Swedish course in Helsinki

myalol · Post by **myalol** » Wed May 06, 2009 9:21 pm

I'm a student studying Swedish and now in Helsinki so looking for Swedish course in Helsinki, which I can take a course starting at about 5 or 6 pm, which I
can start out as soon as possible. I've already checked many other websites but all of them offers courses in the morning or afternoon.

p.s If there's any Finnish course at similar time like that, just let me know, too.

**Sponsor:**

onkko · Post by **onkko** » Wed May 06, 2009 9:34 pm

Studying sweden in finland? are you stupid? go to sweden.

myalol · Post by **myalol** » Wed May 06, 2009 9:38 pm

I study Scandianvian studies(I know Finland is not in Scandinavia but we concern Nordic conturies)in university.
and i'm in Helsinki as trainee actually.

maurine · Post by **maurine** » Thu May 07, 2009 5:59 pm

onkko wrote:Studying sweden in finland? are you stupid? go to sweden.

you dont need to be rude 'Onkko'.
just help the guy out if you know where he can study swedish.

you can go and check for Swedish courses in Luckan, its close to Forum if you live in Helsinki

Nilmahi · Post by **Nilmahi** » Fri May 08, 2009 1:13 am

I've got a booklet for the Helsinki summer university in front of me, they have details on Swedish for foreigners courses listed, that might be worth checking out.

myalol · Post by **myalol** » Fri May 08, 2009 8:42 am

That must be kind of you if you let me know

But aren't summer universities have classes in the morning and afternoon?
I can take course from 5 or 6 pm...

jannemkh · Post by **jannemkh** » Sun May 10, 2009 2:36 pm

How about private tutoring? Some of Helsinki's 35,000 Swedish-speakers might have time in the evenings.

dampa · Post by **dampa** » Sun May 10, 2009 9:22 pm

onkko wrote:Studying sweden in finland? are you stupid? go to sweden.

Maybe you are the stupid one... as far as I know Swedish is official language in Finland and it is taught in so many educational institutions in geographical Finland and one can decide if Swedish is one's official language!

AldenG · Post by **AldenG** » Sun May 10, 2009 9:52 pm

As a student, I'd want to know whether they were teaching Finlandssvenka or rikssvenska. I would assume Finlandssvenska. The differences are profound. As a foreign speaker, learning one of them just barely (if even that) equips you to understand the other until you reach a moderately advanced level. If it's only for reading, that's a somewhat better situation. But even then, you would experience significantly more difficulty reading an advanced text in one if you have only studied the other. (It's different for native speakers. They have a much greater ability to use intuition to decode the differences. But it's not uncommon for Finlandssvenskar to be unable to hear what southern speakers from Sweden are saying, though they would understand if they could get past the accent.)

Given that you live in Finland, if your goal is to communicate with Swedish-speaking Finns, then of course studying in Finland would be the smart thing to do. If you want to understand your neighbors across the gulf, it really would be better to find a way to study there -- perhaps online, for instance.

Pursuivant · Post by **Pursuivant** » Mon May 11, 2009 1:51 am

Yes well exactly the point. Its not a different language... the basics and grammar are the same, but the evolution is a bit different... Not quite as distanced yet as going to Scotland and learning Scots and then being puzzled you get empty stares in London speaking "English", but almost feels so sometimes.

Mumintroll · Post by **Mumintroll** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 1:38 am

AldenG wrote:As a student, I'd want to know whether they were teaching Finlandssvenka or rikssvenska. I would assume Finlandssvenska. The differences are profound. As a foreign speaker, learning one of them just barely (if even that) equips you to understand the other until you reach a moderately advanced level. If it's only for reading, that's a somewhat better situation. But even then, you would experience significantly more difficulty reading an advanced text in one if you have only studied the other. (It's different for native speakers. They have a much greater ability to use intuition to decode the differences. But it's not uncommon for Finlandssvenskar to be unable to hear what southern speakers from Sweden are saying, though they would understand if they could get past the accent.)

Given that you live in Finland, if your goal is to communicate with Swedish-speaking Finns, then of course studying in Finland would be the smart thing to do. If you want to understand your neighbors across the gulf, it really would be better to find a way to study there -- perhaps online, for instance.

That's a massive over exaggeration of the difference between rikssvenska and finlandssvenska; if you learn one or the other, you will certainly be able to understand the "other." It's a misnomer to consider either rikssvenska or finlandssvenska to be too separate dialects; the reality is that there are many different dialects of Swedish spoken even within these two realms... i.e. Swedish in Stockholm is not entirely the same as Swedish in Malmö, just as Swedish in Lovisa is not entirely the same as Swedish in Karleby. In otherwords, the very division rikssvenska-finlandssvenska is inperfect. With regard to reading, there is as good as no difference in the written language. For example, the differences are much greater between written American and British English, especially if you are talking of properly written formal texts (e.g. anything published). You mention specifically "advanced texts", in this case, you'd practically have to be a trained linguist (or at least be someone with an over average fascination for language) to even notice any difference. In reality, it's in informal writtings (emails, letters, diary entries, text messages (!) ) where you'd noticed a greater difficulty.

Obviously, that is not to say that there are not 'finlandisms' in finlandssvenska, but these are are also significant regional variations within Swedish. Yet, when we speak to a non-local speaker of Swedish, we are aware of this, and will steer clear of these differences as much as possible. Remember, when we speak with each other from the same locality, very many Swedish-speakers (in Finland) are speaking dialect, not the so-called högsvenska which is used to speak to other non-local. You have perhaps heard this and thus gained an impression which would explain your remarks. You could very well gain the same misleading impression of rikssvenska if you had only heard people speaking e.g. broad skånska or värmlandska amongst themselves.

AldenG · Post by **AldenG** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 3:25 am

I think it's awfully hard to deny that writers like Jörn Donner and Märta Tikkanen are just as easily recognized as Finlandssvensk from their writing as from their pronunciation -- in other words from their usage. Half a page is typically enough. Are you saying it isn't obvious to Finland Swedes? In fact, I'm not sure what you're saying. It's certainly obvious to fluent speakers of Swedish in Sweden, even those who are not native.

When you talk about dialect, I think of, say, the landmark translation of Linna's "Täällä pohjantähden alla" into dialectical finlandssvenska, a work that even Swedish high school students sometimes experience as heavy rowing. Is that the kind of language you're talking about? But Donner and Tikkanen write in almost everyday language, and still they're unmistakably Finnish.

Additionally, public Swedish-language signage in Finland sounds almost comically archaic in some cases. I think one of the legendary examples used to be Söndras Ej on telephone kiosks. At best it sounded Biblical in that context, but even then it didn't say what it was supposed to mean. Well, perhaps it did -- just not to Swedish speakers of Swedish.

In some academic sense, you may be making valid points about distinctions between languages, dialects, regionalisms, etc. But when I put that up against all the real-life misunderstanding I've personally witnessed, I don't know what to make of it. Sure, it's not as bad as Danes and Swedes only thinking they're fully grasping what each other are saying, but in real life there are both misunderstandings of usage and inabilities to decode pronunciation across the gulf between Sweden and Finland.

in terms of population, Southern Sweden is most of Sweden, and I don't mean only the extremes like Skåne. A foreigner who learns Swedish in Finland will learn something useful, but they will be lost for months (best case) once they step off the ferry to Stockholm. They might do OK north of Örnsköldsvik, but radio and television will still be problematic. As I noted earlier, native Finland Swedes have a much better ability for aural decoding and adaptive usage, just as native speakers of English (some at least) can often decode exceedingly opaque accents and other variations of our language. Perhaps that makes it difficult for native speakers of finlandssvenska to see how those of who learn Swedish and Finnish as second languages have different experiences than they do of crossing the border or the language line.

AldenG · Post by **AldenG** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 9:36 am

And by the way, I mean no disrespect to the writers I mentioned.

From my first exposure to Donner during my first year in Sweden, he became the Swedish-language author to whom I most closely related. I didn't know him as a Finnish author then but simply as an author in Swedish. I don't recall ever finding another Swedish-language author whose observational voice felt so natural and engaging to me. He has usually been a great pleasure to read, including his Swedish. All I'm saying is that it's recognizably different from that of Swedish authors, much as Hufvudstadsbladet does not "sound" at all like Swedish newspapers to me.

I'm no longer fluent in Swedish, haven't written or spoken it for 15 years. Occasionally I listen to Swedish radio on the web. But I still read it at the same speed as English, and well enough to translate authors like Mankell and Guillou significantly better than the published translations I've seen. (I've done chapters just for fun, and compared to the published translation. I really don't understand that -- I think the publishers must be hiring people who have lived abroad too long and lost their ear for their native English. And occasionally you also see misunderstandings of the original text. The fact that they publish mediocre translations tells me they probably have access to people who could do it right but they''re not willing to spend enough money to hire such people.)

sammy · Post by **sammy** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 9:45 am

maurine wrote:you can go and check for Swedish courses in Luckan, its close to Forum if you live in Helsinki

There's also a list of Swedish courses at Nifin's web site - http://www.nifin.helsinki.fi/se/kurser.html - either Luckan and Nifin would perhaps be your best starting point.

Mumintroll · Post by **Mumintroll** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 12:53 pm

There is no such thing as a single dialect of finlandssvenska. The dialect spoken by someone from Jakobstad is totally different from that of someone from Borgå - basically, as much as the difference between a stockholmare and a skåning. To a large extent, it's somewhat artificial to place skånska and stockholmska in one common category ("rikssvenska") and nyländska and österbottniska dialects in another common category ("finlandssvenska").

Obviously, you can tell someone is from e.g. Dalarna, Skåne or an area within Svenskfinland from their spoken accent. But, equally, provided none of these speak heavily in dialect (which they would not do if they know they are speaking to someone who is not from the same area as them), then none would have any problem at all understanding one another. If I spoke to someone from Sweden, I would (almost subconsciously/automatically) not use my local dialect of Swedish. Likewise if I spoke to someone from Österbotten. Using your example of Jörn Donner, he is for instance the "summer speaker" on 7 August's edition of Sveriges Radio P1's programme 'Sommar i P1', which is somewhat of an institution in Sweden (essentially, a different famous person hosts each day for a couple of hours and is given a free hand to speak about what they wish and to play their choices of music). Clearly they would not choose to put people on the radio that the majority of their listeners wouldn't understand. Alexander Stubb will host on 24 June.

Indeed, Swedish language signage in Finland is often very archaic in its wording. But, that reflects the ludicrous official style guidelines used in Helsinki (e.g. for government documents etc). Many Swedish speakers in the Helsinki upper class have a very outdated idea of what is the "proper" language. But, despite their disproportionate influence, they are not very representative of the average Swedish-speaker in Finland. Many of them are likely to even have a stronger and contemporary understanding in Finnish than Swedish anyway, living as they do in the rather un-Swedish (these days) environment of the capital. All too often signage also is a product of a very wooden translation by a Finnish-speaking Finn who has learnt this official "wooden" Swedish in school/university. Sometimes, even more regrettably, this leads also to errors. A sign in Esbo/Espoo has just gone up directing to "Espoonlahti, Esbåviken" for example and there have even been instances where the Finnish and Swedish versions give completely contradictory instructions.

As for saying that native speakers of Finland-Swedish have some of better ability in terms of aural decoding etc, I would say it is easily dismissed by the fact that very many Danes and Norwegians often opine that it is much easier for them to understand spoken Swedish by a Swedish-speaking Finn than that of a Sweden-Swede. Southern Sweden, in a linguistic sense, is absolutely not "most of Sweden". It is probably fair though to say that Sweden has more equally matched large population centres (i.e. Sthlm, Göteborg, Malmö) than (Swedish-speaking) Finland, where Helsinki tends to blow everything else out of the water. Thus, the Helsinki version of Swedish has always tended to be considered (somewhat snobbily) by many as the "proper" version of the language (which comes back to the street signs and awkwardly worded government documents - although the language use has started to be modernised on the recommendations of Forskningscentralen för de inhemska spåken within the last few years). The prestige version of Swedish in Sweden is slightly broader and more reflective of the wider population as a whole due to Stockholm having strong counter balances elsewhere.

Donner and Tikkanen are relatively extreme examples of individuals often actively seeking to write in what could be said to be a colloquial way (however, not the case in all of Donner's works). You can find similar examples in Sweden in various Swedish dialect forms. I am absolutely not saying it is not obvious to Finland-Swedes if a text is using overt finlandisms. But, most texts in the Swedish language (regardless of which side of the Baltic they are produced) are almost indistinguishable, especially if you are not actively on the look out (e.g. if an author uses 'mera' instead of 'mer', or slips in 'flere' they are probably Finnish - but to be honest, to the average reader, they probably won't even notice these things and they are certainly less detectable than the Zs, ommiting of certain Os and Ls etc between US/UK Englishes, yet nobody would suggest a British person has difficulty reading a US-produced text or vice versa). Someone reading about the crisis in Iran in Dagens Nyheter or Hufvudstadsbladet would not be learning about the news in a different language anymore than someone reading about them in the Washington Post and The Guardian.

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