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Give me a clue

Some 20 years ago, a friend of mine, Czech by nationality, went to Finland on a business trip. At a Helsinki railway station, she had to make a phone call so she had to find a public phone which turned out to be a hard task. She kept asking people about the whereabouts of a pay phone. But people kept shrugging their shoulders without a spark of recognition at the sound of the word more or less the same in many different languages until a young man exclaimed "Ah, puhelin!" and showed her a booth. This anecdote shows a big difference between Finnish and other European languages and the fact that the Finns at that time were not particular good at other languages which is not the case these days. Almost all of them speak English now.

Sent by: Alexander

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