h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi,

Couldn't resist coming over to see your page. I'd never heard of The Language Thing! Call myself a researcher?

Is the lists thing caught from reading Nick Hornby, or is it just a personal whim?

Aah, just a whim ...I have seen High Fidelity though. Fever Pitch (the movie) was also good because of...er...

After these pleasant experiences I read How to Be Good and somehow didn't get it at all

I take it you like Hornby then?

Yes indeed.

High Fidelity was one of the best books I've ever read, and I thought they made a good film of it too.

I also liked the book and film of About a Boy, and I'm pretty so-so with the other two. I've never seen the Fever Pitch movie though.

So you liked watching the footballers?

the footballers

I meant *Colin Firth*!!

Oh, I forgot, I've seen About a Boy too. I thought it was okay. I'm just not a huge fan of Hugh Grant's. Probably should've read the book instead.

I haven't yet met a guy who'd have read/seen High Fidelity and not practically fallen in love with it.

It's our bible.

Not a fan of Hugh Grant? So some women *do* have taste!

He's endurable when he's playing an a**hole, but the whole stuttering sweet Englishman routine is just plain nauseating

Can you pinpoint what makes High Fidelity so special?

Yeah, he played quite a good j*rk didn't he.

High Fidelity is special because it puts into words (and funny words at that) why men think the way they do. That's a broad generalisation, but most guys, as you've seen, find something in there that rings true for them personally.

Also, Rob's fascination with music parallels just about any consuming pasttime that a guy might have, whilst at the same time being something that we all have as an influencial part of our growing up.

Hmm, maybe I should have a second viewing. Or first reading...wonder if the Finnish translation's any good. I've been reading so much in English lately that I feel like I'm deserting my beloved mother tongue.

So how long have you been living in Suomi, anyway?

I read the Swedish translation and it lost some of the jokes, so I'd recommend the original.

I've been living in Suomi for just over three years now, long enough to learn Swedish but still not enough for Finnish...

Yeah, Finnish might take a while...But Swedish must come pretty naturally to you, right?

Too true

I was also immersed in it from the beginning, so it was a bit of a baptism of fire... or should I say elddöpning?

Seems a bit heavier that it should be that much tougher for Finnish speakers when they're the only people who *have* to learn it..


...except Estonians who probably have it just as tough. Should ask Hati I guess.

Estonians have it just as tough Learning Swedish? But they don't have to.

Don't they?

I thought they had it as part of their school course...
Could be wrong I guess. I probably thought I read it somewhere in Backlén's "På andra sidan finska viken"

Show's how much I know

I have no idea how it really is - I just don't understand why they'd have it in their schools. I've always thought the Swedish Empire never got to them. Or not for a long time, anyway.

You're really testing the boundaries of my vocabulary with those Swedish words. My 'forced Swedish' isn't very good. It's not that I ever minded studying it. I blame it on the teachers. It seems that only the most desperate and least gifted teachers are willing to take on a classful of sneering, raging 'what the f*** do we need this for' högstadiet pupils. In that sort of environment it was easy to get good grades (with which I was concerned), and very difficult to actually learn something (I didn't really care about that...).

So now it took a long time for me to get what the name of that book was referring to. After six years of Swedish lessons. Hmm.

So it's much the same as English students learning French then

Are you from a coastal area or somewhere inland?

From the coast. My högstadiet days were in Kirkkonummi/Kyrkslätt, but I went to high school in Helsinki.

There's a healthy Swedish-speaking population in Kirkkonummi, but it's not like you you need Swedish to be understood. Like everywhere around Helsinki, most of the Swedish speakers are pretty much perfectly bilingual (which is very ), and they immediately switch to Finnish when talking to a Finnish speaker.

But I think the presence of the language in my town still helped *a bit* with the attitude in the classroom. I hate to think what the lessons are like in Karelia or around Oulu.

I think I read somewhere that you live in Åbo?

Correct, and spend a lot of time in the Turunmaa saaristo, so I'm in contact with Swedish an awful lot.

You could (and people have done) write whole books about bilingualism in Finland.
As a foreigner who can only speak Swedish I try to take advantage of the law governing bilingual service in public facilities (libraries, police etc...) but my experiences are quite disappointing

Have no idea where Kirkkonummi is, but I've been to Helsinki a few times (naturally). Liked the Garlic restaurant!

You can't get service in Swedish even in Turku? I've always thought that it's at least as Swedish-speaking as it is Finnish-speaking.

But here around Helsinki I guess it's quite difficult to maintain good skills in Swedish with the hopeless education, the small number of Swedish-speaking customers and the fact that many of them choose to speak Finnish anyway.

Kirkkonummi is about 30km west of Helsinki. It was mainly Swedish-speaking before the war. If you know the bit of Finnish history about leasing the Porkkala peninsula to the Soviet Union after the war - the area given away comprised most of Kirkkonummi, including the center of the town. They used our 13th century church as a movie theater, which shows some sense of humour.

There's a Garlic restaurant in Helsinki? Do we have a ?

Turku isn't as Swedish as a lot of people think. It gets that reputation for the surrounding suburbs probably (Pargas and outwards).

I second Tarja Halonen when she said that Swedish-speakers need to use their language more often in order that Finnish-speakers continue to recognise a need to learn. I think the same thing happens here as in Hesa.

I did know about Porkkala being cordonned off by the Soviets, but not that Kirkkonummi was part of it. I also had no idea what they did there. Watching movies in a church didn't spring to mind!