[lg policy] Sweden's Finns fear minority language rights are under threat

Tue Mar 13 18:45:29 UTC 2018

 Sweden's Finns fear minority language rights are under threat

Experts warn Finnish could die out in Sweden, with reports of official
policy being contravened

Fredrika Fellman, Liliia Makashova and Viktoriia Zhuhan in Gothenburg

Tue 13 Mar 2018 01.00 EDT Last modified on Tue 13 Mar 2018 05.35 EDT

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[image: A Swedish flag flies in Stockholm.]
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/13/swedens-finns-fear-minority-language-rights-are-under-threat#img-1>
A
Swedish flag flies in Stockholm. Photograph: Nicholas Pitt/Alamy

As rising immigration increasingly puts Scandinavia’s reputation for
tolerance to the test, Sweden’s largest national minority fears its
language rights are threatened and children will grow up with little or no
knowledge of their mother tongue.

Finnish-speaking Swedes, known as Sweden Finns (*sverigefinnar*), make up
more than 7% of the country’s 10 million-strong population and are entitled
to Finnish lessons in school since Sweden
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/sweden> reversed an earlier postwar
approach of forced assimilation.

But complaints that minority language policies are not being respected are
mounting. Reports for the Swedish government in the past 12 months point to
failures with respect to Sweden Finns in particular, but paint “a dark
picture
<http://www.sou.gov.se/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/SOU-2017_91_webb.pdf>” of
the situation for national minority languages in Sweden as a whole.

There is a “severe danger” that the Finnish language will die out in the
country, said Sari Pesonen of the Institute of Slavic and Baltic languages
at Stockholm University, a co-author of recent research. “The signals we
get from teachers, for example, they tell us that the situation is bad.
Something needs to be done, and quickly.”

Pupils at one school in Gothenburg have reported being told to stop
communicating in Finnish altogether. Nelli Tiikkaja, nine, said teachers
had told her not to speak her mother tongue.

“They tell us to stop speaking Finnish if they hear us,” she said. “That
feels sad. It doesn’t feel good when I’m not allowed to speak Finnish,
because for me it is the easiest language.”

Other children at the school have also told her to stop, Nelli said.
“Sometimes they threaten us. A boy in the other class once said he would
punch us if we kept speaking Finnish ... It feels like they want to destroy
the whole Finnish language.”
[image: A street scene in Gothenburg, Sweden]
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A street scene in Gothenburg, Sweden. Photograph: Beatrice Törnros

Nelli is not alone. Parents of Finnish-speaking children at the school took
their complaints to the head, whose investigation confirmed that, although
details were uncertain, one member of staff, who left in February 2017, had
tried to stop students speaking their native language.
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“It’s not good that students hear they’re not allowed to speak their mother
tongue,” said Ingela Bertheden, the headteacher, adding that she had told
staff she wanted no language bans at the school.

A similar case at a school in Västerås
<https://www.svt.se/nyheter/uutiset/svenska/barn-forbjods-att-tala-finska-i-skolan?cmpid=del%3Afb%3A20180131%3Abarn-forbjods-att-tala-finska-i-skolan%3Anyh%3Alp>,
about an hour outside Stockholm, has been reported to the national
ombudsman for discrimination.

The Council of Europe last year reported
<https://rm.coe.int/fourth-opinion-on-sweden-adopted-on-22-june-2017/168075fbab>
that Sweden was “experiencing an increase in instances of interethnic
intolerance, racism and hate speech” that was affecting national
minorities, including language teaching.

It found several cases of Finnish teachers prohibited from using the
language in school outside the classroom. “I have heard of many cases where
Finnish teachers have been discriminated against,” says Sirpa Humalisto,
the head of Sweden’s Finnish teachers’ association.

The position of Sweden’s four other official minority languages – Sami,
Roma, Yiddish and Meänkieli (Tornedal Finnish) – may be worse, since they
are spoken by fewer people. Municipalities have “almost completely failed
<http://www.regeringen.se/rattsdokument/statens-offentliga-utredningar/2017/06/sou-201760/>”
to apply minorities policy across the country, according to an official
report in the summer.

The situation in Sweden is almost the opposite of Finland
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/finland>, where Swedish is compulsory
for all school students even though only about 5% of the population have
Swedish as their mother tongue.

Of an estimated 6,000 children entitled to Finnish mother tongue education
in Gothenburg alone, only 177 are receiving it, according to the city
council. In January last year, the only Finnish-language school in the city
was closed down after a negative evaluation by the Swedish schools
inspectorate.

“I do not want to move my daughter to Finland for her to go to
Finnish-language pre-school, but that’s exactly what I have to do today if
nothing changes fast,” wrote Sonja Jakobsson, under an online petition
<http://www4.goteborg.se/prod/Intraservice/Namndhandlingar/SamrumPortal.nsf/B362089ABAD309C2C125817C00235F66/$File/10.%20Goteborgsforslag%20%20Trygga%20den%20tvasprakiga%20undervisningen%20i%20grundskolan.pdf?OpenElement>
in the summer calling on Gothenburg council to deliver on bilingual
schooling rights.

“Swedish-speaking people have an obvious place in Finnish society and are
given clear Swedish-language schooling in Finland – why is it not the same
for Finns here?”

The condition of the Finnish language in Sweden, say critics, means that
the country lacks qualified mother-tongue teachers, as well as workers in
other fields, such as elderly care.

In other areas, Sweden’s Finnish minority enjoys more rights than before,
according to Petra Palkio, a board member of the Sweden Finnish Delegation.

“The media are covering us in a different way; we are more proud of being
Sweden Finns,” Palkio said. By failing to invest sufficiently in its
Finnish minority, “Sweden is robbing itself,” she said.

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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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