Prentiss Riddle
aprendizdetodo.com
riddle@io.com
 
home art austin books
causes chuckles garden
kids language movies
music time toys travel
 

Search this site

Archive by date
Archive by title
RSS/XML

East Timorese schoolchildren studying, of all things, Finnish?

In an effort to break with their colonial past, schools in East Timor are reportedly teaching first graders in Finnish. Although it has the hallmarks of an urban legend (e.g., the canard that the Timorese language Tetum has a "primitive grammar"), the Finnish press is reporting the story as fact and of course bloggers are picking it up (thanks, Mermie!).

Finnish is one of the most isolated languages of Europe, distantly related to Hungarian and Turkish but spoken by very few non-Finns. It's also considered one of the most difficult languages for non-natives to learn. Supposedly its appeal to the East Timorese is that Finnish is neutral, Finland having little history of conquest, while Portuguese, Bahasa Indonesia and English all have colonial associations in Timor. Timor's precolonial languages are said to be too fragmented by dialects to serve as a unifying force.

For some lively discussion, see the link at Making Light. Participants are having a field day suggesting alternatives like Esperanto or Klingon. I'm surprised no one has suggested Basque, the only European language that clearly beats Finnish in difficulty and isolation. More seriously, a better alternative than any language without historical roots in Timor might be to attempt to codify a fusion of the Timorese dialects. Language planners have attempted something similar with other languages, notably Romani, the highly fragmented language spoken by Gypsies worldwide.

Hi Prentiss,

I really find this too preposterous. I remember that some time ago, there were news about the Timorese picking Portuguese as their national language. What I keep wondering is if they are teaching Finnish as a foreign language? Like Brazilians learn English? In this case, it would still be unpractical, but at least not as demented.

Cheers,
ME

Perhaps grappling with the endings will put the East Timorese at peace with Portuguese [despite lots of irregular verbs?].

Anyway Mermaid, I think they'll all secretly make do with a mixture of basic Portuguese and local languages. Since you ask, I got the impression they won't be learning it as either a native language or a second language. I think they'll be politely looking at the books with big coloured pictures and repeating what the teacher says. Probably a lot of the children will think it's some kind of weird arithmetic or geography lesson.

I don't know about the East Timorese schoolchildren, but as far as I know finnish has nothing to do with turkish language. Allthought it has a lot to do with estonian language.

Well, Juha, you certainly found a hole in my outdated linguistics education, such as it is. Not only did I neglect to mention Estonian and a number of "smaller" Finno-Ugric languages, but I blindly parroted the theory that Finno-Ugric, Turkic, Mongolian and possibly even Korean and Japanese languages are related in a grand group called the "Ural-Altaic". According to Encyclopedia Britannica, "This hypothetical language group, called Ural-Altaic, is not considered by most scholars to be soundly based." Sorry for repeating questionable old theories as fact!

Sisu!

This looks like a fun way to pass a summer's day: http://www.skitunnelvuokatti.fi/eindex.html

A few years down the road, the Finnish thing has taken on the status of a legend, if there was ever any truth in it.

The language situation in East Timor remains complex . Tetum and Portugues are dual official languages, which has caused some amusing foolishness on the part of miffed Australian politicians. See the "Controversy" section on the site of the East Timorese Institutu Nasionál Linguístika.