| Finland Swedish | |
|---|---|
| Fenno-Swedish | |
| finlandssvenska | |
 Unofficialflag of the Swedish-speaking Finns | |
| Region | Western and southern coast ofFinland,Åland |
| Ethnicity | Finland Swedes |
Indo-European
| |
| Official status | |
| Regulated by | Institute for the Languages of Finland |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | east2303 |
| IETF | sv-FI |
Finland Swedish orFenno-Swedish[1] (Swedish:finlandssvenska;Finnish:suomenruotsi) is avariety of theSwedish language and a closely related group ofSwedish dialects spoken inFinland by theSwedish-speaking population, commonly also referred to asFinland Swedes, as theirfirst language.
For the most part, these dialects and the dialects spoken in Sweden aremutually intelligible, although somearchaic dialects inOstrobothnia are practically unintelligible to Swedish-speaking people in southern Finland (and in Sweden). Most Swedish-speaking Finns emphasize that Finland Swedish is not a separate language from the Swedish of Sweden. The Swedish dialects in Finland are considered varieties of Swedish, and the norm for writtenStandard Swedish is completely applicable also for Finland Swedish. Today, Swedish dialects are spoken in four different regions in Finland:Ostrobothnia,Åland,Southwest Finland andUusimaa.
Swedish as spoken in Finland is regulated by the Swedish Department of theInstitute for the Languages of Finland. This regulation includes the officially stated aim of keeping Finland Swedish close to the Swedish as spoken in Sweden and strongly phrased advice againstloanwords andcalques fromFinnish, which are usually incomprehensible to Swedes.
In the spoken vernacular, especially among young people in Finnish-dominated areas, Finnishloanwords as well ascalques 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 fromEnglish.
A common misconception among manySwedes is that Finland Swedish is simply Swedish spoken with aFinnish accent, something that can be a considerable source of frustration to most native Swedish-speakers in Finland.[weasel words][citation needed] Any language adopts features, especially pronunciation habits, from dominant languages it comes in touch with, but many of the traits of Finland Swedish exist also in monolingual areas and some are in fact preserved features of Old Swedish, as withScots in comparison withEnglish orAfrikaans in comparison withDutch.
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Finland Swedish was a result ofSwedish colonisation of Finland during theNorthern Crusades in the 12th to 14th centuries. Colonisation focused on theFinnish archipelago and some of its coastal regions. This colonisation led to the beginning of theSwedish-speaking population of Finland.[2][3]
From the 16th century, Swedish was the main language of jurisdiction, administration and higher education inFinland (which was then a part ofSweden), but the majority of the population in the Finnish inland spokeFinnish outside of these sectors of society, i.e. in normal, daily life. In 1809, when Finland was conquered by theRussian Empire and became an autonomousGrand Duchy, Swedish remained the only official language. In 1863, both Finnish and Swedish becameofficial languages with equal status, and by the time ofFinland's independence in 1917, after aFinnicization campaign by theFennoman movement, Finnish clearly dominated in government and society. See further:Finland's language strife.
Finland has since then been abilingual country with a Swedish-speakingminority (5.2% ofmainland Finland's population in December 2019) living mostly in the coastal areas of southern, south-western, and western Finland. During the 20th century, theurbanization following theIndustrial Revolution has led to large majorities of Finnish speakers in all major cities. The capitalHelsinki (in Swedish Helsingfors) became predominantly Finnish-speaking as recently as around 1900. A large and important part of the Swedish-speaking population nevertheless lives in the capital.[citation needed]
The autonomous island province ofÅland is an exception, being monolingually Swedish-speaking according to international treaties. It is a matter of definition whether theSwedish dialects 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.
Swedish is one of the two official and national languages of the Republic of Finland, the other being Finnish. These two languages have formally equal status in nearly all legislation, though the status of Swedish in Finland has long been a subject of sociopolitical debate.[4][5] The other minority languages (such asSami) are regulated separately.
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Finland Swedish is regulated by theInstitute for the Languages of Finland. Official Swedish is not supposed to be very different from Swedish as found in Sweden. There are however e.g. words regarded as archaic in Sweden, but commonly used in Finland, and terms that differ from their counterparts in Sweden, often because of slight differences in the related legislation.[6]
Bilingualism of municipalities is regulated by the Language Act of 2003.[7] 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 and 6% of inhabitants, then the municipality becomes monolingual, unless it decides to keep its bilingual status. At present, only one such municipality has done so, namelyLohja (Lojo in Swedish). The status is reviewed once in a decade, and enacted by a government decree issued by theFinnish Council of State.
The country's public broadcaster,Yle, provides two Swedish-language radio stations,Yle Vega andYle X3M. The Swedish-language TV channelYle Fem was merged withYle Teema in 2017 to formYle Teema & Fem.
With the exception of the dialects spoken inOstrobothnia along the west coast, close to theGulf of Bothnia (example: the dialect spoken inNärpes), Finland Swedish is not particularly different from Central Swedish. The phoneme/ʉː/ is more centralized and pronounced like[ʉː], quite similar to how many speakers of English pronounce/uː/ (as inmoon). That should be compared to the Central Swedish[ʉ̟ː], which is very close to the short vowel[ʏː] and is morerounded.
The highly variablesj sound/ɧ/ varies between[ʂ] and[ɕ~ʃ] on the Finnish mainland, often close tosh in Englishshoe. In the Åland Islands, its realization is similar to the velar (and oftenlabialized) pronunciations of nearby parts of Sweden. The historick sound before front vowels and thetj sound, in modern Central Swedish africative/ɕ/, is anaffricate[t͡ɕ] or[t͡ʃ] in all Finland Swedish dialects, close toch in Englishchin, except for some[8]Åland dialects, in which it is a simple fricative[ɕ].[9][10]
Thetonal word accent, 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).[citation needed] Hence, Central Swedishminimal pairs like/ˈandɛn/ ("the duck") and/ǎndɛn/ ("the spirit") are both pronounced[ˈandɛn] in Finland.
Finland Swedish lacks theaspirated stops present in Central Standard Swedish, making the contrast between"fortis" and "lenis" stops one of voicing only.[11] The retroflexion that occurs in many dialects when/r/ precedes a coronal consonant does not occur in certain pairs in Finland Swedish (e.g./rt/, which is realized as[ʈ] in Standard Swedish but[rt] in Finland Swedish).[12]
Finland Swedish mostly has the same vocabulary as Swedish in Sweden, and there is a conscious effort to adopt neologisms from Sweden, to maintain cohesion between the two varieties. Nevertheless, there are differences, which generally fall into two categories: words now considered archaic in Sweden, andloanwords andcalques from Finnish or independently borrowed from other languages (nowadays mostly English). There are also some terms differing because of differing legislation.
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