Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

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Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Postby oico2388 » 2016-08-31, 0:38

Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland? Finnish and Swedish are both official languages of Finland. Why don't the Swedish in Finland learn Finnish?

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Re: Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Postby linguoboy » 2016-08-31, 1:11

oico2388 wrote:Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Because Swedish-speakers settled there.

oico2388 wrote:Finnish and Swedish are both official languages of Finland. Why don't the Swedish in Finland learn Finnish?

They do.
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Re: Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Postby Jurgen Wullenwever » 2016-09-11, 20:01

oico2388 wrote:Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Another reply could be that "when the border was drawn between Finland and rump-Sweden, the language border was not considered, so some Finnish-majority areas remained in Sweden, while some Swedish-majority areas ended up on the Finnish side".
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Re: Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Postby Osias » 2016-09-11, 20:20

Another reply could be people want to, and there's no one to stop them.
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Re: Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Postby JMT » 2016-09-20, 15:58

Finland was a part of Sweden up until 1809.

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Re: Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Postby OyVey » 2016-10-09, 17:54

Ni sa att svenskar lär svenska i skolan. Svenskar som åkar til icke svenska talande städer i Finland talar på svenska, eller nu för tiden mer på engelska?
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Re: Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Postby Johanna » 2016-10-10, 9:55

OyVey wrote:Ni sa att svenskar lär sig svenska i skolan. Talar svenskar som åkar åker till icke svenska svensktalande städer i Finland talar på svenska, eller nu för tiden mer på engelska nu för tiden?

Finnar menar du?

De flesta finnar lär sig aldrig tala svenska särskilt bra, så engelska fungerar oftast mycket bättre. Det finns också en del som är väldigt anti-svenska och anti-Sverige och träffar man på en sådan kan det uppstå mindre roliga situationer om man försöker prata det språket med dem.

Vill någon prata svenska byter hen nästan alltid självmant så fort hen förstår att man är från Sverige :)

Finne = person med finska som modersmål
Finländare = person från Finland, oavsett språktillhörighet
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Re: Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Postby lähettiläs » 2016-11-16, 13:31

Johanna wrote:Det finns också en del som är väldigt anti-svenska och anti-Sverige och träffar man på en sådan kan det uppstå mindre roliga situationer om man försöker prata det språket med dem.

Det är sant då många av oss är inte svensktalare från födelsen, men vi finnar haft alltid hatade ryssar mer än svenskar! Renträttende vi har också ogillade svenskarna som är ogillande av oss, blott inte allt.
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Re: Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Postby Jurgen Wullenwever » 2016-11-17, 20:39

lähettiläs wrote:
Johanna wrote:Det finns också en del som är väldigt anti-svenska och anti-Sverige och träffar man på en sådan kan det uppstå mindre roliga situationer om man försöker prata det språket med dem.

Det är sant då många av oss är inte svensktalare från födelsen, men vi finnar haft alltid hatade ryssar mer än svenskar! Renträttende vi har också ogillade svenskarna som är ogillande av oss, blott inte allt.

Så hemskt! :(
Jag har aldrig mött finnar som hatar svenskar eller svenskar som hatar finnar (och var och varannan person har ju finsk härstamning här), men det är kanske inte så märkbart här i Sverige där svenskan är helt dominerande (även om jag uppfattade finskan som vanligare på gatorna än svenskan när jag bodde i Stockholm under 1990-talet).
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Re: Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Postby Woods » 2016-12-31, 14:26

Jurgen Wullenwever wrote:Another reply could be that "when the border was drawn between Finland and rump-Sweden, the language border was not considered, so some Finnish-majority areas remained in Sweden, while some Swedish-majority areas ended up on the Finnish side".


And yet I have not heard of Sweden Finnish, even though I hear of Finland Swedish all the time – why is that?

Du kan godt svara på svenska :)

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Re: Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Postby linguoboy » 2016-12-31, 18:17

Woods wrote:
Jurgen Wullenwever wrote:Another reply could be that "when the border was drawn between Finland and rump-Sweden, the language border was not considered, so some Finnish-majority areas remained in Sweden, while some Swedish-majority areas ended up on the Finnish side".

And yet I have not heard of Sweden Finnish, even though I hear of Finland Swedish all the time – why is that?

Perhaps because it goes by a different name?
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Re: Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Postby Johanna » 2017-01-02, 22:28

linguoboy wrote:
Woods wrote:
Jurgen Wullenwever wrote:Another reply could be that "when the border was drawn between Finland and rump-Sweden, the language border was not considered, so some Finnish-majority areas remained in Sweden, while some Swedish-majority areas ended up on the Finnish side".

And yet I have not heard of Sweden Finnish, even though I hear of Finland Swedish all the time – why is that?

Perhaps because it goes by a different name?

There are plenty of Sweden-Finns (sverigefinnar), the thing is that they're originally an immigrant population and their written language is the same as Standard Finland-Finnish. There are actually more Sweden-Finns than Finland-Swedes.

Meänkieli is a different beast altogether, like Jurgen said. People up there have always spoken Finnish, but we're talking about a bunch of north-western Finnish dialects whose speakers have no interest in the southern-based Standard Finnish whatsoever.

Tornio, Pello = same shit, different country
Rovaniemi = close enough
Oulo = getting a bit too far off...
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Re: Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Postby Woods » 2017-01-02, 22:55

According to Wikipedia, both Finnish and Swedish are official languages of Finland, and I even vaguely remember having read somewhere that to get Finnish citizenship you only need to know one of the two. At the same time, again according to Wikipedia, only Swedish is the official language of Sweden, and I doubt one would be allowed to apply for citizenship if they spoke something else, such as Finnish. Also, I'm not quite sure, but I think all Finns study Swedish in school, but I haven't heard of Swedes studying Finnish in their schools.

Actually I have no idea - I've only been in Sweden for three months, and never in Finland, but from outside, it looks like Swedish is much more important in Finland than Finnish in Sweden. Is it not the case?

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Re: Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Postby md0 » 2017-01-02, 23:10

I don't see any de jure language requirement for Sweden - and if it's anything like the procedure here, that means that just English (or whatever the global lingua franca is at the time) would do:
http://www.migrationsverket.se/English/ ... dults.html

There is for Finland:
http://www.migri.fi/finnish_citizenship ... quirements
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Re: Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Postby Johanna » 2017-01-02, 23:57

Exactly, there is no language requirement for becoming a Swedish citizen, at all.
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Re: Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Postby md0 » 2017-01-03, 7:41

Is it by any chance also similar to Norway, where there are multiple recognised standard registers of the language?
(Norway and German-speaking Switzerland are the two favourite examples of sociolinguists over here)
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Re: Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Postby Woods » 2017-01-03, 14:35

Johanna wrote:Exactly, there is no language requirement for becoming a Swedish citizen, at all.


Wow... that's even more strange.

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Re: Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Postby Johanna » 2017-01-04, 11:30

md0 wrote:Is it by any chance also similar to Norway, where there are multiple recognised standard registers of the language?
(Norway and German-speaking Switzerland are the two favourite examples of sociolinguists over here)

Finland has its own standard variety, but it's kept close to Sweden's on purpose, and the two are way more similar to each other than Bokmål and Nynorsk. And of course, Norwegian lacks a spoken standard register altogether, which can't be said for either Sweden-Swedish nor Finland-Swedish.
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Re: Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Postby Varislintu » 2017-01-08, 9:21

Woods wrote:According to Wikipedia, both Finnish and Swedish are official languages of Finland.


Technically no, because we have "national languages", not "official languages". What difference that exactly makes, however, is unclear to me. The position of Swedish in Finland derives from a different law altogether, and is not dependent on being an "official" language (which it technically is not -- only a natioanl one, as I mentioned).

Woods wrote:Actually I have no idea - I've only been in Sweden for three months, and never in Finland, but from outside, it looks like Swedish is much more important in Finland than Finnish in Sweden. Is it not the case?


It must be, because Swedish was the language of government (and culture) for a long time, and its position has been slowly dismantled since then, whereas Finnish never enjoyed such a privileged position i Sweden.

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Re: Why is Swedish also spoken in Finland?

Postby Jurgen Wullenwever » 2017-01-08, 11:55

md0 wrote:Is it by any chance also similar to Norway, where there are multiple recognised standard registers of the language?
(Norway and German-speaking Switzerland are the two favourite examples of sociolinguists over here)

The Swedish regime has had a very monolithic view on the language, so any deviations from the norm were frowned upon. Nowadays, when most dialects and old minorities have been wiped out, they are slightly more lenient, but the language is still their artificial newspeak, and spelling-pronunciations are more and more frequent, along with a tendency to treat the words as particles. (And if there is some tendency anywhere for something real - then the government strikes back with a vengeance, such as when Ethnologue suggested defining some dialects in Sweden as languages a few years ago, and the Swedes threatened to stop funding them if that happened.)

Woods wrote:And yet I have not heard of Sweden Finnish, even though I hear of Finland Swedish all the time – why is that?

Even back in the 1600s, the government tried to stamp out Finnish in western Sweden. It did survive somewhere in rural Värmland at the Norwegian border until after 1900, but in most places it was gone long before then.
Chekhov wrote:I don't know about naive worldviews, but Jurgen Wullenwhatever pisses me off to no end because of his extreme pessimism and cynicism. You'd think the world was going to end imminently when talking to that guy.

Jag är rebell: jag sockrar teet, saltar maten, cyklar utan hjälm, och tänder glödlampor.
(Ovanstående var förut, nu försöker jag minska sockret och saltet, och har gett upp mejeriprodukter.)


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