Finnish or Swedish?

[AlyR]

Hello all, I am coming to Finland to start a bachelor degree in Porvoo. I want to ask if learning Swedish, which is easier than Finnish , rather than Finnish would be better or not? And is Swedish enough for living and working in Finland?

Thanks in advance.

[Beep_Boop]

Learning Finnish for living in Finland is better.

[Ishmael]

According to wikipedia Porvoo has 30% native population whose mother tongue is Swedish so learning it seems to be useful.

It is also useful for some services which are not available in English (e.g. submitting your taxes online). YMMV but I'd say considering the effort needed to reach some fluency in language and value received it sounds to me reasonable to start with Swedish. As for working I've heard stories of people finding jobs with just Swedish skills, but can't say for certain.

Of course, if you're certain you want to live in Finland for a longer time, you should start learning Finnish immediately.

[SecretCode]

My understanding is there are very few places where being able to speak Finnish would be less useful than being able to speak Swedish - possibly only Åland.

In fact, also some municipalities in Ostrobothnia - see List of municipalities of Finland in which Finnish is not the sole official language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

[AldenG]

My understanding is there are very few places where being able to speak Finnish would be less useful than being able to speak Swedish - possibly only Åland.

In fact, also some municipalities in Ostrobothnia - see List of municipalities of Finland in which Finnish is not the sole official language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

But it remains true that the difference in effort required of an English speaker is substantial. Swedish was 4-6x easier -- more because of its similarity to English than to German, though I did have university German behind me. Swedish was the first foreign (to me) language in which I was easily and confidently conversant, and that almost certainly made Finnish easier thereafter than it would otherwise have been. The "4-6x" is with that experience factored in. For a first foreign language, the ratio may be higher.

But how does that aphorism go? The in-law of my in-law is... finlandssvensk? Almost the only practical use I got of spoken Swedish in Finland anywhere but Turku, Vaasa, or the ferries was occasionally with him. But the family language was Finnish.

The reading knowledge was helpful as training wheels for Finland because of dual-language signage and official documents, and then for reading my morning Hufvudstadsbladet. And I did take a business course my 2nd year at some Swedish organization.

One real advantage to Swedish is that if you have a head for languages, you can self-teach yourself a practically uaeful level of reading ability in under a year, a level that gives a significant head start to learning the spoken language later in-country. Finnish doesn't appear to work that way for any but rare individuals.

So it comes down to where you're moving. 30% native Swedish-speaking is not to sneeze at, but it is still minority and more of those people also speak Finnish than the other way around. So it doesn't mean you'd manage well day-to-day in Swedish.

[Y77]

After 10 months of integration course trying to learn Finnish,(as if this wasn't difficult enough) I'm really pissed off when people try to speak Swedish with me, and expect to be understood because they are too lazy to speak Finnish,as far as I'm concerned people that want to speak Swedish in Finland should just get on a boat and go to Stockholm and leave us alone.

[foca]

In which lingo are you going to study? If it is English and you are not going to live permanently in Finland, you will do ok in Borgå (that is Porvoo in Swedish). At leasat you Will get all govermental pappers in Swedish and you Can easily understand them just after one month of learning Swedish...