PhD students who don’t speak Finnish
[deleted]
Something I feel we don’t talk enough about is what forcing everyone to use a second language is doing to the quality of science, and scientific dialog, in a country. Finnish people speak good English, sure. But not native level. And we all argue and explain better in a native language.
I don’t mean a lot of the study material won’t be in English. But we should value truly free dialog, which also means free from the constraints of the speakers language skill.
Even as a native Finn the language is ass. There is too many little shitty details that nobody gives a shit about. Like why tf would an employer care if your Finnish isn’t perfect. I kinda get it if you’d be working with documents in Finnish, but most Finnish companies do most of their business with other EU countries conducted in English. Then don’t even get me started on the accursed Swedish needed to pass higher education. IMO if you know your field and can put it into words, maybe not perfect, and text, to understandable level there shouldn’t be problems. Like if you can put it into English that’s already good enough. If you use the argument “but the uni is for people coming and staying in Finland!?” yes, so? If you’re already paying tuition who the fuck cares what you do with the language aspect of it. If the Uni is unhappy with people just getting their degrees and leaving, raise the fucking tuition. Although that needs to be done on a govt level to give the unis a little bit of leeway with that
Science transcends the realm of humans. It is universal. We must have maximum cooperation with scientists around the globe. To facilitate that, a common language is key. English is the best option for this.
Privatize universities, and this won’t be a problem.