Once I met a Swiss in hiking, and I asked him, how many languages can you speak?
He answered modestly, ONLY four: German, French, Italian and English. How about you?
I really regretted asking him and hoped my answer did not surprise him: well, English is the only foreign language I can speak…
I guess such kind of “modest” people are common in Europe, and Mindpark is also language diversified. If you come, you can hear conversations in Swedish, English, Mandarin and German probably.
Even though the official language in this country is Swedish, English is the working language for many co-workers here considering that the team consists of people from all over the world.
Besides, it is a good strategy to take English as the working language, especially if you are currently trading internationally or plan to extend your business to a worldwide level. And if you are an employee, according to what the co-workers shared in Mindpark, English will be a stepping stone to work abroad. You can even work remotely for several companies at the same time.
On the other hand, I believe everyone who can speak more than one language must have encountered such a situation: we find there are some foreign words more convenient and expressive than those in our native language, so we mix vocabulary from multiple languages in one sentence. The most persuasive example might be “let’s have a fika together”, which sounds so normal to everyone in Sweden that we hardly realise “fika” is a Swedish instead of English word (until the autocorrect shows the red underline). After all, “fika” is much shorter than “a social coffee break usually accompanied by something sweet”.
Such a mixed-use of foreign language words usually come up in the conversations of people with similar backgrounds. The background here does not necessarily mean cultural background. It can also be professional background, academic background and you name it. When the mixed-use appears, everything is conveyed with no need to explain. It generates a sense of consonance and brings people closer: yeah, yeah, of course I know what you mean because I also…
Sometimes we even find it is hard to find the equivalent word in our mother tongue which we should be extremely proficient, and here is what really happened:
“I think we should do like this.”
“Precis, precis.”
“I totally understand what you mean, but why did you answer me in Swedish suddenly?”
“Sorry, I study Swedish so hard recently that I forget the word in English. What is that?”
“Well, I can’t remember either… Oh, I remember, it is “exactly” or something like that.”
So you can see there is a bonus to work in Mindpark. Because of the linguistic diversity, Mindpark can be a source of foreign language practice (or native language consolidation😆) apart from being a place for people to work and build a social network!
For Swedes, some international co-workers here motivate them to speak English to keep their English “warm”. For non-swedes, it is also very easy to meet a Swede to practice Swedish. No need to sign up to language exchange platforms. No need to pay thousands of kronor for a language course. Just come to Mindpark and you will have the chance to practice languages with native speakers. Vad kul! Sorry, I mean, how fun!