--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, cardemaister <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snip> FWIW, Swedish is the second official language of Finland. > I occasionally watch FST (Finland's Svenska Television, Swedish > TV in Finland). Listening to Swedish kinda makes me, a pathologically > gloomy chap, feel a bit more joyful. As soon as I change back to > a Finnish speaking channel, my normal gloomy mood returns. > I have no idea whether that's because of the differences in the > phonetic properties of those two languages, or just some negative > emotional associations I have concerning my own native language. > But it's interesting that Hungarian that's a very distant relative > of Finnish, sounds awful to me. Actually one of the "ugliest" > languages I know. Well, perhaps mainly because of a couple of > exceptionally ugly vowels. And furthermore, I believe Hungarians > are rather suicidal, like Finns, too. <snip>
Fascinating stuff! Do Finns learn both Finnish and Swedish in school, so they are fluent in both? I admire Europeans in general for their ability to know multiple languages, while we in the USA struggle with American English...
