How Many Languages Do You Understand?

29 comments

1. I would be able understand Swedish and Estonian to an extent but not others.

2. If you speak Finnish you can understand a fair bit of Estonian but not everything. If you speak Swedish you can understand spoken Norwegian fairly easily. Danish would be a bit harder but not impossible.

3. Cruise ships are a bit different compared to the regular people, as the ships that regularly sail some combination of destinations between Estonia, Sweden and Finland, tend to have crew from all three countries, so english is the main communication language between everyone, but depending on who is talking to another ship for example, the communication might switch to that persons native tongue, like what you described with happening in the sinking of ms estonia. There were people of multiple different nationalities and they swapped to their native tongues for easier communication.

   This doesn’t really happen in regular life though. Most finns know finnish and english on a level they can have a conversation in, most understand some swedish, and some understand more languages if they have studied them or have relatives from different countries

4. Many Estonians understood and spoke Finnish during the Soviet occupation because they got Finnish TV. The Estonia sank in 1994 so only a couple of years after the collapse of the USSR. Young Estonians won’t know Finnish that well, nor do Finns really speak Estonian even though we can understand it to an extent since it’s similar to Finnish.

   We study Swedish in schools so many of us will understand or speak it, though I’d say better on our CVs than in reality. As for the others, I guess we understand a bit of Norwegian, but because it’s so similar to Swedish not for cross-border cultural exchange. Russian is mainly spoken by people who have studied it, it doesn’t really casually sneak into our vocabulary besides a few basic words but anyone in the world knows babushka or like, cyka blyat….

   I personally speak five languages but besides Finnish and Swedish they don’t really have anything to do with proximity.

5. 7 language. 👍

6. Speak 4 languages (3 fluently), but i can understand basic conversations with norwegians and danes if they speak slowly

7. I can speak Finnish, French (taught in school and self-learnt) and English (same thing) fluently and a very little bit of Swedish (just school).

8. Russian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Polish are at 0%, those others can be understood at some level. Dialects etc make it harder to understand spoken language, written language is usually easier.

9. 2 natural languages and 12 programming languages

10. Finnish is my first language, but I have studied English, French, German, Russian, Estonian, Swedish. I understand written Danish and Norwegian, but both spoken Danish and some Norwegian dialects are absolutely not understandable. Estonian is much easier for many reasons. Basic knowledge of Russian helps a bit with spoken Polish or other Slavic languages (in writing).

    But there are some Finnish dialects I find difficult to understand as well as Swedish dialects both in Finland and Sweden.

11. Two. Finnish and English.
    And I can introduce myself in Swedish, but that’s about it.

12. Fin, swe, nor, ger, den with some challenge, limited est based only on Finnish knowledge. Karelian can be fairly understandable too

13. I speak Finnish, Swedish and English fluently and can understand little Norwegian, Danish, Estonian and German in written form. I also used to be fluent in French when I was small.

14. I do understand quite many languages but that’s not due to geographical exposure but because I wanted to study them. I’m from the southeastern part and I’ve had plenty of exposure to Russian yet I only understand a handful words and expressions.

    Out of other neigbouring languages I understand quite a lot of Estonian (studied that for a year), Swedish (obligatory to study in school, but I’ve practiced it after school as well) and based on Swedish, some Norwegian and written Danish. I don’t speak or understand at all Latvian, Lithuanian or Polish. (But I speak Spanish, Portuguese and some German and French because I’ve studied them.)

15. Two. Finnish and English.

    I understand basics of Swedish and German but only simple phrases so I don’t count those.

16. Finnish, English, Swedish, Spanish and Arabic are what i took in school, but it’s hard to maintain proficiency if you don’t need them in everyday life. Estonian and Norwegian are somewhat understandable without studying them specifically. Some other Indo-European languages too but to a lesser degree. It’s possible to hold conversations with a Norwegian by speaking Swedish, and Finnish to an Estonian. The latter is definitely harder though.

    Russian isn’t a widely spoken language in the country due to our less than friendly history and a long time aversion to associations with that country. We have some russian loanwords from 100+ years ago tho. Slavic languages in general are probably the hardest to wrap your head around. You don’t hear them in media all that much. I’d like to know how to speak Czech and Ukrainian though.

17. Finnish, Swedish and English are all good for me, Norwegian also, though I usually speak “Svorsk” (Swedish and Norwegian mixed) with Norwegians. Danish is about 50% understandable when spoken slowly 😅 German also ok as long as it isn’t Swiss, Austrian or similar dialect.
    I did work many years on a cruise ship though 😉

18. I’ve studied Swedish (compulsory), English, German, Spanish, and a bit of French in school. I’ve been interested in Italian and Portuguese in my free time. I understand them quite well through Spanish and by having exposed myself to them, listening and translating Italian and Brazilian songs etc. I also know some Hindi out of my own curiosity.

    I understand maybe 50% of Estonian by context but don’t speak any. I don’t understand Russian or Latvian. I understand Norwegian and Danish to varying degrees.

    So including Finnish, that makes about 12 languages where my proficiency varies from passive understanding / basic survival to fluent.

19. I personally as finnish would recognize swedish, estonian, russian and norwegian languages. I speak finnish, english and poor swedish.

20. Only Finnish and English. I couldn’t follow a conversation in Swedish or in Estonian.

    Even though I tried to study English, German and Swedish in school, learning foreign languages were always a huge pain in the ass. Learning a language is a process that takes years and with my self-diagnosed add brains, my attention span lasted for a week until it was switched off for a year.

    Now trying to learn some Spanish. Also, I am thinking of picking some small language that has no value in the real world, like Esperanto or inarinsaame, and master the language, just to show off

21. For a nation with small population in todays world speaking only in native tongue is a huge disadvantage, I`m Latvian and I can also speak English, a bit in German, a bit in Russian and am slowly learning Lithuanian. My wife speaks fluently Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian can do something with Finnish, German and shit Russian 😀

    So yeah, it is not unique in small countries in all over the world to understand more languages.

22. At least at some point Swedish speaking Finns were popular as workers on many of the cruise ships between Finland and Sweden, as many of them were already fluent in Finnish, Swedish and English.

23. I’m a native Finnish speaker and I’m fluent in English, but while I studied Swedish, I never actually learned to speak it. I’m ironically on the same level in Swedish as I am in Estonian: I can pick up a few words and phrases, and I sort of understand the basic grammar, but I wouldn’t be able to communicate.

24. That crew in the radio recording is Estonian. To be able to work on that boat, they would need to know Swedish as the boat traveled between Estonia and Sweden. These guys would have learned Finnish from TV if they were from northern Estonia as they could watch Finnish TV. Russian they would have learned due to Soviet occupation.

    In Finland, it is common to know Finnish, Swedish and English. German used to be more common. Russian has never really been that common to be able to speak.

25. I can discuss about almost everything in Finnish and English. Swedish vocabulary is not that broad anymore so I have to think more often some words or how to explain things differently. All three languages written down are quite understandable at least in my field of expertise.

    German is the language that I have studied less and haven’t been using it after graduation so I can barely handle a situation with the cashier.

26. I’m fluent in Finnish, English and randomly Japanese. Conversational in Swedish, German and French and can read Norwegian and Danish through the Swedish, but understanding the spoken word is a nighmare. I can read Estonian, but as someone else said, I think my listening comprehension of that is somewhere at toddler level. Sprinkle in some handfull of words and phrases in Italian, Spanish and Russian and you’ve got my general mixed soup of languages.

    I think quite a few of us just end up ”collecting” languages since were both exposed to them and they’re (usually) readily offered at schools. Technically every Finn has been taught at least two extra languages (English and Swedish). Many go for three, four or even five by the time their compulsory education is over.

27. Finnish, Swedish and English are used in the radio communications you refer to, but not Estonian. The guy radioing from Estonia (after the initial mayday call) is speaking to the Silja Europa Guy in Finnish.

    The crew members on Silja Europa and Mariella (the ships we hear most from) are Finns, but the Mariella guy is an Ålander so his native language is Swedish. I think everyone involved pretty much understood Finnish, Swedish and English, but they would have been less likely to understand Estonian.

28. English , Portuguese, Spanish, Finnish and Italian

29. Russian? Well, I studied it for a while but lost interest soon. I understand some basic stuff.

    English is basic, everyone speaks it. I learnt some basic Swedish at school which was enough to become fluent in Norwegian by just living in Norway for less than a year. Thus Danish is relatively easy but fast speech is difficult. I don’t speak any other languages, never been exposed to Baltic languages or Polish.

    Estonian is so far from Finnish, that you can only guess some very basic stuff.