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Random curiosity poll! Do you know any Finnish people? Defined here as people of Finnish lineage regardless of where they live, and people who live in Finland and consider it home, regardless of their lineage!

Boost to reduce bias of everyone answering knowing me at least, should it please you. 😄

  • I am a Finnish people! (8%, 159 votes)
  • I do, indeed. (43%, 800 votes)
  • If knowing you counts, yes? (3%, 59 votes)
  • I used to, no longer. (14%, 259 votes)
  • Not really, no. (30%, 552 votes)
1829 voters. Poll end: 1 settimana fa

in reply to Sini Tuulia

I think some of it must absolutely be the confirmation bias of me being Finnish, but it seems every day I go about on the internet and watch and read things and we're just absolutely everywhere! In articles, writing articles, doing stuff and being noted and remembered in general.

"Oh, I have Finnish friends!" says someone from Poland, and I just wonder how we get around so much. In 2024 there were 5 637 214 people in Finland. That's not a huge amount!

in reply to Sini Tuulia

I know there's been multiple times in recent-ish history when there were mass emigrations, and a lot of us ended up here and there... But still. There's not that many of us!
in reply to Sini Tuulia

My most recent university attempt (which was ummm… gosh…. Was that at least 10 years ago? More? Anyway) I met a delightful Finnish born person, who had moved here with their family. So yes! We still occasionally catch up, because this town is like that.
in reply to Sini Tuulia

I met my Finish friend when she was working in the UK and came to volunteer where I work. We stayed in touch when she went back to do her doctorate. We also had a wonderful Finnish museum administrator come to work a placement at the museum where I work. It was part of an exchange programme for professionals.
in reply to Fred

@Fredatron We do love our academic exchanges! I've had classmates who went to Germany for two months, and multiple who went to finish their studies abroad, because their specialisation had much better opportunities in Vienna, Glasgow, some small town in France that had a museum of something... It's really quite nice that they could just do that, and got support from the government for it!

But yes. Another tick on the absolutely everywhere column. 😄

@Fred
in reply to Sini Tuulia

I am of forest finn heritage (Norway), and we are an official minority in .no, in Sweden we are classed under the minority Sverigefinnar. But I read, this Wednesday actually, that there's 1.7 million people in Sweden alone who are descended from the metsäsuomalaiset who left in the 1500s, not counting other Finnish heritage. That's a lot of people. Though I guess most of them aren't aware, the awareness is lower here than in Norway where it was an identity thing when I grew up.
in reply to StarSloth

@silhelm 1.7 million! That's a lot. That's... By my maths some third of the number of existing Finns inside Finland today!

Yeah, the 1500s are a bit far away for most people probably, though culture, customs and words will definitely be able to survive that long. According to Wikipedia (had to check) the finlandssvenska moved over here between 1100-1300, en masse, and have been moving in as families ever since whenever. But they're definitely still a different identity and whole other vibe even all that time later, even apart from the language. It's pretty neat.

in reply to Sini Tuulia

I brought my mother over to Finland to show her some things I had noted when I lived there, and she was tearing up because she recognised things like (poor farmer type) building traditions and such as being her culture and different from the Norwegian equivalent. I could see it, recognise it, but I don't think I felt quite as other as she seems to have felt at times. The language was unfortunately lost - but survived until the 1980s. It had totally split off from modern Finnish, ofc.
in reply to StarSloth

@silhelm Maatalo and mökki design! It's cool how the basic farmer's or forest cottage is unique enough that though it's basically the same, they do feel and look different.

Whatever else has recently gone on with the world, I think the internet in general has made people much more aware and often accepting of different cultures. All the languages homogenising feels like a loss, though. I kind of know two different dialects, my local and the one my mother grew up with, and though the latter especially has a wide variety of words nobody else understands, my own dialect has sort of porridged together with every other one on TV and people on the internet. And that's just dialect, not a whole offshoot language!

in reply to Sini Tuulia

Years ago, I worked with a Finnish woman in a human rights organisation; not so many years ago one of our kickboxing club members was a woman from Finland (she hits hard - very hard!); and currently one of my classmates in a post-graduate course is a guy from Finland (of Swedish heritage) - all in Dublin, Ireland!

But it could be a bit like us lot - there's hardly any Irish people (4-5m million or so?), but we seem to be everywhere on the planet!

in reply to My Joan Private Idaho 💐😷

@clickhere I keep forgetting there's not that many Irish people, either! It does seem like there are more than that, but... Yeah. The 1800s were rough, and even thinking about how the potato famine was handled makes me want to time travel to punch an Englishman, and I'm not even Irish!

But yes. 😄 Multiple Finnish people in Dublin!

in reply to Sini Tuulia

they are everywhere! Somehow i have 4 of them in my ffxiv fc (a guild basically) and they get more miraculously 😂
in reply to Blahmage

@Blahmage 😆 Four! It's hard to get four Finnish people to do anything together in Finland, somehow there's four in a guild? Ah.
in reply to Sini Tuulia

I can't beat 4 but some years ago I spent Christmas Day here in Ireland with 3 Finns (2 Finns and 1 Sámi). It was my best Christmas ever.

There are about 1,000 Finns here in total. They gather for a big fair once a year in December at a Luthern church in Dublin. It's more a social than religious event. @Blahmage facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=98…

in reply to Jim Daly

@psneeze @Blahmage Facebook is a terrible company and also doesn't let anyone not logged in look at its content! If you're sharing something from there, it would be better to take a screenshot, so anyone boycotting it can actually see what you're looking at. 😄

Anyway, that's a pretty solid amount of people, that's pretty much a traditional size Finnish village all on its own. Pretty cool.

in reply to Sini Tuulia

@Blahmage It allows me X out of the sign in box and I can view the page. (I don't have a Facebook account either). Anyway, here is the text of the page.
in reply to Jim Daly

@psneeze Oh, that looks quite lovely! (And thank you for the effort to share the screenshot, too!)

A bit funny to me that rye bread is listed under delicacies as it's a staple food here, but I suppose it costs a lot lot more if the rye flour or bread isn't locally produced? I once dug up shopping details for a friend in the US, to see if she could even try the authentic local glögi... And it was a fully 40 dollars for a supermarket carton that is less than 3€ here. Delicacies, indeed. 😄

in reply to Sini Tuulia

Rye bread has never been popular here at all. It is available in some stores these days but is sold as a healthy and/or organic food rather than a staple.

$40 versus €3 is an incredible price difference. I would love to be in the glögi export business. 😃

in reply to Jim Daly

@psneeze That's some wild profit margins if you felt like carting around a lot of what is essentially juice and spices! People could absolutely just make it themselves, but if they want that specific nostalgic recipe...
in reply to Sini Tuulia

"average Finn has 100 international friends" factoid actualy just statistical error. average Finn has 10 international friends. Online Jyri, who lives on the internet and has 500,000,000 international friends is an outlier adn should not have been counted

Sini Tuulia reshared this.

in reply to Mx Amber Alex (she/it)

@amberage 😆 Jyri, you statistical monkey wrench, you!

Gosh heck, anecdotally as a child every single child in my class had at least one pen pal in Namibia, sometimes three, because we did a pen pal exchange with a school over there...

in reply to Sini Tuulia

Grew up in northern Germany, and one of my childhood friends was half Finnish. He'd move back and forth between both countries quite a lot and was equally comfortble in both cultures and languages. When I was in my early 20s, I visited his sister's family on their little farm in Finland together with him. That's when I really found my appreciation for Finnish culture, it's not the same when you're just a tourist.
in reply to Souvlaki Space Station

@anarchiv The quiet normal places tend to be nice, though you have to kind of try to not find a place like that if you're visiting Finland. Even the biggest cities are not so large you couldn't just walk off into some woods or the sea when wanting to 😂 It's pretty great.
in reply to Sini Tuulia

Yup, it's even more extreme than in Norway, where I live now. That place was really far out though, in the middle of bumfuck nowhere.
in reply to Sini Tuulia

the open source geography conferences I go to have a large Finnish contingent, who are usually the life and soul of the party! Open source seems to be really well supported in government and education.
in reply to Sini Tuulia

I'm not sure you have to get around - I definitely knew the two Finns I worked with for years, we were friendly above the needs of the workplace - but I was never in the same room as either of them. Never in the same country, to the best of my knowledge.
in reply to Sini Tuulia

Yes, I do. A friend of mine went to Finland as an au pair and ended up with a Finnish husband. 😀 They're living here in Germany now.
When I visited Estonia, I met Finnish people who lived there, as well. The language barrier does not seem to be very high between Finnish and Estonian.
in reply to OutoftheBlueDD

@OutoftheBlueDD I think it might be that the average Estonian is much better at Finnish than the average Finn is at Estonian, because good grief do we love to go vacation over there... Not just because it's cheaper, but also because it's beautiful and has a lot of history and culture! But also because it's cheaper.

Listening to spoken Estonian feels like your brain is a bit scrambled and you're just missing what people are saying, while feeling like you really should be understanding it... Reading it is like: "Oh! Oh I get why that word is like that!"

in reply to Sini Tuulia

Estonian is a really cute language somehow. 😀 I love the country, too, and hope to visit again in the future.
in reply to OutoftheBlueDD

@OutoftheBlueDD My favourite Estonian word is "maasikakoorejäätis" aka "mansikkakermajäätelö" aka strawberry ice cream made from cream. It has some of the same sounds, but also "maasika" is earth pig aka wild boar in Finnish!
This amused me a great deal as a kid, and it just sounds nice to say.

I've only been once, but it was so pretty!

in reply to Sini Tuulia

A colleague of mine has a Finnish mother (and all the double vocals in his first name to prove it) and my son wanted to do his master in Finland but didn't get into the program. It would have been a great reason to travel there. Not that I can't find other reasons ... Things like watching polar lights.
in reply to FanCityKnits 🇺🇦🧶

@FanCityKnits Oh, I'm sorry for your son! It's not a perfect country by any means, and they've really really been cutting down on the support structures and benefits for students (especially international ones) but every uni student from abroad have said they really enjoyed it here? When I was younger it was fairly common for any house party with university student age people to have one to five students from elsewhere attend, and everybody would just switch to English when talking to them...
in reply to Sini Tuulia

It was a long shot - a few hundred applications for a handful of slots. He got into second round of the application process which was a great success in itself.

Game design is very appealing to young men.

He got a place for a similar program somewhere else and is happy.

But the whole thing put Finland definitely on our travel list, so something good came from it.

in reply to Sini Tuulia

My parents were Finnish but I wasn't born there so I'm not.

But, a colleague is Finnish!

in reply to Sini Tuulia

I have Swedish family, and so most of the Finnish people I've known have been in context of the broad Scandi/Nordic diaspora. Even after moving far from my childhood home with big Nordic immigrant communities, we wound up in another place with strong Nordic presence. Our fave coastal town still has a big Finnish-American community, and a new park for the collective heritage!
in reply to Anne Deschaine

@aehdeschaine There have been multiple times when there was famine or other misery, and thousands and thousands of Finns moved far away... Or closer by, to Sweden especially. It's always fun to see the flags and such in different places, even so many generations later.

At one point I watched some Canadian man on YouTube talk about his Finnish heritage and about some festival/fair he and his family went to. He himself couldn't speak much Finnish, but looked as Finnish as a man can look, and the festival clips were just... Bizarre in a sort of "no but the trees are wrong??" way that messed with my brain before I got used to it. 😆

in reply to Sini Tuulia

I bet!! I still remember first seeing my dad's extended family. My sister looks a lot like my mom, while I got more of the Swedish but with my coloring a bit more complicated. But I walked in that room and was like, holy hell, all these people are related and they are related to my dad and they are SWEDISH. It was wild, like a kneejerk shock into my bones.

It is funny, because by my gen, we were very Swedish-AMERICAN. Not sure our ancestors would recognize or not!

in reply to Anne Deschaine

Oh, and I totally get the landscape thing. My family came from that part of southern Sweden that is all farms and sometimes Denmark, so I absolutely get why they ended up in the Midwest US. And I also get why immigrants from sea-centered cultures would wind up out here in the Pacific Northwest! Transferable skills and almost-but-not-quite-the-same-as-home geography...
in reply to Anne Deschaine

@aehdeschaine Sagely nodding.
It's really pretty fascinating and complex and I have run out of words for now. 😆 I have internetted enough and must return to do more sensible replies a bit later! This is my personal bookmark of where I left off!
in reply to Sini Tuulia

No worries! It was super late for me and I had hauled myself to bed anyway!
in reply to Sini Tuulia

my cousin married a Rekikoski, they met on Guernsey, and now have three Welsh/Finnish daughters. Tolkien would be so happy about this.

I get to write tri-lingual birthday cards, which makes *me* happy, äääähh!

in reply to Nic Dafis

@nic Love that you can even guess at the original region where the family came from, because "reki" usually refers to a reindeer or horse drawn sled. 😄 Not as south as you can manage, then!
A happy Tolkien indeed. Gosh heck those kids have had access to two "cool secret languages" to switch to if they wanted to plot in earshot of someone who only speaks English...

The trilingual birthday cards is also adorable. :blob_cat_heart:

in reply to Sini Tuulia

I’m not sure how much Finnish their dad has passed on to them, but his parents have very little English, so I hope he’s made the effort! My cousin doesn’t speak Welsh, but the girls are in school here, so will be learning Cymraeg.
in reply to Nic Dafis

My *other* cousin (this one’s sister) married a Cymro Cymraeg — a Welsh speaking Welshman, yes I know that should be redundant be here we are — and although he started with good intentions, and their two dauggters went to Welsh-medium nursery schools, they didn’t keep the language once they progressed to English-medium education, the most convenient local option.

Their eldest is now learning Welsh as an adult, and is a bit pissed off, let’s say.

in reply to Nic Dafis

@nic A little bit, I imagine! An effort should maybe have been made. 😅

I'm sure the kids are likely to learn at least a bunch of the swears in Finnish, if nothing else. You're generally hard pressed to not curse on accident, even when you try not to, and they're pretty snappy curses if not by meaning then sound!

in reply to Sini Tuulia

what about the class of people who are Finnish by virtue of their immigrant parents telling people they're Finnish and don't speak English, so people won't try to talk to them in English and will talk to them in the local language?
Questa voce è stata modificata (2 settimane fa)
in reply to webhat

@webhat I don't understand the question? If they live in Finland and consider it home, they're Finnish!
in reply to Sini Tuulia

I did know Finnish people once, but they were of my Estonian grandmother's generation so they're no longer around...
in reply to Mark Asser

And I forgot the Korhonen kids at high school. It's been nearly 40 years since I saw any of them.
in reply to Sini Tuulia

@MarkAsser I won’t share the surname because it’s not that big a town, but it ends in “”ainen” and has a double consonant..
in reply to Sini Tuulia

Apart from you I know at least 3 Finnish people who live in Finland, 1 or 2 (one may be Estonian) who don't, and 1 who is originally German but is now for all intents and purposes Finnish (*waves to julia*)
in reply to Sini Tuulia

there is a finnish family in the apartment block I live in. But I have very little contact with most of the people living in this house. I only assume they are Finnish because they put Christmas decorations in Finnish on their door, and the name sounds Finnish.
Otherwise my earth science teacher in 5th and 6th grade demanded we greet him in Finnish at the beginning of every lesson. To this day I don't know way, AFAIK he was not Finnish
in reply to Sini Tuulia

even here in this small city (pop. <50,000) one of my closest friends is Finnish! Wherever we are, we Scandis seem to find one another and stick together :) 🇫🇮❤️🇸🇪
in reply to Sini Tuulia

Happy to have been part of a Dutch choir to do a mixed 🇳🇱 🇫🇮 performance series in Kajaani in 2019 😊
in reply to Vincent 🌻🇪🇺

@photovince Oh Kajaani, perhaps not the most exotic location, but alright! I've photographed a wedding or two there, I think.
in reply to Sini Tuulia

We were outside the town, on a custom built stage on the edge of the lake in Paltaniemi. Beautiful -slow- sunsets over the water during the performance…

Anyway, having only been in the south of Finland once before, this was very exotic for me 😄

in reply to Sini Tuulia

Do you mean knowing them in person, or just being aware of some individual people? Dutch friends of mine live in Finland and I have met some of their friends. I follow some Finns on Instagram, but to say that I really “know” any of these people … no.
in reply to Arthur van der Harg

@ArtHarg Even just beyond the basic level of "Oh yeah, that's Matti, I met him in a party once, a nice man" or "once went to class with this Finnish person who always shared their notes with me" applies here!

Even being aware of us is kind of remarkable since we're not incredibly numerous!

in reply to Sini Tuulia

You’re not numerous, no, but Finland produces some of the best metal bands around. Just like Iceland, actually, who are even less numerous!
in reply to Arthur van der Harg

@ArtHarg In my youth I travelled to Tuska to see a dozen to two dozen of them at a time, before it got way too expensive and the band selection went a bit... There also used to be multiple metal bars in my city, and it was always fun to witness the metalhead karaoke!
in reply to Sini Tuulia

About 20 years ago I worked with a woman of Finnish ancestry. At the time I was the administrative assistant in the IT department, so it was my task to request network logins and email accounts from the national office. When I received her information from HR I recognized her last name as Finnish, which surprised her; but I'm of Swedish ancestry and an ice hockey fan.

If we were allowed to check more than one item, I also know you virtually.

in reply to Sini Tuulia

My great grandfather emigrated from 🇫🇮 to 🇸🇪 and then to 🇳🇴.

He was from Honkavaara.

in reply to Sini Tuulia

Me neither.

As far as I understand they where extremely poor and had to send his niece to Russia as a maid, only 14 years old.

in reply to Sini Tuulia

There's you! 😅 But I haven't met any Finnish people offline as far as I know. (Then again, I'm a recluse, so I don't get around too much.)
in reply to Julia

@jtheseamstress Here I am! I count!

People's lives can be online so much that I definitely count having conversations and interacting online as knowing someone, if there's enough of it. 😄 Heck, there's people I've known all my life in physical life that I've spoken ten times with and 20 times less the amount as many people online...

in reply to Sini Tuulia

My mum is Finnish, I grew up bilingual in Oslo, now live in London, and know several Finnish people here. The most diverse one has one Iranian and one Finnish parent, grew up in Italy, and has a Hungarian spouse.
in reply to ilmari

@ilmari Just chuckling with delight at how you and those people in one room could be an international panel all on your own! Love it.
in reply to Sini Tuulia

I played a Facebook RPG/army style game. For some reason, my guild was full of Scandinavian people and our guildmaster was Finnish. There were lots of jokes about Finnish culture and I ended up buying the Finnish Nightmares comoc book
in reply to Sini Tuulia

I somehow found myself on a Finnish run and dominated instance just because I liked the general vibe of the owner (shoutout @rolle). I don't speak Finnish, I've never met a Finnish person (that I know of), but here we are!
in reply to Croc in a Froc (SuperGaytor)

@SuperGaytor 😄 It seems like a pretty good instance! Do you see any of the Finnish memes, are they at all comprehensible to you?
in reply to Sini Tuulia

sometimes I can get the general vibe but there's probably a lot of cultural nuance that's lost on an Australian even if you translate the text.
in reply to Sini Tuulia

Worked for UPM Kymmene for about 8 years, a Finnish-owned paper and forestry company.
in reply to cybervegan

@cybervegan "Production in 11 countries..." Oh wow, I didn't even know that. It's just sometimes in the news as sort of a background radiation of the forestry industry. Forestry has been pretty contentious as of late, the people deciding have decided to ignore the scientists once again!
in reply to Sini Tuulia

Yeah, I know. Back in the late 90's when I started working for them, they appeared pretty "green", but in retrospect, it was mostly greenwash.

The Finns I worked with were interesting people though. I liked their directness and matter-of-fact thinking (I'm Autistic).

in reply to cybervegan

@cybervegan Well. I guess they still are pretty green compared to a lot of companies, but that's a very low bar, and they could definitely do better.

I do wonder if there is something about the culture, that a lot of autistic and ADHD traits are seen as completely normal, at least culturally? In person you might find someone a bit strange, but in literature you'd not blink twice at a man who walks into the woods, knows all the birds, hates talking to anyone and looking them in the eye, and will get upset if you touch his things or make loud noises. And in the same story, that man is just left to do what he likes, and what he likes is sitting in the quiet of the woodshed and whittling all day! No fuss. 😄

in reply to Sini Tuulia

In addition of being Finnish people, I know a person originally from Washington state in US who is of Finnish heritage. And from whom I first heard about the great traditions of Saint Urho's day. She was very confused when no-one else here had even heard of it and only after that found out how it became to be.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Ur…

PS. She didn't stop celebrating St. Urho's, but keeps telling about it to everyone and inviting them over every year, because it fun.

Questa voce è stata modificata (2 settimane fa)
in reply to Walop

@Walop Oh, I'd read about that before and then forgotten! Ah, fantastic nonsense. Absolutely why not! 😂
in reply to Sini Tuulia

I say no, because there is nobody I know - as in have actually met in person - who I know is Finnish.

There are probably those who have some lineage that I don't know about. And there are people like you whom I "know" online. Although I didn't actually remember that you were Finnish - so if someone else had asked I would have said no.

in reply to Schroedinger

@SteveClough I don't post a lot of Finnish, not in content or in the language, so it's easy enough to forget unless one immediately clocks my name as Finnish!
in reply to Sini Tuulia

Great country, great people. I spent a very happy year - 1986 - teaching English in Finland. Sadly the only Finns I kept in touch with have since died or moved to other countries.
in reply to maloki 🍍:ghostbat:

@maloki Yaay a Finn!

Lol, there's only a stable 25% of people responding who have never properly met a Finnish person, out of 850 people from all over. Wild!

in reply to Sini Tuulia

@Sini Tuulia I've met in person two Finns, in both cases we aren't really *in contact*, but sporadically interact online.

Neither of them lived in Finland at the time, nor in the same country I live in.

One of them is the one who taught me how to draft corsets (and gave me the right tips on how to make them), and a few years later sold me a significant part of my current stash of corset materials (thanks!), although this latter part happened through a mutual friend who did the delivery.

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

@valhalla Related but not: Last night, instead of sleeping, I was thinking about making a new corset. A lighter, underbust one, maybe out of linen twill... 😶
Unknown parent

Sini Tuulia
@bthylafh A lot of people went to Michigan! It's part of a lot of books and novels from the time... Every character would have at least some relative that went to America or Canada!
in reply to Sini Tuulia

I am a Finnish people who is bilingual in Finnish and Swedish.
in reply to Sini Tuulia

I don't unfortunately, but this reminds me of an amazing bit of radio gold.

A caller laments that a footballer he likes is never chosen to play for Scotland.

The radio DJ tells him the player doesn't play for Scotland because he's Finnish.

To which the caller replies: "He's not finished, he's only 28"

in reply to Sini Tuulia

@AngelaPreston I have a Finnish friend I met online about 16 years ago and have stayed in contact with
in reply to Sini Tuulia

I have had the pleasure to work for two finnish companies so far. And I always appreciate the finnish culture and colleagues.

I am still looking forward to visiting Suomi. Yksi, kaksi, kuusi, kymmenen .. missät kissat on velhoa. 😸😺🧙🧙‍♀️

in reply to Sini Tuulia

My late mother-in-law was Finnish. Moved to Germany for uni. And stayed for love. So yes, I do know some Finnish folks. ☺️
Unknown parent

Sini Tuulia

I'd assume it's the free education! Anyone whose nerd heart (tone affectionate) desires it can go as deep into their field without going into debt if they want to!

(This used to be more true, also. They've really been trying to cut down on the student benefits, not raising them as living costs go up etc. But if you really really want to, you can still go through the entire process up to a doctorate and more without taking even the government supplied and backed student loan - and that's still for food, stuff and rent, never university fees.)

Questa voce è stata modificata (2 settimane fa)
Unknown parent

Sini Tuulia

@Linza Yeah, sounds about right. In Helsinki the monthly rent for even shoebox apartments (may be in good condition, in a reasonable location and nicely run, just very very small!) is about double that a reasonable condition two bedroom apartment is where I live, and three times what it is for less desirable cities with smaller student populations. Everything else costs more, too.

My mother became a nurse on the basic student benefits, went to Stockholm to work for a year, and then got the student loan, saved it... And *bought* her first apartment with what she had from both work and loan. 😆 Absolutely not going to happen for anyone these days! Friends in academia like: "Yeah I'm using the student loan to buy a used bike and some beans."

in reply to Sini Tuulia

You're asking on Mastodon? I'm not going to believe it if the percentages change much from what I am currently seeing. And there's "1 votes in total" showing up. Well. Maybe not everyone "is Finnish" but I'd be shocked anyone claiming to know none...
in reply to Jigme Datse

@JigmeDatse Yes, on Mastodon! Just in case the numbers are not current for you (as with federation they usually are not) here's also a screen capture of the current votes. It did change overnight, yesterday it was 47% knowing Finnish people and 25% not knowing any for pretty much all day, and only now shifted a bit! The number of Finns answering also went from 9% to 10%.
in reply to Sini Tuulia

I don't but after spending two weeks in Finland in 2023, I'm in love with the country and the language. Therefore I am following several Finnish people accounts on Fedi without actually *knowing" anyone.
in reply to DoryTheFish🌌

@DoryTheFish 😄 A lot of people seem to like the country and the people, slightly less people are very enamoured with the language!
I think it's lovely, but I also didn't have to intentionally learn it and all I had to do was get enthralled with the grammar at school!
in reply to Sini Tuulia

I tried to learn some basic sentences before going... it's HARD!! 😄😄

But I could listen to it all day. To me it sounds like tiny pebbles rolling in a fresh water brook. Rhythmic like a happy song... I don't know. Just lovely 🤗

in reply to DoryTheFish🌌

@DoryTheFish The syllable structure is pretty lovely and can be used to great effect in poetry. Have you ever listened to any of the old Kalevala poems read out loud, or sung? There's such differences in the cadence of the different dialects too, some very pronounced!

I think I read a comment once that said they listened to Finnish nature documentaries to sleep because the usually pretty monotone tone of voice was relaxing to them. Didn't speak any Finnish, of course. 😆

in reply to Sini Tuulia

I'll look into the Kalevala poems. The name rings a bell but, I don't think Ihave heard them.
Thanks for the tip!
And also the nature documentary tip, it sounds like a great idea! 😄
in reply to DoryTheFish🌌

@DoryTheFish It's the national epic, kind of like our Gilgamesh or the sagas, kind of a big deal culturally. 😄 But also a lot of the poems are just rad and enjoyable. Not all of them, there's a lot of murder and objectionable stuff since it's pretty old, but... The creation myth for example is lovely.
in reply to Sini Tuulia

I have heard of it, but my level of Finnish (point at the soil on a camping site saying "avoin???', kiitos, terve, anteekei, moira, kissa, mustikkakakku (my favorite word 🤗🥰), tunturi, sauna, lähdevesi... I think that's about it?) didn't lead me to believe there was a point in trying to listen.
Indeed, just enjoying the sound might be reason enough? 🤷🏻‍♀️
I definitely will!
in reply to DoryTheFish🌌

@DoryTheFish It just sounds nice! And also you can find a lot of videos and transcriptions with audio, of the spoken word being Finnish and a translation running alongside, if you want to roughly know what is being said. 😄
Unknown parent

Sini Tuulia
@Linza Oh I love this sketch... I've seen another version, but this one? Delightful how they're all just losing it!
in reply to Sini Tuulia

Despite this, there’s still differences in who studies e.g. physical sciences; for example, uussuomalaiset and women are still seriously underrepresented in many areas, and that comes down to attitudes of teachers, parents and society as a whole.

@Linza

in reply to David Weir :v_enby:

@davidjamesweir @Linza Yeah, absolutely. Culturally we're pretty egalitarian in many ways (and then not at all in many others) and I figure at least part of that has to be that at least pre-existing wealth as a requirement to exist and study isn't quite so absolute... But there's still all these other problems that we need to work on!

The current government is of course trying to make it all worse as fast as they can. It's really unfortunate.

in reply to Sini Tuulia

As Finnish people are active in SF/F #fandom and recently arranged #worldcon75 , fandom people from all around the world will know Finnish people (and I'm from Sweden, so of course I known Finnish people).
Unknown parent

Sini Tuulia

Anecdotally a lot of people make it! My mother's family was farmers, my father's was one of those people who cleaned up and redrew blueprints before computers were a thing. (Edit: to specify, both are educated and in health care, dad a doctor with specialisation.) It was and is a fine thing to educate yourself... But when the current job market is what it is, and everything has gone down the drain, it's a fairly solid career move for a young person to go into plumbing instead of uni! If they're from an academically inclined Lukio Always family, they're going to get a lot more objection from their parents than if the family is working class.
There's a lot of disdain from academicals to vocational school goers - and some of it is due to the teachers and teaching, because good grief having seen both the latter is LACKING... But also the other way around!

It's not perfect, but at least until very recently if you were born Jaakko the son of a plumber of a lorry driver of a farmer... You can still go and get yourself a masters in philology. But mileage may vary to how difficult it is, socially.

Questa voce è stata modificata (2 settimane fa)
Unknown parent

David Weir :v_enby:

@Linza These days, perhaps. But anecdotally many of my Finnish colleagues at work are from very diverse backgrounds and they are rightly proud of it.

It wouldn’t surprise me, however, if what you say is increasingly the case in Finland today (as it definitely is in the UK). Unfortunately it will take some very strong evidence to persuade the current cohort of the Finnish professional class that something needs to change.

@sinituulia

in reply to David Weir :v_enby:

@davidjamesweir I'm glad your colleagues made it but I'm still struggling to explain why the two tier education system is classist bullshit to people who think because their father was a tradesman that yliopisto isn't worth it for them.

And having seen how much Finland's professions are network-based rather than credentials-based, I can easily understand why they think that.

in reply to Sini Tuulia

half-Finnish here, of the 1920s wave of northern Ontario arrivals.
in reply to Ross of Ottawa

scrolled through the comments and but don't see any other representation of the NW Ontario Finnish diaspora of Thunder Bay Canada. There are LOTS of Finns there.

Thunder Bay is home of the world-famous Hoito restaurant, which closed during COVID but seems to still exist in some form. (I haven't been up there in a decade). It was a big community hub and continues in some form it seems.

thehoito.ca/

in reply to Ross of Ottawa

@ottaross It was a big migration! There was a lot of social and political restlessness and uncertainty, and after the Spanish flu a lot of people had also lost entire families and were looking to start again somewhere else. At least that's what I recall, might have been one of the many mini-famines, too? 🤔

It's always nice to see the community still existing after all that time (a 100 years, gosh) and with some fairly recognisable elements, too. 😄

in reply to Sini Tuulia

I knew a Finnish guy when I was briefly a student at the University of St Andrews in 2017/18. He was an evangelist for gridiron football, and talked my ear off about how deep the strategy was 😂
in reply to Sini Tuulia

'Knowing' as in 'being able to name' or as in 'having some sort of relationship to'?
in reply to helgenug

@helgenug Less "I know this presenter on the internet is Finnish" and more "I had someone in my class who was Finnish", preferably a personal relationship!
in reply to Sini Tuulia

@lavaeolus I always make sure I have at least one Finn on my fantasy hockey team. Absolutely crucial component! But I don’t know any IRL.
in reply to Sini Tuulia

I've known a few Finns who were all lovely. I studied Finnish for a while in high school and want to get back to it because it's so beautiful! 💙
in reply to Sini Tuulia

OHAI, I am using Linux, worked at MySQL and I financed Iron Sky and was invited to the pre-premiere. I worked on December 5 and 6 (sic!) with a guy from Polar Electro on optimizing their database, and on Dec 6 we bought each other drinks at the Helsinki airport before flying home. Me south, and he north.

Do I know Finnish people? Well, yes.

in reply to Sini Tuulia

actually I have a close friend born in Finland raised in Germany in my neighborhood. We are together in a supporters club for our local football team and another mate who also comes there plays the guitar in a Band called Kylmä Krypta and their Leadsinger is also from Finland.
From my point of view finish people seem to come around a lot! ❤️
in reply to Lamaskier.wtf

@Lamaskier Sometimes you make a little poll and people really really like it. 😄 I have come to the conclusion that a lot of people like Finns!
in reply to Sini Tuulia

yes. Probably cus its the oposite of the stereotipical American.😆
in reply to Sini Tuulia

@Lamaskier
If Linus Torvalds counts (which I'm sure is true) then it's no wonder half of the Fedi knows at least one Finnish person. More surprising there are people answering "I don't know anyone".
in reply to tyx

@tyx @Lamaskier Knowing more on the "have had personal interactions with and have some familiarity to" than "I know who a Finnish person is" but yes. And what do I know, a lot of Fedi might have actually talked to Torvalds, too!

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