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Meänkieli
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Meänkieli (lit. "our language") is a Finno-Ugric language spoken in the most northern parts of Sweden, around the valley of the Torne River. From a linguistic point of view Meänkieli is a mutually intelligible dialect of Finnish, but for political and historical reasons it has the status of a minority language in Sweden. In Swedish nowadays the language is usually referred to as Meänkieli by the authorities; a common, and older, name is tornedalsfinska which literally means "Torne Valley Finnish".
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Encyclopedia
Meänkieli (lit. "our language") is a Finno-Ugric language spoken in the most northern parts of Sweden, around the valley of the Torne River. From a linguistic point of view Meänkieli is a mutually intelligible dialect of Finnish, but for political and historical reasons it has the status of a minority language in Sweden. In Swedish nowadays the language is usually referred to as Meänkieli by the authorities; a common, and older, name is tornedalsfinska which literally means "Torne Valley Finnish". Linguistically meänkieli consists of the Finnish Torney Valley (also spoken in the Finnish side of Torne River) and Gällivare dialects which belong to the much larger Far-Northern dialect group (see Dialect chart).
Meänkieli is chiefly distinguished from standard Finnish by a lack of influence from modern 19th and 20th century developments in that language. Meänkieli also contains many loanwords from Swedish, pertaining to daily life. However, the frequency of loanwords is not exceptionally high when compared to some other Finnish dialects: for example the dialect of Rauma has roughly an equal frequency of loanwords as Meänkieli. Meänkieli lacks two of the grammatical cases used in standard Finnish, namely the comitative and the instructive (and they are used mostly in literary, official language in Finland). In Finland Meänkieli is generally seen as a dialect of northern Finnish. There is also a dialect of Meänkieli spoken around Gällivare which differs even more from standard Finnish.
History
Historically, the area where Meänkieli is spoken and what is now Finland (apart from the linguistically Sami and Swedish parts thereof), formed a dialect continuum within the Realm of Sweden. Since the area east of Torne River was ceded to Russia in 1809, the language developed in partial isolation from standard Finnish. In the 1880s, the Swedish state decided that it would be better if all citizens of the country used Swedish. Part of the reason was based on military concern; one felt that people close to the border speaking the language of the neighbouring country rather than the major language in their own country might not be trusted, in case of war. Another reason was that Finns were considered to be of another race. Opinions were, that "the Sami and the Finnish tribes belong closer to Russia than Scandinavia". The schools in the areas were only teaching in Swedish, and the children were forbidden, under penalty of physical punishment, to speak their own language at school even during the breaks.
A language thus separated from all public life and only maintained in the private sphere soon loses ground. For innovations, the Swedish word had often been incorporated. Thus Meänkieli can be regarded as an old-fashioned northern Finnish dialect, with many loan words from Swedish. Native speakers of Meänkieli are very well aware of the fact that they speak what is technically a Finnish dialect, but given that Meänkieli is now taught as a standardized language, it could also be regarded a language in its own right rather than a mere dialect. Native Meänkieli speakers were prevented by the authorities from learning standard Finnish as a school subject for decades, which resulted in the survival of the language only in oral form.
Meänkieli today
On April 1, 2000, Meänkieli became one of the five nationally recognized minority languages of Sweden. It is most commonly used in the municipalities of Gällivare, Haparanda, Kiruna, Pajala and Övertorneå. However, few of the employees in the public sector have sufficient literacy in the language; some 50% of civil servants have oral proficiency in Finnish and/or Meänkieli.
The numbers of how many people speak Meänkieli vary, since few people today speak Meänkieli as their only language. Numbers from 30,000 to 70,000 people are mentioned, most of them living in Norrbotten. Many people in the Northern parts of Sweden understand some Meänkieli, but those who speak it regularly are fewer. People with Meänkieli-speaking roots are often referred to as Tornedalians although the Finnish-speaking part of Norrbotten is a far larger area than the Tornio (Meänkieli and Finnish name for Torne) river valley; judging by the names of towns and places, it stretches as far west as the city of Gällivare. Today Meänkieli is declining as an active language. Few of the young people in the region speak Meänkieli as part of daily life, though many have passive knowledge of the language from family use. The language is taught at Stockholm University, Luleå University of Technology and Umeå University. Bengt Pohjanen is the trilingual author of Torne valley. He wrote in 1985 the first novel in Meänkieli, Lyykeri. He has written several novels, dramas, grammars and songs in Meänkieli. He has also written and directed films. The author Mikael Niemi does not speak meänkieli. His novels, and a film based on one of his books in Swedish, has improved the general knowledge among average Swedes regarding the existence of this Finnish-speaking minority. Since the 1980s, people who speak Meänkieli have become more aware of the importance of the language as a marker of identity that one should not be ashamed of. Today, grammar books are being written in Meänkieli, as such, the Bible is being translated into Meänkieli; there is drama performed in Meänkieli and some TV programs are being made in Meänkieli - ironically at a time where the number of people who do speak Meänkieli as their first language has reduced drastically.
Controversy
Education in and on Meänkieli has been criticized on the grounds that standard Finnish would give the students considerably greater possibilities for further studies, access to the much larger Finnish literature, and would additionally improve the relations between Finland and Sweden, as well as between Swedes and Ethnic Finns in both countries. The governmental and legal support for Meänkieli as a minority language has proved to be weaker than in comparable countries, such as Norway, Finland, and the Netherlands.
Different Swedish cabinets argued for many years that the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages did not make a sufficient distinction between recent immigrants and indigenous minorities, which in the case of Finnish speakers made a great difference for Sweden; from 1940 to 1970 Sweden had received some 400,000 immigrants from Finland to its urban and industrial centers. Also, the Tornio Valley people have been well aware that their "Finnish" was not "proper" Finnish often trying to hide from "real" Finns that they did not know the Finnish word for things like "yeast", where they say "jästi" (Swedish: jäst). By 1995 both dilemmas were solved by emphasizing the difference between standard Finnish, spoken by immigrants, and Meänkieli, spoken by the indigenous minority in the far north.
See also
External links
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