the place of Swedish in Finland.

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Noral
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Re: the place of Swedish in Finland.

Post by Noral » Tue Feb 04, 2014 4:00 am

foca wrote: National affiliation works on many different levels . Ruthenians did not want to be Hungarians or Germans , they wanted to be " Russians" (yes , most often Russians not Ukrainians). Political relation of Ukraine to the outside world including Russia or the Russian position on the question of Rusins in the Hubsburg empire played almost absolutely no role in survival or disappearance of Ruthenian ( especially if you take into consideration that literary Ukrainian is really a 19th century invention) .In case of the Ruthenian and Ukrainian languages in the Habsburg empire the polish question played a much bigger role than the situation in Ukraine ( however you may define that territory/nation). thus , at least in Ruthenian case, it does prove the point that the state representing a certain language majority if it wants can effectively suppress the language as part of national identity.
If Ruthenian speakers tended to see themselves as Russian in nationality, but they identified with the Ruthenian language rather than standard Russian, then this is another problem for the parallel between Russia:Ruthenian and Sweden:Finland Swedish.

A closer parallel with Ruthenian would be if speakers of the Närpiö dialect in Finland (known to be very different from standard Swedish, possibly further from Swedish than Danish or Norwegian) identified specifically with this dialect, not with standard Swedish. Sweden would probably still feel some responsibility towards Närpiö dialect speakers, but I doubt it would be the same relationship that they have with Finland Swedish, i.e., the Finnish form of standard Swedish.
however hard Russia ( or an independent Ukraine, it it existed then) would have tried to save Ruthenian (and they did try) they could only succeed by war ..
What steps did Russia take to try to protect Ruthenian spoken outside its borders?
Noral wrote:Of course parallels are always questionable, but human society develops in accordance with certain laws ( even if we do not know all of them, or tend to misunderstand those that we may know). if you want an example from 21 century buy yourself a ticket and go to Tallinn. there is a Russian language minority there that draws support from the neighboring Russia ( so there is internet, radio, TV - all in Russian ). but sometimes I am just ready to weep when I read documents written by younger Russian people in Estonia- this a direct result of nationalistic position of the Estonian government. same thing happens in Latvia.
I'm not an expert on this matter, but the recent history between Russia and the Baltic states seems quite a bit rockier than the recent history between Finland and Sweden, or between Finnish and Swedish speakers in Finland. And it's not clear to me that the current status of Swedish in Finland isn't making the situation *more* tense than it otherwise would be.
Noral wrote:to start with - when did that happen that Finnish demolished Swedish hegemony?
I may be wrong, but I would guess he was referring to the change that happened over the course of the 19th (and perhaps early 20th) century, wherein Swedish stopped being the default language of learning and social advancement in Finland.
Noral wrote: it has so far and I hope that they will keep on succeeding. as I pointed out earlier , Finland has managed to create a unique system relating to the language minority. it is balanced and it works for both sides. it allows swedes to keep a separate but specifically Finnish identity ( most of them dig for the Finnish hokey team when Sweden plays Finland). That they consider themselves local people , there is a very specific feeling among them to the Finnish state, especially since the times when they fought together for the country.
Again, how specifically does it allow them to do this, in such a way that any attempt to change the status of Swedish would be detrimental? What factor will be disrupted if Finnish speakers no longer have an obligation to learn Swedish, and Swedish speakers who can already fluently speak and read Finnish stop seeing Swedish versions of every official document?



Re: the place of Swedish in Finland.

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foca
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Re: the place of Swedish in Finland.

Post by foca » Tue Feb 04, 2014 2:28 pm

Noral wrote:
If Ruthenian speakers tended to see themselves as Russian in nationality, but they identified with the Ruthenian language rather than standard Russian, then this is another problem for the parallel between Russia:Ruthenian and Sweden:Finland
What steps did Russia take to try to protect Ruthenian spoken outside its borders?.

Rusins did not see much difference between Ruthenian , Ukranian and Russian identity. As I said the national affiliation works on different levels. Russia chose (at least it eats before 1914) not meddle in Austrian affairs and most efforts were concentrated on trying to standardize Ruthenian , to print books and to morally support Ruthenian progressive thinkers. not much, which only proves that independent neighbor who speaks the same language is not always the decisive factor in the surviving of a minority language. Though in case of Sweden/Finland the situation was of course different.


Noral wrote:
foca wrote:
Of course parallels are always questionable, but human society develops in accordance with certain laws ( even if we do not know all of them, or tend to misunderstand those that we may know). if you want an example from 21 century buy yourself a ticket and go to Tallinn. there is a Russian language minority there that draws support from the neighboring Russia ( so there is internet, radio, TV - all in Russian ). but sometimes I am just ready to weep when I read documents written by younger Russian people in Estonia- this a direct result of nationalistic position of the Estonian government. same thing happens in Latvia.
I'm not an expert on this matter, but the recent history between Russia and the Baltic states seems quite a bit rockier than the recent history between Finland and Sweden, or between Finnish and Swedish speakers in Finland. And it's not clear to me that the current status of Swedish in Finland isn't making the situation *more* tense than it otherwise would be.
so the parallel with Irish is too old and with Baltic states is too recent? it is hard to suit your needs. it has been over 20 years since the independence of Baltic countries. there is one entirely new generation of people who grew there and who do not remember the Soviet Union. Nationalistic governments having relieved "occupants" from the right to legally determine their position on language questions (other questions too, of course) , have created a group of poorly educated people with no prospects in the society. due to many reasons it is not the same case in Finland of course . but the move to lower status of Swedish is the move in the same direction.
By the way , Swedish was proclaimed an official language already in 1922 , so it took Finns only 5 years to realize importance of social stability.
Noral wrote:
I may be wrong, but I would guess he was referring to the change that happened over the course of the 19th (and perhaps early 20th) century, wherein Swedish stopped being the default language of learning and social advancement in Finland.
he probably was. the only problem was that to a great extent it was the efforts of Alexander II to elevate Finnish (so does "we" refer then to the Russian imperial administration in onko's statement?) . the Russians did that not from sheer affection for Finnish , but to offset the Swedish speaking ruling class. to a great extent the famous Russification was a much greater burden to the Swedish speaking population than on Finns. And it seems that most of Finns ( with exception of bilingual Swedish - Finnish learned class) stayed out of the Russification discussion.
Noral wrote:
Again, how specifically does it allow them to do this, in such a way that any attempt to change the status of Swedish would be detrimental? What factor will be disrupted if Finnish speakers no longer have an obligation to learn Swedish, and Swedish speakers who can already fluently speak and read Finnish stop seeing Swedish versions of every official document?
First you change the official status of Swedish, then you say that there is no need for Swedish schools to be paid from the state coffers and the next stage is up to your imagination.....If balance is disturbed the things may only become worse for the Swedish speakers. I can not find arguments that in such a case the Swedish would flourish -can you?
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Re: the place of Swedish in Finland.

Post by Noral » Wed Feb 05, 2014 6:02 am

foca wrote:Rusins did not see much difference between Ruthenian , Ukranian and Russian identity.
If they identified themselves specifically as Ruthenians, and spoke a different language than Russian, then they clearly saw a notable degree of difference between the three. (Is Ruthenian mutually intelligible with Russian, by the way?)
As I said the national affiliation works on different levels. Russia chose (at least it eats before 1914) not meddle in Austrian affairs and most efforts were concentrated on trying to standardize Ruthenian , to print books and to morally support Ruthenian progressive thinkers. not much, which only proves that independent neighbor who speaks the same language is not always the decisive factor in the surviving of a minority language.
I agree it's not always decisive, but the independent neighbor didn't speak the language of the minority (Ruthenian) in this case.
foca wrote:so the parallel with Irish is too old and with Baltic states is too recent? it is hard to suit your needs.


My objection to the parallels involving the Baltic states don't have to do with their recentness per se, but with other specifics.
it has been over 20 years since the independence of Baltic countries. there is one entirely new generation of people who grew there and who do not remember the Soviet Union. Nationalistic governments having relieved "occupants" from the right to legally determine their position on language questions (other questions too, of course) , have created a group of poorly educated people with no prospects in the society.
Swedish-speakers in Finland aren't poorly educated relative to the majority population, and I don't see that situation changing if/when Swedish's legal status is made equal to that of Sami (i.e., very far from being unprotected).

By the way, you mentioned that ethnic Russians living in Estonia have "internet, radio, TV - all in Russian". At far as I know, Estonia has little or no state-sponsored media in Russian (unlike Swedish-language media in Finland), and in general, I'm not sure how much Russian-language media is produced within the Baltic countries, rather than imported from Russia (again, unlike Swedish-language media in Finland).
By the way , Swedish was proclaimed an official language already in 1922 , so it took Finns only 5 years to realize importance of social stability.
In 1922, monolingual Swedish-speakers were almost certainly a larger part of Finland's population than they are now, so I can see how it would have affected stability if Swedish had no official status at all. But giving Swedish the status of national language on complete par with Finnish was not the only way this problem could have been solved.
foca wrote:he probably was. the only problem was that to a great extent it was the efforts of Alexander II to elevate Finnish (so does "we" refer then to the Russian imperial administration in onko's statement?) . the Russians did that not from sheer affection for Finnish , but to offset the Swedish speaking ruling class. to a great extent the famous Russification was a much greater burden to the Swedish speaking population than on Finns. And it seems that most of Finns ( with exception of bilingual Swedish - Finnish learned class) stayed out of the Russification discussion.
So, perhaps Onko left out the role of the Tsarist government in promoting Finnish's status. Why is this omission significant to the discussion of Swedish's present-day status in Finland?
Noral wrote:First you change the official status of Swedish, then you say that there is no need for Swedish schools to be paid from the state coffers and the next stage is up to your imagination.....If balance is disturbed the things may only become worse for the Swedish speakers. I can not find arguments that in such a case the Swedish would flourish -can you?
#2 (the government saying that there is no need to sponsor Swedish-language education) is in no sense a natural/necessary consequence of #1 (making Swedish a protected minority/regional language).

Under this scenario, I don't see Swedish flourishing any less *among Swedish speakers* than it does now. There might be a drop-off in terms of the interest Finnish speakers take in Swedish, but even under the present policy, I suspect that the majority of Finnish speakers who take a strong interest in Swedish don't do so because they were forced to learn it.
Last edited by Noral on Wed Feb 05, 2014 1:25 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Ukki
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Re: the place of Swedish in Finland.

Post by Ukki » Wed Feb 05, 2014 9:36 am

foca wrote:
Noral wrote:
First you change the official status of Swedish, then you say that there is no need for Swedish schools to be paid from the state coffers and the next stage is up to your imagination.....If balance is disturbed the things may only become worse for the Swedish speakers. I can not find arguments that in such a case the Swedish would flourish -can you?
There is the problem. Swedish does not have official status, constitution does not say anything about swedish being official language. Finland actually does not have official languages, only national. But to base compulsory requirement on that is false. We do have also national instrument, kantele. Still not everyone is required to learn to play it.

As for the balance: There is no balance between these two language groups. aprox 5% is not equal with 90% on any scale. And it cannot be.
That makes the situation umbearable. Swedish is a language of small minority group, but it acts like it is the majority. The actual situation is that swedish is the only language which dominates Finland in every corner of the state. No other language has the same status, not even finnish (see Ahvenanmaa which abolished compulsory finnish 2007). And that has to change.

The balance comes when swedish is given a official minority status where the compulsory swedish is removed from any level of education so that finnish speaking children (and other language groups) can graduate without compulsory degree in swedish. Also the state official requirement needs to represent reality, so there is a language group based percentage requirement. Now one cannot be a civil servant anywhere in Finland without having a degree in swedish. The situation as it is now is close to the system of South Africa and the Apartheid politics. In this case finns are the bantus. Only physical violence is replaced with mental violence (you must be stupid, backroom boy etc. not to learn quietly your swedish). Not to forget the forced identity when you have state officials and politicians telling you that swedish is part if your identity and you should accept it. People generally agree that a person can have a sexual identity, i.e. to be homosexual etc. but somehow we are not given that right when it comes to language identity? That I would say constitutes as mental rape.

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Re: the place of Swedish in Finland.

Post by foca » Wed Feb 05, 2014 4:19 pm

Noral wrote:
If they identified themselves specifically as Ruthenians, and spoke a different language than Russian, then they clearly saw a notable degree of difference between the three. (Is Ruthenian mutually intelligible with Russian, by the way?)
it is mutually intelligible with both Russian and Ukrainian. In essence it is one of dialects of Uranian. the term Ruthenian is an invention of Hungarians and Austrians (this people called themselves Rusin), As I said their national aspirations were directed towards not being Germans or Hungarians. And in such a strife their differences with Russians and Ukrainians were if no importance.
Noral wrote: I agree it's not always decisive, but the independent neighbor didn't speak the language of the minority (Ruthenian) in this case.)
yes they did speak a language almost identical to Ruthenian ( see above).
Noral wrote:
My objection to the parallels involving the Baltic states don't have to do with their recentness per se, but with other specifics.)
such as? As I see there are so many parallels , including forceful incorporation and native language suppression.
Noral wrote:
Swedish-speakers in Finland aren't poorly educated relative to the majority population, and I don't see that situation changing if/when Swedish's legal status is made equal to that of Sami (i.e., very far from being unprotected).
The Baltic example was provided to show what happens when minority language education is suppressed by a nationalistic government. it is not the case in Finland but it is the way how it all may develop if Swedish speaking education is suppressed. the main difference of the situation is that Russians in Estonia are not bilingual and swedes in Finland are. But Swedish-Finnish bilingualism is a result of proper language policies over many years , something that can not be said about Estonia.
Noral wrote:
By the way, you mentioned that ethnic Russians living in Estonia have "internet, radio, TV - all in Russian". At far as I know, Estonia has little or no state-sponsored media in Russian (unlike Swedish-language media in Finland), and in general, I'm not sure how much Russian-language media is produced within the Baltic countries, rather than imported from Russia (again, unlike Swedish-language media in Finland).
if you call one-half a tv channel in Finland " state sponsored media" then it is almost exactly the same in Estonia . News programs are available in Russian on etv2 and there is one state sponsored radio station that has Russian programs. all other Russian channels are either Russian or Scandinavian (tv 1000). But there is also a number of private owned Russian radio stations with all media produced independently in Estonia, not in Russia. Swedish media programs on YLe 5 are perhaps 60-70 percent (i do watch it , but if course the percentage is debatable) imported from Sweden. So I do not see that much of state sponsorship when it comes to Swedish language media in Finland [/quote]
Noral wrote:
In 1922, monolingual Swedish-speakers were almost certainly a larger part of Finland's population than they are now, so I can see how it would have affected stability if Swedish had no official status at all. But giving Swedish the status of national language on complete par with Finnish was not the only way this problem could have been solved.
Swedish is not on "complete par" with Finnish in Finland . as far as I remember it is only on "complete par " in bilingual communities. the rest of Finns are not obliged to receive official bilingual documents or read the names of streets in detested language. neither I nor anyone else (including power hungry, extremely crafty Swedish politicians ) advocated that all communities in Finland should be bilingual.

Noral wrote:
So, perhaps Onko left out the role of the Tsarist government in promoting Finnish's status. Why is this omission significant to the discussion of Swedish's present-day status in Finland?

it certainly is not ( even though it is not an omission it is more like a total unawareness of the historical development of this situation). you asked why I thought that his statement was wrong I gave you an answer...it is as much as it means.
Noral wrote:
foca wrote: First you change the official status of Swedish, then you say that there is no need for Swedish schools to be paid from the state coffers and the next stage is up to your imagination.....If balance is disturbed the things may only become worse for the Swedish speakers. I can not find arguments that in such a case the Swedish would flourish -can you?
#2 (the government saying that there is no need to sponsor Swedish-language education) is in no sense a natural/necessary consequence of #1 (making Swedish a protected minority/regional language).
no one said that one is a detrimental consequence of the other , but it is how it may develop (see the Estonian example). the other possible development is that the swedes will loose their separate identity or emigrate..
Last edited by foca on Wed Feb 05, 2014 5:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: the place of Swedish in Finland.

Post by Upphew » Wed Feb 05, 2014 4:54 pm

foca wrote:if you call one-half a tv channel in Finland " state sponsored media" then it is almost exactly the same in Estonia .
One-half tv channel that gets 15-20% of 500 000 000€.
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Re: the place of Swedish in Finland.

Post by foca » Wed Feb 05, 2014 5:47 pm

Upphew wrote:
foca wrote:if you call one-half a tv channel in Finland " state sponsored media" then it is almost exactly the same in Estonia .
One-half tv channel that gets 15-20% of 500 000 000€.

is it that much??? I wonder how much of that ends up with SVT? :(
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Re: the place of Swedish in Finland.

Post by Upphew » Wed Feb 05, 2014 5:53 pm

foca wrote:is it that much??? I wonder how much of that ends up with SVT? :(
In fact they got a 10M hike for their budget this year, so 510M. Few years back they showed all the Swedish stuff separately in their balance sheet and then it was 17% iirc.

edit. get -> got
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Re: the place of Swedish in Finland.

Post by foca » Wed Feb 05, 2014 9:59 pm

it is unbelievable. they have perhaps 3-4 hours of original amateurish programs on Yle 5 , the rest are SVT news and programs along with subtitled serials and movies......I should have learned Swedish long time ago and applied for a job there..... live and learn ...
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Re: the place of Swedish in Finland.

Post by Upphew » Wed Feb 05, 2014 10:59 pm

foca wrote:it is unbelievable. they have perhaps 3-4 hours of original amateurish programs on Yle 5 , the rest are SVT news and programs along with subtitled serials and movies......I should have learned Swedish long time ago and applied for a job there..... live and learn ...
All won't go towards the TV channel, some go to radio stations too.
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Re: the place of Swedish in Finland.

Post by Noral » Thu Feb 06, 2014 5:45 am

foca wrote: it is mutually intelligible with both Russian and Ukrainian. In essence it is one of dialects of Uranian. the term Ruthenian is an invention of Hungarians and Austrians (this people called themselves Rusin), As I said their national aspirations were directed towards not being Germans or Hungarians. And in such a strife their differences with Russians and Ukrainians were if no importance.
My understanding is that standard Ukrainian is also mutually intelligible to a large degree with Russian, and yet the difference between Ukrainian and Russian became quite politically significant over time. How can you prove that, if the Rusins had chosen to identify exclusively as Russians, and had adopted Russian as their language, they wouldn't have received more protection from the Russian state?
foca wrote:yes they did speak a language almost identical to Ruthenian ( see above).
Just as Norwegian is almost identical to Swedish?
foca wrote:
Noral wrote: My objection to the parallels involving the Baltic states don't have to do with their recentness per se, but with other specifics.)
such as? As I see there are so many parallels , including forceful incorporation and native language suppression.
At least in the short term, the main people affected by changing Swedish to a regional/minority language would be Finnish speakers, as far as I can see (they would no longer be forced to learn Swedish if they didn't want to, and less time would have to be spent on Finnish-to-Swedish instruction and translation). I don't see where forceful incorporation comes into it.

The only suppression entailed in this change (as far as I can see) would be that Swedish speakers would no longer see bilingual signage/documentation/etc. in all the places where they had been accustomed to seeing it before. In the event that a monolingual Swedish speaker needed translation from Finnish to Swedish, s/he would have every right to receive it.
Swedish-speakers in Finland aren't poorly educated relative to the majority population, and I don't see that situation changing if/when Swedish's legal status is made equal to that of Sami (i.e., very far from being unprotected).
The Baltic example was provided to show what happens when minority language education is suppressed by a nationalistic government. it is not the case in Finland but it is the way how it all may develop if Swedish speaking education is suppressed. the main difference of the situation is that Russians in Estonia are not bilingual and swedes in Finland are.
There are also big differences between Estonian-Russian relations over the past century and relations between Finnish and Swedish speakers over the same time period, and major differences between Estonia's current language policy (monolingual, to my knowledge) and the proposed policy in Finland (to give Swedish protection as a minority language).
foca wrote: if you call one-half a tv channel in Finland " state sponsored media" then it is almost exactly the same in Estonia . News programs are available in Russian on etv2 and there is one state sponsored radio station that has Russian programs. all other Russian channels are either Russian or Scandinavian (tv 1000). But there is also a number of private owned Russian radio stations with all media produced independently in Estonia, not in Russia. Swedish media programs on YLe 5 are perhaps 60-70 percent (i do watch it , but if course the percentage is debatable) imported from Sweden. So I do not see that much of state sponsorship when it comes to Swedish language media in Finland
Thanks for the info. If Russian programming is available to this extent inside Estonia, besides what can be acquired from Russia itself, it's not at all obvious that the prospects of the Russian language in Estonia are as dim as you make them out to be. This is true even if the Estonian state supports Russian far less than the Finnish state supports Swedish, or would support it even if it were no longer a national language.
foca wrote:Swedish is not on "complete par" with Finnish in Finland . as far as I remember it is only on "complete par " in bilingual communities. the rest of Finns are not obliged to receive official bilingual documents or read the names of streets in detested language. neither I nor anyone else (including power hungry, extremely crafty Swedish politicians ) advocated that all communities in Finland should be bilingual.
I meant on par at the national level, so that Finnish speakers are obliged to learn Swedish, etc. (although I think that the policy of mandatory Swedish for all Finnish speakers, regardless of their professional aspirations, is a relatively recent interpretation of the Finnish constitution).

Also, isn't the largest populated region in Finland (the capital region) designated as a bilingual community, despite only about 6% of residents identifying as Swedish-speaking?
foca wrote:
Noral wrote:#2 (the government saying that there is no need to sponsor Swedish-language education) is in no sense a natural/necessary consequence of #1 (making Swedish a protected minority/regional language).
no one said that one is a detrimental consequence of the other,
Why is the disappearance of Swedish more probable than its maintenance, if the proposed language policy is enacted?
but it is how it may develop (see the Estonian example). the other possible development is that the swedes will loose their separate identity or emigrate..
Those aren't the only possible scenarios, but if the Swedish speakers in Finland do lose their separate identity (gradually, not because they were forced to give it up), that doesn't seem like the end of the world to me.

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Re: the place of Swedish in Finland.

Post by foca » Thu Feb 06, 2014 11:51 am

Noral wrote:
My understanding is that standard Ukrainian is also mutually intelligible to a large degree with Russian, and yet the difference between Ukrainian and Russian became quite politically significant over time. How can you prove that, if the Rusins had chosen to identify exclusively as Russians, and had adopted Russian as their language, they wouldn't have received more protection from the Russian state?
literary Ukranian is to some degree an artificial amalgamation of different dialects. As I already said, and it seems you want to have my messages repeated over and over again , Rusins , even educated ones, did not really differentiate between Russian and Literary Ukranian ( which did not really exist then). they perceived their national identity differently from surrounding Hungarians and Germans , that was the focal point. they wanted to be "Russians" and orthodox , not Hungarians and Protestants. and the last passage from your above message has no real sense - I do not need either prove or disprove a subjected case in the given historical background, there would be too many "ifs".

Noral wrote:

Just as Norwegian is almost identical to Swedish?
Exactly like that. and to the obvious astonishment of Onko , Norwegians do not tend to use English when they speak to Danish and Swedish.

Noral wrote: My objection to the parallels involving the Baltic states don't have to do with their recentness per se, but with other specifics.)
foca wrote: such as? As I see there are so many parallels , including forceful incorporation and native language suppression.
Noral wrote: At least in the short term, the main people affected by changing Swedish to a regional/minority language would be Finnish speakers, as far as I can see (they would no longer be forced to learn Swedish if they didn't want to, and less time would have to be spent on Finnish-to-Swedish instruction and translation). I don't see where forceful incorporation comes into it.
Still I do not see why you refuse to take the Baltic case as a an example. in broader ethnic and historical environment the Estonian case of 1991 is almost the same as Finnish in 1917. Finns made the right choice, Estonians did not. thus the current state of affairs is different. taking away what you have now is going back to the "estonian " way.
Noral wrote:
There are also big differences between Estonian-Russian relations over the past century and relations between Finnish and Swedish speakers over the same time period, and major differences between Estonia's current language policy (monolingual, to my knowledge) and the proposed policy in Finland (to give Swedish protection as a minority language).
there are no two identical cases. but see above about two ways of dealing with the language minority.
Noral wrote:

Thanks for the info. If Russian programming is available to this extent inside Estonia, besides what can be acquired from Russia itself, it's not at all obvious that the prospects of the Russian language in Estonia are as dim as you make them out to be. This is true even if the Estonian state supports Russian far less than the Finnish state supports Swedish, or would support it even if it were no longer a national language.
Russians barely watch state Estonian TV, they prefer independent sources of information. but it is not TV that teaches people to properly write and speak. And I doubt that TV is the only factor that shapes a national identity. Estonian government refuses the Russian speaking community the right to be educated in their own language on any level ( schools, gymnasiums, trade colleges etc.).

Noral wrote:
Why is the disappearance of Swedish more probable than its maintenance, if the proposed language policy is enacted?
can you prove otherwise, by the way? it is not that absolutely everything has a ready scientific prove. That is when examples and parallels are provided and examined , it is called a "case study".all given examples prove that minority language without state supervision and help tends to die, especially if the state outright opposes it ( not the Finnish case, of course).
Noral wrote:
Those aren't the only possible scenarios, but if the Swedish speakers in Finland do lose their separate identity (gradually, not because they were forced to give it up), that doesn't seem like the end of the world to me.
there you go!! so if the Russification had gone on it would not have been " the end of the world" for you if Finns had lost their national identity ("gradually, not because they were forced to give it up") ? that is what the Estonian government is trying to do to the Russian speaking minority ( with various degree of success though) . and I think that swedes in Finland would think quite otherwise on that point........
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Re: the place of Swedish in Finland.

Post by Upphew » Thu Feb 06, 2014 12:14 pm

foca wrote:there you go!! so if the Russification had gone on it would not have been " the end of the world" for you if Finns had lost their national identity ("gradually, not because they were forced to give it up") ? that is what the Estonian government is trying to do to the Russian speaking minority ( with various degree of success though) . and I think that swedes in Finland would think quite otherwise on that point........
Wouldn't the thing that Estonian government does be the other half of the swing of the pendulum? The other half being what Moscow did during the Soviet era to the Estonian speaking minority. You reap what you sow or some such.
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Re: the place of Swedish in Finland.

Post by onkko » Thu Feb 06, 2014 1:58 pm

foca wrote: he is also referring to that "we demolished hegemony of swedish hundred years ago, there was and is protests against finnish education because masterrace. " which is wrong on so many levels....minority languages?
I try to elaborate, as you know english isnt my language.
100 years ago swedish was de facto only possible language if you wanted higher education. According to swedish speakers it was "useless" to teach in finnish because we were inferior. It is still here. With fight we got out own higher education.
Today there still is protests against swedish and finnish schools what are too close, and its not from finns.
In 70s RKP got mandatory swedish in school and goverment in exchange of vote. That means finns are de facto servants to swedes and have to learn swedish to serve small group of people. For example if i want to work in russian border i have to speak swedish even if its not really needed.
I have to speak swedish to get in higher education.
I have to speak swedish to get goverment job.
I have to speak swedish even if i dont need it.
Swedish minority language... there is 2x swedes in east of us where swedish is main language. And they do say that finnish is "recognized minority language" and if thats how swedish would be in finland in here i would be happy.
I would be happy with mandatory swedish when swedes start mandatory finnish. Finns in sweden are about or more than swedes in finland.
Caesare weold Graecum, ond Caelic Finnum

Noral
Posts: 24
Joined: Sun Jan 05, 2014 12:38 am

Re: the place of Swedish in Finland.

Post by Noral » Thu Feb 06, 2014 2:49 pm

foca wrote:literary Ukranian is to some degree an artificial amalgamation of different dialects. As I already said, and it seems you want to have my messages repeated over and over again , Rusins , even educated ones, did not really differentiate between Russian and Literary Ukranian ( which did not really exist then). they perceived their national identity differently from surrounding Hungarians and Germans , that was the focal point.
Whose focal point do you mean? My focal point when you brought up this example was language -- the Rusins' language was different from Russian, and they did not attempt to identify it as Russian either.

I'm not going to argue over this point any further, since it's already very tangential to the main discussion.
Noral wrote: Still I do not see why you refuse to take the Baltic case as a an example. in broader ethnic and historical environment the Estonian case of 1991 is almost the same as Finnish in 1917. Finns made the right choice, Estonians did not. thus the current state of affairs is different. taking away what you have now is going back to the "estonian " way.
I think it's problematic to call this the Estonian way, for more than one reason. For example, Finland did not achieve independence from Sweden in 1917, and the size/military power of Sweden versus Finland, while not equal, is/was considerably closer than that of Russia compared to Estonia today.

Whatever you may think about the present-day situation in Estonia, the motivational factors in 1991 Estonia and the factors in 1917 Finland were quite different (as they would be in present-day Finland).
Noral wrote: Russians barely watch state Estonian TV, they prefer independent sources of information. but it is not TV that teaches people to properly write and speak. And I doubt that TV is the only factor that shapes a national identity. Estonian government refuses the Russian speaking community the right to be educated in their own language on any level ( schools, gymnasiums, trade colleges etc.).
Estonia doesn't prohibit Russian-language education, it just doesn't (to my knowledge) fund it publically.

Also, I wasn't just thinking of Russian-language TV, but also radio, newspapers and so on. You said earlier that there are a number of Russian-language radio stations within Estonia, and by doing a little searching I found a number of Russian-language Estonian newspapers as well (Den' za Dnyom, for example).
Why is the disappearance of Swedish more probable than its maintenance, if the proposed language policy is enacted?
can you prove otherwise, by the way? it is not that absolutely everything has a ready scientific prove. That is when examples and parallels are provided and examined , it is called a "case study".all given examples prove that minority language without state supervision and help tends to die, especially if the state outright opposes it ( not the Finnish case, of course).
They don't prove this, because the conditions in each case are quite different. (And I'm not yet convinced that Russian in Estonia or the other Baltic states is a case of impending language death.)
Noral wrote:
Those aren't the only possible scenarios, but if the Swedish speakers in Finland do lose their separate identity (gradually, not because they were forced to give it up), that doesn't seem like the end of the world to me.
there you go!! so if the Russification had gone on it would not have been " the end of the world" for you if Finns had lost their national identity ("gradually, not because they were forced to give it up") ? that is what the Estonian government is trying to do to the Russian speaking minority ( with various degree of success though) . and I think that swedes in Finland would think quite otherwise on that point........
No, it wouldn't have been the end of the world, but it's not what happened. And I don't understand why Swedish speakers in Finland (far from all of them, I suspect) attach the degree of value they do to the present language situation in Finland. If certain people consider it so important that Swedish should have paramount status as a national language, they need travel no further than the large, modern nation on the other side of the Gulf of Bothnia, where this is already the case.


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