Meankieleg : diforc'h etre ar stummoù

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40,000-70,000 Sweden

Meänkieli (lit. "our language") is a Finno-Ugric language language spoken in the most northern parts of Sweden, around the valley of the Torne River. From a linguistic point of view Meänkieli is a mutually intelligible dialect of Finnish, but due to historical reasons it has the status of a minority language in Sweden. In Swedish both the official and informal name is tornedalsfinska - "Tornio Valley Finnish".

Compared to standard Finnish, meänkieli is chiefly distinguished by a lack of influence from modern 19th and 20th century standard Finnish. Meänkieli also contains many loanwords from Swedish, pertaining to daily life. However, the frequency of loanwords is not exeptionally high when compared to some other Finnish dialects: for example, dialect of Rauma has arguably frequency of loanwords comparable to that of Meänkieli. Meänkieli lacks two of the declensions used in standard Finnish, the comitative and the instructive cases. In Finland Meänkieli is generally seen as a dialect of northern Finnish. There is also a dialect of Meänkieli spoken around Gällivare which differs even more from standard Finnish.

Since Finland was ceded to Russia in 1809, the language developed in partial isolation from standard Finnish. In the 1880's, the Swedish state decided that it would be better if all citizens of the country used Swedish. Part of the reason was based on military concern; one felt that people close to the border speaking the language of the neighbouring country rather than the major language in their own country might not be trusted, in case of war. The schools in the areas were now teaching in Swedish, and the children were forbidden to speak their own language at school even during the breaks.

A language thus separated from all public life and only maintained in the private sphere, loses ground. When new items of modern life arrived and a word for it was needed, the Swedish word was often incorporated. Thus meänkieli can be regarded an old fashioned northern Finnish dialect, with many loan words from Swedish. From a linguistic point of view, meänkieli is not language on its own, but rather a dialect of Finnish. However, the fact that people whose mother tongue is meänkieli are very well aware of the fact that they don't speak "proper" Finnish and that Mäenkieli is taught as a standardized language, give some support for the claim that Mäenkieli should be regarded language, rather than dialect.

On April 1, 2002, Meänkieli became one of the five officially recognized "minority languages" of Sweden. It is most commonly used in the municipalities of Gällivare, Haparanda, Kiruna, Pajala and Övertorneå. However, very few of the employees in the public sector have sufficient literacy in the language; some 50% of civil servants have oral proficiency in Finnish and/or Meänkieli.

Numbers of how many people speak meänkieli differ, since few people today speak meänkieli as their only language; it depends on what you mean by "speaking" a language. Numbers from 30,000 to 70,000 people are mentioned, most of them living in Norrbotten. Many people in the Northern parts of Sweden understand some meänkieli, but those who speak it regularly are fewer. People with meänkieli-speaking roots are often referred to as Tornedalians although the Finnish-speaking part of Norrbotten is a far larger area than the Tornio river valley; judging by the names of towns and places, it stretches as far west as the city of Gällivare. Today meänkieli is declining as an active language. Few of the young people in the region speak meänkieli in daily life, though many have passive knowledge of the language from family use. The language is taught at Stockholm university, Luleå University of Technology and Umeå University. The author Mikael Niemis novels, and a film based on one of them, has greatly improved the general knowledge among average Swedes regarding the existence of this Finnish-speaking minority in the country that was not immigrated. Since the 1980s, the people who speak meänkieli have gotten more aware of the importance of the language as a marker of identity, that one should not be ashamed of - as they so often were. Now, grammar books are being written in meänkieli, the Bible is being translated into meänkieli, there is drama performed in meänkieli and some TV-programs are being made in meänkieli - ironically first now, in a time where the number of people who do speak meänkieli as their first language has grown increasingly smaller.

Education in and on Meänkieli has been criticized on the ground that standard Finnish would give the students considerably greater possibilities for further studies, access to the much richer Finnish literature, and additionally improve the relations between Finland and Sweden and between Swedes and Ethnic Finns in both countries. The governmental and legal support for meänkieli as a minority language has proved to be weaker than in comparable countries, such as Norway, Finland, and the Netherlands.

Different Swedish cabinets argued for many years that the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages did not make a sufficient distinction between recent immigrants and indigenous minorities, which in the case of Finnish speakers made a great difference for Sweden; from 1940 to 1970 Sweden had received some 400,000 immigrants from Finland to its urban and industrial centers. Also, the Tornio Valley people have been well aware that their "Finnish" was not "proper" Finnish often trying to hide from "real" Finns that they did not know the Finnish word for things like "yeast", where they say "jästi" (Swedish: jäst). By 1995 both dilemmas were solved by emphasizing the difference between standard Finnish, spoken by immigrants, and Meänkieli, spoken by the indigenous minority in the far north.

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