Tongue-tied - Part Two
By Anu Nousiainen
It is time to move on to living politicians, starting with two Presidents.
Martti Ahtisaari should need no introduction. President from 1994-2000, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008 for his work as an international mediator, for example as United Nations Commissioner for Namibia, working to secure the independence of Namibia from South Africa.
Ahtisaari is seen in a TV interview with Sir David Frost.
He makes few grammatical errors and the words roll out without him having to dig deep for them. He chats naturally and rambles freely - just as he does in Finnish.
"He's in his own comfort zone talking in English", says William Moore.
Eddy Hawkins speculates whether Ahtisaari's quite strong accent might be a reflection of his having spent a good deal of time stationed in Pakistan and in Africa, where English is spoken as a second or a foreign language.
When Hawkins interviewed Ahtisaari in Oslo during the Nobel ceremonies last year, he noticed that one or two "Swedicisms" slipped into his speaking. "This is typical of Finnish speakers", he says, though of course Ahtisaari was in Norway at the time, and may have been doing a lot of interviews with Scandinavian media, and he also claims Norwegian ancestry on his father's side.
In any event, Ahtisaari gets a unanimous 9 from the panellists.
"The pronunciation isn't spot on, but it doesn't have any impact on one's understanding, because he's got the language where he wants it."
President Tarja Halonen is a slightly trickier case.
She is heard in a media session with foreign journalists prior to the last Presidential elections.
Halonen is fluent enough, but right out of the gate, there is a mistake with one of those pesky irregular verbs, and in discussing changes to the Constitution she repeatedly talks about the President's "rights", rather than the more acceptable term "powers".
"She makes errors that are archetypally Finnish and are the result of direct translations. She says 'close my phone' when she should be saying 'turn it off'. The word 'agenda' gets pronounced wrongly in the same way that Finns often do. There are article mistakes and wrong prepositions, too."
The current President of the Republic gets a solid 8.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn uses English a lot, every day.
His mother was an English teacher, he studied in Minnesota in the United States, and he completed his doctorate at Oxford University.
The panellists show no mercy: Hawkins gives him a 9, but the churlish Moore will not go above an 8+.
"He's already pretty comfortable in English, but the problem is the dead intonation. His speech is flat and monotonous. When he wants to stress something, it doesn't come across from his intonation, but instead every time he throws in an 'indeed' for emphasis", says Moore.
And what about Environment Minister Paula Lehtomäki?
Her speaking sounds very fluent, and you can make out a British accent there.
Moore, who grew up close to Cambridge, seems to be unimpressed.
"Au-pair English", he grunts.
Huh?
This is not apparently a fault as such, however.
Moore goes on: "There's nothing wrong with au pair-English - what I mean is that every tenth or eighteenth word in there sounds like the real deal British English. She pronounces the O-sounds in a very natural English way. I may be wrong, but I'd be surprised if she hasn't lived in the U.K., for instance as an exchange student."
"She's got a good attack on the language, too, and she doesn't fumble around, but just lets it flow. She actually sounds better than Ahtisaari. Ahtisaari sounds like Ahtisaari in both languages."
To Moore's surprise, Lehtomäki has not lived in Britain.
Instead she has been an exchange student in St. Petersburg and also speaks fluent Russian.
She gets a mark of "excellent" - a 9 minus.
In the case of Justice Minister Tuija Brax, Moore and Hawkins find things to grumble about right away.
"English is a language with a lot of words to choose from. Brax keeps recycling the same words. Her speech is colourless. She's like an intelligent teenager", says Hawkins.
Grade: 7+
By contrast, former Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja gets praise from both men, and a grade of 9+.
"Whoa, Tuomioja's on Hardtalk! Wow, I missed that one."
"He's good."
Might it be of any significance that Tuomioja was an ambassador's son and moved to Britain to live there for two years at the age of eleven, in the mid-1950s?
"But even he shouldn't go using a word if he's not sure how it is pronounced", mutters Moore.
Minister of Communications Suvi Lindén talks about human beans instead of human beings, and the panellists are left scratching their heads as to what exactly was the subject of her remarks to a web camera: something about "infrastructure", but what?
Lindén splits the panel with a 7 / 7+ rating.
Minister of Finance and National Coalition Party leader Jyrki Katainen is fairly fluent, but says"trash bank" when he should be saying "junk bank".
And he, too, is a bit forgetful with prepositions.
Katainen comes away with 8- / 8.
The arrival on the screen of the Minister of Foreign Trade and Development Paavo Väyrynen has the panel duo waxing nostalgic.
"It's like going back in time. Väyrynen's pronunciation is never going to get any better. It doesn't sound nice, and it doesn't sound right, but he's managing fine in there. He's got a very broad vocabulary", enthuses Hawkins.
The nostalgia factor derives from the fact that the eurosceptic Väyrynen first joined the cabinet ranks in the Kekkonen era, back in 1975, and held the Foreign Ministry portfolio on three occasions from 1977 to 1993.
Väyrynen gets an 8+ from both panellists.
The same clip also features Väyrynen's Centre Party colleague, Minister of Economic Affairs Mauri Pekkarinen.
The panel describes Pekkarinen's performance as "energetic", since the minister stresses every word, regardless of meaning.
Eddy Hawkins laughs: "Mauri is doing the cause of the English language a great favour by removing the majority of the articles and prepositions!"
Pekkarinen gets 7- / 7.
Defence Minister Jyri Häkämies's famous "Russia, Russia, Russia" speech, delivered in 2007 to an audience at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, prompts Moore to get lyrical in Finnish about the "soft breezes of history".
"He sounds just like Kekkonen!"
Oh boy. When Häkämies refers to the Sinai Peninsula it comes out unfortunately as closer to the "Senile Peninsula". And when he should be talking about "battle-hardened" troops, the strange expression "battle-tough" works its way in.
Häkämies splits the jury and gets a 6 and a 7 minus.
Speaker of Parliament Sauli Niinistö is a former Finance Minister and also served on the Board of the European Investment Bank.
Oddly enough, it was hard to find any samples of his English in action, until someone at the Foreign Ministry recalled that he had met the foreign press in the run-up to the 2006 Presidential election, where he lost to Tarja Halonen in the run-off.
"He's not terribly fluent, but he doesn't really make any glaring mistakes, either", say the panellists.
"If I were his schoolteacher, I'd write on the end-of-term report something like 'Steady progress but could do better' or 'Doesn't exert himself unduly', says Moore.
Niinistö gets a decent 8.
One of those who followed Niinistö at the Finance desk is Eero Heinäluoma of the opposition Social Democrats.
His end-of-term report would read: 'Needs more work'.
Heinäluoma gets a 7.
In the next part, linked below, one of the harassed panellists needs a break for a cigarette, and we explore the triumphant march of English with a professor from the University of Helsinki.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print in the October 2009 issue of the Kuukausiliite monthly supplement.
More on this subject:
 Tongue-tied
Tongue-tied - Part Three
Tongue-tied - Part Four
ANU NOUSIAINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
anu.nousiainen@hs.fi
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