Helsinki Mayor Juhana Vartiainen has been thinking of Helsinki-the Finnish capital as an English-language city to attract more foreign workers and respond to the city’s and country’s labor shortages.
According to the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper, Vartiainen has said that “Helsinki could call itself an English-speaking city, where people who speak English wouldn’t need to speak Finnish or Swedish.”
Mayor Vartiainen said this requirement could also be relaxed to attract more foreign workers that would certainly make it easier for foreigners.
In Finland, all public-sector companies in Finland require employees to speak both Finnish and Swedish. This has created the worst labor shortages in the health and social sectors and in the restaurant business.
Finland’s two main official languages are Finnish and Swedish. About 5% of Finns speak Swedish as their native tongue mainly on the western and southern coasts, according to government information.
A survey last year found that almost half of companies in Finland that suffer from labor shortages want their foreign employees to speak native-level Finnish.
Thus, taking reference of the country’s deep labor shortage, the mayor who was elected to office only last month said that it had become apparent “very slowly to the political consciousness that we need employment-based immigration.”
The mayor also said that the English-language education in kindergarten and primary schools should be expanded, something that has to be decided at the national level.
As per the reports of the Finland Chamber of Commerce, three-quarters of Finnish companies are suffering from labor shortages. And more than 36% of foreign students leave Finland not long after graduating; many of them cite language challenges as among their reasons for going, according to government information.
Helsinki Business Hub (HBH), which supports foreign companies setting up in the city, launched the 90-day Finn Scheme last year in an attempt to tackle the problem.
“The aim was to attract foreign tech workers and their families to Helsinki for three months. The hope was that the quality of life there would persuade them to stay long term,” HBH CEO Miska Hakala believed.
Finnish is famously difficult to learn. It has no connection to Latin or Germanic languages, and it sounds unlike most European languages. With 15 different grammatical cases, no future tense and no genders, even some Finns concede their mother tongue is hard to master.
Finnish also has some of the longest words in the world. Ismo’s favorite is epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkäänköhän, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in English.
