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
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—Swedish proverb, trans. by Verne Moberg.