HS Business & Finance 9.9.2003 - Finnish Elite speaks English

By Pirjo Hiidenmaa, Sirke Lohtaja, Sabah Samaletdin, and Risto Tainio

Finnish is no longer the only language that is spoken in corporations in Finland. As the activities and ownership structures of companies become more international, the language spoken in the boardrooms of companies in Finland is often English. Various internal memos are also drafted in English, and English is spoken at meetings so that everyone, regardless of his or her mother tongue, will get the same information.

Knowledge of English is no longer just a virtue - it is a necessity for success at work.

For the managements of companies listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange, English comes as naturally as Finnish.

Some of the most important people that company management talk to are international investors, whose views increasingly determine corporate activities. Finland has shifted from being a Finnish-speaking industrial economy to an English-language financial economy in which corporate representatives must speak the language of investors in London and New York. That language is rarely Finnish.

English has also strengthened

its position as the predominant language of the European Union, gradually taking over from French. EU experts in linguistic issues say that Finland's position in the EU is stronger than ever.

Finnish is one of the 11 official EU languages, and Finnish representatives are entitled to write the documents necessary in the EU in their own languages and to get texts that are translated into their own languages. Texts are usually not translated from every language into every other language. Instead, an intermediate language - usually English - is used.

It remains to be seen how much the EU can expand its pool of translators, if the number of official EU languages grows from the present 11 to 21, as is expected to take place when the EU takes on new members next year.

The triumph of English as the language of science

has continued for some time.

Researchers publish their studies in English in order to increase their readership, and also the number of listeners.

An internationally renowned researcher is more likely to be invited to speak at international conferences than one who has drafted a study for the Finnish scientific community alone. Studies published in English are also quoted more often than those in Finnish, which is an important consideration when applying for grants.

In this way English has become the basis of a researcher's visibility and reputation.

Finnish universities are interested in increasing the amount of instruction in English. This interest is the result of competition: a common language allows universities to attract internationally celebrated scientists, as well as students from outside Finland.

It is interesting to note that Finland

is one of the most active non-English-speaking countries to offer university-level instruction in English. According to cautious estimates about five percent of instruction that leads to an academic degree is in English, whereas the average for other European countries is two percent.

As the worlds of business, government administration, and science become more international, where is a Finnish worker, corporate manager, or investor supposed to seek out the information that applies to the operational environment of a company that he or she is interested in? Not necessarily from the domestic media or other Finnish-language sources.

Many feel that the Finnish economic media only scratches the surface and operates far too slowly. Even for this reason investors are likely to prefer the financial news of CNBC at a time of their choosing rather than a newscast in Finnish that comes once a day. Nor do corporate directors or even employees necessarily look for information about their company or its competitors in Helsingin Sanomat alone; in addition they like to read The Harvard Business Review or The Financial Times.

How large is this group

of Finns who seek out the foreign media? Small. However, the focus should be on the fact that the group is important.

The domestic media serves large readerships - not a small group, regardless of the importance of that group, or of the desire of the medium to change its content. For a publication to be worth publishing it needs a readership. For this reason we are unlikely to see new Finnish financial media, or any upgrade in what there is now. Instead we will seek the information we want ourselves from the sources that we choose.

Many editors-in-chief of Finnish magazines and newspapers have said that they use more foreign media than before as sources of information. And it is certainly not difficult to guess which language is used for deciding on the main lines of operations. The voice of owners and investors is heard in them as well, and that voice is not exclusively in Finnish.

Language is a medium

of power. When a company's official language policy favours English, then English easily creeps into situations in which it is not necessarily needed, but where it shows that the user of the language is part of a certain group.

One reason for the willingness to use English is that Finns are quite accustomed to using a foreign language alongside Finnish. Finns learn the rudimentary elements of a foreign language already when they are children. They continue to study languages throughout their school years, and study or work abroad, using English when they do it.

Another explanation is the respect given to the English language, which makes it attractive to throw English language words into Finnish conversation. The use of English abbreviations instead of established Finnish expressions suggests that the user of the language wants to show that he or she is part of a certain group - an elite.

In addition to using power

, an elite sets an example for others to follow. If the corporate managers use English it can be expected that the staff will do the same. A common language is what keeps a group together. Someone who does not understand the terminology becomes an outsider. This is an incentive for people to learn and absorb the expressions.

In five decades English has become the lingua franca of our time - a common language for more than a billion people. It makes international communications easier, but at the same time it can weaken the position of other languages.

As long as English enriches Finnish, the Finnish language will serve the Finns. If, however, English usurps the position of Finnish as the language of special fields or science, then there would be reason for concern.

If university research focuses exclusively on the use of English, Finnish will gradually lose its ability to depict new concepts and phenomena and their subtle differences. This in turn will lead to a weakening of Finnish as a language of teaching as well. At the same time it will become more difficult to describe new phenomena to lay people unfamiliar with the specific branch of science.

At worst the strengthening

of the position of English and the pushing of Finnish out of special fields and science will lead to a hierarchical division, where social inequality grows - as the elite uses English and the ordinary people use Finnish.

This kind of linguistic division can lead to the total disappearance of a language, which is what happened to Celtic languages, as well as to the pre-English lingua franca - Latin - in the Roman Empire.

The death of a language usually begins from the narrowing of the fields in which it is used.

A language lives and develops when it gets loan words from other languages. In this way Finnish has also changed during its history, and is still changing. Nearly half of the 1,000 most frequent words in Finnish are loan words. Therefore there is no point in fearing or lamenting the use of loans.

In addition to languages, the world is changing. The need for outside labour will bring more people to Finland with a mother tongue that is something other than Finnish.

The question is not whether to use

Finnish or English, but rather how to use Finnish and English alongside each other. Even representatives of special fields need Finnish in Finland. Likewise most of us need English and other languages.

We use the language that best serves us.

Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 1.9.2003

Pirjo Hiidenmaa is a lecturer in the Finnish language. Sirke Lohtaja is a consultant in investor communications. Sabah Samaletdin is Head of Capital Markets with Kaupthing Sofi, and Risto Tainio is a professor at the Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration.