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These days a lot of kids just speak English (hexbear.net)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

61 comments fedilink hide all child comments

(I mean, at least in the Metropolitan area) Earlier I waited in line at a shop in Helsinki and behind me was a large group of schoolkids, all various people of colour and all speaking American English with each other. It's a fairly common occurrence in Eastern Helsinki and makes you feel like you're in the US or Canada

It's interesting how quick things have developed just since I was a kid

I think it's cool but it seems to cause Finnish boomers enormous existential anxiety of the Great Replacement variety

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Those kids' families probably aren't from Anglophone countries right? In that case both Finnish and whatever their home language is is being eroded.

Plus from what I can tell as an outsider, this push for Anglicization is something European countries are doing to their entire population, immigrant or not.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)

But if their families are from all over, English might be the easiest language for them to converse in

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

It can make sense and also be kinda sad. Ideally they'd know their parents' language, Finnish and also English or another lingua franca. Finnish is cool and relatively unique among languages so its sad to imagine a future where it doesn't get spoken because more common languages supplant it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Maybe. like yeah if English is the easiest language for them sure it makes sense to use that. But the only reason it's easier for them is because (I assume) Finnish society is dedicating all this effort into teaching these kids English.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Or because it's what they pick up in the media they consume and on the internet? That's how I was reading and speaking English when I was still being taught incredibly basic shit in my actual English classes in elementary school and I'm a Finnish person

And I didn't even really have the internet to rely on in the 90s/2000s

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

So Finland and Denmark are both relatively similar in the fact that we are the two most reactionary Nordic countries, but does the Finnish government also just take in a whole lot of immigrant children and put them in an english-speaking "reception" class to teach them Finnish language? I know that some of my wife's cousins from Italy moved here and were just plopped into a class with a bunch of Syrian refugee children and some somalis, none of whom spoke english natively and ostensibly the goal of the class was to teach the children Danish, but since few of the kids even spoke english at first, my wife's cousins had to act as translators for the kids who spoke arabic primarily.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I wouldn't really know but I would not be surprised. Sounds like a brilliant idea that I'm sure is a lot cheaper than teaching them properly doomer