Evil evil Sweden

[Whaleboy]

God yes, can you imagine this sailing up the Humber?

[Meticulous Man]

Originally posted by Ignorance
Due to Finland sharing most of its border with Russia and russians outnumbering scandinavians the way they do, this should be russia, if anything.

The cultural gap between Russia and Finland is as broad as the border is long. Of course, this could also be taken to mean that we should be learning more Russian in order to build bridges between our countries. Plus I've heard that Finns often consider themselves experts on Russian affairs. Altogether I think that it's kind of a question of identity which one of the languages should come first. And if you are into linguistics then learning one of them doesn't exclude the possibility of learning the other. If you aren't, you will stick to English. A lot of doors will stay unopened that way, though.

As the pupils who are taught Swedish generally don't see things from this perspective, maybe I agree that mandatory Swedish indeed has been a failure... If you lack the motivation to learn, then you will not learn, whereas if you are genuinely interested in the subject, you will, and then you won't even notice if something is mandatory... Funny how nobody ever complains about "mandatory mathematics" even though you will have forgotten most of it a year after high school if you don't happen to start studying science or engineering!

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun
I live by the damn fenno-suedo border, and i have never, ever needed swedish anywhere else than school.

It's usually even referred to as "pakko-ruotsi", "forced swedish"...

Considering they speak Finnish on the Swedish side of that border, it's not exactly the place in Finland where one'd expect Swedish to be useful.

[Tattila the Hun]

Well, one would expect them to expect us to speak swedish, then...
Never, ever has anyone come to me and asked anything in swedish...