Is Spanish the third language in Finland?

[inma]

Hi everyone!

I´m Spanish and I´m looking for a job in Finland. A friend who was living in Turku told me that Finnish people speak English as second language, and Spanish as the third one. Is that true? Because I´ve been searching vacancies as a Spanish teacher but I haven´t found anything...

Could anyone help me? Is there any kind of language institute to contact?

Greetings!

[ajdias]

I´m Spanish and I´m looking for a job in Finland. A friend who was living in Turku told me that Finnish people speak English as second language, and Spanish as the third one. Is that true?

Yes, absolutely.
We're even thinking of replacing sauna with bullfighting as our national past time.


Tell your friend to get over itself.

[EP]

Spanish as the third one. Is that true?

Well, both Swedish and Spanish start with S

[sammy]

Spanish - the third language in Finland

There's no Spanish language institute (Instituto Cervantes) in Finland. Spanish as a foreign language is taught at many schools, but not all - AFAIK it is not very high on the 'most popular foreign languages' list... English, Swedish (as you may know it's note really a foreign language here), German, French... maybe then Spanish, Italian... Not sure how Russian would fare in this ranking.

However, maybe -just maybe, I do not have any stats- the popularity of Spanish as a foreign language has been on the grow for the past few years.

See this link: http://www.suomenespanjanopettajat.fi/index.php?lang=es - but at the same time, bear in mind that just because your native language is Spanish it does not qualify you for a school teaching job. Also get familiar with this.

[inma]

Thanks sammy for the information and links!

[inma]

We're even thinking of replacing sauna with bullfighting as our national past time.

I´ve also been thinking about a job as a stand-up comedian but I see that the competition got in first

[rinso]

told me that Finnish people speak English as second language, and Spanish as the third one.

he probably meant holiday phrase books.

[sammy]

Somali, Estonian, Romanian

Now, you seem to have mixed up a few things

First of all - school pupils who have one of those languages as their mother tongue at Finnish schools, and foreign languages taught at Finnish schools in general. These three are way below Spanish in that regard, if indeed they are taught at all to those students whose native language is Finnish. I'm not using the word 'Finns' there because in most cases for example these Somali-speaking pupils are Finns; they're living here permanently, have Finnish citizenship, they speak Finnish as their second (or even first) language etc - in some schools however I'd expect that they are provided at least some lessons in their mother tongue (?)

Secondly, you've also mixed up "Helsinki" and "Finland"...

[ajdias]

We're even thinking of replacing sauna with bullfighting as our national past time.

First time "we"...
Time to apply for citizenship.