A scene from Tallinn

[bellinghman]

There we were, sitting in the Café Mademoiselle in Tallinn Old Town, drinking our coffees and browsing the web, when we noted a couple attempting to order. Since pretty much everyone working in the Old Town speaks English (Estonian is a nice language, most closely related to Finnish, but the number of fluent speakers worldwide is probably less than two million), that is what this couple was doing. However, they were obviously having a vocabulary problem of some form.

And then the waitress switched language.

To Russian.

Suddenly everything went much better, since the couple was Russian, and the waitress, an Estonian of an age to have been educated while Estonia was still part of the USSR, sounded pretty much as fluent in it as they were.

I did find it interesting that the switch only occurred when the waitress had decided that English wasn't going to cut it, and that it was her rather than the Russians who did so. Given history, I can imagine that starting off in Russian in Estonia would invite a certain hostility.

Comments

[bellinghwoman.livejournal.com]

I had a similar experience in Finland last time I was there lo these many moons ago. I was speaking Swedish to someone (because I knew they would know Swedish and couldn't be sure if they would know any English) and was being given less than optimal service. Then I stumbled and had to switch into English and as soon as it became clear that I wasn't actually Swedish it was smiles all round and the level of service I received improved dramatically.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

I think the problem then may well have been that your accent when speaking Swedish was much closer to Stockholmer than to English - and the Finn would have believed you to be actually Swedish.

I strongly suspect that last Thursday, the waitress was able to detect the Russian accent when the customers were speaking English, just as you can detect a Göteborg accent in a Swede.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

No, Finns really don't like Swedish-speaker Finns either! This was muchly impressed on me in Turku which is very near the swedish autonomous bit. My lodger had also mentioned it.

It also seems to be mutual - cf the Korean women married to a Swedish speaking Finn I met in Turku who'd done her PhD in japanese and spoke fluent English and Swedish but refused point blank to learn any Finnish!