Yeah, funny how people resent people who try to make others to act as their servants. Because that is the main (spoken) reason why there is a mandatory Swedish: so that the Finnish speakers could serve Swedish speakers in Swedish. Most of them will never need it for anything (else) but still everyone has to study it. Most Finns like Finnish because it is their native language. Who cares what foreigners think? Many Finns speak good English anyway. I haven’t heard any assaults on people who have spoken Swedish but it’s nice to play the victim card.

“People often forget that Swedish was spoken in Finland many years before Finnish even existed as a language.”
I see you have been talking to Swedish speakers because that is simply not true. The reason why the anthem had Swedish words first was that the FINNISH speakers were neglected for centuries. Why Finnish speakers should speak Swedish, anyway? Are the Swedish speakers so much better than the rest of the population?

Most Finnish speakers don’t speak Swedish for the simple reason that they never need it, even in jobs where it is a requirement. After all they require it on the Russian border, too. They speak with other Finns in Finnish and foreigners with English. The Swedish speakers can serve themselves in Swedish or learn Finnish, that’s what other people do, too, also Sami people and the children of the immigrant families who speak another language as their mother tongue.

There is no more reason to have mandatory Swedish than to have mandatory Sami languages. Besides, Swedish has only been mandatory for 50 years anyway.

The Finnish society uses one language, Finnish, because it is spoken by well over 90 % of the population, even most immigrants study it. It is not a burden for us to keep using Finnish.

Learning Swedish hasn’t given me any tools to learn other languages, it only mixed with German and made studying it more difficult. Swedish has no sounds that would be useful in other languages but knowing French did give me some tools to study Russian.

Calculations are studied all over the world. Is Swedish? Also I never learned anything about Finnish culture in Swedish classes. My culture is mostly Finnish speaking because that is the language I hear spoken around me and what my ancestors spoke as well. It even has more in common with the Russian culture than the Swedish one. History is studied in history classes and considering how Finnish was treated not so long ago, I really wouldn’t consider it a good argument for mandatory Swedish…

Beth, I don’t think I’m really following your argument, but you really need to understand that questioning the broader Finnish language policy is not the same thing as “getting rid of Swedish”. Swedish has not gone anywhere from Finland for centuries and it won’t disappear as people do have the right to maintain it as a mother tongue as far as government goes; what is actually happening nowadays is that Swedish is being pushed really hard on people who do not speak it. So what we have is an extension of a language agenda on the pretense that if you don’t go along with it, you’re trying to “get rid of” Swedish.

If Swedish needs to be maintained (or more correctly, expanded) by controlling the rest of the population linguistically, it just shows that the importance of Swedish really is not all that it’s claimed to be. I have always found the kind of argument that “if you don’t agree to be made one of us, you’re trying to get rid of us” to be unsatisfactory. It just demonstrates that what the actual threat here is is actually the fact that they do not approve of us Finnish-speakers in the first place. You can see the attitude in a couple of the comments above — that “if you only knew immigrants (I do), you’d know Finnish is useless” and that “Finnish wasn’t even a language” (that Finnish is actually not historically-culturally legitimate, and hence we do not enjoy the same kind of ethical right of existence as the Swedish-speakers do). I’m glad there has been acceptance that most of the argumentation about Swedish is bullshit though — and that includes the “easier to learn German” kind of rhetoric. I did just fine in Swedish in school because I was fluent in English at a young age; I never learned German to a fluent degree because I just didn’t spend enough time on it, despite of all the Swedish.

Having been called all kinds of names in language-political discussions, having heard that Karelians are “despised” on the coast, and having had to deal with all the weird arguments about “compulsory mathematics is there too!”, I have no interest in embracing anything. They can be Swedish all they want, but I will not apologize for being my own person, having my own interests and not giving in to nonsense just because it makes them feel better.

I don’t quite understand what you are saying but so what if Scandinavian languages are easier to learn after Swedish, I wouldn’t be studying them anyway. And for many studying Swedish makes it more difficult to learn German because the languages are so similar. I can’t speak German anymore because it gets mixed with Swedish. Besides, I am already a proud Finn. I don’t need Swedish for “preserving my culture” because it has nothing to do with my culture, it’s a foreign language to me.

As a foreigner in Finland (almost 10 years now) I have never come across what you describe. (Including the two years I did research on the Swedish-speaking Finns).
What I have experienced is Finns expressing resentment towards Swedish-speakers and most Swedish speaker I have been in contact with (in the past 10 years) and independently told stories of how you will have to be careful with where you speak Swedish in order not to get beaten up or verbally assaulted (especially in the Helsinki area).
What I can tell you is that a lot of foreigners like Swedish because it is much easier to read and understand (for Scandinavians it goes without saying, but also for Germans, Dutch and English speakers etc.).
People often forget that Swedish was spoken in Finland many years before Finnish even existed as a language. The Finnish national anthem was written in Swedish and it is simple neglect of the law that Finnish speakers can’t and don’t want to speak Swedish – even when they are in jobs were it is a requirement. And what will happen if Swedish is no long a requirement? Then the Swedish-speaking Finns don’t have to learn Finnish any more either. What happens in courts, schools, hospitals etc. when native Finns can’t use their mother tough?
It is horrifying to meet Finns that have had Swedish in schools for 10years that can’t (or won’t) say a single word in Swedish.

“There is no reason to have a mandatory Swedish to all Finns.” Swedish is the national language of Finland, so there is that.

“It’s also very bad for the Finnish society that severely needs people who speak different languages”

How is it bad to know several languages? Besides many European countries like: Belgium, Denmark, Austria, France Germany, Italy, Ireland, Luxembourg, Spain, Sweden, Norway Switzerland, UK etc. uses more than one language. If you truly believe it is a burden then maybe Finland should then completely switch to English.

Children have no problem learning several languages without being especially talented, it is a matter of exposing them to it early, and not when they are defiant teenagers. Ironically, if you look at it from a linguistic point of view Swedish and Portuguese are the two languages that gives you the best tools to learn other languages as they have so many sounds that are also used in other languages.

Sure you haven’t used Swedish so then it seems useless to you. I have never used cosinus calculations outside the classroom (and I doubt most people have) should that then be dropped as well?

Learning Swedish in Finland is also about learning the culture and history of your country.

Actually, being a foreigner in Finland you’ll be in for an interesting phenomenon if you engage in this conversation further. The pro-Swedishers have this belief that they represent tolerance in general, and that for example if you don’t want to study Swedish, you have to be anti-immigration, anti-gay, anti-minority in general. Their ego becomes dependent on this idea that everyone who disagrees with the meaning and status of Swedish is the devil and that they stand for The Good.

Therefore, recruiting immigrants for their cause is really important, and they will want you reaffirm that the status of Swedish — and believing any and all of the either self-serving or nonsense arguments — is the same thing as for example accepting your presence in the country. If you do not, they’ll get mad. If you do, they love you. Of course none of these associations hold, but hey, you just have to be “civilized enough” to understand… to quote Jörn Donner, “you [Finnish-speakers] do not have rights”.

You need to familiarize yourself with what the concept of “national language” means to the pro-Swedishers. Before one understands that, the pro-Swedish argument can seem incredibly unable to treat other people (Finnish-speakers) with any kind of sense of normal fairness.

In essence, for them us Finnish-speakers do not really exist as a legitimate group of people with a real mother tongue — typically we get told that we must stop speaking Finnish as well if we don’t study Swedish(!!). In particular if you suggest that there is an “ethnicity” there, you get a huge reaction calling people Nazis and what not, in the style of what was said in this thread above.

What they actually want is that the appropriate way to see Finland is Sweden of the 1700s, and in a very Swedish-nationalist way. Everyone was supposedly Swedish, the “real language” of Sweden is Swedish, and the Finnish language is not significant culturally or even in an identity sense. It really is a red cloth to them to suggest that the Finnish-speakers (I really would like to say “Finns”, but hey, we don’t exist) should be considered in any way. In particular the society of the 1700s-1800s was not a “problem” as we were all Swedes and you could just start speaking Swedish if you wanted to get ahead.

Of course, anything that happened after 1809 is just an aberration of history and Finnish-speakers should have just assimilated into proper Swedes..

I totally understand about the history and reasons behind the whole matter. I do believe students should avoid Swedish if they want. Isn’t it true that Finland is a free country and everyone has their own right to do things they want? Why Japan can insist all foreigners to speak in Japanese but the Finns cannot?

This is one of these odd half-thoughts that gets repeated in the pro-compulsory-Swedish memeplex as things that an “enlightened person must say”.

Of course there is always an opportunity cost to studying something instead of studying something else. This is trivial to see: Otherwise it would be OK to study something else instead of Swedish, because “nothing would keep you from studying Swedish afterwards”. But this is not allright because… you know the argument is nonsense. You want to prioritize Swedish instead of the “something else”.

I do not believe one bit that the synergy benefits one derives from Swedish are so large that it justifies its position as a language that must or should be studied before other languages. Of course, in my favoured system of two compulsory languages, the combination of English and Swedish would probably still be quite popular, so I do not expect the studying of Swedish to end altogether.

Linguistically talented people like you (and actually, me) are one thing; but let’s say that we have some person who would be a brilliant engineer but struggles with languages. In our Finnish model he either does not become a brilliant engineer, or is supposed to be a brilliant engineer in Swedish… in Sweden, he would have the option of just taking more English. It’s all just a matter of exercising power by creating linguistic requirements.

First of all, not everyone will learn languages easily and every one of them takes time and effort to learn and keep up.

I studied the maximum number of languages in school, four, and one of them was the mandatory Swedish that became my second strongest language. I would have rather studied four languages but WITHOUT Swedish and have some other language as my second strongest. I have had no use for the Swedish I know and have since forgotten most of it. I also have no interest to keep up my Swedish skills (unlike the languages I chose to study).

There is no reason to have a mandatory Swedish to all Finns. Expecting 95% of the population (including minorities) to study a minority language so that one of the minorities gets service in their own language just doesn’t work. In fact it’s very arrogant. It’s also very bad for the Finnish society that severely needs people who speak different languages. SFP doesn’t have the best of Finland or Finns in their mind, they are just interested in power over Finnish speaking Finns.

While I sort-of follow your reasoning from the idea that one has to essentially treat Swedish equally as a subjectively experienced “value” that then becomes sufficiently, acceptably “inherent” and that one then *legitimately* “imposes” nationalistically on everyone who steps inside borders, a couple of things of note…

“When a country is bilingual, as Finland is, the state will facilitate it´s citizens to interact with the state with both national languages. Hence Swedish and Finnish are equally useful in the narrow context of the Finnish state…”

Yes, the state has obligations towards citizens as specified in the language law, so there are regional differences even there. As for other things… when a language is common somewhere as spoken natively by sufficient numbers of people, it just simply is useful. Go tell the French they’re imposing their language on others when they go to France. And yes… I work daily with immigrants speaking English, and fully understand learning Finnish is not easy and we get along fine without.

“The road to multilingualism does not go from bilingualism to monolingualism.”

I would be hard pressed to suggest to anyone that in order to get more multilingual (as a population, statistically so), one actually needs to prioritize in a certain manner such as we do in Finland. The moral argument from the perceived status of Swedish by individuals is completely separate from this, although they are often intentionally confused.

I know the history very well, I have actually always been quite critical of the compulsory Swedish based on most of the arguments presented. It’s actually a really difficult conversation to hold as there are so many non sequiturs being thrown around about “you never know, maybe you end up working in Sweden” — and when they try to pull the all the reverse-psychology and the rest of the bag of tricks, you just must make a stand against the entire style of discussion, not just the part about Swedish per se.

I really hope not-a-foreign-language is trying to demonstrate a principled point about these “inherent values” of languages being essentially granted by government (really, I’d think mother-tongue speakers attribute their own subjective inherent values to languages), as there is just a wee bit of the Fenno-Swedish attitude present…