Hey alle, alle,
Finnland wird oft als eines der englischfreundlichsten Länder der Welt gelobt, insbesondere in Helsinki. Aber ist das wirklich der Fall oder ist es nur ein Mythos?
Derzeit gibt es einen Blog von Helsinki
Sicher, Arbeitsplätze, Universitäten und viele öffentliche Dienste bieten Englischsprecher, aber was ist mit Wirkliches Leben?
Living in Finland as an English Speaker – What’s Your Experience?
byu/Valmista inFinland
Von Valmista
14 Kommentare
You can get by with English pretty much everywhere and without issues, but you can forget about having a job (unless it’s in IT, or a foreign, English speaking company brings you here) without at least decent Finnish.
If by English speakers you mean having English as the only usable language in a country which official languages are Finnish and Swedish, its pretty easy to figure out where you could not have it easy.
If you manage to live in an English speaking bubble in Helsinki or some other city, then you’re probably fine. Probably not that different from living in an English speaking bubble in some other country where English is an imported language.
This is often the case with people who worked for international companies and are „well off“ and have a good salary. And are able to keep their job.
But when the English only bubble bursts, many people leave Finland because they are not equipped to deal with the real world outside it.
That said, I personally recommend starting to learn Finnish from the day you decide to come here and make a serious effort into learning the language. Finnish language learning can be a nice hobby if you don’t self sabotage yourself in the process.
Praised as one of the most English friendly countries in the world? Where does that come from never heard that before.
Helsinki for sure but once you leave that ring III highway it’s whole other beast. Leave at your own risk.
Workplaces don’t accomodate English speakers mostly. Most jobs are Finnish speaking only but that makes sense because Finns speak Finnish.
I had zero problem getting by with just English in my first 6 months living in Finland, in an area (which was told to me by other Finns) with „less English speakers“.
I’m in the position I can work for a company from my own country so learning Finnish was just for integration not to get work necessarily. I would be confident to apply for a job that requires Finnish now tho.
So yeh I would say it’s easy to get by day to day with just English, even more so in the capital area.
You can easily manage knowing only English in Helsinki in day to day life. Overall, it’s one of the better places I’ve been to in that regard (setting aside countries where English is the native language).
Finding a job won’t be easy though.
I was in Imatra and Lappeenranta dozens of times as eng speaker and I can assure you – not everyone (especially middle aged and older people) speaks English. And it’s not like they didn’t want to speak with me personally, my friends shares the same experience.
In Helsinki pretty much everyone speaks English.
I know someone that worked in finance for one of the large telecoms. After 10 years didn’t even know the word for apple. At least in Helsinki, or other major city you can easily get by with only English.
My experience (not living in Helsinki but around 400 km further north): I have met only one cashier so far who could not speak enough English for me to explain something to her, but then I just turned around and asked the lady behind me if she could translate for me, which she could without problem. So with every day life things I never had any big problems.
i moved to finland as an English speaker 20 years ago. I have since learned fluent Finnish for daily living purposes and acceptable Finnish for professional purposes. My advice is that getting by in the major cities is fine but not smaller towns, but if you want stay and really succeed then you must learn Finnish capably-to-well. You don’t want to end up in one of those expat bubbles with non-Finnish speakers.
I work in university so my work life is completely in English. Almost all of my colleagues are foreigners (apart from my boss and few other professors I work with who are Finnish) so we would be speaking English anyway. Outside work place I can survive without Finnish but I feel that I’m excluded from many things around. I’m trying to learn Finnish but I’m very drained mentally after work and Finnish is very hard to study when you’re often exhausted. My big worry concerning the language is that almost all the permanent positions within university are given to Finns so I think that this problem will push me out in a few years even though I have a very high level CV for academia…
You can get by with English very easily, but family and work life require Finnish.
I’m a Finnish citizen, have a Finnish name, look stereotypically Finnish, half of my family lives there, but I only speak Finnish at an A2 on a good day. I’ve lived in Finland for extended periods. There is no way I could pull up roots and move to Finland and build a career. Work life would be impossible. All of the best jobs are obtained through networking in, you guessed it, Finnish. Not to discourage people who want to immigrate, but mastery of Finnish is not easy, and it’s absolutely required.
As a Finn, this is pretty interesting. Maybe it’s my bubble of being university educated, but I don’t know anyone under 60 who can’t have at least a basic conversation in English and 90% of people I know live in cities with population of less than 100k
Why people keep saying „forget about getting a job outside Helsinki“? You know we have the same schools, movies and internet outside Helsinki? Even if people don’t want to speak english, it doesn’t mean they can’t.
If you can get by with about 2000-2500€/month (after tax), there is lots of physical labor that english speakers can do. Every boss, welder and construction worker can say „put these here, and repeat untill it’s time to go home“.
I’ve lived in Helsinki for a decade and a half as an English speaker. Sure nowadays I guess I speak Finnish well enough, but I’m hardly entertaining the table in polite society with my witty Finnish wordplay.
What’s hard:
-Official documents and officials who now and then get uppity about speaking English.
Anecdote (feel free to skip) I got assigned many moons ago to the TE Toimisto/ job centre and had some lady explain to me in perfect English that the official languages of the office are Swedish or Finnish so she would now switch into Finnish. Knowing I spoke not a jot, and was in a beginner’s course. It was a truly ludicrous, dehumanising experience. Thankfully nowadays 2 things have happened. There are signs up in TE saying “use whichever language you can, we’ll try our best.” Which to me, is very humanising, welcoming, and the easiest path to achieving a desirable outcome. Plus technology has improved enough that you can have a stilted convo using google translate etc. Secondly, HES has taken over from TE.
-Confusion about bills, systems, bank logins, getting a bank account & strong ID login, etc. if you have a native speaker to help you with this, all the better
-Relying on a partner. This puts you less on a 50-50 standing and instead more to a parent/child relationship. Try not to stay in this for too long.
-Finding sports teams, having meaningful conversations.
-Keeping up with the school messages. Hard enough in a language you know!
What’s Easy:
-Day to day life no problem. Everyone speaks English and even those that don’t speak very well, it’s better than they think.
Overall, yes you should learn the language, but there’s no golden moment (so far at least) where everything suddenly makes sense. It’s more like, keep grinding, and you’ll end up having whole convos in Finnish and get to feel proud of yourself.
If you lived out in the sticks (I.e. anywhere not Helsinki), then you will learn at 2x rate whether you like it or not.