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Linus' second quote (somewhat off-topic)Linus' second quote (somewhat off-topic)Posted Apr 17, 2009 3:12 UTC (Fri) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648)Parent article: Quotes of the week
Just curious, does Linus speak Finnish fluently? Yes, I know he's from Finland, but (1) his lineage is amongst the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland, and (2) Swedish and Finnish are vastly different languages (Swedish being a Germanic language and Finnish being a Uralic language).
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Linus' second quote (somewhat off-topic) Posted Apr 17, 2009 6:58 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] His parody of the Finnish overabundance of vowels (which as you can see in the Finnish version of the wikipedia is limited to a lot of double vowels) would point to no. In fact I can understand that a Swedish speaker (where there is an actual overabundance of consonants) would find the double vowels funny.
Linus' second quote (somewhat off-topic) Posted Apr 18, 2009 3:46 UTC (Sat) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link]
To be born and raised in Helsinki and not speak Finnish would practically demand that his parents isolate him from the surrounding culture; young children will absorb a second language from their playmates easily, no matter how it's related to their first language. If he furthermore managed to graduate high school, then serve in the Finnish army, then graduate from the University of Helsinki, all without knowing Finnish, I'm stunned.
Linus' second quote (somewhat off-topic) Posted Apr 18, 2009 10:40 UTC (Sat) by kragil (subscriber, #34373) [Link]
Yeah, I also thought that question wasn't really a bright one.
Linus' second quote (somewhat off-topic) Posted Apr 19, 2009 0:04 UTC (Sun) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] Yeah, I also thought that question wasn't really a bright one. Go ahead and criticize my comment—I really don't care. But, (1) I did qualify the original question with the word fluently, (2) it's not unreasonable to assume that Linus spoke Swedish much more than any other language (including Finnish) while growing up and around family (I may be wrong here), and (3) as an American, I can think of several other Americans who can't speak English worth crap. (Of course, that only reflects badly on Americans and not other countries, like Scandinavia, where literacy and multi-lingual fluency rates are amongst the highest in the world.) I thought it was a decent question, even if it did have a hint of rhetoric.
Linus' second quote (somewhat off-topic) Posted Apr 19, 2009 0:44 UTC (Sun) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link]
The question showed a basic failure of linguistics. Anyone who grew up in the United States and doesn't speak fluent English was either brought up in a very restricted environment (very rare; even Native Americans on reservations can't escape English), is deaf, or is mentally retarded. Literacy is irrelevant here, and most of the complaints are really about formal versus colloquial English.
No matter what language he spoke at home, he would have picked up the dominant language of his society at a fluent level as a child; the only real question was that of demographics.
Linus' second quote (somewhat off-topic) Posted Apr 19, 2009 2:18 UTC (Sun) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] The question showed a basic failure of linguistics. I don't see where a failure of linguistics occurred here. My question was about Linus' ability to speak Finnish, a language far removed from the (otherwise) commonality of Norwegian/Swedish/Danish spoken in the rest of Scandinavia (excluding Iceland, of course), and the fact that most formal services (i.e. government and public services) of European countries cater to the language abilities of non-native speakers of the dominant language in other countries (substantially more so than here in the U.S.A.). But, I'm certain it's a moot point as Linus is fluent in English nowadays.
Linus' second quote (somewhat off-topic) Posted Apr 19, 2009 2:24 UTC (Sun) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link]
The failure of linguistics is that if Linus Torvalds grew up in Finland, and was exposed to Finnish-speaking children at a young age, he'd speak fluent Finnish. Period. Doesn't matter what the government does, it doesn't matter how close Finnish is to his native tongue. That's just the way language learning works, the world over.
Linus' second quote (somewhat off-topic) Posted Apr 23, 2009 8:19 UTC (Thu) by efexis (guest, #26355) [Link]
Way to chastise the guy's curiosity.
That'll quash those people who want to find out more! Nice one. God forbid the internet become a place of well mannered idea and information exchange. After all, if you don't already know something, why find out?
For the record (and without the sarcasm), both his point and curiosity were perfectly valid, the failure here was yours.
Linus' second quote (somewhat off-topic) Posted May 4, 2009 20:15 UTC (Mon) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
Your attitude is misplaced. It's absolutely possible to grow up in a bilingual country without being exposed to all languages.
I admit it would be difficult in Helsinki but I would not be surprised if it could happen in Åland. I know people from Jakobsdal who speak no Finnish.
I don't know how well versed the person you replied to is in Finnish culture but there is no reason for the condescending attitude. I would imagine you could grow up in Greenland without learning Danish, for example. There are definitively Vallonian francophones who never learned Flemish.
Those are all north European examples, don't get me started on Africa or China. It should be obvious that this has nothing to do with intellectual prowess. The question was not stupid at all.
Linus' second quote (somewhat off-topic) Posted Apr 26, 2009 0:19 UTC (Sun) by cras (guest, #7000) [Link]
I'm a little late answering, but ..
So no one in this thread has read the "Just for fun" book about Linus? I can't remember it clearly
I saw him talk about 10 years ago and his Finnish was okay. No idea what it's like today.
Linus' second quote (somewhat off-topic) Posted Apr 23, 2009 14:20 UTC (Thu) by joib (guest, #8541) [Link]
As another Swedish-as-mothertongue Finn, I'm 99 % sure that Linus speaks fluent Finnish.
There are Swedish-speaking people in Finland that don't speak Finnish particularly well, but they tend to live in the rural areas along the western coast or in the southwestern archipelago. Among the older population there, you might even find monoglots.
However, for someone grown up in and studied at uni in a city like Helsinki where 95 % of the population normally speaks Finnish, like Linus did, it's just inconceivable to not speak Finnish.
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