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The importance of consumable media should not be underestimated. My native language is Finnish, which is farther from English than Hindi. But I learnt English
by sharpneli 7y ago
The importance of consumable media should not be underestimated.
My native language is Finnish, which is farther from English than Hindi. But I learnt English at a very young age simply via TV, Games and Movies. And that’s the reason why English skills are so high here in general. It doesn’t matter that English is ”clunky”. It’s so pervasive that it’s hard not to learn it.
- programmer_dude 7y agoInteresting! I understand Finnish is not an Indo-european language, but English and Hindi are.
- ptaipale 7y agoThat is correct. Also Russian and other Slavic languages belong to Indo-European family. Russian is linguistically closer to English than Hindi, but Finnish is far apart (and is close to Estonian, and more remotely related to Hungarian). Still, as a native Finn I can get some things from Russian even if I have never studied it, because there is so much common vocabulary.
- stevekemp 7y agoI moved to Finland from the UK, and I've been struggling with Finnish for the past few years. But I find the process fascinating, especially now that I'm helping raise a bilingual child. Currently our boy hears English almost solely from me, and brief moments of TV. Everybody else around him speaks Finnish, and despite that he's fully capable of understanding both his mother in Finnish, and me in English. His speach is an adorable mixture of both "More leipä", "minä haluan jumping in puddles", etc.