As a 'bilingual' fan myself(as in I started learning English at about the same age as you did) I found this really interesting. Lately I've considering getting into Finnish fandom, but my experiences have been pretty similar to yours. On the one hand I want more Finnish fannish friends(it would be really nice to have someone you could meet up with and talk about fandom to in RL every now and then!), but on the other hand Finnish fandom culture frustrates me. (And as I belong to a Swedish-speaking linguistic/cultural minority, I often feel like an outsider in the first place.)
I often get the feeling that Finnish fandom is behind English-speaking fandom in many aspects. Like there's a few years delay before things reach the Finnish forums. And it only gets worse when so many Finns are participating only in the English speaking part of fandom.
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Date: 2009-05-04 10:32 am (UTC)As a 'bilingual' fan myself(as in I started learning English at about the same age as you did) I found this really interesting. Lately I've considering getting into Finnish fandom, but my experiences have been pretty similar to yours. On the one hand I want more Finnish fannish friends(it would be really nice to have someone you could meet up with and talk about fandom to in RL every now and then!), but on the other hand Finnish fandom culture frustrates me. (And as I belong to a Swedish-speaking linguistic/cultural minority, I often feel like an outsider in the first place.)
I often get the feeling that Finnish fandom is behind English-speaking fandom in many aspects. Like there's a few years delay before things reach the Finnish forums. And it only gets worse when so many Finns are participating only in the English speaking part of fandom.
I hadn't really considered this before...