Swedish in Finland - should you learn it?
“Pratar du svenska?”
The (unofficial) flag of Swedish speakers in Finland. (Image credit: Mysid on Wikipedia)
November 6th is Finnish Swedish Heritage Day in Finland (Swedish: svenska dagen, Finnish: ruotsalaisuuden päivä)
Finnish Swedish Heritage Day celebrates the Swedish-speaking population of Finland, their culture, and bilinguality in Finland.
So, in this week’s Figuring Out Finland newsletter we will look at some facts and figures on Finland’s other official language, as well as the Swedish-speaking population in Finland, and the pros and cons of being able to speak Swedish in Finland.
The Swedish language in Finland
Should you learn Swedish as a foreigner?
Learning Swedish - pros & cons.
My own experiences of Swedish in Finland
My stupid mistake of the week
The Swedish language in Finland
Swedish is an official language in Finland in addition to Finnish.
Both Swedish and Finnish have formally equal status in nearly all legislation, and the Swedish language in Finland is regulated by the Institute for the Languages of Finland, kotimaisten kielten keskus or KOTUS in Finnish; institutet för de inhemska språken in Swedish.
Swedish is the native language of roughly 5% of the Finnish population. That’s about 296 000 people.
Swedish speaking Finns refer to themselves as finlandssvensk, which literally means Finland’s Swedish.
There has been a lot of debate about the origins of the Swedish speaking people in Finland, but the current consensus seems to be that the Swedish-speaking population in Finland dates from the Swedish colonisation of the Nyland and Ostrobothnia coastal regions of Finland in the 12th and 13th centuries.
The vast majority of the Swedish speaking communities are still located in these coastal areas in Nyland and Ostrobothnia.
The Swedish spoken in Finland is referred to as Finnish Swedish, suomenruotsi in Finnish and finlandssvenska in Swedish, and it differs somewhat from the Swedish spoken in Sweden.
It is not an independent language, however, rather it is considered a regional variant of the Swedish language.
According to the Institute for the Languages of Finland, the differences from the Swedish spoken in Sweden are partly in pronunciation, partly in vocabulary, expressions and structure, and partly also in its morphology. The differences are partly noticeable, but only apply to a small part of the entire vocabulary.
The Institute for the Languages of Finland also maintains the Swedish language spoken in Finland. According to the website, “one of the goals of Finnish-Swedish language maintenance is to prevent Finnish-Swedish from becoming too distant from Swedish-Swedish”.
Should you learn Swedish as a foreigner?
The short answer to this question is YES - at least some.
I have to admit that my own ability in Swedish is quite poor, even though I live in a predominantly Swedish-speaking area.
However, despite the fact that my Swedish is not great, I think that the ability to understand and speak even a little Swedish is very important in Finland.
Like it or not, Sweden, the Swedish people and their language have had an enormous influence on Finnish history, culture and language. Even though the languages are not at all related, there are many Swedish loan words in active use in Finnish, and the ability to recognise them and understand their use can only ever add to your cultural understanding of Finland and the Finnish people.
I do not think it is necessary to learn Swedish to a high level in Finland, but it is definitely useful particularly around the coastal areas where most of the Swedish-speaking communities are located.
The exception would be if you intend to apply for an official post in Finland, in which case you will need to prove your language proficiency in both Finnish and Swedish. Employees holding an official position in Finland are required to be able to provide services in both official languages upon request.
In practice, the level of Swedish accepted by official institutions varies somewhat, but you will not even be considered for an official position if you do not have any proficiency in Swedish.
Learning Swedish - pros & cons
Pros
Swedish is probably easier to learn than Finnish.
I say this with caution because I don’t like to rank languages in terms of “difficulty”.
The “difficulty” of a language is very subjective and depends a lot on your native language, your age, your exposure to languages other than your own, your motivation to learn, etc.
However, I think it is fair to say that Swedish grammar is not as complex as Finnish grammar.