Is English Endangering Finnish And Other Small Languages?
It's very hard to find pictures that support the story among mine. I hope this one will convey a sense of looming threat in keeping with the topic. lol
On October 26, the Chairman of the Board of Finnish Language at the Institute for the Languages of Finland Jaakko Leino made a statement that English is starting to threaten the scope of the usage of Finnish in Finland and that he was gravely concerned about that. What he was referring to was the fact that the status of Finnish as a language of higher education has come under threat as some M.Sc. and MA programs at universities are offered only in English. Also, in some niche fields and even in some larger ones the work necessary to translate the jargon of the field into Finnish has been neglected. Some officials have been talking about allowing the Matriculation Exam at upper secondary schools to be taken in English as well.
Finnish is not a very small language in global comparison. It is in the top 2% of the largest languages measured by number of speakers. But another important measure of the well-being of a language is the scope of its usage. The status of Finnish as the dominant language in Finland in government and higher education is the result of centuries of struggle. This is a matter of choice at an official level, nothing we have no influence over.
Some have even suggested that English be made a third official language in Finland alongside Finnish and Swedish. I find that completely unacceptable. English has no place whatsoever as a language of government in Finland at any level. The law would require that official documents be translated into English. I shudder to think about the poor level of English to be found in the documents that government offices at national and at local levels would be required to produce. Mikael Jungner, a former politician, Managing Director of the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation, Public Affairs Manager at Microsoft Finland and a current partner at a communications consulting company has advocated that idea in order to make Finland lucrative for professionals who intend to live and work in Finland for a few years. He says a few years is too short a time to properly learn a foreign language. Sure, but that's no reason force a foreign language upon all of society. Surely, in those cases employers can arrange for help for their employees.
This entire discussion is embarrassing. English as an official language in a country where it is not spoken by the population as a first language is a relic of colonialism. Native speakers of Russian outnumber native speakers of English in Finland by an order of magnitude. Should we consider to make Russian an official language in Finland?
Despite using English every day I consider it to be a foreign language to me. Not a second language, a foreign language. I have zero ownership of it. I do not belong to any community of its users that has any say on how it is used. I model my own use of English after normal educated middle-class people of the Southeast of England. With my Canadian relatives (Vancouver, BC) I've always used their variant of the language. English something I'm only borrowing. I'm trying not to break it.
Swedish is the second official language of Finland and the Finland-Swedish community is part of the nation. I prefer to use Swedish with Finland-Swedes if I meet one whose command of Finnish is not clearly superior to my knowledge of Swedish. I have done that on Steem as well.
It's a linguicide. The small countries of Europe, speaking in population and influence, such as Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, etc., are killing their own culture to adapt to the global market. If they move along this road they will soon lose all their national identity simply to become global productive factors, and that would be regrettable.
It would be an absolutely stupid and unnecessary thing to do to allow English to enroach upon the scope of the use of their national languages.
What happened in Ireland a couple of centuries ago was the loss of its national language. Out of a population of 4.6 million, only some tens of thousands in rural areas still speak Irish as native tongue. From what I've read, there is an awareness in Ireland that something important has been lost which is why there is a growing number of people among the educated socio-economic elite in the cities who at least claim they know Irish. According to a paper I recently read, much fewer actually speak it as a native tongue. That is a regrettable state of affairs.
If it is, and indeed the Irish lost something very important, language is the mother of all their worldview.
If you compare how Iceland and Ireland responded to foreign banks during the financial crisis, you can see how the responses were like night and day. Iceland basically told the British and other governments and banking giants to go and fuck themselves. Iceland got quickly back on its feet. Ireland continues to be mired in debt. It's the spirit that makes all the difference. Iceland's language policy also reflects this spirit.
Posted using Partiko Android
I think language discussion is generally not conclusive.
Look at Nigeria, although being colonised by the British, it has several other indigenous languages that are widely spoken by the people. But English language is the medium of communication at all levels. Thats why an average Nigerian can speak and understand English language. But does this mean that the British considers Nigeria whom they colonized as an English speaking country, No, they dont.
In Mexico, their Official language is Spanish but many of them are so desiring of English language because of the fortune dream they think can only be obtained in the US and also because they share the border with an English speaking country. There have been discussion on making English langugae a compulsion in Mexico. In one way, I think this is good, it will remove the complex most feel when they are faced with English speakers.
My thought is, out of all the languages of the world, English has the most usage and more wide acceptability, in all spheres of life, education, health, day to day activity and so. This makes it very difficult not to include it in the curriculum for the present and upcoming generations. Since arming oneself with multiple languages can open limitless opportunity in the future.
In crypto terms, English has a first market advantage like btc. lol.
Do you think English is bad for Finnish?
As a foreign language spoken by most of the population, of course not. As having any role in government or supplanting the use of the national languages in academia, bad.
Posted using Partiko Android
I agree with your first statement, but in terms of academia, I will think otherwise. Actually, the academia (science) has been structured around English language and to be globally relevant in the academic field, the language of publication must be in English. There is always the challenge faced by academia when they try to publish, especially from countries that their first language is not English, they are always asked to check their articles for general English corrections. Although there are paid services that people use in this regards.
Somehow, it has a role, but not to supplant a country original language.
It's one thing for researchers to have to write publications in English and another to have no courses offered in the local language in an entire degree programme. I don't recall taking a single course in English at university. And I have an MSc in a STEM field. Many of the textbooks were in English even in the early courses but the lectures were always held in Finnish and the professors never wrote their lecture notes in English. The exams were in Finnish. I took one course in English but that was because the lecturer was a visiting Russian professor who couldn't be expected to know Finnish.
I opined this is wrong, if this kind of thing happens. Its definitely not supposed to be so. Thats definitely bad.
Hi @markkujantunen!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 3.612 which ranks you at #5586 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has improved 55 places in the last three days (old rank 5641).
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 236 contributions, your post is ranked at #136.
Evaluation of your UA score:
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server