[3rdEye]

I'm only asking for one thing, to Finns who read what I'm writing here. I don't want another Swedish vs. Finnish conflict. Please, just don't assume that I mean something that I don't say clearly.

Finnish and Swedish, which are not related, have been Finland's two official languages since 1922.

The share of Swedish speakers has dropped by a third since 1880, when they represented about 15 percent of the population.

The fall is attributed to many Swedish speakers moving to Sweden, while the emigration of Finnish-speaking Finns to Sweden and the United States had faded by 1900.

Judging from this, the wane of Swedish seems to be a part of a long process with demographical consequences.

up to 40 percent of Finnish speakers more or less understand Swedish

I wonder what this figure implies, since according to the curriculum, all Finns have to learn Swedish. I want to hear from the Finns.

Three of the country's presidents have been native Swedish speakers, though the current head of state, Tarja Halonen, speaks it decently but not perfectly.

If she's the president of a bilingual state, shouldn't she be able to master both languages??? She should, indeed.

And then, there are clear indications that the law from 1922 is not practiced, and has been overrun systematically:

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.

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

Elderly Swedish speakers have difficulty getting health care in their mother tongue, public television has cancelled some of its Swedish-language programming 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.

"It's scandalous! We don't even know who was here first, the Swedes or the Finns," thunders a judge, Charles Lindroos, whose court is due to close.

Certainly, there is a great deal of hipocrisy involved, probably on both sides. But demographically it is evidently clear that Finnish speakers have the upper hand.

I'm not surprised at tensions, especially since what is said to be a bilingual state seems to mean [Language #1 = Finnish] and [Language #2 = Swedish], and to begin with the state is founded upon two rather different groups culturally. Just look at this statement:

In 2005, Finnish-language author Arto Paasilinna, who wrote The Year of the Hare, told Kaleva magazine he believed "the question will be resolved naturally. The Swedish speakers will die off, taking their language with them."

It sounds like a threat. What a gentleman.

Originally Posted by wilpuri

Swedish as an official language is on the way out. And its about time, in my opinion. It should not be up to the state to uphold artificial bilingualism in this case, and I think it would be good if Swedish-speakers realized this (I am myself from a bilingual family).

I can relate to what you say, but I don't think that I agree fully. I'm an ethnopluralist, and rather consequential about it. Furthermore, the presence of settlers of Swedish stock seems to go way back before recorded history, for all we know, so the Swedish speakers cannot not be treated as if they were recent gold-diggers or even immigrants at any point in history, as far as I can see. But you can take what I say with a pinch of salt. I'm confident that you know more about what is realistic and what isn't.

Originally Posted by Mynydd

The more I learn about it, the more that it looks to me as a mess of uncertain consequences.

If the ethnic Swedish minority faded away or if it lost completely its signs of identity to be engulfed by the Finnish, how would this affect the relations between Sweden and Finland? Or between Swedes and Finns? And what about the Finnish minority in Sweden?

I'm not sure about this question. I disagree with how this issue has been dealt with, just like I disagree with the history of Swedish ethnopolitics generally. On the question of importing labour force from abroad, I'm generally negative. A lot of resources have been spent on helping Finns retain their heritage, but still there has been nothing like an attempt at a bilingual state, just a great many bureaucratic and institutional measures. I don't even know of as much as an attempt to deal with this question rationally in real politics. What was done was on the level of well we'll grant you this, this and this, and then let's hope we will all be happy for a while now, which is not what I would call a good approach. Tage Erlander, who was Sweden's statsminister 1946–1969, during the period when most of the Finns immigrated, was of Finnish descent. His original family name was Suhoinen.

Exactly how far back ethnic Finnish presence in Sweden dates I also don't know. We had a discussion on shared ethnic minorities between Sweden and Finland, and opinions differed on the question. What was agreed upon was that Finnish presence goes at least as far back as somewhere around the year 1600 or shortly after.