vapaakielivalinta.fi

Regarding Aftonbladet's portrayal of the Finnish language question


I hope this reaches you, I am just making a guess as to your email address.

I'm a life-long debater of Finnish language policy, always having
believed that we Finnish-speakers, too, have rights in the
conversation and policy formulation -- after all, it's mostly about
demands on us -- and that the Swedish-speakers can't expect "anything
and everything" from us; in particular, that it is wrong to pressure
us into adopting Swedish by insisting on systematic blanket coverage
of Swedish-language requirements in society and education when they do
not serve anything else but ideological purposes. Those kinds of
requirements are generally banned by human rights norms and even the
EU convention on the treatment of language minorities.

Of course our Swedish-speakers raise an incredible stink every time
anyone speaks up even a little bit to loosen the language legislation
in order to lift unneeded requirements and to allow for free language
choice in schools. This is what the recent years' discussion has been
about, but of course you won't hear *that* in Sweden, as you can't
follow the conversation that is mostly in Finnish. From the
Fenno-Swedes' point of view it always Nazism and hatred, followed by
loads of abuse towards us for being uncivilized forest people who just
need to be more forcefully integrated into Scandinavia and western
civilization. Guess how this makes me feel, considering I always go
the extra mile not to cause offense towards people I know love to be
offended, and are indeed the best at being offended of any minority
group I know?

It's pretty incredible that the media in Sweden is being so totally
uncritical in this matter. It really demonstrates that either you have
no idea of the reality and content of the discussion here, or that
alternatively you do have a very strong, willful, ideological position
in believing that the Fenno-Swedes have a "human right" to the
silencing of our side's concerns and feelings. You even resorted to
Jörn Donner as some kind of an impartial authority -- you'll be
getting the most biased view from him possible. Of course he'll tell
people that Fenno-Swedes are about to be systematically murdered off
or something ludicrous to that effect.

The danger in this kind of situation is that you can really lose all
ability to defend your own rights against opposition like that, if
you're painted as oppressing the other side even when simply
exercising normal freedom of speech. Therefore, I would hope that you
would exercise at least some kind of journalistic spine. As it is,
Swedish commentary on the matter is beyond comprehension.

Quite simply as a human being I'd expect intellectually fair
treatment, which is what I try to give the Fenno-Swedes when debating
them, despite having been subjected to more personal abuse than I
could ever imagine possible, and for that reason, having developed a
*personal* choice of never having anything to do with Swedishness
while I'm still freely allowed to make that choice.

Could it be, for once, that a Swede could see things from the other
side, too? That would be a small miracle.

Yours,

Eero Nevalainen (enevalainen@gmail.com)

Nurmijärvi, Finland

Hannu Jussi kirjoitti:A) Aftonbladetit´in tekstin löytää edelleen Sees´in antamasta linkista

Hannu Jussi kirjoitti:Höblä otsikoi jälleen 30-lukua!!!--- Ahtisaari kommentoi tv:ssa että kyllä se nyt on kamalaa jos Suomi "umpeutuu" ja rajat laitetaan kiinni ---ONKO TÄLLE LOPPUA?

Sees kirjoitti:

Hannu Jussi kirjoitti:A) Aftonbladetit´in tekstin löytää edelleen Sees´in antamasta linkista

Faktalaatikko aftonbladetin artikkelin lopussa on kuitenkin ok:

- 5 procent pratar svenska
- Enligt finländsk folkbokföring 2007 har 265 000 invånare, motsvarande 5 procent av befolkningen i Finland, svenska som modersmål. På Åland pratar nio av tio svenska som förstaspråk.

Eero Nevalainen kirjoitti:Sehän tässä on surullista, että persut ovat valitettavasti ihan loistava maalitaulu sille, että koko kielikritiikki yhdistetään heihin. Tämmöisessä taktikoinnissa surut ovat loistavia. Ehkä kaikkein huonoin juttu on se, että muuten fiksut, jopa kielipolitiikan kritiikille avoimetkin ihmiset saattavat kääntää kelkkansa ollakseen sitten jotenkin "yleisen suvaitsevaisuuden" puolella...