After seeing the film Downsizing I asked a group of students what they thought the word meant. One suggested it was all about trading in a car with a big engine for one much smaller. Another thought the word for that was downshifting. So what’s the difference?...
When my wife and I arrived in Finland in the year 2000, Tarja Halonen was president and within a few years, albeit briefly, Anneli Jäätteenmäki became Prime Minister. Yet many of our students were mysteriously and repeatedly referring to Tarja Halonen as ‘he’, in spite...
It is not unusual to hear speakers of English as a foreign language loudly pronouncing the many silent letters in English. Finns, coming from a phonetic language, often excel at sounding these silent letters. Living and teaching English in Finland, I have heard no bett...
