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| Languages of Finland | |
|---|---|
| Official language(s) | Finnish (92%) Swedish (1st: 6%, 2nd: 41%) |
| Minority language(s) | Sami, Romani, Finnish Sign Language, Russian, Estonian and Turkish. |
| Main foreign language(s) | English (63%) German (18%) French (3%) |
| Sign language(s) | Finnish Sign Language |
| Common keyboard layout(s) |
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| Source | ebs_243_en.pdf (europa.eu) |
The two official languages of Finland are Finnish and Swedish. The official minority languages include Sami languages, Romani and the Finnish Sign Language.
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Finnish
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Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page. (February 2008) |
Finnish, the national language of the Finnish people, is the native tongue of 94% of the population. It is a Baltic-Finnic language and as such related to e.g. Estonian. The Baltic-Finnic languages belong to the Uralic languages so Finnish is distantly related to languages as diverse as e.g. Hungarian (an Ugric language) and the Sami languages.
Swedish
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Swedish is the native tongue of 5.5% of the population (92.4% in the Åland autonomous province), down from 14% at the beginning of the 20th century. It is a North Germanic language, closely related to Norwegian and Danish; as such it is also an Indo-European language, related (more or less distantly) to languages as diverse as Hindi, German and Russian. Its importance in Finland is greater than this percentage suggests, however, for historical reasons and because a large fraction of Finns are competent in it: apart from the 5.5% native speakers, an additional 41% of the Finnish population claim to be able to conduct a conversation in Swedishcitation needed. Swedish is a mandatory subject in Finnish schools.
All municipalities where both Finnish and Swedish are spoken by either at least 8% of the population each or at least 3,000 people each are considered bilingual. Swedish only reaches these criteria in Åland and some coastal areas, making the inland unilingually Finnish-speaking. Finnish reaches them everywhere but in Åland and in three municipalities in the Ostrobothnia region, which is also the only region on the Finnish mainland with a Swedish-speaking majority (52% to 46%). Outside these regions, there are Swedish-majority municipalities only in Finland Proper (especially in Åboland outside Turku), in Uusimaa and in Eastern Uusimaa.
The four largest Swedish-speaking communities in Finland, in absolute numbers, are those of Helsinki (Helsingfors), Espoo (Esbo), Porvoo (Borgå) and Vaasa (Vasa), where they constitute significant minorities. Helsinki, the capital, had a Swedish-speaking majority until late in the 19th century.
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The Swedish dialects spoken on the Finnish mainland are collectively known as Finland-Swedish, while the Åland dialect is closer to standard Swedish. There is a rich Finland-Swedish literature, including authors such as Tove Jansson, Johan Ludvig Runeberg, Edith Södergran and Zacharias Topelius. Runeberg is considered Finland's national poet and wrote the national anthem, "Vårt land", which was only later translated into Finnish.
Sami languages
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Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page. (February 2008) |
The Sami languages are a group of related languages spoken across the region known in English as Lapland. They are distantly related to Finnish. The three Sami languages spoken in Finland, Northern Sami, Inari Sami and Skolt Sami, have a combined native speaker population of roughly 1,800.2
See also
References
- ^ "Väestö – Suomessa puhutut kielet (31.12.2007)" (in Finnish). suomi.fi. Helsinki:: State Treasury (2007-12-31). Retrieved on 2009-01-04.
- ^ "Population according to language and the number of foreigners and land area km2 by area". Statistics Finland's PX-Web databases. Helsinki: Statistics Finland (2007-12-31). Retrieved on 2009-01-04.
External links
Media related to Languages of Finland at Wikimedia Commons
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 4 January 2009, at 18:41.
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