Re: Rude Comments about Weight - Was: Expectations about weight OTLONG

Marina wrote:

I remember reading somewhere that Canada modelled its language legislation on the Finnish one (our national languages are Finnish and Swedish). Sounds like attitudes are pretty similar, too. Some kids hate having to take Swedish in school, other kids' parents send them to immersion classes. My home language is Swedish, so I attended a Swedish school, and had to take Finnish. I didn't hate it because it was too difficult, I hated it because I already spoke fluent Finnish, but I had to sit through the classes from day one. Same with English; I learned English before I started school, but it was compulsory to read English as a third language in my school. Argh! What a waste.


I've always spoken both Swedish and Finnish, Swedish at home and Finnish outside with friends. I attended the German school all the way from kindergarden to graduation. There the first language was German, which was used in all other non-lingual classes too. The first "foreign" language for me was Swedish (grade 1 or 2), second Finnish (grade 3), third English (grade 6) which I already knew a lot of from TV. The last language at that school for me was French, grades 10-12 = graduation. I didn't mind the Finnish classes, the teacher was an old eccentric bat of a lady and we concentrated mostly on grammar, which for Finnish is fairly complex. All of us in that class were in the same situation, already being fluent in Finnish but speaking Swedish at home. The ones with Finnish as home language, had the same as us in reverse. We had more weekly lessons of the mother tongue language than the "second country language". Kids with Finnish as their home language were *not* fluent in Swedish like we were in Finnish... When graduating we had to choose a minimum of four, maximum of six subjects for the final exams. Naturally I chose five languages and the short course of maths. :)

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Christine in Vantaa, Finland
christal63 (at) gmail (dot) com
photos: http://photos.yahoo.com/christal63
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