Finland has two official languages. Finnish is one. What is the other?
"competition. The song broke records scoring the highest number of points in Eurovision Song Contest history (292).The record was eventually broken by Norway in 2009 (387). All of Finland's entries were in English between 1973 and 1976 and again since 2000 (except in 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2015); both of these periods allowed submissions in any language. Two entries, 1990 and 2012, were in Swedish, which is an official language in Finland alongside Finnish. All of Finland's other songs have been in Finnish. In voting patterns, Finland has traditionally supported and been supported by the other Nordic countries, but also"
"literally ""common speech""), without otherwise changing the definition of the standard national language. Amharic is the national language in Ethiopia. Finland has two national languages: namely the Finnish language and the Swedish language. The Constitution of Finland guarantees the right to use Finnish and Swedish in courts and other state institutions. Despite the large difference in the numbers of users, Swedish is not officially classified as a minority language but equal to Finnish. Both national languages are compulsory subjects in school (except for children with a third language as mother tongue) and a language test is a prerequisite for governmental"
"a national language in Finland is defined by the Finnish constitution. There was migration of Swedish-speaking peasants to some Finnish coastal areas during the Middle Ages. During this period, when Finland was ruled by Sweden, Swedish language became part of the culture in the coastal areas. Swedish was also the language of the ruling class. The Finnish language was forbidden an official status alongside Swedish until the period of Russian rule (1809–1917), in 1860. The autonomous Åland Islands (pop. 26,000, 95% Swedish, 5% Finnish) has only one official language, Swedish, and the speaking of Finnish between employees is forbidden in"
"""Högsvenska""), which, alongside Finnish, is the other official language of Finland. There are differences in vocabulary and grammar, with the variety used in Finland remaining a little more conservative. The most marked differences are in pronunciation and intonation: Whereas Swedish speakers usually pronounce before front vowels as , this sound is usually pronounced by a Swedo-Finn as ; in addition, the two tones that are characteristic of Swedish (and Norwegian) are absent from most Finnish dialects of Swedish, which have an intonation reminiscent of Finnish and thus sound more monotonous when compared to ""Rikssvenska"". There are dialects that could be"
"the terms dividing the populations of Finland and Sweden. In Finland, both Swedish and Finnish are official languages. The Swedish-Finns are Finnish nationals who speak Swedish. The variant of standard Swedish spoken in Finland is called Finland Swedish or Finno-Swedish, and those who speak it are Finland-Swedes. Because of the shared language, Finland-Swedes are overrepresented in the migration of Finnish nationals to Sweden. Swedish-speakers make out 5.3% of the total Finnish population, while around 20% of Finnish immigrants to Sweden were Swedish-speakers according to a 2004 estimation. Sweden-Finns, however (this article), refers rather to Finnish-speaking Finns in Sweden, since Swedish"
"to advance to higher positions. Swedish spoken in today's Finland includes a lot of words that are borrowed from Finnish, whereas the written language remains closer to that of Sweden. Finland is officially bilingual, with Finnish and Swedish having mostly the same status at national level. Finland's majority population are Finns, whose mother tongue is either Finnish (approximately 95%), Swedish or both. The Swedish-speakers live mainly on the coastline starting from approximately the city of Porvoo (in the Gulf of Finland) up to the city of Kokkola (in the Bay of Bothnia). The Åland Islands, an autonomous province of Finland"
"relations in both countries. Swedish language has an official status in Finland whilst Finns form the largest ethnic minority in Sweden, estimated to be about 675 000. Both Finland and Sweden joined the European Union in 1995. Relationships are maintained at the highest political level on a regular basis, and interactions between public authorities and civil society are very strong. New elements of the special relationship are the official minority language status that Finnish language received in Sweden as well as the business integration between the two countries. Both countries are also united by the fact that neither Finland or"
"with a significant Swedish-speaking population such as Helsinki and Turku, most of them are fluent in both Swedish and Finnish. Although in some municipalities Swedish is the only official language, Finnish is the dominant language in most towns and at most employers in Finland. In areas with a Finnish-speaking majority, Finnish is most often used when interacting with strangers and known Finnish speakers. However, 50% of all Swedish speakers live in areas in which Swedish is the majority language and in which they can use Swedish in all or most contexts (see demographics below). Of the Swedish-speaking population of Finland:"
"brotherhood.)</poem> Estonian language The Estonian language ( ) is the official language of Estonia, spoken natively by about 1.1 million people: 922,000 people in Estonia and 160,000 outside Estonia. It is a Southern Finnic language and is the second most spoken language among all the Finnic languages. Estonian is closely related to Finnish and belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family. Alongside Finnish, Hungarian and Maltese, Estonian is one of the four official languages of European Union that is not of an Indo-European origin. Despite some overlaps in the vocabulary due to borrowings, in terms of its"
"subject in school for Finnish-speakers in Finland, where Swedish is a co-official language with Finnish; a 5% minority of Finns use Swedish as a native language. In official documents and in education, Swedish is considered ""the second domestic language"" (fi. ""toinen kotimainen kieli"", sv. ""det andra inhemska språket"") for Finnish-speakers, while the same holds true for Finnish for Swedish-speakers. Finland was a part of Sweden from the 13th century to 1809, and the use of Swedish in government prevailed for much of 19th century. Language reforms did not replace Swedish, but gave Finnish (which is a completely unrelated Uralic language)"
"minority has more than one third of the population, can if it wants to introduce a minority language in official use. Finland has one of the most overt linguistic rights frameworks. Discrimination based on language is forbidden under the basic rights for all citizens in Finland. Section 17 of the Constitution of Finland explicitly details the right to one's language and culture, although these languages are stated as either Finnish or Swedish. This right applies to in courts of law and other authorities, as well as translated official documents. There is also overt obligation of the state to provide for"
"official languages. The Northwest Territories has eleven official languages. All provinces, however, offer some necessary services in both English and French. Canadian advocates of a single official language say it promotes national identity. In Canada, debate has focused on whether the local majority language should be made the exclusive language of public business. In the Canadian province of Quebec, for example, laws restrict the use of the minority English in education, on signs, and in the workplace. According to the Finnish constitution, Finnish and Swedish are the official languages of the republic. Citizens have the right to communicate in either"
"Finnic languages The Finnic languages (Fennic), or Baltic Finnic languages (Balto-Finnic, Balto-Fennic), are a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by Finnic peoples, mainly in Finland and Estonia, by about 7 million people. Traditionally, eight Finnic languages have been recognized. The major modern representatives of the family are Finnish and Estonian, the official languages of their respective nation states. The other Finnic languages in the Baltic Sea region are Ingrian and Votic, spoken in Ingria by the Gulf of Finland; and Livonian, once spoken around the Gulf of Riga. Spoken farther northeast are Karelian, Ludic"
"Finnish only speaker in this system. Similarly ""old domestic language"" is a category applied to some languages and not others for political not linguistic reasons, for example Russian. With 3.9 million members, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland is one of the largest Lutheran churches in the world and is also by far Finland's largest religious body; at the end of 2017, 70.9% of Finns were members of the church. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland sees its share of the country's population declining by roughly one percent annually in recent years. The decline has been due to both church"
"official language: Swedish. On the mainland, Swedish-speakers are concentrated to the regions Ostrobothnia, Uusimaa and around Turku. North Sami, Inari Sami and Skolt Sami are semi-official in the Sami Domicile Area. The Language Act of 2003 groups municipalities into three groups: monolingually Finnish, monolingually Swedish and bilingual. The municipality is monolingual, if it has less than 8% of the minority language speakers and if the population of the lingual minority in the municipality is below 3,000. Other communities are bilingual.<ref name=""Kielilaki 423/2003"">Kielilaki (423/2003) 5 §. Retrieved 3-8-2007. </ref> In bilingual municipalities, the Language Act requires that all toponyms have both"
"Finnish, a Uralic language unrelated to the Scandinavian languages; next come the Finland-Swedes (5.3%). Finland is the eighth-largest country in Europe and the most sparsely populated country in the European Union. The sovereign state is a parliamentary republic with a central government based in the capital city of Helsinki, local governments in 311 municipalities, and one autonomous region, the Åland Islands. Over 1.4 million people live in the Greater Helsinki metropolitan area, which produces one third of the country's GDP. Finland was inhabited when the last ice age ended, approximately 9000 BCE. The first settlers left behind artefacts that present"
"Estonian language The Estonian language ( ) is the official language of Estonia, spoken natively by about 1.1 million people: 922,000 people in Estonia and 160,000 outside Estonia. It is a Southern Finnic language and is the second most spoken language among all the Finnic languages. Estonian is closely related to Finnish and belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family. Alongside Finnish, Hungarian and Maltese, Estonian is one of the four official languages of European Union that is not of an Indo-European origin. Despite some overlaps in the vocabulary due to borrowings, in terms of its origin,"
"language of the country and bolstering the status of the minority languages, was submitted by an expert committee to the Swedish Ministry of Culture in March 2008. It was subsequently enacted by the Riksdag, and entered into effect on 1 July 2009. Swedish is the sole official language of Åland (an autonomous province under the sovereignty of Finland), where the vast majority of the 26,000 inhabitants speak Swedish as a first language. In Finland as a whole, Swedish is one of the two ""national"" languages, with the same official status as Finnish (spoken by the majority) at the state level"
"Swedish-speaking municipalities have been proposed in Finland's Swedish-speaking media. Following an educational reform in the 1970s, both Swedish and Finnish became compulsory school subjects. The school subjects are not called ""Finnish"" or ""Swedish""; the primary language in which lessons are taught depends upon the pupil's mother tongue. This language of instruction is officially and in general practice called the ""mother tongue"" (' in Finnish, ' in Swedish). The secondary language, as a school subject, is called the ""other domestic language"" (' in Finnish, ' in Swedish). Lessons in the ""other domestic language"" usually start in the third, fifth or seventh"
"is a mandatory subject in Finnish schools, since Finland by law is a bilingual country. Danish is mandatory in Faroese and Greenlandic schools, as these insular states are a part of the Danish Realm (""Rigsfællesskabet""). Iceland also teaches Danish, since Iceland too was a part of the Danish Realm until 1918. Beside these and the insular Scandinavian languages Faroese and Icelandic, which are also North Germanic languages, there are the Finnic and Sami branches of the Uralic languages, spoken in Finland and in northern Norway, Sweden and Finland, respectively; and Greenlandic, an Eskimo–Aleut language, spoken in Greenland. All the Nordic"
"language, except for people studying some other language as mother tongue (e.g. immigrants and those studying Sami). Finnish speakers take Swedish, and vice versa. According to Statistics Finland, practically all the students take English, either as a compulsory or an optional language. There is also a possibility to take one or more extra foreign languages. Despite Finland being a neighbour of Russia, Russian is not taught in most schools of Finland, and only 1.5% of Finns know some Russian. The hindrances are cultural and political, as there has been relatively little cultural exchange between the Finns and Russians in the"
"language and the right to use it as a mother tongue. Courses in ""sign language"" have been taught in Finland since the 1960s. At that time, instruction taught signs but followed Finnish word order (see Manually Coded Language). Later, as research on sign languages in general and Finnish Sign Language in particular determined that sign languages tend to have a very different grammar from oral languages, the teaching of Finnish Sign Language and Signed Finnish diverged. Finnish Sign Language Finnish Sign Language (""suomalainen viittomakieli"" in Finnish) is the sign language most commonly used in Finland. There are 5000 ""(estimate)"" Finnish"
"Toponyms of Finland The toponyms of Finland result mainly from the legacy left by three linguistic heritages: the Finnish language (spoken as first language by about 93% of the population), the Swedish language (about 5.5%) and Sami languages (about 0.03%). Finland’s place names range from those of unknown or unrecognizable origins to more clearly derivable onomastics. There are both national and international recommendations on how to use the bilingual country's place names in texts written in different languages. In Finland, the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland and the National Land Survey of Finland are jointly responsible for the"
"belonging to the same Finnic branch of the Uralic language family. Nevertheless, the two languages are not mutually intelligible, although educated native speakers can read the other language with a greater or lesser degree of understanding. Estonian and Finnish are only distantly related to the Hungarian language. Written with the Latin script, Estonian is the language of the Estonian people and the official language of the country. One-third of the standard vocabulary is derived from adding suffixes to root words. The oldest known examples of written Estonian originate in 13th century chronicles. During the Soviet era, the Russian language was"
"Finnish. The language of instruction in publicly financed schools is Swedish (In the rest of Finland, bilingual municipalities provide schooling both in Finnish and in Swedish). (See Åland Swedish for information about the dialect.) The issue of the ethnicity of the Ålanders, and the correct linguistic classification of their language, remains somewhat sensitive and controversial. They may be considered either ethnic Swedes or Swedish-speaking Finns, but their language is closer to the Uppländska dialect of Sweden than to Finland Swedish. See Languages of Sweden. Regional citizenship or the right of domicile () is a prerequisite for voting, standing as a"
"situated in the Baltic Sea between Finland and Sweden, are entirely Swedish-speaking. Children are taught the other official language at school: for Swedish-speakers this is Finnish (usually from the 3rd grade), while for Finnish-speakers it is Swedish (usually from the 3rd, 5th or 7th grade). Finnish speakers constitute a language minority in Sweden and Norway. There are also languages derived from Finnish, having evolved separately, known as Meänkieli in Sweden and Kven in Norway. The Sami languages are indigenous minority languages in Scandinavia. They belong to their own branch of the Uralic language family and are unrelated to the North"
"a language of the same Finnic language group as Finnish, and national language of Finland's southern neighbour Estonia, although Finnish is popular in Estonia. Sentiments toward mandatory Swedish vary. Many prominent politicians (both Finnish- and Swedish-speaking) wholeheartedly support mandatory Swedish in schools, while others oppose it. There have been numerous petitions and other similar campaigns arranged by some small but dedicated organizations to pressure the lawmakers to abolish mandatory Swedish, but to date, they have had no significant impact on the established policy. Thus, while the ongoing debate is often heated and passionate, the support for mandatory Swedish tuition remains"
"higher costs of living in the capital region have pushed many daily commuters to find housing in formerly rural areas, and even further, to cities such as Lohja, Hämeenlinna, Lahti, and Porvoo. Finnish and Swedish are the official languages of Helsinki. 79.1% of the citizens speak Finnish as their native language. 5.7% speak Swedish. The remaining 15.3% of the population speaks a native language other than Finnish or Swedish. Helsinki slang is a regional dialect of the city. It combines influences mainly from Finnish and English, and has traditionally had strong Russian and Swedish influences. Finnish today is the common"
"right to maintain and develop their language and culture. The right to use sign language is also set in the Finnish Language Act. In accordance with the Population Census Act, censuses are drawn every ten years, and the mother tongue of each resident is registered. However, key census data, including population by native language, are updated annually. According to the official statistics, speakers of 155 different languages have been registered. The censuses use the ISO 639-1 language classification. France recognizes but one language, French, declared national language. Other indigenous languages have no official status, although their teaching is tolerated in"
"the countries of the Americas and Oceania, with the population of primarily immigrant background, namely Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. The Population Register Centre maintains information on the birthplace, citizenship and mother tongue of the people living in Finland, but does not specifically categorize any as Finns by ethnicity. The majority of people living in the Republic of Finland consider Finnish to be their first language. According to Statistics Finland, of the country's total population of 5,503,297 at the end of 2016, 88.3% (or 4,857,795) considered Finnish to be their native language. It is not known how"
"Finland Finland ( ; ), officially the Republic of Finland (, ) is a country in Northern Europe bordering the Baltic Sea, Gulf of Bothnia, and Gulf of Finland, between Norway to the north, Sweden to the northwest, and Russia to the east. Finland is a Nordic country and is situated in the geographical region of Fennoscandia. The capital and largest city is Helsinki. Other major cities are Espoo, Vantaa, Tampere, Oulu and Turku. Finland's population is 5.52 million (2018), and the majority of the population is concentrated in the southern region. 88.7% of the population is Finnish and speaks"
"and fishermen from the Finnish coastal municipalities and archipelago. Finland is a bilingual country according to its constitution. This means that members of the Swedish language minority have the right to communicate with the state authorities in their mother tongue. On the municipal level, this right is legally restricted to municipalities with a certain minimum of speakers of the minority language. All Finnish communities and towns are classified as either monolingual or bilingual. When the proportion of the minority language increases to 8% (or 3000), then the municipality is defined as bilingual, and when it falls below 6%, the municipality"
"only to master their selected field, but also to study at least two languages beside their mother tongue, one of which is obligatorily Swedish for Finnish-speakers. As study material is often in English, this effectively removes the free choice; the two ""voluntarily chosen"" languages must be Swedish and English. Despite being a neighbour of Russia, it is in practice possible to study Russian only in some schools (due to low interest or it not being offered); only 1.5% of the Finns have a good knowledge of Russian. Also very few Finns speak Estonian (which is not taught in most schools),"