Eddies Wingman said:
"What the hell is this blood doing in my alcohol circulation"
By the way: How much Swedish do Finns generally speak (those who don't have it as their first language, of course)? When I was in Helsinki, I had the impression most would rather speak English than Swedish.
Yeah, I figured it from Foro's post (see above). Funny how not knowing one word can make the entire sentence incomprehensible.
"Normal" Finnish people (that is, not Finnish-Swedish, who speak Swedish as their mother tongue) learn swedish at school, and it's mostly compulsory from lower secondary on (some take it in primary school already). There was a change in the language law a few years back so I'm not sure how it is now. I dropped it after my first year of high school. Most people see it as a necessary bore, not something they would want to learn. Most young people especially speak English pretty well since it's on TV, the internet, movies, ads, and so on (foreign movies here use subtitles instead of being dubbed, fortunately). Most speak it better than Swedish. I practically can't speak or understand Swedish anymore, though I studied it for four years... I'd just straight ask for English, and if that didn't help, then try to manage with my broken Swedish or get someone else to help you. For government and municipality jobs, it's usually a formal requirement, though sometimes it's just enough to say that you studied it in school. But if you try to get service or ask for directions in Helsinki, you'll probably get better results in English. It might be a bit surprising, since most things like road names and traffic signs are in both languages. If you go North, even, say, Tampere, you'll find it harder to get service in Swedish, since most of the Swedish-speakers are on the coast.
Then again, I'd still say we speak Swedish better than Americans speak any other language.
