Pakko paha?

"If there is no requirement to choose another language in place of Swedish, the fear is that a lot of people will no longer study a language," said Kari Jukarainen of the Finnish Language teachers association. "We would have a large group of pupils whose only foreign language is English."

http://yle.fi/uutiset/teachers_fear_for_language_skills_without_compulsory_swedish/7021451

Misnomers

Mårten Westö finds some curious errors in the Finnish translations of subtitles in Swedish-language films: 

Tabben fick mig ändå att ägna resten av filmen åt att analysera den finska textningen.

Den visade sig vara en katastrof.

Det vimlade av fel och direkt missvisande information i nästan varje scen. Ibland blev det snudd på galghumoristiskt, som när pappans svenska arbetskompis säger till sin norske kollega: ”Och så får vi slita röven av oss. Det är bara för att ni har oljan.” På finska: Saamme huhkia toden teolla. Saadaksemme olutta (En i och för sig kul freudiansk felsägning som varje frustrerad översättare säkert kan identifiera sig med.)

The background to the language situation

In the latest issue of the Finland-Swedish journal Nya Argus (nr. 11-12, 2010) linguistics professor Fred Karlsson considers the present uneasy situation surrounding the status of the Swedish language in Finland above all through the prism of the past. In doing so he raises some interesting points that are sometimes forgotten: the men who in the 19th century worked to establish Finnish as Finland’s national language were, after all, Finnish Swedes. Snellman, Forsman and other representatives of the country’s Swedish-speaking intelligentsia helped to bring about a peaceful linguistic revolution, but were soon regarded as traitors by their own Swedish-speaking compatriots. Karlsson also examines the nowadays neglected role of the Finnish linguist and politician Emil Nestor Setälä (1864-1936) who single-handedly drafted Finland’s declaration of independence in 1917 and also wrote an important work on the language law of 1922, in which he emphasized that although Finland had two languages, this did not mean that Finland had two nationalities: “Finland’s people are one.”

The essay also traces the history of pakkoruotsi (tvångsvenskan or “compulsory Swedish” – the preferred translation “mandatory Swedish”  seems like a bit of a euphemism) – in Finland’s schools, pointing out, somewhat drily by reference to online discussions, that compulsion is not usually the way to make friends. There are, however, difficult decisions to be made. An education minister of the Kekkonen era is quoted as saying that if compulsory Swedish is abolished, it will be replaced by another language, “and that language is not Spanish”. Karlsson believes that it’s incumbent on Finland-Swedes to keep a low profile in the current language debate, and to leave it up to the Finnish-speaking majority and their political leaders to draw up guidelines as to their situation in Finland, Europe and the constantly changing modern world.

Language talk

The debate about whether Swedish should continue to be a mandatory subject of instruction in Finland's schools, and about the general status of the Swedish language in Finland, continues to occupy the columns of the Finnish press. Ten days ago the magazine Suomen Kuvalehti devoted a readers' discussion to "10 common statements" about the subject, including "Finland is a bilingual country", "Everyone must know Swedish", "Swedish-speakers have too much power", "Civil servants must be able to speak Swedish", and so on. Judging from the majority of the large number of readers' comments, the consensus appeared to be a thumbs-down for Swedish as an obligatory part of Finnish education and society, though few seemed to be eager to ban it from the curriculum altogether. Not to be outdone, Finland's main Swedish-language daily Hufvudstadsbladet has hosted a discussion of its own featuring the same 10 statements. Oddly enough, the consensus among Hufvudstadsbladet's readers is largely the same -- no one has much objection against Swedish as a language, but they don't want it to be forced on them if they don't grow up in a Swedish-speaking household. An interesting feature of Hufvudstadsbladet readers' discussions in general: it appears that comments written in Finnish are not accepted by the editors, and are routinely deleted from the discussion board...

Shadows of Recession

The latest issue of Hiidenkivi, the cultural magazine published in Helsinki by SKS, the Finnish Literature Society, is focused on the theme of "The Long Shadows of Recession", with a look in words and pictures at three periods of economic crisis in Finland: the early 1930s, the early 1990s and the late 2000s. Articles examine social attitudes to unemployment and poverty through the decades, and there's also a survey of Depression and wartime cookbooks, and a sobering photograph of a Helsinki leipäjono (literally "breadline") or soup kitchen in 2006. Jouni Jäppinen contributes an interesting study of the tiny Baltic-Karelian island of  Tytärsaari, whose Finnish inhabitants traded with local Estonians from the 14th century onwards until the Second  World War, when the island was lost to the USSR (it's still in Leningrad Oblast). And Taru Kolehmainen ponders the history of the Finnish Literature Society's language committee, which was founded in 1928 and modelled to some extent on Germany's Der Allgemeine Deutsche Sprachverein, which in the Nazi period attempted to rid the German language of foreign - particularly French - loanwords. It's somewhat eerie and even rather disturbing to note some details of the Sprachverein's experiments, such as its aspiration to replace the names of the months of the year with "Germanic" equivalents like Herbstmond (September) and Julmond (December) - for some of these creations seem to have been borrowed from equivalent formations in Finnish (syyskuu, joulukuu). In Finland, the struggle was against Swedish influence, however, and probably represented a natural historical development more or less untainted by ideology.

Land of one language? - 2

The renewed and often bitter debate about the position of the Swedish language in Finland continues to cause waves in Finnish cultural and political life. Last week Anna-Maja Henriksson, chair of the Swedish Assembly (Folketinget) which promotes the interests of Finland's Swedish-speaking minority warned that if the anti-Swedish trend continues (the future of the country's Swedish-language television service is currently in doubt) the Åland Islands may seek separation. At present Åland (in Finnish, Ahvenanmaa) enjoys a special autonomous status within Finland, enabling the province to conduct its affairs entirely in Swedish, without the need for the people who live there to learn and speak Finnish at all.

This statement, which Ms. Henriksson subsequently modified, saying she had been misunderstood, caused outrage in the comments section of the Helsingin Sanomat article in which it appeared, and she began to receive threats and accusations of treason.

Polarization around the issue does appear to be gathering momentum, though the discussions I've read generate more heat than light. Today's issue of Hufvudstadsbladet leads with a story about Finland-Swedish hospital patients and their experiences, suggesting that Finland-Swedes demand more of the public health services than Finns do. On the other hand, most of Finland's medical personnel don't speak much or any Swedish, especially those doctors and specialists who have migrated to Finland from abroad.

Finland's current prime minister, Matti Vanhanen, is the first politician to hold the post who in meetings with his Nordic colleagues uses English, not Swedish, as a means of communication.

Svenskfinland in English has much more on all the related issues - seen from a Finland-Swedish viewpoint, of course. 

See also: Land of one language?

Land of one language?

In Finland the vexed and perennial question of the position of the Swedish language in the country's affairs continues to provoke discussion in Finnish and Finland-Swedish media. Last week Ulla-Maj Wideroos, chair of the Swedish People's Party group in the Finnish Parliament, gave an interview to the regional Finnish dailyTurun Sanomat in which she said that

the climate within the government had changed to the disadvantage of Swedish-speaking people over the past two legislative periods... "There has been a change of generation and today's politicians do not relate to the Swedish language in the way earlier ones did"...(Helsinki Times)

Last month the youth wing of the Perussuomalaiset (True Finns) party demanded (Turun Sanomat) that Finland should become a monolingual country, and that the special official status accorded to Swedish should be removed, "because the language legislation does not correspond to the real declaration of will in our country". In their statement, the campaigners said that too much of Finnish taxpayers' money was being spent on maintaining Swedish as the country's second language relative to the small area in which Swedish is actually spoken. Alluding to the growing numbers of Russian-speaking migrants to Finland, they asked if Russian. too, would be made an official language when the numbers of Russian-speakers reached the same proportions as those of Swedish-speaking Finns.

In the Swedish-language Hufvudstadsbladet it's possible to follow an ongoing discussion of the issue. Some of the contributions illustrate the intensity and bitterness of some of the debate. Excerpts:

• Our history with Sweden was horrible and vile. We don't want a Little Sweden here in Finland any more.
  

• It is simply that there is no need to learn Swedish. Everywhere in Scandinavia one can get by with Finnish and English.

• Swedish Finland (Svenskfinland) - that's not something one talks about in Finnish. What is it , exactly? 
  

• In the metropolitan area nearly all Finland-Swedes speak "proper" Finnish. But there must be something wong with  the Swedish teaching in Finnish schools, because Finns don't learn Swedish? The majority of Swedish teachers in Finnish schools don't know Swedish well enough and are also incapable of inspiring their students to learn it.

Note: to an outsider, it would seem that from a literary point of view Finland is quite clearly a land of two languages - the Finland-Swedish contribution is at least equal to the Finnish one. But seen in contemporary social and general cultural terms, the situation appears to be different. Is it a case of one Finland for the Finns, and another for the rest of the world?

Dangerous English

Helsingin Sanomat's English-language edition has been running a series on "Tankero-English" and its use by Finnish politicians down the years. Examples of Tankero:

"Kän piipöl ket laisens tu ö händ kan sou frii laik it häs biin juusd in Finland."

"Sou aim veri kritikal foor tis gan, tiis händkans.”

Anu Nousiainen asks:

If English is today to be understood as a motley collection of "Englishes", then is it not a bit over the top to demand that Finnish politicians should have the sort of language skills a native speaker is blessed with by accident of birth?