Languages

As a nation with few close linguistic relatives, Finns take care of their language competence by studying a wide range of foreign languages.

A Finn's mother tongue is either Finnish, Swedish (5.6% of the population are Swedish speakers) or Saami (some 8,000 native speakers). Finnish belongs to the small Finno-Ugrian language group; outside Finland it is understood (and to some extent spoken) in Estonia. And in Sweden, too, Finnish is spoken among the large number of Finnish immigrants. Finns take care of their linguistic communication by maintaining a wide range of foreign languages in the school curriculum.

English is widely spoken in Finland and in the business community some companies use it as their house language. German is no longer widely taught but many Finns in their 50s or older learned it as their first foreign language at school. French, Spanish and Russian have grown in popularity both in schools and among adult learners. Membership of the European Union and the related practical and social demands have increased the need to study European languages, at least in the case of Finns who travel in Europe on business or are studying abroad.

Educated Finnish speakers, particularly those working in the public sector, speak Swedish to some degree whilst almost all Swedish-speaking Finns speak Finnish too. Only in some coastal areas and in the autonomous province of the Еland Islands is Swedish the dominant language, indeed in Еland it is the only official language. The status of Swedish as the joint official language of mainland Finland can be seen in the bilingual names of public institutions and in street signs, the latter case depending on the percentage of minority language speakers resident in a given municipality, and in the Swedish-language programmes on radio and TV. Swedish-speaking Finns have a distinctive culture, and their social mores are influenced by Scandinavian traditions moreso than amongst the Finnish-speaking majority.

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