Ethnic Minorities & Languages
No official statistics are kept on ethnicities. However, statistics of the Finnish population according to language and citizenship are available.
The Finnish and Swedish languages are defined as languages of the state. Additionally, Swedish is an official municipal language in municipalities with significant Swedish-speaking populations. The three Sami languages (North Sami, Inari Sami, Skolt Sami) are official in certain municipalities of Lapland.
Finnish people — Finns — speak the Finnish language, which is the dominant language and is spoken almost everywhere in the country with the notable exception of Åland.
Population of mainland Finland (excluding Åland) according to language, 1990-2010
| Language | 1990 | 2000 | 2010 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finnish | 4,674,095 | 4,787,259 | 4,856,529 |
| Swedish | 273,495 | 267,488 | 265,982 |
| Sami | 1,734 | 1,734 | 1,832 |
| Foreign languages: | 24,550 | 98,858 | 222,926 |
| Russian | 3,884 | 28,179 | 54,546 |
| Estonian | 1,394 | 10,153 | 28,355 |
| Somali | 0 | 6,454 | 12,985 |
| English | 3,518 | 6,850 | 12,758 |
| Arabic | 1,133 | 4,875 | 10,379 |
The government only considers the "working language", Finnish or Swedish, of the person, and "bilinguality" has no official standing.
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of Finland
Famous quotes containing the words ethnic, minorities and/or languages:
“Caprice, independence and rebellion, which are opposed to the social order, are essential to the good health of an ethnic group. We shall measure the good health of this group by the number of its delinquents. Nothing is more immobilizing than the spirit of deference.”
—Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985)
“We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have some sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be. The question is not what we can do now for the hypothetical Mexican, the hypothetical Negro. The question is what we really want out of life, for ourselves, what we think is real.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“The less sophisticated of my forbears avoided foreigners at all costs, for the very good reason that, in their circles, speaking in tongues was commonly a prelude to snake handling. The more tolerant among us regarded foreign languages as a kind of speech impediment that could be overcome by willpower.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)