Animal Mutha — Finnish is nothing like russian. They\'re not even remotely related (er, not sure though, maybe an insywinsy bit).
Oikeastaan tämä on erittäin mukava kieli; hyvin soljuva, monipuolinen ja ilmeikäs. Ikävä kyllä suomalaisten puhekieli eroaa kirjakielestä sen verran että kukaan ulkomaalainen ei saisi mitään selvää siitä mitä kaikki ympärillä sönköttävät. (at least without spending a lot of time within a finnish speaking community or group of people).
Translation : Actually, this (finnish) is a very nice language indeed; fluent (when you finally grasp it), versatile and expressive. Unfortunately, the spoken language we use everyday is so different from written finnish, that I don\'t think any foreigner could understand the gibberish everyone normally uses. (at least without spending extensive periods of time within a finnish speaking community)
Coredweller — The younger generations are basically grown up in a bilingual environment here in Finland, thanks to the abundance of english in the media (games are also a powerful way of education in this area; me being a prime example) and TV. Unfortunately, school is a powerful way to suppress any interest young people might have for the language. Plus, I think most of us finns (mainly the older generations) lack any extensive knowledge of the english language, but I\'m sure you\'d get along just fine. Store clerks and such are supposed to know at least some english (though I\'ve seen exceptions and I\'ve had to butt in to help...). If some problems are to come up, you can always holler: "DOES ANYONE SPEAK ENGLISH HERE!?!". Or not.
Even less people speak german, and there are about... err... 4 finns (who for some nutty reason choose to study the language) and the russian immigrants that speak russian here, so that would be the weakest choice available.
I still can\'t understand why swedish is an obligatory subject in our schools, but english isn\'t as highly regarded. It\'s nuts! The school system sucks!
Anyways... Welcome to our beautiful country!
