Aika hauska blogimerkintä vuoden alusta. Tältä siis näyttää kielitilanne maassamme saksankielisen leidin silmin, joka on avioitunut suomenruotsalaisen kanssa:
http://germfinnchick.wordpress.com/tag/finland-swedes/
On my Finnish niece’s birth certificate, her mother tongue is listed as Swedish, which is the language my husband and his sisters grew up speaking with their mother. --- Although DH’s [dear husbands] father is Finnish and speaks Finnish, if you go back far enough on his family tree, you find Swedes. My niece’s father is a Finnish speaking Finn as well, so finnish Swedes are better described as Swedish-speaking Finns than Swedes. --- the fight to maintain their linguistic heritage is a fierce one. At the wedding and funeral I’ve been to, the Swedish speakers had no qualms about singing as loud as they could so that the Swedish lyrics would overwhelm the Finnish ones. --- In all likelihood, my niece will attend a Swedish speaking school and have the right to services in Swedish. Her presence will help shore up Swedish numbers, ensuring that they have at least 3,000 Swedish speakers in an town so that all street signs will have to be in both languages.
This is all theoretical though. Swedish speakers in Finland are dying out. Eastern Finns don’t like them. The study abroad coordinator at my university was from Jyväskylä and when I told her my boyfriend was a finnish Swede, she looked like she had just sucked on a lemon. Most Swedish speakers not only speak Finnish but are also marrying Finnish speakers. Although my niece has the right to services in Swedish, as she grows it will become increasingly unlikely anyone will be able to provide them to her. My husband tried to get service in Swedish in his hometown and the city workers patiently replied in Finnish until he gave up and spoke Finnish. Aside from the Swedish they had learned (and in all likelihood, forgotten) in school, they didn’t speak Swedish.
All of this factored into our decision not to pass Swedish onto our kids. Our kids would have Finnish citizenship, not Swedish. They would have to interact with Finnish speakers in Finland 98% of the time, not Swedish speakers. Add into that the fact that we already had two Germanic languages (English and German) and Swedish lost out.
--- It would certainly make things easier for my mother-in-law if we had decided to pass Swedish on instead of Finnish. When she talks to the grandkids, she has to remember talk in Swedish to my sister-in-law’s daughter, then Finnish to my kids. She mixes them up a lot. But I assume this kind of mental gymnastics will delay any onset of dementia and is good for her. It helps she has to speak English to me. My father-in-law has it easier: he pretty much only speaks Finnish, so he sticks to that.