Everything about Finland Swedish totally explained
Finland Swedish is a general term for the closely related cluster of
dialects of
Swedish spoken in
Finland by
Swedish-speaking Finns as their
mother tongue. For the most part, these dialects and the dialects spoken in Sweden are mutually intelligible, although some
dialects from
Ostrobothnia are practically unintelligible to Swedish-speaking people in southern Finland (and in Sweden). However, most Swedish-speaking Finns emphasize that Finland Swedish isn't a language separate from the Swedish of Sweden. The Swedish dialects in Finland are considered
varieties of Swedish, and the norm for written
Standard Swedish 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 Finland. This regulation includes the officially stated aim of keeping Finland Swedish close to the Swedish as spoken in Sweden and strongly phrased advice against
loanwords and
calques from
Finnish, which are usually incomprehensible to Swedes. The standardized form of spoken Finland Swedish, as used for instance in national radio and television, has a
prosody 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
Danish and
Norwegian.
Phonological 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, "
standard Finland Swedish" may be preferred.
An often repeated "fact" is that the municipality with the highest proportion of Swedish speakers in the world,
Hammarland (96%
as of 2004), is located in Finland.
Korsnäs 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
loanwords as well as
calques 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
English.
A common mistake made by many
Swedes is to mistake Finland Swedish for Swedish with a
Finnish 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 clearly different from that of monolingual Finnish speakers pronouncing Swedish as a foreign language.
History
From the 16th century, Swedish was the main language of jurisdiction, administration, and higher education in
Finland, but the majority of the population spoke
Finnish outside of these sectors of society, for example in normal, daily life. In
1863, Finnish and Swedish became
official languages with equal status, and by the time of
Finland's independence 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 Finland's population in 2006) living mostly in the coastal areas of southern, south-western, and western Finland. During the 20th century, the
urbanization following the
Industrial Revolution has led to large majorities of Finnish speakers in all major cities. The capital
Helsinki (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 province of
Åland is an exception, being monolingually Swedish speaking according to international treaties. It is a matter of definition whether the Swedish
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.
Official status
Swedish is an official language of the state of Finland and is regulated by the
Research Institute for the Languages of Finland.
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. The status is reviewed once in a decade, and enacted by a government decree issued by the
Finnish Council of State.
Sounds
With the exception of the dialects spoken in
Ostrobothnia along the west coast, close to the
Gulf of Bothnia, Finland Swedish isn't particularly different from Central Swedish. The phonology is identical, but it has slightly different vowel qualities. The phoneme /ʉ/ is more centralized and pronounced like [ʉ], quite similar to the
American English pronunciation of /u/ (as in
moon). This should be compared to the Central Swedish [ʉ̟], which is very close to the short vowel [ʏ] and is more
rounded.
The realization of the highly variable
phoneme /ɧ/ is more frontal on the mainland and can vary between [ʂ] and [ɕ~ ʃ], while the realizations on Åland are more similar to the velar (and often distinctly
labialized) [ɧ] in the neighboring parts of Sweden. /ɕ/ is
affricated into [ʨ] or [ʧ] in all dialects including in standard Finland Swedish.
The
tonal word accent, which distinguishes some minimal pairs in most dialects of Swedish and Norwegian, isn't 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, isn't used at all, instead accent 1 is used in all words. Hence Sweden Swedish minimal pairs like /ˈandɛn/ ("the duck") - with stress on only the first syllable - and /ˈandˌɛn/ ("the spirit") - with both syllables stressed - are both pronounced [ˈandɛn] in Finland.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Finland Swedish'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://finland_swedish.totallyexplained.com">Finland Swedish Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
