Talk:Finland Swedish
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[edit] 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)
[edit] 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...
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.
- Mentioned högsvenska (Standard Finland-Swedish) using the article in http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/högsvenska as a source of information.
[edit] 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)
[edit] 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)
[edit] 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)
- 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)
[edit] 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)
[edit] 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 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)
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- 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)
- 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)
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- 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)
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