SWEDISH LANGUAGE IN FINLAND

It is getting crowded in the Swedishspeaking schools in Finland which comes as a surprise to certain experts who have de scribed the Finnish Swedes as the melting iceberg that will disappear in a matter of time.

However this group of Finnish citizens who have Swedish as their first language, represents a very tenacious five percent of the population with its rights firmly entrenched in the constitution. Finland is officially bilingual and the minority has the right to receive service in Swedish in the municipalities where it is in a majority or where there is a minimum of 3000 Swedish speakers.
The rights and the status of the Swedishspeaking minority has always been a contentious issue and every now and again a more active discussion on the subject surfaces as seems to be the case right now on two fronts.

The growing enrollment in Swedish speaking schools is attributed to the fact that the majority of children in the growing number of mixed Swedish-Finnish families opt for a Swedish school and are registered as Swedish-Finns. But also many Finnish speaking children, for example in Helsinki, go to Swedish-speaking schools to get a second language as a bonus.

In some areas there is opposition among the Swedish Finns to Finnish-speaking kids enrolling in their schools. These people argue that there is an adverse effect on the level of education when all the children are not completely fluent in the language. Swedish Finns are very protective of their language and their identity and this leads to a measure of over-reaction.

Another debate on the opposite side of this issue has been raging in the daily paper Helsingin Sanomat. Here the question is asked why Swedish has to be a compulsory subject for not so willing Finns. The younger generation considers it "humiliating" to have to learn Swedish, and feels that this leaves less room for Finns to learn the more important languages like English, French and German.

Among the older generation's politicians and cultural elite, a knowledge of Swedish has historically been considered to be an asset. Hence Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen speaks good Swedish as does the former leader of the Center Party, Esko Aho and the head of the Bank of Finland Esko Ollila. But the younger generation is trying to bypass Stockholm and has its sights firmly set on Brussels and the rest of the EU.

Scandinavian Press, Issue1, 2002