Vastauksia Britanniaan

[Eero Nevalainen]

Orsila vastasi tälle eräälle britille jo; tämä oli minun oma henkilökohtainen kannanottoni.

No problem, those are very valid, good questions. It is sometimes good to get back to the basics to see how well I am able to reiterate our position on the basic, immediate issues that spring to mind to someone from the outside; I am sure you can appreciate that this is a far deeper issue than it seems like at first blush though. Unfortunately, a very naive and trivial view of this is being pushed to media abroad ("The Finns party attacks minorities").

It seems like Heikki Orsila already was in contact with you; let's agree that his views are representative of the assocation. I am speaking for myself, although I have a long familiarity with this debate; I started some time in the 90s when I was still in school and started wondering about this issue and when the Internet first allowed for public discourse that did not get filtered through major media.


2013/12/13 XXXXXXXXXXXX
Why is this discussion around the mandatory Swedish in Finnish schools so strong right now, and why has the petition been made this year?

The debate about this has been going on for as long as I can remember, so it is not the case that it would have somehow particularly flared up in recent years out of nowhere. A lot of claims are being made that somehow we're facing a generally more anti-minority and anti-immigration climate in Finland due to the Finns party, but this is more of an argument from convenience than anything else. Some two-thirds of the population have always been opposed to compulsory Swedish in schools and the routine orthodoxy around Swedish has always been well debunked. I can go into the specifics regarding all the arguments if you wish, but let's keep this a bit more general for the time being.

Some ten years ago I actually suspected that the days of Finnish language policy as is were numbered; during most of the 20th century after the war, the issue was mostly something that people went through the motions with because Swedish just was something a bit like death and taxes. You did what you had to do and then went on with your life. Finland was really getting more and more international in the sense that Sweden is no longer something you have to "go through to Europe", and for my generation (people at around 30 years of age) the world looks decidedly different than during the Cold War. I have never spoken Swedish anywhere in real life, have never been to Sweden, and all my international contacts use English.

The petition simply happened because the mechanism for the petition has been put into place. Finland has a very strong culture of horse-trading when parties form governments, and party discipline is also very strict. This means that in the Finnish democracy, it is actually the party leadership of the parties in government that set the agenda. Even the current PM's National Coalition party's congress -- the party's highest deciding body -- voted a few years back to move to rationalize this issue, but the clique of higher-ups just ignored the entire vote (the vote was later "corrected" though to have the right kind of result). Also it seems like that when you move higher up the ladder of political influence in Finland, you have to start to toe the line, so some kind of grassroots work needs to be done here.

Most of the "strong discussion" today actually happens by the Fenno-Swedes and other pro-Swedish entities; they have shifted into high gear in recent years, and they do have an admirable meme machine going, I must admit. It is not so much that Swedish is being criticized more; the Fenno-Swedes both have more demands and make more noise when it seems like the people might say out loud the Emperor doesn't actually have any clothes on. Currently they have managed to own the concepts around "tolerance" up to the point where they're mostly untouchable: The rhetoric has moved away from trying to rationalize the situation into just simply getting to say and demand anything and then call all who disagree Nazis. As things stand, most people don't want to risk the conflict.

It certainly didn't help that in the spring there was this one (1) person sending death threats to notable pro-Swedish journalists, and of course the issue has been framed in terms of that incident ever since. The person did more damage with some emails than I have ever done good in some fifteen years.

Why shouldn't Swedish be mandatory?

First of all, there's a burden of proof problem in this kind of a question. All kinds of statements are being made about why Swedish is important, but those are the positive statements that need proof. You could make a lot of things mandatory simply by endlessly asking people "why not". I do see this often from people who don't care much about the issue; in that kind of a situation my own reaction is to allow others to make up their own mind and not agree with blanket enforcement.

Simply put, you wouldn't agree with French being outright mandatory in Britain and being a compulsory subject as a part of all university degrees, no matter how "civilizing" studying languages (in general) supposedly is and how much the French would argue that you need to study languages (that is, specifically "French") more and not have "attitude problems" about it. You would see that for those making these statements, there obviously is a need to prop up French in particular, and if the UK were a smaller country with a language that is not the global lingua franca, you would also be concerned whether prioritizing French for everyone has an opportunity cost. Unless, of course, you personally felt strongly that the UK needs to be particularly tied to France and nothing must be allowed to threaten this "special relationship".

The task of a language curriculum is to offer a selection of useful languages and to make sure that students study "some" languages. I am personally in favour of the model of two compulsory languages that you get to choose. The Nordist ideology that is being propped up by compulsory Swedish is not something I would want to invest myself of my hypothetical children in, as I do not in any sense share its goals as a matter of principle.

Do you think many would still choose to take Swedish classes?

Under the model I favour and that was mysteriously just completely ignored while considering the new school curriculum a few years ago -- two compulsory languages you get to choose -- I suspect that English + Swedish would still be quite popular even among students who are not all that good at languages. The only argument I have yielded to my opposition is that Swedish is not hard, it's actually probably the easiest foreign language I've studied.

Unfortunately the pro-Swedish crowd is willfully blind to considering that idea that children would still be studying languages; they just keep on repeating over and over again that you can't allow a situation where kids don't study any languages, do not go to school at all, or do not study Finnish. And of course while they love the idea that those who don't speak Swedish are and must be the bottom of the barrel of society in general, the ones they really care about are the more gifted individuals; their recruitment is, of course, what education must achieve. The biggest danger to the societal status of Swedish comes from actually educated, smart Finns who have studied "some other language than Swedish". No wonder the savvy Svecomen of years past already knew all too well that the creation of an educated Finnish-speaking class is a great danger to them and that it should not be allowed to happen.

What kind of impact do you think removing mandatory Swedish would have on Finland, if any?

De facto not much anything. Actual Swedish-speaking wouldn't change at all, and for those who really want to study and speak it, the situation might get better. Of course you'll get told that Finland gets isolated from Western civilization, we'll have pogroms and fall into the abyss... but that is just the world-view of those people for whom the Swedish language (and by extension, the culture) represents anything and everything worthwhile and positive. But frankly modern Finland has been full of educated people with Finnish as their modern tongue for a long time now, and we're no longer in the 1800s. I find it difficult to see that the people I see in my everyday life -- people who don't actually use Swedish, and for whom it's been mostly a formal requirement always -- would all of a sudden degenerate so profoundly if the formal requirements were simply removed.

An argument you often hear is that mandatory Swedish is needed for Swedish-language services. My own take to this is that the "services" are just a political tool to maintain requirements for Swedish. Iceland has about the same number of people as we have Swedish-speakers, and they provide their own services just fine. Our Fenno-Swedes are also quite concentrated around the coastlines, and then you would also have those people who have voluntarily studied Swedish. In practical implementation, we can also share material resources. In the end, all Fenno-Swedes I have ever met have spoken at least very good, if not perfect, Finnish. Yet while you hear that we are somehow oppressing them more right now, the actual fact of the matter is that language-related requirements have been tightened gradually all the time. It seems to be very important, for example, that border guards speak Swedish at a border crossing with Russia where we have a million crossings with Russians annually.

Of course in the long run voluntary Swedish would mean that Finns would have a broader set of languages they speak, and for those who just can't grok Swedish, it wouldn't be a life-destroying issue. Even in Sweden you're just allowed to take more English if you're really bad at languages, and this should be allowed for Finns as well in order to realize the full potential of these cases.

Voluntary Swedish would also certainly dismantle the basis for the argumentation that says that Swedish just "is" necessary and that when dealing with Swedes, you "must" speak Swedish (I never have). For example, I was not able to get my CS degree without passing a Swedish test at university. Of course the language has nothing to do with my field of study, and the only use of it professionally is with the Swedish localizations of software provided for the public sector -- because, you know, you have to have Swedish there. The reality just is rather different from what policy makes it have to be.


If there's something I haven't asked about but that you feel is important, or something else you'd like to add around this topic, just let me know!

You need to understand that this is not an issue of normal minority rights -- arguments like the ones around Swedish just wouldn't fly under other circumstances, and some people have started admitting that -- analogies to any other situations are not allowed because Finland is "special", even when apparently arguing about seemingly very universal things. Just hop a few islands westwards from Turku and you end up on Åland where it is their human right to be isolated completely from the negative influence of the Finnish language, such as it saying "Ahvenanmaa" under "Åland" on general Finnish maps. It's also apparently quite the violation violation of their human rights if the entire mainland doesn't communicate with them in Swedish. Speak about tolerance...

The operative words in the conversation are "national languages" and what this concept actually means. I have always felt this means that the state recognizes certain mother tongues in Finland to have "home rights", and that the state acts accordingly in order to provide necessary functionality. So far so good. But this is not the case -- we have to investigate the potentially dangerous concept of identities and "ethnicity". Again, unfortunately, the Fenno-Swedes are perfectly legitimate in this discourse while everyone else is a bunch of Fascists.

It took me a long time cutting through all the obviously nonsensical arguments to understand how the Swedish-speakers actually see this, and when I got it, it wasn't pretty. For them, the Finnish-speakers actually do not exist as "a party" to a conversation on what is actually ethical, because the 1800s, for them, are essentially a bit of a historical perversion where the Finnish-speakers "forced" themselves into Swedish-language institutions and started imagining, in a bout of nationalistic fervor, that they constitute an entity with rights -- which in this picture, they do not, as we're supposedly all a group of "eastern Swedes" that I suspect are supposed to start speaking proper Swedish as we graduate from the woods into "rooms with furniture" (former Swedish People's Party's leader Stefan Wallin's words). Language does not matter, see, as long as it's not Swedish that does not matter. And then it means a whole lot.

Sometimes when discussing this and listening to lectures on who "carries Western civilization" here in Finland, I am not all that certain I follow who the supposed racist and nationalist is. I certainly wouldn't want to be a minority in a hypothetical modern Greater Sweden, as it would treat me much more badly than I treat our Swedish-speaking minority. The deal that gets offered to get past this is the one where the country as a whole has "two national languages" on an individual level, but that of course is, in reality, a very lopsided suggestion. Finland looks very Finnish-speaking because it is full of Finnish-speaking people that legitimately do so.

The core questions are whether the society that currently exists oppresses the Swedish-speakers' notion of what should be possible in terms of "Swedishness", and whether Finnish-speakers should take Swedish to heart all the same as Finnish. I hear "why don't you stop studying Finnish then, too?" all too often, although for me it is quite obvious why my offspring would study my mother tongue. For them, it is not.

By the way, if you want an opposing opinion that should at least somewhat understand what is going on, do get in touch with Jan-Erik Andelin, the editor of Borgåbladet and say hi from me. He spent quite a while at our forum, wrote an editorial about how we're closet-Nazis, and then we finally ended almost having an agreement about the practicalities of "services in Swedish". The "identity-question" really seems to be touchy with him though.

[NRR]

Hieno teksti!

Löytyykö linkkiä kirjoitukseen, johon on vastattu?

[Eero Nevalainen]

Tämä oli sähköpostitse tullut tiedustelu jossa ilmeisesti sukunsa kautta suomalaistaustainen opiskelija Bournemouthista tekee jotain projektia kielistä, oli kiinnostunut siitä miten täällä tämä asia on nyt tapetilla.

[Eero Nevalainen]

Mielenkiintoista, Googlella löytyy Sandra Herranen joka on omien sanojensa mukaan "Swedish-speaking Finn". Tässä voi olla kyseessä suomenruotsalainen opiskelija... pitänee pyytää häneltä projektinsa tuloksia, me varmaan luemme niitä mielenkiinnolla.

[NRR]

Taitaa olla kyllä kotosuomesta tilapäisesti Briteissä opiskeleva nuori, joka tietää aika hyvin mistä on kysymys. Miksi kysely tehtiin englanniksi? Keitä siihen oli valittu?

Lisäys: Liittynee tähän
http://finlandswedes.wordpress.com/about/

[NRR]

Tämä on se linkki, johon on parempi vastata - kullekin sivulle voi vastata erikseen.

http://finlandswedes.wordpress.com/2013 ... you-think/


--- Mietin, missä viipyvät apurahat niille nuorille tutkijoille, jotka haluavat haastaa nykyisen kielipolitiikan?

[NRR]

Sivu on lukittu.

Tätä pakon puolustajissa eniten ihmettelen:
Ensin pyydetään kommenttia,
mutta sitten kun toiset ystävällisesti ja asiallisesti kertovat faktat,
niin heti seuraavaksi ripustetaan lappu luukulle:

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Samaa kuin laittaisi sormet korviin ja alkaisi lallattaa, ettei tarvitsisi kuunnella toisia -
tässä tapauksessa niitä, joita pakkoruotsi haittoineen koskee.

Turhauttaa, sillä käytin aamustani aikaa vastatakseni tuonne.

[NRR]

Korjaus - poistin osan viestistäni, sillä näin blogista, että kysessä on varsin suloinen nuori tyttö, joka kertoo itsestään näin "Jag är en finlandssvensk från Egentliga Finland, och av någon anledning har jag aldrig lyckats lära mig finska vilket har lätt till att jag alltid känt mig lite värdelös då jag försöker få något gjort i Finland." - käännös: Olen suomenruotsalainen Varsinais-Suomesta ja jostain syystä en ole koskaan onnistunut oppimaan suomea, mikä on johtanut siihen, että olen aina tuntenut itseni hiukan arvottomaksi, kun yritän saada jotain tehtyä Suomessa.

Aivan vapaasti saakoon tyttö elää omilla ehdoillaan ja omilla kielillään tässä maassa. Samaa oikeutta toivon myös muille suomalaisille.

[Hannu Jussi]

NRR

Ollakseen suloinen nuori tyttö, kirjoittaa kumman jäykkää ruotsia.

[NRR]

NRR

Ollakseen suloinen nuori tyttö, kirjoittaa kumman jäykkää ruotsia.

Voisiko johtua kielten oppimiseen liittyvästä ongelmasta?

Minä symppaan kaikkia, joilla on ongelmia kielten kanssa. Soisin, että heille kielivapaus olisi erityisesti winwin-tilanne.

[Hannu Jussi]

Kiitän ensin omasta puolestani, koska todellakin olen puolikielinen, enkä tässä vaiheessa elämääni enää taida oppia kunnon suomea.
Ruotsia osaan sen verran, että mielestäni tuo "nuori suloinen tyttö" on mitä ilmeisemmin jälleen näitä sylttytehtaan juttuja.
Sorry.

[NRR]

Tämä oli sähköpostitse tullut tiedustelu jossa ilmeisesti sukunsa kautta suomalaistaustainen opiskelija Bournemouthista tekee jotain projektia kielistä, oli kiinnostunut siitä miten täällä tämä asia on nyt tapetilla.

Voisitko EN ystävällisesti välittää tälle leidille hämmästyksen ja pahan mielen, jonka hänen sivujensa sulkeminen tuotti. Olihan hän avoimesti kutsunut sivuillaan kommentoimaan.

[Eero Nevalainen]

Olipas taas erikoinen episodi. Minä tosiaan vastasin hänelle kuin asioista tietämättömälle ulkomaalaiselle (nimestä huolimatta). Oletin että kyseessä on jokin toisen polven ulkosuomalainen, mutta tämä olikin sitten syntyperäinen suomalainen, jonka tosiaan voisi kuvitella tietävän vähän paremmin jo lähtökohtaisesti mistä tässä keskustelussa on kyse... vaikka joskus tuntuu siltä että monet suomenruotsalaiset taitavat olla ihan vilpittömästi pihalla, mitä on joskus vaikea uskoa.

Materiaalihan meni siis johonkin opinnäytetyöhön. Pitäisikö pyytää siitä kopiota ihan uteliaisuudesta, jos nyt näytti siltä että kommentit blogiin olivat jollain tavalla vääränlaisia?

[Eero Nevalainen]

Kysäisin häneltä että voisiko sitä lopputulosta sitten vilkaista koska se omalta osaltaan edustaa Suomen kielikeskustelua ulkomaalaisille. Huomautin myös että blogi näköjään ainakin suljettiin aika rivakasti.

En nyt tässä halua maalailla piruja seinille, mutta tilannehan usein näissä kuvioissa on se, että koska meitä ainakin pidetään jotenkin syvästi vihamielisenä porukkana, niin meitä voi "tutkivana journalismina" tarkastella ikäänkuin kantaamme pitäisi legitiiminä, mutta mitään velvoitteita meitä kohtaan ei ole. Tämän takia joskus tuntuu ehkä siltä, että mitä tahansa voi tapahtua, vaikka osapuolta kohtelisi miten reilusti tahansa...

[JV Lehtonen]

Kysäisin häneltä että voisiko sitä lopputulosta sitten vilkaista koska se omalta osaltaan edustaa Suomen kielikeskustelua ulkomaalaisille. Huomautin myös että blogi näköjään ainakin suljettiin aika rivakasti.

En nyt tässä halua maalailla piruja seinille, mutta tilannehan usein näissä kuvioissa on se, että koska meitä ainakin pidetään jotenkin syvästi vihamielisenä porukkana, niin meitä voi "tutkivana journalismina" tarkastella ikäänkuin kantaamme pitäisi legitiiminä, mutta mitään velvoitteita meitä kohtaan ei ole. Tämän takia joskus tuntuu ehkä siltä, että mitä tahansa voi tapahtua, vaikka osapuolta kohtelisi miten reilusti tahansa...

Minua henkilökohtaisesti on tutkinut Pasi Saukkonen ja hän kyllä omassa tutkimuksessaan tajusi,
mistä me olemme vihaisia. Uskoisin, että esim. Tony Björk veti US-bloginsa pois, kun ei saanutkaan niin vihamielisiä
vastauksia kuin oli toivonut.

Saukkonen
"Vallitsevan kielipolitiikan kriitikot jakautuvat puolestaan "pragmaattisiin kriitikoihin" sekä "uusfennomaaneihin". Yksille esimerkiksi ruotsin kielen asema suomenkielisessä kouluopetuksessa on ennen muuta konkreettinen ja käytännöllinen kysymys, joka ei muuten liity väestöryhmien välisiin suhteisiin. Toisille sama aihe kytkeytyy puolestaan viime kädessä Suomen valtion ja yhteiskunnan viralliseen kaksikielisyyteen. Uusfennomaaneille ruotsinkieliset edustavat usein paitsi eri kieliryhmää, myös eri kansallisuutta kuin suomenkieliset, varsinaiset suomalaiset. Pragmaattisten kriitikoiden kansakuntanäkemys on ennemmin topeliaaninen: kaksi kieltä mutta vain yksi kansa.

Pragmaattisten kriitikoiden perustelut ovat usein viime kädessä instrumentaalisia eli ne keskittyvät kielipoliittisten järjestelyjen merkitykseen yksilöille ja yhteiskunnan kehitykselle. Uusfennomaaneilla päällimmäiseksi nousevat taas historialliset ja identiteettikysymykset eli se, mistä Suomessa heidän mielestään on perustavalla tasolla kysymys. Samat perustelurakenteet ovat itse asiassa löydettävissä myös nykytilannetta puolustavasta diskurssista. Ruotsin kielen asemaa ja ruotsin kielen taitoa puolustetaan joskus Suomen ja suomalaisten identiteettiin liittyvillä tekijöillä, toisinaan puolestaan historiallisilla tai välineellisillä argumenteilla (taulukko 1)."

Minä olen SEKÄ pragmaatikko ETTÄ 2000-luvun snellmanilainen!

http://www.magma.fi/teema/mikae-suomenr ... ersyttaeae