Finnish language policy

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The ABC book by Mikael Agricola, published in 1543, was the first Finnish-language reader.

The Finnish language policy refers to the ratio of the Finnish state's most spoken languages in the country and those languages speaking ethnic groups. One of the special features of Finnish language policy since the 19th century has been bilingualism and the associated struggle for the balance of power between the Swedish and Finnish languages spoken by a minority .

history

prehistory

The area of ​​present-day Finland was an organic part of the Swedish Empire from around the 12th century until 1809 . The Swedish language essentially served as the administrative language of the state. In the late Middle Ages , Latin was also used and, to a certain extent, Danish was used during the times of the Kalmar Union . The Finnish language spoken by the majority of the population, however, had no official status and was initially non-existent as a written language.

Today Mikael Agricola is considered to be the father of the Finnish written language , who published the first reading book in Finnish, the ABC book , in 1543 at the latest . At the beginning of the 17th century, the first laws were also published in Finnish, and in 1759 the entire code of the country was finally published in Finnish.

During the Swedish period, the Finnish nobility, as well as a large part of the wealthy middle class, adopted the Swedish language. The peasant class repeatedly unsuccessfully requested interpreting and translation services at the Reichstag and demanded that the Finnish language be taken into account when filling positions. However, while a movement of lovers of the Finnish language, the so-called fennophiles, formed at the Turku Academy under the leadership of Henrik Gabriel Porthan , Porthan himself believed that the Finnish language would eventually disappear as the “further expansion of culture” progressed would.

Grand Duchy of Finland

At the Diet of Porvoo, Tsar Alexander I promised Finland autonomous status.

After Finland was separated from Sweden and the Grand Duchy of Finland was formed under the Russian crown , Swedish retained its position as an official and administrative language. However, the Russian rulers hoped that a strengthening of the Finnish language would weaken Finland's ties to the previous motherland, Sweden. The regent insurance of Tsar Alexander I was published in the Reichstag in Porvoo in both Finnish and Swedish.

During the time of the Grand Duchy , a new Finnish identity emerged, fueled by the national ideas that had emerged in Europe . This Finnish national movement was initially not of a language-political nature. Among the central protagonists of the movement, for example, Johan Ludvig Runeberg and Zacharias Topelius wrote in Swedish and Johan Vilhelm Snellman used both languages. However, Elias Lönnrot and Aleksis Kivi wrote in Finnish, and the publication of Lönnrot's Kalevala collection and Kivi's novel The Seven Brothers earned respect for the previously underrated Finnish language and culture.

The Russian language reached a significant role even in the period of Russian rule at any time if was required a certificate of the Russian language skills also since 1818 by all incumbents. This requirement was lifted for pastors in 1824. Instead, they were required to speak Finnish in municipalities with a Finnish-speaking population.

In 1828 the office of the lecturer of the Finnish language was established at the university and in 1850 the chair of Finnish language and literature was established. The first Finnish-language dissertation was published in 1858. In the same year the first grammar school was founded in Jyväskylä , the language of instruction was Finnish.

Laws and regulations were published in Swedish and, if necessary, in Finnish. The Finnish Ordinance Gazette, which has been published since 1860, was bilingual from the start, and in the course of the Russification efforts that began in the 1880s, it was also published in Russian in the short period from 1903 to 1905. The preparatory work on the legislation was generally carried out in Swedish, and Finnish translations were only made for the official bill. It was only after the parliamentary reform of 1906 that Finnish-language legislation began to gain ground.

Fennomans and Svekomani

Efforts to improve the position of the Finnish language and the linguistic rights of Finnish speakers led to the emergence of fennomania as an ideal movement in the 1840s . Its followers founded the Finnish Party and from 1847 published the first newspaper, Suometar , aimed at an educated audience in Finnish .

The most prominent Fennomaniac was initially the philosopher, journalist and later statesman Johan Vilhelm Snellman , who complained in newspaper articles that the Finnish people were mentally and materially lagging behind other peoples. As the reason for this, Snellman cited the lack of national awareness, which can only be promoted by making the Finnish language an official and educational language.

Snellman's thoughts met with a wide echo, and different currents soon emerged in the expanding movement. While liberal Fennomaniacs such as Elias Lönnrot and Zacharias Topelius strove for the country to be bilingual, the young Fennomaniacs, formed from 1863 around Yrjö Koskinen , wanted to establish Finnish as the only cultural and official language of Finland, displacing Swedish. Radicalized Fennomans developed the question of language into the demand for a greater Finland encompassing the Finnish-speaking peoples . The Finnish Swedes referred to them as strangers or as traitors to their Finnish ancestors.

As a counter-reaction to the Fennomans, a movement defending the position of the Swedish language developed, the Svekomanen , whose leading figure was Professor Axel Olof Freudenthal and from which the Swedish Party emerged . The Swedish-language newspapers have argued that the Finnish language is unsuitable as a cultural language. Radical Svekomanen took the view that the Swedes brought western culture to the Finns who were otherwise incapable of development in the Middle Ages.

In government circles, too, an attitude unfriendly to the Finnish language prevailed, reinforced on the Russian side by the concern about the spread of revolutionary ideas among the people. Therefore, in 1850, the so-called Language Ordinance prohibited the publication of Finnish-language texts with the exception of religious and economic publications. However, the ordinance was rarely followed and was formally repealed in 1860. Since 1858, inland officials have been required to take an oral Finnish language test.

While the Finnish Senate remained skeptical of the Finnish language, the fennomans apparently achieved a breakthrough in 1863 when Tsar Alexander II signed a draft ordinance submitted by Snellman, bypassing the Senate, under which Finnish became an official and judicial language within 20 years should be.

Shift in the balance of power

When the deadline set by Alexander II expired in 1883, the Russian governor-general Fyodor Loginowitsch Heiden tried to use Finnish by ordinance as the official language. He failed, however, at first because of resistance from the Swedish-minded Senate as well as the Procurator Robert Montgomery, who considered Finnish to be a “foreign language” that could not be used in the courts. It was not until the language ordinance of June 19, 1902, that Finnish became the official language.

This process was overshadowed by the effects of the language manifesto issued in 1900, through which the Russian language was established, among other things, as the language of the Senate in the course of the intended Russification of Finland. In practice, however, Swedish and Finnish remained the languages ​​used in the Senate, while the protocols and resolutions were merely translated into Russian. The language manifesto was revoked after the preliminary end of the Russification efforts in 1906.

The establishment of a Finnish-language school system, which began in the second half of the 19th century, led to the formation of an educated Finnish-speaking population by the turn of the century, and by the second decade of the 20th century, Finnish had developed into a fully-fledged cultural language. At the same time, Swedish lost its position as the sole cultural language. While Swedish was previously the language of the educated classes, it was now increasingly perceived as the language of a clear minority of the population. This also led to the fact that the Swedish-speaking parts of the population felt more clearly than before as a special ethnic group to which, in addition to the old elite, the Swedish-speaking parts of the simple population belonged. This development, together with the resurgence of the language dispute and the efforts of Fennomanic circles to make Finnish the only official language in the country, ultimately led to the founding of the Swedish People's Party to represent the interests of the linguistic minority and the first explicitly Swedish-speaking university, the Åbo Akademi .

Wrestling about the language policy of independent Finland

When Finland gained independence in 1917 , the balance of power between the languages ​​had reversed, and the crucial open question was the status of Swedish in the young state. The Finnish Swedes, fearing for their linguistic rights, faced loud demands from the Fennomans, who wanted to tolerate Swedish at best as a minority language.

Radical Svekomanian groups put forward the theory of two different nationalities and demanded an autonomous status for the predominantly Swedish-speaking areas, comparable to the rights later granted to the Åland archipelago . For this purpose, an unofficial parliament of the Finland-Swedes (Svenska Finlands folkting) was founded in the spring of 1919 . The Swedish People's Party, which feared a weakening of the overall position of Swedish in the country, rejected these demands, and the project could not win any significant approval in parliament.

After long negotiations, a compromise was finally reached and the 1919 Constitution stipulated that Finnish and Swedish are national languages ​​with equal rights. The Language Act of 1922 determined the details of the use of the national languages ​​in courts and authorities, with the rights to use one's own language being guaranteed primarily at the level of written correspondence.

The "real Finns"

The Academic Karelia Association AKS was one of the central actors in “true Finnism”.

The compromise found in the constitutional negotiations did not resolve the fronts that had hardened in the decades-long language dispute. The Swedish language retained a dominant position in educational and cultural circles for a long time, and the Finnish population repeatedly accused the Finnish Swedes of arrogance and elitism.

The radical Fenno movement continued in the activities of various ethnic groups who soon came to be known as the "true Finns" (aitosuomalaiset) . The main pillars of the movement were, on the one hand, in Finnish-speaking academic circles, here in particular under the influence of the nationalist Academic Karelia Association ( Akateeminen Karjala-Seura, AKS), and, on the other hand, in the Finnish rural population, represented by the Landbund (today's Finnish Center Party ). The ongoing language dispute led to frequent demonstrations, but also to a lively development of cultural life on both sides.

The language dispute came to a head again in late 1934 when the government planned to introduce a quota for Swedish-language professorships at the University of Helsinki . This was vehemently rejected by the "true Finns" striving for a monolingual university around the Landbund and part of the National Collection Party . The marathon speeches of the opponents of the project prevented a final treatment of the bill during the legislative period of the parliament in 1935 , so that the question initially remained open. It was not until 1937 that the dispute was decided in principle in favor of the Finnish language, but the quota for Swedish-speaking professorships was nevertheless introduced via an implementation law.

After this final aggravation of the language question, world political events began to push the language contradiction into the background. The fear of the Soviet Union and a possible war also forced the Fennoman-oriented parties to turn more towards a policy oriented towards their Scandinavian western neighbors. The wars that followed contributed to strengthening the national feeling of belonging among the Finns, and language disputes of the previous vehemence were a thing of the past.

Juho Kusti Paasikivi, here as President in 1948, recognized bilingualism as a foreign policy strength.

Language Policy in the Post-War Era

After the war, Finland had to cede significant areas to the Soviet Union, including East Karelia . The resettlement of the affected sections of the population, which made up 12% of the total Finnish population, also raised questions of language policy. The resettlement of the predominantly rural population was regulated by the land acquisition law passed in parliament in 1945.

At the request of the then Prime Minister and later President Juho Kusti Paasikivi , language-related provisions were also included in the law. According to these, the resettlements were not allowed to change the language relations of the affected communities. In practice, this prevented settlement in Swedish-speaking or bilingual areas, as there were very few Swedish-speaking refugees.

In Paasikivi's view, the resettlers would have endangered the Swedish-speaking settlement and culture. However, their preservation ensures that the interest of Sweden, the Nordic countries and indirectly also the entire western world in the fate of Finland does not diminish. In contrast to the prewar period, bilingualism in Finland was no longer seen as a domestic political problem, but as an advantage in foreign policy.

Finnish and Swedish in what is now Finland

Legal regulation of the language question

Residential areas of the Swedish-speaking population in Finland

The language law (kielilaki) , first passed in 1922, has subsequently been reformed several times, most recently in 2003. The core provisions of the law concern on the one hand the rights of the individual and on the other hand the language status of municipalities as administrative units.

Each municipality is either Finnish-speaking, Swedish-speaking, or bilingual. A municipality is considered to be bilingual if the linguistic minority is represented by at least 3000 inhabitants or, alternatively, makes up 8% of the population. According to the current classification, valid until 2012, 19 municipalities in Finland are Swedish-speaking (16 of them in the province of Åland) and 43 municipalities are bilingual. The remaining 354 municipalities are exclusively Finnish-speaking.

Citizens have the right to deal with state courts and authorities in their mother tongue, Swedish or Finnish. The same goes for local authorities in bilingual communities. In monolingual municipalities, on the other hand, the municipal authorities generally only use the municipality's language. However, if a participant has to be heard in a matter that he did not initiate himself, he may also use his mother tongue. If necessary, an interpreter must be called in.

The Public Service Acts state that any employment in the public service in Finland requires proof of proficiency in Finnish and Swedish. Learning the other national language has been mandatory in all schools since 1968. The acquisition of a university degree also requires proof of knowledge of the other national language.

For practical reasons, Finnish is the exclusive command language in the Finnish Army . However, most Swedish-speaking soldiers are trained in a separate brigade in Dragsvik.

The Finnish language laws do not apply in Åland ; instead, language issues in this autonomous province are regulated by the local government law. Åland speaks only Swedish, but Finns are allowed to use the Finnish language in relation to the authorities of the Finnish state. Only Swedish can be used for the authorities of the province or its municipalities.

Finland's public broadcaster Yleisradio provides the Swedish-speaking population with two radio stations. Swedish-language broadcasts account for around 10% of the television programs of the company.

Development of the share of the
Swedish-speaking population in Finland
year number Proportion of (%)
1880 294 900 14.3
1890 322 600 13.6
1900 349 700 12.9
1910 339,000 11.6
1920 341,000 11.0
1930 342 900 10.1
1940 354,000 9.6
1950 348 300 8.6
1960 330 500 7.4
1970 303 400 6.6
1980 300 500 6.3
1990 296 700 5.9
1999 292 700 5.7
2006 289 600 5.5

statistics

While the absolute number of Swedish-speaking Finns has remained largely unchanged in the long term, the relative proportion of the total population has steadily declined (see table opposite). An increasing mix of language groups can be observed, especially in the bilingual areas.

One of the peculiarities of the bilingualism practiced in Finland is that in practice the language barriers do not represent a relevant obstacle to the formation of communities. This may be due to the fact that, according to a study from 1997, 70% of Finns regard the Swedish language as part of their own national identity. In the bilingual families, 60% of the children are registered as Swedish-speaking.

The language dispute today

Although there haven't been any large-scale language disputes since the 1930s, the language issue has never been completely quiet. The discussion today regularly ignites mainly around two points of contention, namely the compulsory language training and the quotas for Swedish-speaking Finns.

The obligation to learn the other national language is exposed to constant criticism, especially from the ranks of Finnish speakers, especially from the pupils and students affected by the obligation to learn. The subject is repeatedly made the subject of public campaigns under the catchphrase “ Forced Swedish(pakkoruotsi) . The central argument is that the Swedish language is less useful than learning important languages ​​such as English, German or French.

However, there is currently a clear consensus among the country's political parties on maintaining the language requirement. Only a few small right-wing populist parties have joined the demand for their abolition. The new Language Law 2003, which brought no change in this regard, was adopted by Parliament with 179 votes and only three votes against.

The second major point of contention relates to the quota-based filling of certain study and training places with Swedish-speaking students. For example, in the law and medicine courses , separate quotas are available for students who have mastered the Swedish language. This practice, perceived as discriminatory by some Finnish-speaking Finns, is justified by the fact that the language law requires an adequate supply of Swedish-language services and that, for this purpose, adequate training in Swedish must be ensured. In addition, the Swedish-language education is open to all Finns who have a command of the Swedish language, not just those Finns whose mother tongue is Swedish.

Despite these points of contention, the practice based on the language law has now become a matter of course for most Finns, and linguistic issues are rarely the subject of broader public discussion.

Position of the Sami languages

The flag of the Sami

From the 1990s onwards in particular, Finnish language policy increasingly took account of other minority languages ​​and the right of speakers of these languages ​​to use their own language and culture. In this context, Finland has also ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

Besides Swedish, only the Sami languages ​​are covered by the charter in Finland . Since 1992 these have had an official status in the homeland districts of the Sami in the municipalities of Enontekiö , Inari and Utsjoki and in the northern part of the municipality of Sodankylä .

The status of the Sami languages ​​guarantees the Sami the right to use it as a lingua franca in authorities and hospitals. Since the different variants of the Sami language are also taken into account, the innovation has made Inari the only quadrilingual community in Finland. All public announcements are made there in Northern Sami , Inari-Sami , Skolt-Sami and in Finnish. Northern Sami is the primary school language in schools in some areas.

The revitalization of the Sami languages ​​is one of the central concerns of language policy in the Nordic countries. Under pressure from the major national languages, only about half of the Sami speak a Sami language. A separate Sami parliamentary representation ( sámediggi ) was established in 1996 to monitor the position of the Sami languages ​​and to implement linguistic and cultural self-government .

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Languages ​​of Finland  - collection of images, videos and audio files
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on March 22, 2006 in this version .