Ralli English, Ralli Finnish, Finglish instead

Do you know that Finns are famous for their way of speaking English even though they are the 8th best non-native english speakers in the world? Famous rally drivers like Mika Häkkinen, Kimi Räikkönen, Keke Rosberg, and Markus Grönholm have made rally English a worldwide phenomenon. Ralli Englanti or tankero Englanti is translated as rally English. It's the Finn's caricatural way speaking English. In most circumstances, it doesn't matter how perfect the English is as long as the message gets through. Most Finns are proud of it.

There are actually 350 million native English speakers and 2 billion people worldwide who speak English as a non-native language. English language is learned at school by watching TV, listening to music, playing games, and discussing with multilingual parents. Most non-native English speakers have a distinct way of speaking English but so do native speakers. We somehow know the differences when British, Americans and Australians speak English.

There are many foreigners living in Finland who do not speak English as their native tongue. Most of the foreigners living here speak more than one language. Some foreigners are fluent in English and some can communicate using basic English. Nevertheless, we all need to communicate, tell our stories, and find information about residing, working, and visiting Finland. We will speak rally English in order to regroup, reunite, recover, and take a turn for the better.

In order to become a Finnish citizen, we need to learn the Finnish language as well, and maybe a little Swedish or Sami language. In the long term, we will speak rally Finnish. Finnish with an accent, grammar mistakes, and elementary level sentences. The longer we stay in Finland, the higher the chances are that we might forget the language of from our home country or we might lose touch of our mother tongue.

In general, language evolves and multicultural environment helps shape and advance the old language to a modern one. As we know it, there were no selfies, internet or emojis back then but we speak about them as if they were always there.

Rather than isolating members of our society about how perfect the English and Finnish language is supposed to be, let us connect and learn from each other with our Rally English and Rally Finnish or with Finglish instead.

Mae N.