The Friday Five for 22 March 2024 – https://thefridayfive.dreamwidth.org/124924.html
1. What is your native language?
Finnish.
2. Do you speak any other languages? Which ones?
I read and write English fluently, and speak it less so (don’t need to speak it much so I haven’t had the practice to get fluent).
Learning Swedish all through the school and vocational school/university is mandatory, but I can’t speak it and can only read it with very great difficulty, with a dictionary, up to a certain point. Nowadays, after having watched so many Swedish crime tv series, I can understand enough to get the gist of the thing, say, when I watch the news, but for anything longer and more in depth, I need subtitles.
I also studied French for two years in school in 1988-89, but other than saying my name or asking what time it is, I can’t speak it or understand it.
3. How difficult is it for you to learn or understand new languages?
English was very easy but Swedish was very difficult and I never really got the gist of it. French was somewhere in between and the pronunciation was the most difficult part. Our French teacher was very particular that we’d learn to pronounce it well.
4. If you were going to study a new foreign language, which would you want to learn?
I’d re-start learning French. There are a couple of books that I’d love to read which haven’t been translated to English nor Finnish. Once of them has been translated into Swedish, but I can’t read the language well enough to manage to get through the book – I tried!
5. How are you at reading subtitles in foreign films?
It’s the norm for me. Subtitles for foreign films and tv shows are the norm here (except for the movies/tv shows for babies and kindergarteners which are dubbed in Finnish). The majority of (fictional) tv shows and movies shown on television here are foreign here, so you learn to read subtitles as a tiny kid if you watch practically any television almost by accident. I also want subtitles for Finnish things because the actors always mumble and/or the audio work/sound effects drown out the dialogue. I generally use English subtitles for English and other language things because they are often easier to find than Finnish subtitles (and the Finnish translation is sometimes really bad on more obscrure things).
About 20 years ago, YLE tested dubbing The Bold and The Beautiful in Finnish for two weeks (an episode was shown every day), and the outcry was loud. Nobody wanted dubbing! Everyone, including me, thought it was horrible – original audio always, please!
Friday 5 for March 22: Initial here – http://f.riday5.com/2024/03/22/friday-5-for-march-22-initial-here/
1. What do you remember about your first camera?
I’ve only ever owned one camera myself and only had it for a few years before phones with cameras became a thing. The only thing I truly remember is that I took a lot of photos with it on my first trip to London in 1997 or was it 1998. I’m not sure – I might still actually have it lolling around somewhere. I have no memory at all whether I’ve gotten rid of it or not.
I never took much photos before the phone cameras.
2. What do you remember about your first cell phone?
The very first cell phone I ever used was my best friend’s Ericson – I had it for about a year before deciding that yes, cell phones were cool and wanted my own. My friend loaned the Ericson to me in 1999, as she had gotten a newer cell phone from her family as I recall (her father was something of a technology enthusiast), also an Ericson, I think.
The first cell phone I actually owned was a Nokia 3210 (mine was the silver/gray color pictured in that link), and I asked for this particular model as a birthday gift from my Mom! I LOVED that phone – it’s was the best cell phone of the basic three cell phones I had before I got my first smart phone and probably the best I’ve ever had. It just fit perfectly my hand and was so comfortable to hold, and the calls never had any trouble and I loved the way it looked and the color. The other two basic cell phones I had were the Nokia 3510 (the beige/orange color shown in this link) which was my second one, and I think the third one was a Nokia 6300 but I’m not completely sure – it looks like the one I had quite a lot but not entirely but that just might be color in the picture (mine was black/silver) and the model number feels familiar and the buttons certainly look like it. I didn’t like this third cell phone at all! It was too thin, too narrow, too short, the buttons were situated too low and it was just damn uncomfortable to hold and use. The previous two phones I had for 3-4 years, but this one I had only for 1,5-2 years, unhappy with it the entire time and that spurred me on to get my first smart phone in 2009, a year or two sooner than I otherwise might have.
3. What do you remember about your first radio?
Nothing. I had my own radio/casette player as far back as I can remember as a kid (I listed to music literally every waking second) – I do remember we had to buy a new one every few years because they’d would always start to break my tapes and ruin them. I used them so much.
I’ve never actually bought a radio for myself! I don’t listen to radio, and my Mom bought a stereo tower for me, with an LP player, radio, 2-casette decks and a 5-cds player. I still have that stereo tower and all th parts except for the casette decks still work great, so what with that tower and smart phones and computers and laptops, I’ve never needed to buy a radio. Not to mention, I never ever listen to radio. I don’t even have the stations saved in the stereo tower.
4. What do you remember about your first countertop kitchen appliance (or device)?
I’m not sure what this means? The first I ever kitchen appliance bought myself was an electric hand mixer and I bought it pretty much the first week I ever lived alone, after I had moved to Vantaa while starting the library studies. But the hand mixer never lives on top of the counter, but in the cupboard. On top of the counter, I have a microwave oven, an electric kettle (and a broken stand mixer I should get rid of). But the only reason they are on the top of the counter is because in a small apartment there aren’t enough room in the cupboards for them. If I could, I’d put them out of sight. I’m pretty sure that my previous microwave oven was the first one to actually live on the top of counter – I bought it when I moved into my apartment in 1998 from my childhood home and it worked great for about 20 years. I lived alone in my childhood home for a couple of years because Mom moved in with her SO; we had a microwave oven in my childhood home but it was from 1980s and so big, that we saw that my new home didn’t have enough countertop room for it (there was too little right from the start – the curse of small apartments). So I bought a new, smaller one immediately after the move.
5. What do you remember how to do from your first job?
My very first job ever was wrapping Christmas work-place-gifts for my Mom’s then-work-place’s employees. This took 3 nights of a week in November/December, about 4-5 hours an evening and I did it for two or three Christmases. My school day would end at either 2pm or 3pm and I’d go straight from school to Mom’s work by bus, gift wrap their gifts until 8pm and then take the bus home. It was a nice income for a few hours of easy work for a teenager! It was in 1988-1989 but I think I still benefit from having to wrap so many presents in such a sort time even to this day by having more agile fingers and having the forethought to think about what I’m doing first before doing it to streamline the process and make it sensible.
Interesting! Did I understand it correctly that you need Finnish subtitles for Finnish films? I’ve lived in Finland for three and half a year now, I’ve learnt Finnish to some degree, I can understand for instance news on TV (not just selkosuomi, normal news too), I can hold conversations with Finnish people about general topics but watching Finnish films is like a whole different level. Sometimes I can hardly understand anything, and it feels like I didn’t know any Finnish at all. It can be really frustrating. I have wondered many times if native Finnish speakers are able to understand dialogues in Finnish films without any effort. Even with subtitles it is sometimes difficult, for instance during the Independence Day of Finland I tried to watch “Tuntematon sotilas”, I turned the subtitles on but I still couldn’t understand much. I guess that’s because they speak some dialects in that film and the subtitles are also written in the way that they imitate the dialects, so it was difficult to recognize some words, like “nähdä” turning into “nährä” and so on.
I can understand that subtitles for foreign films are good, and that is often given as one of the reasons why people in Nordic countries speak English so well. On the other hand, for foreigners trying to learn Finnish it makes finding something to watch on TV in Finnish more difficult. If one turns on the TV at some random time, the likelihood that one encounters some Finnish-language programme is not that high.
Yes, that’s right! I need subtitles for Finnish movies and tv series. It’s because the actors mumble and the sound mixing is often made in a way that car crashes and explosions etc. are ridiculously loud but normal speaking is too quiet. I think it’s the combination of the two! I don’t need subtitles for things like news or A-Studio, the speaking audio work is much clearer on those. But you are not the only one – even many us Finns have problems making out the dialogue in modern films and need subtitles.
Have you tried old black & white Finnish films from the 1950s and 1960s? Such as Komisario Palmu films? Speaking on those old films is completely different and much clearer, although more formal.
Well, I didn’t watch many films that old, but I saw some Finnish films from late 60s or 70s. I guess they could be already considered as relatively “modern”, at least in the sense of the voice acting. One of the first Finnish films I saw was “Rautatie” from 1973. However, I only watched its ending. It was really a coincidence, I was just switching channels and then came across this. I had lived in Finland a few months prior to that, I could understand some single words, but not much overall. I didn’t know much Finnish then anyway. I don’t even remember much from the film itself, though it somehow drew my attention then. I haven’t watched any Komisario Palmu films, I see that some of them are available on Yle Areena. I shall check them out. Thanks for the recommendation!
Now when I work at Aalto University, most of my colleagues are also foreigners so I hardly hear any Finnish at work. I still try to practice it if I encounter some Finnish person. I also try to expose myself to spoken Finnish, for instance by watching TV. It’s good that before coming to Aalto I worked at Tampere University. I had much more Finnish colleagues there, so I could practice with them.