Last week's episode of All Points North — which asked if using English only is enough to live in Finland — received a huge amount of audience feedback and eventually to a wider discussion about how Finnish is taught to adult foreigners in Finland.
Although appreciative of the opportunity to learn the language, many who move here as adults say that more could be done by educational institutes and wider Finnish society to help the newcomers master the language.
"The bottom line is that Finns don't know how to teach Finnish to foreigners, especially English language speakers," an APN listener that holds a PhD in Educational Technology, Angela Koponen, said.
University of Jyväskylä postdoctoral researcher Katharina Ruuska told APN that the Finnish language's fearsome reputation can often demotivate new learners right from the start.
"I think it's problematic when this idea is perpetuated more broadly, and by Finnish people as well, as if it were an impossible thing to do, and I think it creates an unnecessary boundary around the language," Ruuska said.
You can listen to the full podcast using the embedded player here, via Yle Areena, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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The interminable search for internships
APN also hears about the struggles many international students face in Finland when trying to secure a work placement post, especially as these internships are usually mandatory in order for the student to graduate.
University of Helsinki master's student Weronika Krupa from Poland spent six months looking for an internship place.
"It wasn't said specifically [by the companies] that we chose a Finnish speaker over you, because I don't think they can say that. But for international students that don't speak Finnish I think that's kind of your first guess," Krupa said.
Different worlds
With Finland's biggest film festival — the edgy and sometimes controversial Love and Anarchy — about to kick off in Helsinki, APN also hears from Irish-Finnish filmmaker and former Yle News colleague, Donagh Coleman, about his documentary film Tukdam - Between Worlds.
"The focal point of the film is this really amazing Tibetan Buddhist tradition of dying in meditation, known as Tukdam, where the meditators die in a very consciously controlled way," Coleman explained, adding that the film seeks to show the conflict between two very different world views.
First launched in 1988 with an initial focus on films from Japan and Hong Kong, Love and Anarchy aims to bring "inventive, controversial and visually stunning new films" to Finnish audiences from all over the world.
Join the discussion
This week's show was presented by Ronan Browne and Veronica Kontopoulou. The sound engineer was Anders Johansson.
If you have any questions or would like to share your thoughts, contact us via WhatsApp on +358 44 421 0909, on our Facebook or Twitter accounts, or at yle.news@yle.fi and allpointsnorth@yle.fi.
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