skilled & polyglot student looking for any job!

[Tiwaz]

After all i've read i've now gained a gradual impression of you (plural) being reluctant to foreigners temporarily (or not) migrating to finland unless they're able to show relatively high securities in monetary or educational (finnish!) terms. Among the OECD countries, i'm sure, if i were to regress i'd find a trade-off between taxes and the amount of foreigners resident. presumably wage taxes and social transfer would matter most. Yet, i know it is a daunting task to get rid of the endogeneity problem of the variable under scrutiny... but possible. finland, being a high-tax thus - to some extent - generically social democratic country, has its legitimacy to be more suspicious towards immigration than traditionally migration countries like the UK or the US as high governmental and/or sub-governmental spending into public goods, disability payments, umemployment transfers and the like is understandably less supposed to be spent on immigrants; capitalizing on that would be easier where redistribution is implemented more generously. As for me, it wouldn't appeal to my conscience to avail myself of finnish payments as they should be kept being spent on needy finns. If finland were a low-tax country i wouldn't mind..... so you need not to view me as a bitter immigrant as i would get back as soon as broke. but why should eating tuna embitter one?.. hm, i love tuna.. could eat fish all the time.

Now, mate.
What I am trying to do here, is to make sure you do not fall from too high.

Right now you most likely have some hopes/dreams/wishes about how your experience with Finland will turn out. One is working in nice place for some extra change and whatnot.
When you get to Finland, those dreams will float a while longer. Then they start coming down. Higher they are, harder they fall. And when their dreams collapse, people become bitter.

It does not matter if you go back home when your money runs out or get some kind of welfare. You still have had your dreams utterly crushed and that leaves that bitterness.
Think coming to Finland as extreme urban survival course. If you can handle the hardships which will be plenty, you might enjoy it.

[Geri Bush]

HELLO,

If you can stand small children and have some sort of a degree, sign up to sub at the local schools. Subing pays well and once you get "in", you'll be called! The pay is great because you get your vacation days on top of you hourly salery. Most schools have classes taught in english and if you can get by in Finnish the special-ed classes are super! Or if you do wood working, crafts, etc.... try them too.

Good Luck.

[Willhelm Tell]

Now, mate.
What I am trying to do here, is to make sure you do not fall from too high.

Right now you most likely have some hopes/dreams/wishes about how your experience with Finland will turn out. One is working in nice place for some extra change and whatnot.
When you get to Finland, those dreams will float a while longer. Then they start coming down. Higher they are, harder they fall. And when their dreams collapse, people become bitter.

It does not matter if you go back home when your money runs out or get some kind of welfare. You still have had your dreams utterly crushed and that leaves that bitterness.
Think coming to Finland as extreme urban survival course. If you can handle the hardships which will be plenty, you might enjoy it.

hou hou young man... again, let me express my gratitude for you imbuing me with precautionary precepts though there is no need in effect given that i'm well glued on grounds and still will be when landing in vantaa in... hm, exatctly 1 month and 10 minutes. you appear to be accustomed to the procedural embitterment astonishingly well - what comes first, follows and how one ends up embittered for good! how comes? without intending to aggrieving you but i suppose a great deal of the richness of detail must have stemmed from your own experience. maybe, in compliance with your terminology... no, let's say with the way you perceive it, i might already be fairly bitter... at least, and at this point we certainly are of equal view, once you're bitter you cannot fall anymore if one is a rational long-term learning organism... and we both surely are. that's why i've come to terms with great expectations (long ago!) and become a pessimist, which does not necesseraly further embitter my life at all -i am happy - ... being pessimistic is prophylactic without having any detrimental (or very few!) effects on one's current state of mind!

[Willhelm Tell]

Hrm depends on the job and depends on the employer.

There are lightning-bolt luck stories that exist where someone gets offered a job before they even step outside Vantaa airport and when all they can say is their name and favourite colour. But I doubt it's going to happen very often. "Workplace" level fluency is usually about 4-5 years.

But if you're in a job which doesn't require an awful lot of conversing in perfect Finnish, well, someone might think your Kindergarten-level mumblings are good enough 2 years after you arrive. Or you might gain a job early on, not even needing Finnish at all. There isn't a hard and fast rule, but there are tons of threads in this place where people mention 5 or even 10 years to fluency, it entirely depends on whether you

(1) know Estonian (knowing 50 other languages doesn't seem to help);
(2) study Finnish daily or go to adult high school (in that case, it's at high school level in 1-2 years)
(3) work fulltime in a Finnish speaking workplace (if not, you should double the learning time)
(4) speak exclusively in Finnish / Finglish at home

Not surprisingly, most immigrants don't have any of these going on.

Danke schön!... 10 years 'till fluencey.. well, i'm not brain-dead!... in switzerland there are italian immigrants who came like 30 years ago when there was too much work and too little disposable workforce.. whose vocabulary are still restricted to 10-15 german words.. and italian-german are way more similar than finnish-X.

bye

[Rabs]

I also saw people in my Helsinki intensive class who had 2 or 3 unrelated languages to fluency yet struggled with basic Finnish. .....

in my opinion, being able to speak fluently 2,3 languages does not show someone is a gifted multi-lingual . I speak 4 different languages fluently... yet struggling with finnish. point perhaps here might be ... you can learn languages related to your mother tongue much faster than other distant languages

[Willhelm Tell]

(1) know Estonian (knowing 50 other languages doesn't seem to help);
(2) study Finnish daily or go to adult high school (in that case, it's at high school level in 1-2 years)
(3) work fulltime in a Finnish speaking workplace (if not, you should double the learning time)
(4) speak exclusively in Finnish / Finglish at home

Not surprisingly, most immigrants don't have any of these going on

Political discussions often - when immigration policies are at stake - debate nonsensically by comparing other countries' more successful policies without considering language barrier differentials at all. in switzerland, immigrant germans need at least 3 month before they come to understand the repeated basics, though termed swiss 'german'. now immigrants from non-german countries, everything they read is in german-german, yet to them everything they hear is miles away from that they read or from that integretion classes for immigrants teach as swiss-german is not a written language (except sms!). so, although integrational structural procedures, efforts and invested money might be way better (or of greater real amount) than in germany (which is not necessarily), the outcome, meaning the proportion of output they've acquired of actually real use to their integration, is devastatingly little (my impression!).... an finland? though spoken and written surely does not differ that much.... what's the issue, opinion and so forth?

[Pursuivant]

an finland? though spoken and written surely does not differ that much....

duunimestalla jos ei snaijaa mitä gubbet bamlaa saa dille lähtee dallaa...

[Rosamunda]

an finland? though spoken and written surely does not differ that much.... what's the issue, opinion and so forth?

For a self-acclaimed polyglot your English is..... er.... odd. How did you learn English? Self-taught from reading business and marketing books, PC manuals and The Economist? E.g. Your punctuation is terrible. If your CV is as difficult to read as your posts, you won't get many replies. Keep it short and simple

And as for the issue, opinion and so forth: if the issue is that spoken and written FInnish do not differ that much, then my opinion is you do not have a clue what you are talking about.

[sinikettu]

Me thinks that Herr Tell suffers from..
"verbal diorrhea"
(not sure of spelling but this is copy paste from Wlki)
A serious disease which, once it has control of a person, causes them to spew forth incoherent babble from the bowels (of the voicebox.) Often extremely frustrating for the victims (us) or extremely hilarious for the observer.

[Geri Bush]

Hello,

Unless you're hoping to be Nokia's new CEO, there are penty of oppertunities for somesort of something to do while learning the language. Teaching, tutoring, translating, child care, cleanning, construction, truck driving, warehouse, beer drinking... I taught Business English class for companies. Good way to learn Business Finnish! And that put me in the place to translate their sales promo stuff for thier foreign markets.

Small children are the best teacher of practical spoken Finnish. And... they are not afraid to correct your pronouciation! Volunteer to babysit!

It's all about cold calling, knocking as many doors as you can and networking everyone you meet. Just like getting a job anywhere else in the western world. Seldom does anyone get a job sending a CV to an ad in the paper.

Positive attitude and open mind and close your eyes and jump in head first!

[Pursuivant]

hey at least abu applehead isn't peppetto-ing

[blaugrau]

finland? though spoken and written surely does not differ that much.... what's the issue, opinion and so forth?

of course, compared to German-speaking part of Switzerland, the difference between spoken and written language is not as big in Finland. I'd say in the German part of Switzerland you actually have two different Germanic languages, one spoken, one written. Nevertheless, there is a difference between spoken and written Finnish that is not to be ignored and requires conscious learning, since sometimes a certain grammatical feature is systematically used with a completely different meaning in the written and spoken version. Then of course there's also differences in vocabulary and endings, but that is the case in other foreign languages too. My impression is that French and Dutch are relatively homogeneous concerning their written and spoken versions, German in Austria differs quite signficantly from the standard version (but of course never as much as Swiss German), and Finnish in my humble estimation is somewhere in between.

Is definitely possible to learn Finnish well, but it's difficult to estimate how long it takes to acquire fluency, since the conception of what constitutes fluency is itself not quite clear and will depend on individual circumstances and also of requirements of desired jobs. In addition, the development of fluent speaking can significantly lag behind developing of an academic writing standard -- which is a problem if you're looking to work in a job that crucially depends on perfect writing skills in Finnish etc.

So I think there's many dimensions to the problem.

[Rosamunda]

Hello,

Unless you're hoping to be Nokia's new CEO, there are penty of oppertunities for somesort of something to do while learning the language. Teaching, tutoring, translating, child care, cleanning, construction, truck driving, warehouse, beer drinking... I taught Business English class for companies. Good way to learn Business Finnish! And that put me in the place to translate their sales promo stuff for thier foreign markets.

Small children are the best teacher of practical spoken Finnish. And... they are not afraid to correct your pronouciation! Volunteer to babysit!

Why do I want to cry when I read threads like these ?
If you're qualified to teach English then I could be Nokia's new CEO. I can't believe companies throw money at English lessons without checking any credentials.
Who were you working for? Are you a native English speaker?


(In case nobody noticed, I am in a BAD mood today 'cause I have spent 4 hours looking for my keys... )

[Willhelm Tell]

First and foremost i'm stunned by the responsiveness my short yet not-so superficial comment unleashed as scarcely 11/2 hour has elapsed since i submitted it... ok, hadn't it been for me who knows how many comments would have been made concerning unlike matters.

In addition, the development of fluent speaking can significantly lag behind developing of an academic writing standard

Blaugrau, this is nothing but true.. nonetheless, a way more disconcerting issue is the lag between orally understanding and speaking/writing. one, or at least I, may make written orthographical and grammatical mistakes that are more or less one by one applied orally, which, I daresay, is an easy task. But when it comes to understanding natives, above all those reluctanct to accomodating to non-natives when they speak, it often turns out daunting.

For a self-acclaimed polyglot your English is..... er.... odd. How did you learn English? Self-taught from reading business and marketing books, PC manuals and The Economist

... odd or not, may it appear to you as it does/you want. Rather led by the maxim that everything shall fit into one sentence... like in german; one never really has to put a full-stop. and yes, i only read non-fiction. prefer reading dictionaries than stories.

almost forgot:

E.g. Your punctuation is terrible. If your CV is as difficult to read as your posts, you won't get many replies. Keep it short and simple

Coming down on my punctuation is all right... sth. I frequently get negligent of when writing in english as its relative relevance seems miniaturizingly small. In casual correspondance i rarely apply Okham's Razor as it just bores me. my CV usually triggers replies.

Me thinks that Herr Tell suffers from..
"verbal diorrhea"
(not sure of spelling but this is copy paste from Wlki)
A serious disease which, once it has control of a person, causes them to spew forth incoherent babble from the bowels (of the voicebox.) Often extremely frustrating for the victims (us) or extremely hilarious for the observe

.. and 'methinks' that Sinikettu should slowly but determinedly be fished out of his/her pond of obsolete expressions lest one appraises amusement for the time being.
why should you, which you reffered to as 'us' in parantheses, be the victims?

A clearer way to describe the difference between spoken and written Finnish might be um... many words are abbreviated, run into each other, letters omitted and verb tenses changed. When you combine all of this together it is extremely difficult for a beginner to even pick out the word stems to follow the conversation. It goes way beyond slang and dialect.

... the only finns i've ever heard speak finnish was when i spent a week in finland, in iceland and the remainder is to be traced back onto youtube, mostly driving drunkards... and, hm.. yes, the stems are kind of formidable to make out!

[Willhelm Tell]

I'm still not entirely sure if you were debating my four points or agreeing and going off onto a discussion about something else entirely.

nay, actually more your being surprised by immigrants not getting along well with finnish....