Post by Bozur on Jan 12, 2006 3:38:14 GMT -5
Finland Makes Its Swedes Feel at Home
By Lizette Alvarez The New York Times
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2005
EKENAS, Finland - In most parts of the world, language is usually a fiery and divisive issue, one that pits the powerless against the powerful, the small against the big.
The Basques battle the Spanish. The Flemish tussle with the Walloons. The Québécois scuffle with the rest of Canada.
But Finland, a country with an unshakable sense of fair play, offers a counterbalance to that sort of acrimony. If anything, Finland bends over backward, with little dissent and at great cost, to make its 260,000 Swedish speakers feel comfortable.
No sooner did Finland win its independence from Russia in 1917 than it ensured in its Constitution that Swedish speakers, who still controlled much of Finland, would be granted equal rights culturally, educationally and socially. It was a gesture of comity and pragmatism that overlooked the fact that for five centuries Sweden had controlled Finland and scorned the Finnish language, which the Swedes deemed mysterious and second-class.
The result of that constitutional mandate, few would disagree, is that Finland is home to the world's most pampered minority group, the endangered Swedish-speaking Finn. Even as their numbers and influence dwindle - from a high of 14 percent of the population in 1880 to 5 percent today - their rights, for the most part, continue to flourish.
"We have it very good here," concedes Henrik Creutz, a Swedish-speaking Finn and a board member of the Swedish People's Party, who is quick to note that almost all Swedish speakers also speak Finnish, most of them very well. "There are lots of language minorities in Europe, but they don't have a lot of power."
Finland has two official languages, Swedish and Finnish. One language takes precedence over the other, depending on how many of the people living in a given community speak Finnish or Swedish as their mother tongue. Mostly, the country is made up of Finnish-language communities; only about 4 percent of the 432 Finnish communities are considered Swedish only.
Another 10 percent are bilingual, 21 of them with a Finnish-language majority and 23 of them with a Swedish-language majority, like Ekenas, a coastal jewel of 14,500 residents.
Wander the streets, cafés, marinas, schools, health centers and government buildings of Ekenas, and the chitchat is all Swedish - actually a dialect of Swedish. More than 80 percent of the residents in Ekenas speak Swedish. As in all other bilingual communities, the government offers Swedish speakers their own schools, day care centers, health care centers, local government councils, newspapers and television and radio shows. Signs are all written in Swedish at the top, Finnish at the bottom.
Swedish speakers also have their own political party in the Finnish government and a host of cultural institutions. Walk into a courthouse, a women's shelter, a nursing home or a government office in any bilingual community, and Swedish speakers, by law, must be served in Swedish, if they request it. A 2004 law requires it. All documents and brochures must be translated into Swedish.
Finland even has a kind of reverse system of quotas and affirmative action for Swedish speakers at the university level; reverse because Swedish speakers tend to be wealthier - Swedish speakers control many of the major industries - and healthier than Finnish speakers.
Swedish speakers have their own Swedish-language business school and their own quotas to study medicine and law at the University of Helsinki. For example, of the 230 laws students at University of Helsinki, at least 18 must be Swedish speakers.
On this point, at least, some Finnish speakers begin to grumble, arguing that Swedish speakers have an easier time getting into these fiercely competitive schools because of the quotas. Swedish speakers disagree: They maintain that without the quotas, Finland would be unable to abide by the law and produce the doctors, lawyers and business people to serve the Swedish-speaking population.
While the idea of peeling back the Swedish speakers' broad rights is almost unthinkable in Finland, a growing number of Finns are beginning to question, or at least complain about, other parts of the historic language law as well.
Heikki Tala, the chairman of the Finnish Alliance, which is fighting to make Finnish the sole official language of Finland, characterizes the status quo as a vestige of a bygone era. Finnish deference to it, he added, is a hangover from Finnish country-bumpkin days.
"There is still a feeling that Swedish speakers are the civilized ones and we are the peasants," Tala said.
Most upsetting to Finns is the fact that they are required to take Swedish in school. Last spring, irate Finnish-speaking students struck a first blow at the Swedish-language requirement, when the government, despite aggressive lobbying from powerful Swedish speakers, agreed to drop Swedish from the difficult matriculation exam that leads to university admissions.
Riita Uosukainen, a former speaker of the Finnish Parliament, argues that some laws simply go overboard. "People in Finland don't want to take rights away from Swedish speakers," she said. "It's in our Constitution. We are proud of it. But Finnish speakers don't want to be told that they must learn Swedish. Finnish people also have rights."
By Lizette Alvarez The New York Times
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2005
EKENAS, Finland - In most parts of the world, language is usually a fiery and divisive issue, one that pits the powerless against the powerful, the small against the big.
The Basques battle the Spanish. The Flemish tussle with the Walloons. The Québécois scuffle with the rest of Canada.
But Finland, a country with an unshakable sense of fair play, offers a counterbalance to that sort of acrimony. If anything, Finland bends over backward, with little dissent and at great cost, to make its 260,000 Swedish speakers feel comfortable.
No sooner did Finland win its independence from Russia in 1917 than it ensured in its Constitution that Swedish speakers, who still controlled much of Finland, would be granted equal rights culturally, educationally and socially. It was a gesture of comity and pragmatism that overlooked the fact that for five centuries Sweden had controlled Finland and scorned the Finnish language, which the Swedes deemed mysterious and second-class.
The result of that constitutional mandate, few would disagree, is that Finland is home to the world's most pampered minority group, the endangered Swedish-speaking Finn. Even as their numbers and influence dwindle - from a high of 14 percent of the population in 1880 to 5 percent today - their rights, for the most part, continue to flourish.
"We have it very good here," concedes Henrik Creutz, a Swedish-speaking Finn and a board member of the Swedish People's Party, who is quick to note that almost all Swedish speakers also speak Finnish, most of them very well. "There are lots of language minorities in Europe, but they don't have a lot of power."
Finland has two official languages, Swedish and Finnish. One language takes precedence over the other, depending on how many of the people living in a given community speak Finnish or Swedish as their mother tongue. Mostly, the country is made up of Finnish-language communities; only about 4 percent of the 432 Finnish communities are considered Swedish only.
Another 10 percent are bilingual, 21 of them with a Finnish-language majority and 23 of them with a Swedish-language majority, like Ekenas, a coastal jewel of 14,500 residents.
Wander the streets, cafés, marinas, schools, health centers and government buildings of Ekenas, and the chitchat is all Swedish - actually a dialect of Swedish. More than 80 percent of the residents in Ekenas speak Swedish. As in all other bilingual communities, the government offers Swedish speakers their own schools, day care centers, health care centers, local government councils, newspapers and television and radio shows. Signs are all written in Swedish at the top, Finnish at the bottom.
Swedish speakers also have their own political party in the Finnish government and a host of cultural institutions. Walk into a courthouse, a women's shelter, a nursing home or a government office in any bilingual community, and Swedish speakers, by law, must be served in Swedish, if they request it. A 2004 law requires it. All documents and brochures must be translated into Swedish.
Finland even has a kind of reverse system of quotas and affirmative action for Swedish speakers at the university level; reverse because Swedish speakers tend to be wealthier - Swedish speakers control many of the major industries - and healthier than Finnish speakers.
Swedish speakers have their own Swedish-language business school and their own quotas to study medicine and law at the University of Helsinki. For example, of the 230 laws students at University of Helsinki, at least 18 must be Swedish speakers.
On this point, at least, some Finnish speakers begin to grumble, arguing that Swedish speakers have an easier time getting into these fiercely competitive schools because of the quotas. Swedish speakers disagree: They maintain that without the quotas, Finland would be unable to abide by the law and produce the doctors, lawyers and business people to serve the Swedish-speaking population.
While the idea of peeling back the Swedish speakers' broad rights is almost unthinkable in Finland, a growing number of Finns are beginning to question, or at least complain about, other parts of the historic language law as well.
Heikki Tala, the chairman of the Finnish Alliance, which is fighting to make Finnish the sole official language of Finland, characterizes the status quo as a vestige of a bygone era. Finnish deference to it, he added, is a hangover from Finnish country-bumpkin days.
"There is still a feeling that Swedish speakers are the civilized ones and we are the peasants," Tala said.
Most upsetting to Finns is the fact that they are required to take Swedish in school. Last spring, irate Finnish-speaking students struck a first blow at the Swedish-language requirement, when the government, despite aggressive lobbying from powerful Swedish speakers, agreed to drop Swedish from the difficult matriculation exam that leads to university admissions.
Riita Uosukainen, a former speaker of the Finnish Parliament, argues that some laws simply go overboard. "People in Finland don't want to take rights away from Swedish speakers," she said. "It's in our Constitution. We are proud of it. But Finnish speakers don't want to be told that they must learn Swedish. Finnish people also have rights."