I lived there for a bit over three years. Never spent any time trying to learn the language. I learned more about Finnish from this article then in three years

I lived there for a bit over three years. Never spent any time trying to learn the language. I learned more about Finnish from this article then in three years of living there. The language is so hard that I just did not see the point of even trying to learn it. Everybody speaks English and I already learned a bit of Swedish when I was living in Sweden so I figured that speaking one of their official languages was good enough (even though non Swedish speaking Finns hate having to deal with Swedish). At least for official stuff (which you usually can do in English as well), that was sometimes useful. The need to learn new languages is slowly disappearing. And not because English is so dominant (which it is) but because machines are getting better at translations. That is about to become very disruptive. Right now, using machine translations is nice when you really need them but still a bit awkward and tedious. And they still get a lot wrong. But that's not going to last very long. Real time subtitles are already a thing in video chats and on Youtube. They aren't necessarily very good yet but improving over time. Once we hit the good enough stage, Having real time conversations with people you don't share any language with also becomes a possibility. Right now you can use your phone for simple stuff but it's a bit awkward. I think in a decade or so, you'll be able to go wherever and have meaningful conversations with just about anyone you meet. I think that's going to be massive enabler for businesses.