Fortunately, my journey and sign interpretation was helped by partially by the fact that I had been reading this excellent book for the duration of my plane ride, but mostly by the fact that every single person in Finland is completely fluent in English. Seriously, from bus drivers to baristas, everyone jumps straight into excellent English without skipping a beat when my Finnish flounders, which is currently is quite often since even a good dictionary/phrasebook can only give so much preparation.
Based on all the research on how dualinguality (is that a word? I guess it is now...) is so beneficial to academic performance, it makes me wonder if the famous Finnish educational superiority is just due to their linguistic capabilities. The humongous differences between Finnish and English would contribute to the amount of brainpower required to master both languages. I wonder if anyone has done any research on that...
Based on all the research on how dualinguality (is that a word? I guess it is now...) is so beneficial to academic performance, it makes me wonder if the famous Finnish educational superiority is just due to their linguistic capabilities. The humongous differences between Finnish and English would contribute to the amount of brainpower required to master both languages. I wonder if anyone has done any research on that...
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