Meänkieli language

Meänkieli, or Torne Valley Finnish, is a variety of Finnish that since the split of the Swedish realm in 1809 has developed in partial isolation from standard-Finnish. It may be perceived as a separate Finno-Ugric language. Meänkieli literally means "our language." In Swedish it is called Tornedalsfinska. {| border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" align="right" width="300"\n! colspan="2" bgcolor="limegreen" style="font-size:120%"|Torne Valley Finnish (Meänkieli)\n|-\n| valign="top"|Spoken in:\n|Sweden\n|-\n| valign="top"|Region:\n|Northern Europe\n|-\n| valign="top"|Total speakers:\n|40,000-70,000\n|-\n| valign="top"|Ranking:\n|Not in top 100\n|-\n| valign="top"|Genetic
classification:\n|Uralic languages
\n Finno-Ugric languages
\n  Finno-Lappic
\n   Baltic Finnic
\n    Meänkieli\n|-\n! colspan="2" bgcolor="limegreen"|Official status\n|-\n| valign="top"|Official language of:\n| valign="top"|officially recognized minority language of Sweden\n|-\n| valign="top"|Regulated by:\n| valign="top"|-\n|-\n! colspan="2" bgcolor="limegreen"|Language codes\n|-\n|ISO 639||fiu (Finno-Ugrian (Other))\n|-\n|SIL||FIT\n|} Meänkieli is chiefly distinguished by a lack of influence from modern 19th and 20th century standard-Finnish. Meänkieli also contains many loanwords from Swedish which pertain to daily and public life, for instance from the fields of law and governmental administration. Meänkieli lacks two of the declensions used in standard-Finnish, the comitative case and the instructive case. In Finland Meänkieli is seen as a sub-dialect of the northern Finnish dialect. There is also a dialect of Meänkieli spoken around Gällivare which differs even more from standard Finnish. Meänkieli is spoken by some 40,000-70,000 people in the Torne River Valley, in Norrbotten, along the border between Sweden and Finland. An unknown number of people with Meänkieli as mother tongue have migrated to more southern parts of Sweden is search for employment, and are not kept track on. On April 1, 2002, Meänkieli became one of the five officially recognized "minority languages" of Sweden. It is most commonly used in the municipalities of Gällivare, Haparanda, Kiruna, Pajala and Övertorneå. However, very few of the employees in the public sector have sufficient literacy in the language – some fifty per cent of civil servants have oral proficiency in Finnish and/or Meänkieli. Today Meänkieli is declining as an active language in Sweden. Few young Swedes in the region speak Meänkieli in daily life, though many have passive knowledge of the language from family use. The language is taught at Luleå University of Technology and Umeå University.

Table of contents

1 Controversy 2 See also 3 External link

Controversy

\nEducation in and on Meänkieli has been criticized on the ground that standard Finnish would give the pupils considerably greater possibilities for further studies, access to the much richer Finnish literature, and additionally improve the relations between Finland and Sweden and between Swedes and Ethnic Finns in both countries. The governmental and legal support for Meänkieli as a minority language has proved to be weaker than in comparable countries, such as Norway, Finland, and the Netherlands. Different Swedish cabinets argued for many years that the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages did not make sufficient distinction between recent immigrants and indigenous minorities, which in the case of Finnish speakers made a great difference for Sweden that 1940–1970 had received some 400,000 immigrants from Finland to its urban and industrial centers. By 1995 this dilemma was solved by emphasizing the difference between standard-Finnish, spoken by immigrants, and Meänkieli, spoken by the indigenous minority in furthest periphery.

See also

\n* Demographics of Sweden\n* Sweden Finns

External link

\n* Tornedalen Finnish at ethnologue.com Category:Finno-Ugric languages