Finnish people speak good English, generally. So, yes, you could, but as someone already said here, you’ll most likely learn some Finnish, anyways, while staying in Finland.

Welcome to our lovely country! : )

What do you mean by survive? All (almost all) younger than middle age people speak some English, the universities and your teaching will be in English, so no problem. But do not ask:do you speak English .just ask what you need to know -BUT slowly (which is usually impossible to native English speakers) because people may not be used picking up spoken English. If you ask them:do you speak English, they will usually say:a little which usually means a lot more than you would think (in Italy of Portugal it is the other way around :their little means far less than you would think).There is some self effasiveness in the culture built in, so take that into account.

If, however, you want to get some deeper glimpses and be understood when you pronounce Finnish names, you would be well to study a little. I could teach you to read Finnish in 10 minutes so that all the Finns would understand but you probably would not. There are some basic rules -which unfortunately most of us don’t understand to tell the foreigners. 1. all letters are always pronounced 2. they are always pronounced the same way. 3. the stress is always on the first syllable. If there are joint words composed of several words like the name of the town Tammisaari, the stress is on the first syllable of tammi(=oak) and of saari (=island).

If you pick up the alphabet and ask a Finn to help you pronounce the letters you are quite far quite soon.

Implementing the above rules takes a little more than just nodding, though. Nokia is really NOkia and not noKIa.

As every letter is pronounced tuli (fire) is pronounced differently from tuuli (wind) and tili (account) from tilli (dill, the herb) and from tiili (brick). May sound complicated but really is not.

Speaking Finnish is a different matter altogether as it is not IndoEuropean and very different and I doubt whether you pick up much if you don’t pick up a book. A short introduction can be found in many places on the Internet, here is one -but if you are not interested of languages, it may be a little hard, but take a look: http://www.ielanguages.com/finnish.html

One thing that is VERY good in Finland is the library system. Go and get yourself a library card. They will give it to you in any municipal library for a few months free, even if you are a foreigner and only live for a short time in Finland -and you can borrow books (they have English ones, too). Of course you can get the school/university library card also -and even if you don’t have a library card you can always go there and read and study and listen to music. This is the net page of the Helsinki municipal library -it does have pages also in English so you can find the closest library to where you stay. http://www.lib.hel.fi/

The pages:

www.helsinki.fi, www.turku.fi, www.tampere.fi, www.oulu.fi and www.kuopio.fi – the net pages of the biggest cities -and the universities there , might be worth a look -they have English pages also.

Tervetuloa (well come=literally :terve=healthy, used also as informal greeting as such) tuloa (tulo=coming and tuloa is accusative form of tulo) ja onnea matkaan! (ja=and -and j in Finnish is always ya like in Yokohama -which the Finns would spell Jokohama and pronounce the same, the sound of j like in apricot jam does not exist in Finnish.; onnea=luck , matkaan=into the travel/journey)

You will be surprised how many students in Finland speak fluent English. The majority of the population does not however and it would be most difficult when you are going to the store and getting groceries and banking and that kind of stuff. I am an American who went to school in the Netherlands but I visited Finland several times while I lived in Europe. Five months is really not that long and you could probably manage as an English speaker in most college environments easily if you have an adventurous spirit.

most foreign exchange groups encourage students to learn new languages, even if they don’t have a clue how to speak them. The best way to learn a language is to live it. You’ll be able to understand and speak some by the end of a few monthes.

i believe most schools who take foreign exchange students in Finland teach in English, so you should be communicate easily, make friends and they would help you to translate whatever you do not understand.

don’t worry that much, you will survive.

Of course you cold. There’s many English speaking people who can translate for you.