Query

[Trosterud Trond]

My post to the list from yesterday may not have gone through, I have at least not got it:

Trond.

---- quote

The best estimates on the number of speakers of both the Sami languages and of Kven in Norway can be given by Torkel Rasmussen. As for Kven:

Rasmussen, Torkel<http://www.ub.uit.no/baser/kvensk/advancedsearch.php?Creator=Rasmussen,%20Torkel&submit=search>
Kuinka moni osaa suomea ja kveeniä Pohjois-Norjassa? / s. 41-47 / 2005<http://www.ub.uit.no/baser/kvensk/advancedsearch.php?Date=2005&submit=search> /
Arina : nordisk tidsskrift for kvensk forskning = pohjoismainen kveenitutkimuksen aikakausjulkaisu / Nr 1 /


I have a copy of the article (but on the university). The empirical material for this article is material achieved as a byproduct from an investigation regarding knowledge of North Saami in Norway, and some of the follow-up questions given to Saami speakers were not given to the Kven speakers. But this investigation is, as far as I know, the best there is since the last Norwegian census asking for language knowledge. I will not quote any numbers without the article at hand, but as you can see, an investigation thus exists.

Some of the census data from the first half of the 20th century are also treated in my article
Trond Trosterud: Language Assimilation During the Modernisation Process: Experiences from Norway and North-West Russia. 93-122. Acta Borealia (2008): Volume 25(2) (ref: http://site.uit.no/acta/category/trosterud-trond/)

---- /quote.

Now, I have Torkels article in front of me and cite, from his page 41: Elleve present av befolkningen over 18 år i det undersøkte området kan finsk. Seks prosejt har svart at de kan kvensk. 13 prosent har opplyst at de kan enten finsk eller kvensk eller begge deler.

He then extrapolates the representative data, and get the following absolute numbers (op.cit):
"[D]et er 10340 personer som kan finsk og 5640 som kan kvensk. (...) Det totalet antallet personer som kan enten kvensk eller finsk eller begge deler [er] 12220.

The empirical basis fro the data is a telephone query done by the Norwegian query company Opinion, by interviewing 5751 persons in potentially Sami municipalities (these municipalities overlap with the Kven ones). The absolute numbers are calculated by estimating that the sample is representative.

I recommend his article, it also breaks don the numbers according to municipality, and e.g. shows that the largest Finnish and/or Kven municipalities are Karasjok (32.9%), Kautokeino (32,8%) and Tana (30.5%). In the two former municipalities the respondents knowing Finnish and Kven also know Sami, whereas in Tana, 250 of the 724 Finnish/Kven speakers do not know Sami, whereas 477 know both Finnish/Kven and Sami.

Trond.


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