OldBoring wrote:How can you guys recognise and remember all the languages that you hear in your city?
This is why I haven't replied to this thread yet, but I guess now is the time.
I'll only list ones I've heard here in Roihuvuori, not Helsinki as a whole. Also, I'll at least try to list them in a decreasing order judging by the times I've heard them throughout my life and contexts explained as best as I can. That means they're not necessarily ordered by number of speakers.
FinnishI mean, this is Finland...
EnglishLiterally everyone who doesn't speak Finnish speaks English with people who speak Finnish, unless both know Swedish and that's not a lot of people AFAIK. There are also a lot of tourists that come to the cherry tree park here, so that means more English being spoken... at least for a couple of days each year.
SwedishAround the beach, there's fairly often at least one or two people speaking Swedish. Elsewhere, though, there aren't as many judging by my ears. I'm not sure if that means the coastal parts are more upper-class or not (well, they are, but I don't know if that still correlates with Swedishness to this day so strongly), but well.
RussianAt least once every ten times I go out, I hear Russian. Whether that means there are a lot of Russians here or it's just a coincidence, I don't know. There are quite a few Russians in Finland, though, so... I hear it much more in the summer than in the winter, so it could be that they're tourists or the visiting relatives of a few Russians who live here or something?
TurkishThe local pizzeria/kiosk's owner and staff are Turkish. Since I go there at least once a month, often once a week, I overhear them talking to each other in Turkish quite often. I'm not sure how many Turks live around here, but there are at least a few...
ArabicI have no idea which varieties they speak, but there are a lot of recent immigrants. Assuming they're refugees, logically they're from Iraq or Syria and as such speak Iraqi and/or Syrian Arabic, and I guess maybe Tunisian or whatever. There are some older immigrants, too, though, so there could be other varieties.
SomaliLots of Somali immigrants from the late 90's and early 2000's. If this list was ordered by number of speakers, this would probably come before Swedish. Lately, I haven't heard as much Somali (or seen as many Somalis) as a couple of years ago, but I don't know if that means they're moving away or not. Probably not.
EstonianWhen I was like 5-10, there were tons of Estonians here for work. They've all moved back to Estonia as far as I know, but I have heard it a couple of times randomly and I think there are a few living somewhere in the same building I live in. Of course, some come as tourists and whatnot.
JapaneseMostly in and around the cherry tree park in the summer, especially when they blossom. There are lots of tourists around that time, and I suppose the relatives of Japanese people who live here also visit them around that time? I've also heard it at random times in random places since there are some Japanese immigrants, but not that often.
RomaniThere was a Romani family that were my neighbours when I was a kid. Unfortunately, they were the most stereotypical Romanis ever, leaving a bad impression on everyone... and I don't know what kind of variety or dialect or whatever they spoke, but it was probably the one that most Romani in Finland speak. I've randomly seen some other Romanis but they've almost always all spoken Finnish.
GreekAnother language I heard as a kid. There was a Greek family that lived next door, and they were the most messed up family ever. The parents yelled at the kids in Greek and sometimes in Finnish, also mixing them IIRC, and were known to beat and sexually abuse them, and as a result the kids were totally fucked up bullies... I don't want to start talking too much shit about people I haven't seen in over a decade, but it was my first impression of Greeks and it wasn't a good one. It could be that that's partially why I've never been interested in learning Greek except for occasional wanderlusts...
/
Hindi/UrduI'm not sure which variety, but I've definitely heard Hindustani at least half a dozen times, although I guess it could also have been Punjabi or something...?
Some Indian languageYeah, I know, it's kinda racist to not be able to tell apart languages that may not even belong to the same language family, but all I can say is that there was a family from India who lived nearby when I was a kid and that they spoke something with retroflex sounds and aspirated plosives. I can't even remember what it sounded like beyond that, only that it sounded funny to my ears as a child. And since the family has almost certainly moved (I haven't seen them in years), it's not like I could ask them what language they spoke... not that I'd ask even if I could, since that'd be weird and rude.
PersianThere was a short period of time either last year or the year before when I heard this practically every time I went out in the summer. No idea why. Maybe there were some Iranian exchange students or something somewhere and they hung out around here for some reason and happened to always be outside in random places at the same time as me, or maybe they were the relatives of some Iranian immigrant living somewhere around here visiting? Or maybe it was just a strange coincidence? Well, whatever the case, I haven't heard it at all since then.
KurdishSimilarly to Persian, I heard it several times over the course of maybe half a year and then not at all. It was around the same time, too, although at times I couldn't be 100% certain whether something was Kurdish or Persian (or some other Iranian language) so it could be that they were always the same people and at times they spoke one language and at times the other for some reason, maybe even code-switching between them or something?
ItalianSimilarly to Persian and Kurdish, I heard Italian a bunch of times maybe like 3-5 years ago in a short period of time, but then never again. To be honest, though, it could've been any smaller Romance language(s) that sounded somehow more like Italian than French or Spanish and I would've just assumed it was Italian and moved on; still, logically it's more likely that it was always Italian than anything else, so yeah.
Polish,
German,
Romanian,
Spanish,
French,
ThaiThese I've heard only once or twice (maybe a few more times), but definitely recognised. They're not in any order, but I think I've heard Polish and German more often than Spanish, French or Thai at least. These have probably all been tourists or whatever, so I don't know if it's even appropriate to include them in this list.
Mandarin ChineseLiterally once. Well, okay, probably a few more times, but the reason I'm listing it separately from the above is that the most recent time I heard it was in such a hilarious context: it was a couple of days before the proper hanami festival (yeah, Finns really are weebs lol) but there were already a ton of people hanging out by the cherry trees since they had started blossoming. I was on my way to see my dad, walking past the trees, when a group of people who were on a blanket on the ground under one of the trees suddenly started talking loudly... in Mandarin. Like, are the relations between China and Japan so bad that it's easier for the Chinese to come to Finland to look at cherry blossoms than Japan, or what...?
Mystery language of my neighboursThis is something I hear at least once a week since my downstairs neighbours speak loudly and occasionally yell. Since it's really muffled and stuff, I can't recognise it. It could be that it's not just one language since there are two names in the mail slot, neither of which's origin I'm 100% certain about; one is definitely Slavic, probably Polish (it's too long to memorise during the glance I take whenever I pass by), and the other is apparently common as a given name in Afghanistan but not used as a surname except in India with a slightly different spelling... what makes it hard to find information about is that one person with the name became very well-known, but even saying for what reason would immediately reveal my neighbours' surname, and that's probably illegal (and even if it was legal, it wouldn't be a good idea since there's probably only one family with that surname in Finland...) Oh well, whatever language(s) they speak, it's none of my business.
Mystery Turkic languageI thought it was Uzbek, but it could've been literally any Turkic language (or any non-Turkic language with a phonology similar to Turkic languages and some false friends with Turkic languages) if it sounding weird and unrecognisable was just the guy who spoke it having an odd style of speech or him being old and that distorting his speech. It had a lot of rounded vowels, so that's why I assumed it was Uzbek, but well.
~
I probably forgot at least a few languages I've heard more than once, and almost definitely many I've heard only once or twice, but well.
United States (United States)
Serbia (Србија)
Italy (Italia)
Finland (Suomi)