Blog Anniversary & About Foreign Languages

My blog friend Jesh asked about my language skills, and she thought that Russian is widely spoken in Finland. That is not the case! Therefore I thought to write a bit about the language dispute Finnish vs Swedish and the foreign languages spoken here.

Finland is a bilingual country, official languages being Finnish, Swedish and Sami. The most common foreign language spoken is English, not Russian! Every child knows English and in international companies it is the corporate’s language. In mid 1800s la crème de la crème of our society were all Swedish speaking. Finnish speakers have felt always a bit underdogs with them and there is a long history of language disputes. As a mother tongue Swedish is spoken mostly on coastal areas and archipelagos. To understand this dispute you have to know a bit of our history. Wikipedia helps:

The Language Strife was a major conflict in mid-19th century Finland. Finland had once been under Swedish rule and Swedish (with some Latin) was the language of administration and education. Finnish was considered by the upper classes to be a "language of peasants”. As a result of the Finnish War, Sweden ceded Finland to Russia in 1809 and Finland became the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland. Under Russian rule Swedish continued to be the only official language. The dispute was considered to have officially ended when Finnish gained official language status in 1923 and became equal to the Swedish language. 

But the strife continues! Both languages are mandatory at school but many Finnish speakers are against this. We have a lot immigrants from Russia and Estonia, but Finns don’t speak Russian. I found a statistic where you can see the situation. Englanti = English, Ruotsi = Swedish, Saksa = German, Ranska = French, Venäjä = Russian, Espanja = Spanish.

At school I  have studied English, Swedish, French and German, later on Spanish. I have forgotten all my French, German is a bit better. I read fluently German, but speaking and writing are more difficult. I have put shame aside and write in English and even in German, though I make many mistakes. But the most important thing is to get understood and communicate. I find it great that while blogging I can practise languages - and the brain! I started blogging four years ago, in the autumn of 2015 and slowly changed my blog’s official language into English, because most of my blog friends come from abroad. Thank you for your interesting posts and your friendship ❤︎

  No more Swedish flag colors, but blue & white :)

We celebrate our 102nd Independence Day on December the 6th. A blue-white post later.

Own language is so important to every nation. In the years of wild dispute 

Adolf Ivar Arwidsson (1791-1858) said:

We are no longer Swedes, we do not want to become Russians, 

so let us be Finns!



We have stunning Finnish writers whose works are being translated into other languages, too.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

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