Finland Swedish is a general term for the closely related cluster of
dialectThe term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by scholars of language. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other...
s of
SwedishSwedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the coast and on the Åland islands. It is to a considerable extent mutually intelligible with Norwegian and to a lesser extent with Danish...
spoken in
FinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland
, is a Nordic country and democracy situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland...
by Swedish-speaking Finns as their
mother tongueA first language is the language a human being learns from birth...
. For the most part, these dialects and the dialects spoken in Sweden are mutually intelligible, although some
dialectsOstrobothnian Swedish is a variety of Finland-Swedish, spoken in Finland. Outside the autonomous island province of Åland, which is officially monolingually Swedish, Ostrobothnia is the only region of Finland where the Swedish-speakers have a majority...
from
OstrobothniaOstrobothnia is a region of Finland. It is located in Western Finland. It borders to the regions Central Ostrobothnia, Southern Ostrobothnia, and Satakunta and is one of the four regions making up the historical province of Ostrobothnia....
are practically unintelligible to Swedish-speaking people in southern Finland (and in Sweden). However, most Swedish-speaking Finns emphasize that Finland Swedish is not a language separate from the Swedish of Sweden. The Swedish dialects in Finland are considered
varietiesIn sociolinguistics a variety, also called a lect, is a form of a language used by speakers of that language. This may include dialects, accents, registers, styles or other sociolinguistic variation, as well as the standard language variety itself...
of Swedish, and the norm for written
Standard SwedishStandard Swedish denotes Swedish as a spoken and written standard language. While Swedish as a written language is uniform and standardized, the spoken standard may vary considerably from region to region...
is completely applicable also for Finland Swedish.
Swedish as spoken in Finland is regulated by the Swedish Department of the
Research Institute for the Languages of FinlandThe Research Institute for the Languages of Finland is a governmental linguistic research institute of Finland geared at studies of Finnish, Swedish , the Sami languages, Romani language, and the Finnish Sign Language....
. This regulation includes the officially stated aim of keeping Finland Swedish close to the Swedish as spoken in Sweden and strongly phrased advice against
loanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from one language and incorporated into another.-General:By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept, whereby it is the meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself.The word loanword is itself a calque of the German...
s and
calqueIn linguistics, a calque or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or root-for-root translation....
s from
FinnishFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. It is one of the official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a Finnish dialect, are spoken...
, which are usually incomprehensible to Swedes. The standardized form of spoken Finland Swedish, as used for instance in national radio and television, has a
prosodyIn linguistics, prosody is the rhythm, stress, and intonation of connected speech...
that like in northern parts of Sweden is related to Finnish prosody, similarly to how the high status varieties of Swedish as spoken in southern and western Sweden are related to the prosody of
DanishDanish is one of the North Germanic languages , a sub-group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. It is spoken by around 6 million people, mainly in Denmark; the language is also used by the 50,000 Danes in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany where it holds the...
and
NorwegianNorwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants ...
.
PhonologicalPhonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system...
patterns may be considered distributed similarly, although to much lesser degree. Such spoken high status Finland-Swedish is sometimes called "High Swedish"
(Högsvenska), although this term is increasingly shunned since it by many is considered a carrier of the capital's elite's expectations of dominance. As a term, "
standardA standard language is a particular variety of a language that has been given either legal or quasi-legal status...
Finland Swedish" may be preferred.
An often repeated "fact" is that the municipality with the highest proportion of Swedish speakers in the world,
HammarlandHammarland is a municipality of Åland, an autonomous territory of Finland.The municipality has a population of and covers an area of ofwhich is water. The population density is.The municipality is unilingually Swedish...
(96% ), is located in Finland.
KorsnäsKorsnäs is a municipality of Finland.It is located in the province of Western Finland and is part of the Ostrobothnia region. The municipality has a population of and covers an area of of which is water. The population density is ....
has also held this title and is often cited as such. However, as there are no official statistics on the mother tongue of inhabitants of Sweden, this is hard or impossible to verify and should probably be taken with a grain of salt.
In the spoken language, especially among young people in Finnish-dominated areas, Finnish
loanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from one language and incorporated into another.-General:By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept, whereby it is the meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself.The word loanword is itself a calque of the German...
s as well as
calqueIn linguistics, a calque or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or root-for-root translation....
s from Finnish are frequently incorporated into Finland Swedish. There are also some words in Finland Swedish that would be considered slightly archaic in Sweden. Some government and public service terms that have been created in recent centuries also differ. The same is true of other new words, notably loanwords from
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
.
A common mistake made by many
SwedesSweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe...
is to mistake Finland Swedish for Swedish with a
FinnishFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. It is one of the official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a Finnish dialect, are spoken...
accent, something that can be a considerable source of frustration to most Swedish-speaking Finns. Any language adopts features, especially pronunciation habits, from dominant languages it comes in touch with, but the pronunciation of Finland Swedish by a Swedish-speaking Finn is in some cases different from that of monolingual Finnish speakers pronouncing Swedish as a foreign language. It is also true that in some accents of Swedish (especially in Turku and Helsinki) this difference is quite unexistent.
History
From the 16th century, Swedish was the main language of jurisdiction, administration, and higher education in
FinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland
, is a Nordic country and democracy situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland...
, but the majority of the population spoke
FinnishFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. It is one of the official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a Finnish dialect, are spoken...
outside of these sectors of society, i.e. in normal, daily life. In 1809, when Finland became an autonomous
Grand DuchyThe Grand Duchy of Finland was the predecessor state of modern Finland that existed in its territory 1809–1917 as part of the Russian Empire.- History :...
in the
Russian EmpireThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia, and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
, Swedish remained the only official language. In 1863, Finnish and Swedish became
official languageAn official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other territory. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...
s with equal status, and by the time of
Finland's independenceThe Finnish declaration of independence was adopted by the Parliament of Finland on 6 December 1917. It declared Finland an independent and sovereign nation-state rather than an autonomous Russian Grand Duchy.- Revolution in Russia :...
in 1917, Finnish clearly dominated in government and society.
Finland has since then been a bilingual country with a Swedish-speaking minority (5.5% of
mainland FinlandMainland Finland is a term used for instance in statistics to exclude the autonomous Åland Islands under Finnish sovereignty. Mainland Finland is not to be confused with Finland Proper, which is the province adjacent to Åland...
's population in 2006) living mostly in the coastal areas of southern, south-western, and western Finland. During the 20th century, the
urbanizationUrbanization is the physical growth of urban areas from rural areas as a result of population immigration to an existing urban area. Effects include change in density and administration services. While the exact definition and population size of urbanized areas varies amongdifferent countries,...
following the
Industrial RevolutionThe Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, and transport had a profound effect on the socioeconomic and cultural conditions in the United Kingdom. The changes subsequently spread throughout Europe, North...
has led to large majorities of Finnish speakers in all major cities. The capital
HelsinkiHelsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the southern part of Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, by the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it the most populous municipality in Finland by a wide margin...
(in Swedish Helsingfors) became predominantly Finnish speaking as early as around 1900. A large and important part of the Swedish-speaking population nevertheless lives in the capital.
The autonomous
island provinceIsland province is a province with jurisdictional extent encompassing the whole land area of an island.A province cannot be called an "island province" if a certain part of the island is governed or administered by a separate province...
of Åland is an exception, being monolingually Swedish speaking according to international treaties. It is a matter of definition whether the Swedish
dialectThe term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by scholars of language. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other...
s spoken on Åland are to be considered a kind of Finland Swedish or not. Most Swedish-speaking Finns and linguists consider them to be closer to some of the dialects spoken in nearby parts of Sweden.
Official status
Swedish is an official language of the state of Finland and is regulated by the
Research Institute for the Languages of FinlandThe Research Institute for the Languages of Finland is a governmental linguistic research institute of Finland geared at studies of Finnish, Swedish , the Sami languages, Romani language, and the Finnish Sign Language....
. Official Swedish is not supposed to be different from Swedish as found in Sweden.
Bilingualism of municipalities is regulated by the Language Act of 2003. Finnish and Swedish are defined as national languages. If the minority has increased into at least 3,000 persons or 8% of inhabitants, then the municipality must become bilingual. If the minority has fallen below 3,000 persons or 6% of inhabitants, then the municipality must become monolingual, unless it decides to keep its bilingual status. (At present, only one such municipality has done so, namely
LohjaLohja , is a town and municipality of Finland.It is located in the province of Southern Finland and is part of the Uusimaa region. The town has a population of and covers an area of ofwhich is water...
(
Lojo in Swedish).) The status is reviewed once in a decade, and enacted by a government decree issued by the
Finnish Council of StateThe Council of State is Finland's cabinet; it directs the Government of Finland. However, in governmental translations to English, the distinction is often blurred between cabinet and government in the wider sense...
.
Sounds
With the exception of the dialects spoken in
OstrobothniaOstrobothnia is a region of Finland. It is located in Western Finland. It borders to the regions Central Ostrobothnia, Southern Ostrobothnia, and Satakunta and is one of the four regions making up the historical province of Ostrobothnia....
along the west coast, close to the
Gulf of BothniaThe Gulf of Bothnia is the northernmost arm of the Baltic Sea. It is situated between Finland's west coast and Sweden's east coast. In the south of the gulf lie the Åland Islands, between the Sea of Åland and the Archipelago Sea.-Name:...
, Finland Swedish is not particularly different from Central Swedish. The phonology is identical, but it has slightly different vowel qualities. The phoneme is more centralized and pronounced like , quite similar to the
American EnglishAmerican English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two thirds of native speakers of English live in the United States.English is the most common language in the United States...
pronunciation of /u/ (as in
moon). This should be compared to the Central Swedish , which is very close to the short vowel and is more
roundedRounding a numerical value means replacing it by another value that is approximately equal but has a shorter, simpler, or more explicit representation; for example, replacing US$ 23.4476 by US$ 23.45, or the fraction 312/937 by 1/3, or by 1.41....
.
The realization of the highly variable
phonemeIn a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
is more frontal on the mainland and can vary between and , while the realizations on Åland are more similar to the velar (and often distinctly labialized) in the neighboring parts of Sweden. is affricated into or in all dialects including in standard Finland Swedish.
The
tonal word accentPitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words...
, which distinguishes some minimal pairs in most dialects of Swedish and Norwegian, is not present in Finland Swedish (except around the parish of Snappertuna, west of Helsinki). The so-called accent 2, used mainly in words with a two-syllable root, is not used at all; instead, accent 1 is used in all words. Hence, Sweden Swedish minimal pair like ("the duck") - with stress on only the first syllable - and ("the spirit") - with both syllables stressed - are both pronounced in Finland.
External links
- SweDia - a collection of dialect samples of Swedish including Finland Swedish