Noral wrote:foca wrote:ok. let us make some changes to your statement.
Estonian independence didn't consist in Estonian speakers overthrowing Russian speakers, or Russian speaking elites being replaced with Estonian speaking ones.
Maybe not within Estonia, but Estonia achieved independence from a Russian-controlled state.
and so? Finland received independence from " Russian controlled " state and was controlled from within by a Swedish language minority. Estonia was not controlled within by "foreign language minority". so they should have been much less threatened by the Russians.
foca wrote:noral wrote:
Swedish in Finland as a ruling class had a much longer and more profound history, unlike Russians in Estonia (before 1917 the language of learned classes in Estonia was not Russian , it was German. those who wanted to study in the Derpt university had to learn German). Swedish (Fennoman mostly) made a conscious choice to learn Finnish and over the period of time to develop a separate from mainland Sweden identity.
How does this translate to Finland having achieved independence from Sweden (or something equivalent) in 1917?
it translates directly. ...the Russian government before 1917 relied on Swedish minority after failure of a half hearted attempt at Russification. thus having lost support from the Russian government Swedish speaking people have lost a preferable standing in the society...and Finland was freed from Swedish "oppression".....
noral wrote:
I was thinking more of what would have happened (or rather, what Estonian leadership saw happening) if Estonia had enacted less exclusive laws. (Again, I'm not defending the citizenship policies they enacted.)
what if what would have happened resembled the Finnish way? unfortunately it was the citizenship policy that was instrumental in language policy. first they took away the right to vote from Russian speaking minority and then they created segregation language laws which were applied to this minority. now they have a broken society with many people resenting the laws and the majority of the people of the country they live in. nothing like that is evident in Finland.
noral wrote:foca wrote:
And I do not understand why particular percentages should force some adults to bear consequences of certain governments decisions, which these adults never had a chance to vote for. And it is not me who invoked the percentages into discussion.
It wasn't me, either: I asked earlier why children of immigrants to Soviet-era Estonia should be treated differently (in terms of language entitlements) from children of immigrants to the United States, without mentioning percentages at all.
my statement was an obviously failed attempt at negation simile. the nature of my statement was that: relating to Estonia, language minority that represents certain (large) part of the society shall have a civil right to influence the decision making through voting. and if one day Russian or Estonian speaking people shall be a majority in the US
they may vote for changing the language law there . and I would not say that I know what such percentage should be. by the way there is no official language in the US (some states do recognize English as the official language, but there is no official "federal " language). thus poor Russian and Estonian children in the future US probably will be left without a vote....
Noral wrote:
Of course they do -- they're citizens of a different country than Sweden, and for the most part their social and economic lives take place in Finland rather than Sweden. And making Swedish an official regional and minority language in Finland won't change that.
it certainly would. just try to read what the Swedish speaking people think about it. it will evidently decrease their official standing even in their own eyes..
Noral wrote:
You can reply to this post if you like, but I don't think it's productive to continue this discussion any longer. I think this thread as a whole should be moved out of the Kielikoulu section of the forum, since it has nothing to do with learning Finnish, and it's taking attention away from other threads that do.
it is up to you , but what is unproductive is to provide statements " i am not convinced that this will happen" without any arguments. and those who do not want to read this are free not to. it is a free country...
