Re: Economic comparison Estonia<->Finland -- some 80 years ago?

In article <dq7s9t$3en$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "J. Anderson"
<andersons6@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

> "Eugene Holman" <holman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:holman-1301060944430001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > In article <1137135200.581327.33540@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Leo"
> > <lazauskas@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > <deletions>
> >>
> >> Just wondering... when did English become a major "other" language in
> >> Finland?
> >
> > The short answer:
> > During the 1970s, consequent to English being made a virtually compulsory
> > (>95% of students) first foreign language in the comprehensive school
> > system. The 1970s marked the beginning of a generation change in Finnish
> > education, the primary trend within which was that educators educated
> > before and during WW II with German culture being the model to emulate
> > began to be replaced by the post-war generation raised to regard
> > Anglo-American culture as an ideal.
>
> Don't forget the importance of television. Ever since its start in the
> 1950s, Finnish TV has been brainwashing the population with American and
> English material, always subtitled: you hear the spoken language and read
> the translation. Children seem to understand English even before they learn
> it at school, and old people who never studied English find themselves able
> to follow a dialogue on TV even should the subtitles suddenly disappear for
> a while.

Correct indeed. This issue is discussed in the articles mentioned under
"The long answer". Motion pictures, and now the internet, also contribute
to the strong status English has as the "puolivirallinen kolmas kotimainen
kieli" ("semi-official third domestic language").

>
> Subtitled TV and movies are a peculiarity of the smaller nations of
> Europe -- you need a certain audience size to make dubbing, the alternative,
> profitable. That's why people in Scandinavia, Holland, Portugal and Greece
> are better English-speakers than the Germans, the French, the Spanish or the
> Italians.

The other side of the coin is that the small langugages of Europe do not
travel well. In a European city of any size you can always find people who
speak German, French, Spanish, or Italian, but you will ot necessarily
find people who speak Dutch, Portuguese, Hungarian, or one of the many
dialects going under the name of Norwegian. In northern Europe English has
been the lingua franca since the 1950s, German having had this position
until the last years of WW II. I recently visited Hungary and the Czech
Republic and noticed there that Germany still retains a strong position as
a *Kultursprache*, but English has emerged as the dominant language for
the under-30ish generations. In the Baltic countries, the situation is
more complex. English is well established and well spoken in western
Estonia, with Russian still being the most widely spoken foreign language
in the eastern part of the country, in particular the north east, where it
is not a second language, but rather the dominant one.

In Riga and particularly neighboring Jurmala Russian will get you much
further than English.

My experience in Vilnius and Kaunas is mixed. English is better
established there than I would have expected, but I still think that most
adults over the age of thirty or so would prefer to use Russian, which
they speak fluently, as their second language of choice rather than
English, which many would prefer to speak, but do so only rudimentarily.
Of course the situation is changing, and the younger generation of
Lithuanians travels westward, not eastward, so they are interested in
becoming fluent English speakers. On the other hand, with Russian-speaking
Russians, Belarussians, and Ukrainians hankering for the jobs in booming
Lithuania that Lithuanians disdain, Russian still plays an important
function, at least in Lithuanian cities and large towns. I was surprised
at how little German seems to be spoken in Vilnius and Kaunas. In Vilnius
you hear a lot of Polish, but I would suspect that these are members of
the local Polish minority or tourists. Few Lithuanians would bother to
learn Polish as a *jezyk kultury*.

Regards,
Eugene Holman
.

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