Finnish has separate words for the intermediate compass directions, northeast, southeast, southwest and northwest are “koilinen, kaakko, lounas, luode”. There’s no pattern to the words. I still can’t automatically match directions to these words, the only way I remeber them is from having learned to list them along the clock face and working back and forth using that.
Finnish also has separate words for the various types in-law relatives such as ‘lanko’ or ‘käly’. I have no idea which is which. I remember other people in my high school English class complaining about not knowing what the Finnish words mean when discussing in-law vocabulary.
Finnish month names don’t come from Latin like the English ones do. Most of them have some common Finnish word as their root, but ‘maaliskuu’ and ‘huhtikuu’ for March and April both have nonsensical-sounding root words and are right next to each other, so I still have to think a bit sometimes about which is which.
English has some similar ones: ‘lay’ vs ‘lie’, ‘set’ vs ‘sit’. (Actually, these both derive from a standard construction in Germanic languages that we no longer use. There are equivalents in other Germanic languages.)
It’s a bit odd how people keep citing the PISA results, but don’t seem to ask the follow-up question of why Finns don’t seem to be exactly the international science superstars having top academic performance in the world would indicate. For instance, there are about twice the number of Swedes than there are of Finns, but Swedes have 30 Nobel laureates, while Finns have 4, according to Wikipedia. (Ragnar Granit, who emigrated to Sweden, is on both lists, so maybe the numbers should be 29.5 and 3.5 instead.)
It doesn’t necessarily bother me. I know that there are some biases in the Nobels (iirc, Literature has a bias towards Scandinavian authors), and there are plenty of other explanations. Perhaps Finland simply has an atrocious higher education system, which may not reflect in PISA scores. Perhaps Finland and Sweden are similar and some of Finland’s better scores come from it being smaller and more susceptible to variation (kind of like the smaller school effect). Perhaps their techniques improve the average but squash extreme variation—like potential Nobelists. Without knowing more, I take the PISA at face value.
Now, what would bother me a lot is if a country had very low PISA scores but very many per capita Nobels. (The other way around only bothers me a little.)
The BBC article that you cited suggests precisely that Finland has flattened the extremes. They’re proud of this on one end but acknowledge that they need to quit this on the other end.
The Finnish system supports very much those pupils who have learning difficulties but we have to pay more attention also to those pupils who are very talented. Now we have started a pilot project about how to support those pupils who are very gifted in certain areas.
Finnish has separate words for the intermediate compass directions, northeast, southeast, southwest and northwest are “koilinen, kaakko, lounas, luode”. There’s no pattern to the words. I still can’t automatically match directions to these words, the only way I remeber them is from having learned to list them along the clock face and working back and forth using that.
Finnish also has separate words for the various types in-law relatives such as ‘lanko’ or ‘käly’. I have no idea which is which. I remember other people in my high school English class complaining about not knowing what the Finnish words mean when discussing in-law vocabulary.
Finnish month names don’t come from Latin like the English ones do. Most of them have some common Finnish word as their root, but ‘maaliskuu’ and ‘huhtikuu’ for March and April both have nonsensical-sounding root words and are right next to each other, so I still have to think a bit sometimes about which is which.
English has some similar ones: ‘lay’ vs ‘lie’, ‘set’ vs ‘sit’. (Actually, these both derive from a standard construction in Germanic languages that we no longer use. There are equivalents in other Germanic languages.)
Hey, I have all of those same problems. Except worse, since I wouldn’t know the intermediate directions even if given a moment’s thought.
(Going to a Swedish-speaking elementary school is probably partially responsible.)
So it’s true: Finnish is so insanely difficult that even the Finns can’t speak it! :-)
Which makes their PISA scores and educational practices all the odder, to me.
It’s a bit odd how people keep citing the PISA results, but don’t seem to ask the follow-up question of why Finns don’t seem to be exactly the international science superstars having top academic performance in the world would indicate. For instance, there are about twice the number of Swedes than there are of Finns, but Swedes have 30 Nobel laureates, while Finns have 4, according to Wikipedia. (Ragnar Granit, who emigrated to Sweden, is on both lists, so maybe the numbers should be 29.5 and 3.5 instead.)
It doesn’t necessarily bother me. I know that there are some biases in the Nobels (iirc, Literature has a bias towards Scandinavian authors), and there are plenty of other explanations. Perhaps Finland simply has an atrocious higher education system, which may not reflect in PISA scores. Perhaps Finland and Sweden are similar and some of Finland’s better scores come from it being smaller and more susceptible to variation (kind of like the smaller school effect). Perhaps their techniques improve the average but squash extreme variation—like potential Nobelists. Without knowing more, I take the PISA at face value.
Now, what would bother me a lot is if a country had very low PISA scores but very many per capita Nobels. (The other way around only bothers me a little.)
The BBC article that you cited suggests precisely that Finland has flattened the extremes. They’re proud of this on one end but acknowledge that they need to quit this on the other end.
D’oh! Perhaps I should re-read references before I link them.