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<p class="MsoNormal">As the Finnic overview has been compiled by
Riho Grünthal, I
leave the answer to him. On my behalf I add the following comment:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Beside the well known problems of how to
classify Kven and
Meänkieli (linguistic identity and language structure do not have
to go hand in
hand) there is an urgent practical question which comes to my
mind. Where do
these numbers come from and how reliable are they? Can you as a
potential
supporter of a distinct entry for Kven and Meänkieli offer
independent
statistics or back up secondary sources? If this is not possible
this would be
another reason for retaining the current classification [and
elsewhere] to
which one could add a separate note including regional variants
Kven and
Meänkieli. If you have better data to offer, please forward this
to us! </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Best wishes,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Florian Siegl </p>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
On 30.10.2012 15:41, Jussi Ylikoski wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Dear
colleagues,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Thank
you for a very interesting discussion!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">One
heretical question from behind the Finnish language: When
presenting a list of more than forty Uralic languages, is it
OK to ignore fact that thousands of people identify
themselves as speakers of the Kven and Meänkieli languages,
and those varieties of the Finnic branch have also been
recognized as independent minority languages in Norway and
Sweden, respectively?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Surely,
the present-day legal status has not been achieved without
discussion, and the arguments in favor of the independence
of Kven and Meänkieli from Finnish do contradict many of the
traditional ways of doing and seeing things in Uralistics.
However, if the authorities as popular (and democratic) as
Wikipedia or as authoritative as Ethnologue and
International Organization for Standardization regard Kven
and Meänkieli as languages of some kind as well, could not
"We, the Ura-list" do that as well? As for the numbers of
speakers, I personally only wish to refer to the second-hand
information of Ethnologue and Wikipedia (6,500 or
2,000–8,000 for Kven, 40,000–70,000 or 79,600–109,600).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Is
it perfectly OK to ignore facts such as these, perhaps by
referring to the traditional Finnish dialectology and the
(earlier) mutual understanding between the Finnic speakers
in Finland, Sweden and Norway? At least within the
discussion as detailed as we are seeing here? (For example,
Akkala Saami, alive or not, seems to have gained its
scholarly independence – both from Skolt and Kildin – only
quite recently.) Florian mentioned that the overall
intention of the list is "to arrive at a reasonably
realistic estimation which can be used e. g. in teaching,
research or PR work." There are also many attempts to
revitalize the use of Kven and Meänkieli, but what kind of
signals are the Uralists giving in our PR work if we just
bluntly state "Finnish, 5 300 000, Finland and elsewhere"?
Kven is Finnish, Finnish is not endangered, ergo Kven is not
endangered?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Best
regards from Guovdageaidnu,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">Jussi<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
</blockquote>
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