Finland: Professors: Spending Cuts Threaten National Culture

[Harold Schiffman]

Professors: Spending Cuts Threaten National Culture
Published 04.11.2008, 09.38


Sharp cuts in spending are seen as a threat to domestic language
research and language maintenance: a group of professors of Finnish
Swedish, Sami, the Nordic languages, and the Finno-Ugric languages
have appealed to the government's Ministerial Committee on Economic
Policy to pay more heed to national culture. The productivity
programme of the Ministry of Finance is leading to cutbacks in funding
for the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland.

The tasks of the institute include solving problems in language usage,
research into the spoken and written languages, as well as monitoring
of the media and public officials. The institute also has a book of
Finnish grammar available for free on the Internet. The 42 professors
signing the appeal are concerned about the future of language
maintenance and research in Finland. They note that employees with
professional skills are a key resource of research in the humanities,
and that decisions that are made now will have far-reaching
consequences. The Ministerial Committee on Economic Policy will
discuss the proposal of the Ministry of education on November the
25th.

 http://www.yle.fi/news/left/id106529.html


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