What languages do you speak?

[Manephelien]

Finnish - Mervi and I are compatriots.

Swedish - I'm a bilingual Finn, my father's first language was Swedish and I went to Swedish-speaking schools from kindergarten to university. I put Finnish first simply because it literally is my mother tongue. That said, I speak Swedish and my husband speaks Finnish to our son.

English - I've spoken it since I was 12, when my parents worked for a year in the UK. When I was about 20 and started going online more, I made the conscious decision to switch to American spelling, it's more consistent than the UK variety...

French - as a student I spent 6 months in the country, at an exclusively French-speaking university, i.e. they didn't offer any courses in English. I'm not as fluent anymore, lack of practice.

Spanish - I worked in a customer-service environment for 6 months as a student. I'm not very fluent currently, lack of practice.

German - very basic skills.

I can read Danish and Norwegian pretty fluently, but understanding the spoken languages, particularly Danish, is a different matter.