merenneito wrote:2. If I talk "kirjakieli" with my friend, she will understand better, but should I try to use the spoken finnish anyway, since everyone else will use that with her? To make things worse my dialect is from Helsinki and she lives in Pohjanmaa.. :D
Spoken Finnish is a continuum which ranges from highly dialectal and local forms of speech to the neutral
yleiskieli used by the TV hosts/announcers. Often when two speakers from different parts of the country meet and engage a conversation they will both hold back their local dialect a bit: trying to use more “neutral” words and expressions than they would in their local environment, toning down their tendency of pronouncing some words in a dialectal way, and shifting towards the (informal) forms of language heard on the TV and on the radio.
To get an idea of “neutral” spoken Finnish (which is at the same time informal in its style, as opposed to “stuffy” or “formal” or “book language”), try listening to the Finnish radio DJs on the music channels (YleX, Radio Nova, etc.) Although many of them come from the capital area and do have some Helsinki-isms in their speech, they’re trying to keep them at bay most of the time.
Of course there are also some speakers who do not change their language one bit even if it makes it difficult for others to understand them, and regardless of what the occasion or the audience might be. It is sometimes hard to say whether this is an issue of “principals” (stubborn pig-headed resistance towards anything that might dilute your “local values”, origins, family background, and tradition), a conscious try to proudly emphasize the value of dialects and encourage their use and preservation in daily life (by setting an example), or just a demonstration of a lack of social and practical skills at reading the situation and switching between the different forms of language as needed.
