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Languages in Helsinki
Languages in Helsinki
The city is officially bilingual, with an 86% Finnish-speaking majority and a visible 6% Swedish-speaking minority. However, English is somewhat more widely spoken than Swedish, since English is a "stronger" language for most Finnish-speaking people, so if you don't speak Finnish, you are actually better off just speaking English. One should note that even if Finland is officially bilingual, the Finnish-speaking majority in most cases only know basics in Swedish that they learned in school (which is obligatory). Another fact is that the Swedish spoken in Finland has a different pronunciation than the Swedish spoken in Sweden (kind of like British English and American English) and even if Finns understand the Swedish spoken by other Finns they might get confused when a Sweden native approaches them in his/her mother tongue. Although locals will appreciate an effort to say a few words in Finnish, they know very well how difficult Finnish is and will readily switch to English.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Helsinki
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WHERE TO TRAVEL NEXT IN 2020
Helsinki Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.