Language Research

4. Minority groups: To what extent are minority groups in this country disadvantaged by their language?

Updated (December 2007)

LANGUAGE TENSIONS IN FINLAND

The tiny Swedish-speaking minority is concerned their language having status of the second official language is at risk.

Juhan Janhunen, an expert on Asian languages and a member of the Swedish-speaking Association of Finland, denounced at the Council of Europe in Strasburg that Finland attempts at “Finlandization”.

Since 1922 Finnish and Swedish, which are not linguistically related, have been two official languages in Finland.

Finnish speakers represent 92 percent of the country's 5.3 million inhabitants, compared to just 5.6 percent of Swedish speakers. Almost all Swedish speakers are bilingual, while up to 40 percent of Finnish speakers more or less understand Swedish.

Swedish speakers in Finland, however, retain considerable influence in society – almost every coalition government in modern times has included ministers from the Swedish-speaking Liberal Party. In addition, three of the country's presidents have been native Swedish speakers, though the current head of the State, Tarja Halonen, speaks it decently but not perfectly.

Nevertheless, the Swedish language's heyday seems to be over. The share of Swedish speakers has dropped by a third since 1880, when they represented about 15 percent of the population. Many Swedish speakers moved to Sweden, while the emigration of Finnish-speaking Finns to Sweden and the United States had faded by 1900.

Since Swedish holds official language status, bilingual signs are everywhere and almost all government documents must be published in both languages, though the Swedish translation is not always immediately available.

At present, most Swedish speakers say they need Finnish to get by in their daily lives as their language has increasingly lost ground.

The representatives of the Swedish minority argue that, for instance, elderly Swedish speakers have difficulty getting health care in their mother tongue, public television has cancelled some of its Swedish-language programs and the once mandatory Swedish language exam for university studies was abolished in 2005.

And as a result of budgetary cutbacks, Swedish-speaking police stations, courts and municipal offices will in the coming years be integrated into Finnish entities.

On the contrary, Heikki Tala, the head of the Association for Finnish Culture and Identity, does not see a problem. He said that Swedish speakers enjoy privileges like no other linguistic minority in the world, and also pointed out to the fact that the 500,000 Finns in Sweden have no such rights.

Sonia Parayre, an expert at the Council of Europe tasked with monitoring the implementation of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, said Swedish speakers were right to be concerned but noted that Finnish language legislation was among the most protectionist in Europe.

Source: The Local, December 4, 2007 by Gael Branchereau http://www.thelocal.se/9292/20071204/

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Updated (April 2008)

SÁMI SAY THEY ARE FACING ASSIMILATION

There are growing concerns among the Sámi people in Finland that their traditional way of life as an indigenous people is under threat. They say they are facing comprehensive and complete assimilation all the time.

The Sámi are recognized in the Finnish Constitution as an indigenous people: they have an elected parliament that handles their affairs, and have the right to receive services in their own language. Nevertheless, parts of the state administration do not pay attention to the constitutional recognition, says Martin Scheinin, professor of international law at the Åbo Academy in Turku; adding that they keep treating the Sámi as a linguistic minority.

Hundreds of Sámi families are involved in reindeer herding, their traditional source of livelihood. But over the years and due to the process of assimilation many of the Sámi have taken on the lifestyle of other Finns.

Scheinin says the Sámi way of life is threatened significantly by competing usage of land - often by the government itself - through cutting down forests. A central issue, according to Scheinin, is that the Sámi have no secure land rights in Finland. Large areas of land in the north where many Sámi live are state-owned. Even though the Reindeer Act protects the rights of the Sámi people, it is the government and the state forestry agency that decides about the land.

The land usage right of the Sámi people is complicated by the fact that Finland has not ratified International Labor Organization Convention 169 on land rights for indigenous and tribal peoples. Article 14 of the Convention says: “Governments shall take steps as necessary to identify the lands which the peoples concerned traditionally occupy, and to guarantee effective protection of their rights of ownership and possession.” ILO Convention 169 would require Finland to start demarcation of land that belongs to the Sámi either through ownership or through protected usage rights.

According to Prof. Scheinin, the resource rights related to land are crucial to the maintenance not only of the nature-based way of life of the Sámi people, but also their language and culture. He explains that the Sámi language lives and dies with the Sámi way of life because the social activities around reindeer herding and in the nature-based forms of livelihood really keep up the living language.

Finland's Minority Ombudsman Johanna Suurpää says the government is not pursuing a deliberate assimilation policy but the situation in the northern part of the country is not very simple because there are also non-Sámi people who are engaged in reindeer herding, and so it is difficult to find solutions that would be fair for all parties.

Suurpää acknowledged difficulties over language: Sámi people have the right to receive services in their own language but what is received is inadequate due to lack of civil servants in the north who know the Sámi language well enough. The usual focus is on land rights, but the language issue is becoming a “crisis”, the Ombudsman concluded.

Source: IPS, Latest News, April 7, 2008 by Linus Atarah http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41887

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Updated (September 2008)

INFORMAL LANGUAGE POLICY PREFERING SWEDISH SPEAKERS IN RUSKEASUO

Potential customers who want to buy summer cottages or allotment gardens in Ruskeasuo are finding it difficult if they do not speak Swedish since there is an informal policy of favoring Swedish speakers, or at least Finns who are acceptably proficient in the language.

A command of Swedish, and preferably native-level, is also a prerequisite for admission to the local allotment garden association's Swedish-speaking board. The language barrier is so high that one Helsinki-based interested buyer was forced to suspend her offer when it became clear that money was not the issue.

One dealer in summer cottage has confirmed that offers are being dismissed out of hand based on language. It seems that these cottages are marked out exclusively for Swedish speakers. They have established a presence in the area, and they are unwilling to see its linguistic character compromised.