Talk:Finland Swedish

Finland Swedish, Finnish Swedish or Finnishswedish?

The most logic name of this Swedish dialect would be Finnishswedish, or Finnish-Swedish. The "Finland Swedish" seems very strange, and shoult at least be hyphenated? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.210.244.29 (talk) 00:18, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

My favourite would be Finland's Swedish. --Mlang.Finn (talk) 15:50, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

We speak about a combination of a country - Finland or Sweden - and a language - Finnish or Swedish. I find it quite logical to put the two words together. Genitive is OK, but the term in common use is the one without genitive. I cannot judge if the combined word should or should not be hyphenated. "Finnishswedish" sounds to me like a language mix. It would be difficult to remember which is which of "Finnishswedish" and "Swedishfinnish". And the two other combinations "Swedishswedish" and "Finnishfinnish" for the majority language groups in respective countries - are such reduplications really proper English? 188.238.73.179 (talk) 09:42, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

The term “Finland Swedish” seems to be the universally accepted one in English, which makes logical sense: A form of Swedish spoken in Finland. (The part “Finland” can refer only to the country, so you know that it means Swedish spoken in Finland, not Finnish spoken in Sweden.) The terms “Finland Finnish” or “Sweden Swedish” are rarely used because they look too redundant.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 15:49, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Sweden-Finnish?

As well as a Finland dialect of Swedish, I've also heard of a Sweden dialect of Finnish. I don't know much about this however, yet. Gringo300 12:41, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, Sweden has a quite large Finnish minority. Tornedalsfinska (Meänkieli) has oficial status as a minority language.. --Njård 11:00, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

So does standard Finnish. --88.114.252.193 22:34, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

It's worth mentioning that in addition to the Tornedal Finns there's an even bigger minority of Finns spread all over Sweden. Therefore Finnish is widely spoken in Sweden. --Alexej 19:04, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I've noted that quite a lot of Swedes have Finnish surnames. Some of them may descend from Forest Finns (not sure if they kept their names), but generally Sweden Finns have only been immigrating since WWII. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 05:32, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Language regulation

I heard that the Finland-Swedish language regulation is quite different from the approach in Sweden. The official aim is to keep the language similar to the standard swedish spoken in sweden, particularly hard on borrowings or calques from finnish, which would be ununderstandable in Sweden. This approach is different from the swedish academy, which sometimes give recommendations, but mainly accepts the majority usage as the correct one. I think this should be added to the page... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.198.149.127 (talk) 17:17, 10 November 2004 (UTC)

Added the comment: Language Regulation The Finland-Swedish language is regulated by the "Swedish Department" at the "Research Institute for the Languages of Finland" in Finland. There is an officially stated aim that the Finland-Swedish dialect should remain close to the Swedish spoken in Sweden, thus the Swedish Department strongly advices against loanwords and calques from Finnish, which would often be incomprehensible to swedes from Sweden. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.198.149.73 (talk) 01:50, 25 November 2004 (UTC)

Mentioned högsvenska (Standard Finland-Swedish) using the article in http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/högsvenska as a source of information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.230.27.24 (talk) 22:35, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Dialects

There are many dialects in Finland-Swedish, and they can differ a lot from place to place even if it's only a few kilometers between. If someone wants to start writing about the different dialects i propose to use the following article names: Swedish dialects in Ostrobothnia, Swedish dialects in Western Nylandia, Swedish dialects in Eastern Nylandia and Swedish dialects in Åboland. That should be a good start, when a text about a specific dialect grows too big we'll just move it to its own article. Anyone feel like doing this? bbx 16:19, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Would it be possible to perhaps start describing the different dialect groups in this article first? Any linguistic terminology for the dialects would be good. Peter Isotalo 22:21, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

This isn't that much different from Swedish areas, where some dialects are now considered to be different languages. I'm not saying that this shouldn't be noted. Just that languages are not that conformed as many nationalists think. Andjack (talk) 15:37, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Article split

Since this article clearly is meant to refer to the variant of Swedish rather than Finland-Swedes, I've moved all material that is mainly concerned with the ethnic group as well as the relevant discussions to that article and its talkpage respectively. Please try to keep these things separate from now on. This article is supposed to be mainly about the linguistic aspects of the various Finland-Swedish dialects, not about the people who speak them.

Peter ^Isotalo 20:38, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Looks good to me. --Janke | Talk 21:33:38, 2005-08-31 (UTC)

Most Swedish-speaking municipalities in the world

I have heard this claim that the municipality in the world that has the largest percentage of Swedish-speakers is in Finland, then then it was claimed to be Närpes. Does anyone know the facts behind this claim? Since we don't have statistics on people's languages in Sweden in the way they do in Finland, I wonder how the comparison is made - and frankly, I doubt that this is correct although often repeated. / Habj 21:39, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I guess that was from the time when there were many municipalities in Finland where there were no foreigners. But I think it wasn't Närpiö, originally. It has never been without Finnish-speaking minority. I guess originally it was about some Åland's island municipality. --Lalli 10:32, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes this is true, i think in fact both the first and second most swedish-speaking places in the world are in Finland, one of them is on Åland, i think. But i can't find which one it is. It was featured atleast in the tv-show "värsta språket" on swedish television, but apaprently they do not have backlogs enough for the tv-shows on svt.se. But this is pretty much trivia as they are both places with a few hundred inhabitants or something like that so a few finnish speakers or foreigners moving in would change that. Gillis 19:57, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

It should be noted that unlike in Finland those kind of records are not kept in Sweden so there are probably municipalities in Sweden with nearly 100% Swedish speakers. --88.114.252.193 22:36, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Input requested

Hi. We could use some outside input over at Categories for discussion. In particular, here we have two people arguing over what to call Category:Finland-Swedish, and another couple of opinions could be very helpful. Thanks! -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:57, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Finland Swedish: Map of where Swedish is spoken

Added to user talk: "Hi, you have unilaterally changed the map on this article to one that is more politicised. The purpose of the article is to describe Finland Swedish as a dialect of the Swedish language. The new map ignores the fact that the Swedish speaking areas of Finland also include the so-called "language islands". The map you have replaced it with is based only upon which munipalities are deemed bilingual or unilingual Swedish-speaking. This does not correspond exactly to the same areas as Svenskfinland or where Swedish is spoken. 82.21.219.114 (talk) 14:20, 14 January 2008 (UTC)"

The flag in the article is also the Flag of Skåne/ Scanian flag, am I right?Fågelfors-Glen (talk) 11:57, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

The replacement map, on the other hand, is hand-drawn. Obviously a better map would be color-coded individually by municipality and Swedish-speaker percentage, but before it is drawn, a map based on municipality bilingualism is better. The old map is not NPOV, because it's drawn by hand according to personal opinion rather than actual demographics, like the official bilingualism map. Also, it is a JPG file; JPG should never be used to store diagrams. I believe that by international standards, requiring at least 6% to 8% in order to be bilingual is exceptionally pro-bilingualist and consequently a map of municipality bilingualism represents the actual situation best. In many countries, 20% is required. Note also that you don't own the article and I'm not vandalising it; i.e. you should not unilaterally revert the established article in favor of your favorite map and then use the personal talk page to complain.

And by the way, even the new map is a pixel image. A good project would be color-coding a SVG image of Finnish municipalities with Swedish-speaker percentages. --Vuo (talk) 14:35, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

This new map could be perceived as rather misleading. It relies solely on political structures to donate where Swedish-speakers are found. It we must have a "intensity" of "speakers" style map, it may be better done on numbers of speakers. This new one could mislead people to believe that e.g. Helsinki doesn't have many Swedish speakers - whereas in fact, it's the most Swedish-speaking municipality in Finland - even though as a percentage of the population, it's very low. The new map gives the impression that the Swedish speaking population is concentrated overwhelmingly in Österbotten - which is not numerically the case. Furthermore, I agree that this article is not really meant to be about political viewpoints on Swedish in Finland, so political structures are essentially irrelevant. It should be concentrating on the simplicity of "Where are Swedish-speakers?". This new map is over complicated and thus confusing and with real potential even to mislead. 94pjg (talk) 14:56, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

True, I was just tinkering with the kunnat.net data [1] and I also (independently) noticed that number of speakers is much more reliable. A color-coded map could be drawn with for example color categories of over 10000 (Helsinki, Espoo, Porvoo, Vaasa, Mustasaari, Tammisaari, Pietarsaari, 41%), then 5000-10000 (30%), then 1000-5000 (21%), then 1000-100 (6%), then under 100 (2%) as white. 98.1% of Swedish-speakers would be covered by a color in such a scheme. Furthermore, it would be useful to denote cities i.e. populous municipalities (let's say over 20000 people) with a separate coloring coordinate. There are nine such cities that are bilingual. ... And to expand on the criticism of both maps, any map of the situation can be highly misleading because a large area is colored by rural municipalities, if simply bilinguality is shown. The large urban population is therefore underrepresented in the first visual impression. --Vuo (talk) 15:15, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

True, there are problems in representing the urban population. I feel that we both might be suggesting that the map should do more than is actually needed. I believe that the point of the map is perhaps left as simple as possible - to show "where there are Swedish speakers". If I'm in the shoes of someone viewing this article from New York wanting to know where the Swedish language is found in Finland, I probably don't want to know in what percentage the Finland-Swedes are found (the article on Swedish-speaking Finns understandably does go into that in more detail, as it's about the "people"). In fact, adding such information here probably would just over-complicate the matter. So, in some ways, a simple single colour map might actually be the best solution for this article. I'd leave it like that (although perhaps with a better version than the original on this article) and let the Swedish-speaking Finns article deal with the political matters and actual numbers. (Thus leaving this article as primarily about just the variety of the language). 94pjg (talk) 16:36, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the latest map, it's not correct to state that white represents unilingual Finnish speaking municipalities. There are also municipalities that have Sami as an official language that have been included in the white colour (e.g. Utsjoki). 94pjg (talk) 00:32, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

This article is about language, not population. By necessity maps primarily show distributions and not numbers, so it is true that in big cities there may be many people with Swedish as their mother tong, hardly visible on the map. But often these people in their daily life speak the majority language of their city as well, which is Finnish. So if we are interested in knowing where Swedish is spoken the most, it may well be more or less those areas on the maps which are indicated to have a high percentage of Swedish speakers. 188.238.73.179 (talk) 10:49, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Rv

total Swedish-speaking is 38% of pupulation What does this mean? --Vuo (talk) 17:37, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

It should be cited more clearly. It comes from a piece of research done relatively recently which asked people to gage their ability in Swedish. I think, from the results, 38% was the number determined to be confident enough to say they could speak Swedish at least nearly free from failure (in the whole country of Finland). If my memory is right (although it may not be!), it wasn't actually a specific survey for the Swedish language - it covered others as well. So, I think that there is a statistic for English out there that comes out of the same survey. I think, again if I remember correctly, that the English percentage was a little higher. But yes, someone should try and find the actual results and link to it and explain exactly what ability in Swedish people had to have to belong to the 38%. Perhaps someone else can shed more light? 94pjg (talk) 13:57, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that Swedish spoken as a foreign language by other inhabitants of Finland qualifies as, or is included in the dialect of Finland-Swedish. (This is even in the article: 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.) --Vuo (talk) 14:08, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

It depends really. I agree and disagree with you at the same time! I disagree because can one really say that there is one entire dialect called Finland-Swedish? You could make a very good case for no (I'm not suggesting that I'd personally subscribe to it, but it could be a valid argument). There is one Swedish language and the Swedish language has dialects, for instance, people from Stockholm, Malmö, Ekenäs and Närpes all speak in dialects of the Swedish language. Why do we group together the very different dialects in Stockholm and Malmö and the very different dialects in Ekenäs and Närpes and suggest that the belong to a bigger larger dialect (rikssvenska and finlandssvenska respectively)? Does it actually make much logical sense? Perhaps it's only the case because of political borders rather than linguistics. Naturally, one can argue that there are enough commonalities between all the various dialects of Swedish found in Finland for them to be included in a common 'Finland-Swedish' as well. But anyway, regardless of that, I think including information on how many people in Finland actually speak Swedish is fairly relevant to be in this article. 94pjg (talk) 20:18, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

There is a clear difference between Finland Swedish and Sweden Swedish on one hand and different dialects on the other: there is an official body for Swedish in Sweden and another for Swedish in Finland and more or less common norms about how to speak a good non-dialectal Swedish in either country.

People talking the more genuine dialects as mother tongue do change the way they speak when meeting city folks (who do not have a dialect), into the standard variant, often learnt at school. Thus this article is not only about (even not primarily) the Swedish dialects in Finland, but also about the language that is used in schools, broadcasts and similar contexts (and in writing).

--LPfi (talk) 21:16, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

The official body and the Swedish school teachers do not say "as a Finland Swede you shall speak like this, because otherwise it will sound like Sweden Swedish." And there is no such norms for written language either. What the bodies and teachers do - in Finland like in Sweden is to give recommendations how to master the Swedish language in its variation. What differs between the language bodies in Sweden and those in Finland is merely that existing dialectal patterns, influences from other languages, older norms and practices are different in the two countries, so the bodies have to focus on different things. But there is a huge variation within Sweden also, and within Finland as well, so in both countries the bodies have to adapt.

One general goal is some sort of standard, some language usage which is generally accepted, but in reality that norm contains much room for variation - in Sweden like in Finland. In all this variation, is there still something which is common to most people in Finland, when they meet people from outside their willage, and which differs from most in Sweden? Yes, but very little. When a person from Finland and a person from Sweden edit the Swedish Wikipedia you cannot see any difference. When they speak at a seminar, you can hear a difference, but not because of the action of any regulatory body. (The way rural people change their way of speaking when they meet city folks depends on whether the folks are from Helsingfors or Malmö.) 188.238.73.179 (talk) 11:58, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

On Swedish Wikipedia, occasionally you could spot differences concerning vocabulary and syntax etc. but rarely anything major. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:34, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Cite

The first three sections, “History”, “Official status”, “Phonology”, have almost no citations. They need some.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 15:44, 11 February 2014 (UTC)