Excuse me, do you speak my language?

A foreign environment, a foreign language. After a greeting, there is a complete blackout. What was I supposed to say again? A nervous giggle, clenched fists hidden in the jacket pocket and a new attempt through gritted teeth. Somehow, the words emanate from the various parts of the brain.

Does this sound familiar? Travelling, international work environments and bumping into a foreign tourist in a familiar street corner – sometimes opening your mouth in a foreign language is necessary. If you lack practice, it is never easy.

Take a ride on a language carousel

At Lingo, the past year has been spent amid language soup. The correct words, prepositions, inflictions or conjugations are hunted on a daily basis. Even language professionals forget and scramble, search and find. Every day, my desk resembles the revolving doors of translations and revisions in English, German, Swedish, French and many other languages. Last spring, we also started to provide French lessons with participants from five different countries. These language courses continue in the autumn and, in addition to French, we offer 10-week courses in English, Spanish and German. More information about our language courses is available at Lingo’s online store.

The language selection is also complemented by our most recent reinforcement, Lu Johansson, who will start working for Lingo as Project Assistant.

Meet Lucy and read her thoughts about doing business with the Chinese (in Finnish). Nowadays in the office, you can hear Finnish, English and Chinese with sprinkles of French, Spanish, German and Swedish from time to time!

I remember pondering a year ago how I could increase foreign-language chitchat and practice in my own life, particularly in English and French, as email communication tends to completely bulldoze face-to-face meetings. I am happy to notice I have succeeded in this and I welcome you, too, to this happy carousel of languages!

– Miia Virtanen

Kieliasiaa – Language Matters is a collection of topical language issues published in Lingo’s blog. Read the previous blogs about the weird Icelandic letters (in Finnish) and the jeitinho brasileiro phenomenon in Brazil.

Miia Virtanen is the owner and CEO of Lingo Languages Oy, M.A. (French language and English Philology), authorized translator from English to Finnish.

With 15 years of experience in the translation and language industry, she is helping businesses to reach the world and chants the importance of language and multilingual communication when operating in the global markets.

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