Basic information on the spoken languages and the educational system:

Finnish

The Finnish language belongs to the Finnic group of the Finno-Ugric languages, a subfamily of the Uralic languages. Since 1809 it has been an official language (along with Swedish) of Finland. Closely related to Estonian, Finnish is more distantly related to Saami,  in the same group, and to Hungarian, in the Ugric group. Written records of Finnish date from the 16th century, when the New Testament was translated. The publication in 1835 the famous epic, the Kalevala, fueled the nationalist movement, which called for Finnish to replace Swedish as the official language of the government and the educated classes.

Finnish and Swedish are both official languages of the European Union.

Swedish

Swedish is one of the two official languages in Finland. The majority of the inhabitants in Finland are Finnish-speaking but a minority speaks Swedish as its first language. The number of bilingual families (one parent Finnish-speaking - the other parent Swedish-speaking) is increasing. The Swedish language belongs to the Germanic language family and is one of the Nordic languages which have much in common.

The Swedish-speaking population in Finland can be traced back to medieval time when farmers colonized Finland from Sweden. Finland was a part of Sweden for more than 600 years (until 1809). Therefore there were numerous contacts between the countries; many merchants, civil servants and military personnel moved from Sweden to Finland.

The Swedish language spoken in Finland has the same standard and the same norms as the Swedish spoken in Sweden. The language spoken by about 30-40% of the Finland-Swedes consists of different Swedish vernaculars. It is one of the five regional varieties of the Swedish language. Nevertheless, the norm for the Finland-Swedes is standard Swedish, which is the medium of instruction in the Swedish-language school.

Compulsory schooling lasts from the child=s seventh year of age to nine years later. The education system in the Swedish-speaking parts of Finland is not different from the system in the rest of Finland. The main characteristic of the organisation of the teaching at all levels for the Finland-Swedish popoulation is the principle of Alanguage shelter@. Besides the Finnish school system a parallel school system exist in Swedish. These schools have native speakers of Swedish as teachers and the language of the school is Swedish. The medium of instruction when teaching Finnish as foreign language in such schools can be Swedish or Finnish (depending on the group of pupils). In Finnish-language schools Swedish is a compulsory subject, usually from grade seven till grade nine, taught during 2-3 lessons a week.

Russian

There are some 25.000 Russian-speaking persons living in Finland of whom some 5.000 are so-called old-Russians. A substantial majority of Russian-speaking immigrants have come to Finland from Russia as Ingrian Finns who are ethnic Finns but whose mother tongue is Russian instead of Finnish. It remains to be seen whether they will ultimately assimilitate to the Finnish population or identify themselves to their mother tongue or whether they will form a minority group on their own.

There exists no Russian-speaking school in Finland which would serve the particular needs of the Russian-speaking population. Over 80 per cent of the 729 pupils of the Finnish-Russian School in Helsinki are Finnish-speaking pupils who want to learn the Russian language. In this school, as also in a Finnish-Russian network school in Lappeenranta and Imatra, the main language of instruction is Finnish even if instruction is given also in Russian.

Romani

It is estimated that there are about 10,000 Roma in Finland. Some of these have only a limited command of the Romani language. Although the middle-aged and younger adult Roma population mainly use Finnish for daily interaction, they have retained a passive command of the language and can understand the spoken word. Despite this, however, there are many more  people who are competent in this language than has erstwhile been claimed. A reasonable estimate seems 3.000 mother tongue speakers. Legislative amendments and education have helped to reinforce Romani language and culture. School  attendance is compulsory for Romani children, as for all other children in Finland. It is estimated that there are between 1.500 and 1.700 Romani children of school age spread throughout the country. Only some 240 of these are currently covered by the Romani language eductional programme.

Saami

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