Hello everyone,
I am not Finnish and I am here to complete my studies and leave. However, during my stay here, it has been few years now, I learned the language to A2-B1 but obviously it’s not fluent.
However I have this feeling especially recently, when I have to interact with customer service in a store, or library, even in the healthcare system ( I live in savo region) I feel like people are kind of rude because I don’t speak Finnish , they show some kind of disappointment or get frustrated because they can’t express themselves in English. I had to interact with this nurse who was quite rude to me yesterday and was speaking to me in an infantilising way, yes i don’t speak Finnish but I am not stupid ?
I hope I don’t sound rude or too critical. I know it is an expectation to speak the language in order to integrate here. But I don’t feel like Finns are so understanding and supportive towards people who are new or just beginning to learn the language.
I feel like I am offending people here just by existing, especially with the rising racism sentiment in Europe.
My country has been colonised in the past, and we have this sentiment that we need to “serve” foreigners who come to our country especially Europeans, we speak to them in their language and we show good hospitality towards them. Yet here, not only that im expected to be fluent , I feel like I’m also supposed to suppress my cultural identity, “act Finnish” .. and I know that I will never be fully integrated because I know many people of color who speak fluent Finnish, have decent jobs like engineering, and still don’t feel included either and that they don’t have Finnish friends.
I still feel this sort of inferiority here, I have been in many situations in Finland in which I really felt like I wasn’t treated with the same amount of respect that a Finn would get, especially in the healthcare system for example.
I did meet a couple of nice Finns tho during my stay in Finland. there are friendly people here for sure, but recently im just encountering this kind of cold and rude behaviour more and more. I just don’t want my existence to be a burden to anyone.