I'm curious about this from a Canadian perspective. Growing up a decade before the internet French was more mandatory than it is today so we had a few years of it even in my province of Alberta which is way off in the west. What was curious about it was that we were mostly just told that French is the language of Quebec so we need to know some of it, which didn't sit well with any of us. They also used these videos of a depressed looking clown named Sol that didn't help matters much. The Bonhomme de Neige character from Quebec's winter carnival was pretty creepy for us too and none of us liked the idea of a culture so fixated with snow because we certainly had enough of that ourselves.
It wasn't until much later (around high school) when it wasn't mandatory anymore that we became aware that it might have been useful to pay more attention because it's one of the most useful languages to know and related to others like Spanish.
Swedish is clearly nowhere near French in terms of usefulness but it's also not at the far extreme (i.e. a complete language isolate) so the teachers still have a bit to work with here. So I'm curious if the curriculum tries to at least improve the experience by jazzing the students up a bit with how at least it's one of a few closely related languages that you get almost for free spoken in countries with nicely developed economies (and German and Dutch become somewhat easier while you are at it), or whether it's more of an artifact of the past and just introduced as a language the country wants you to learn as was the case with us growing up.
by Dhghomon
12 comments
It’s like French in Canada if you live in any other state than Quebec.
It’s mandatory from sixth, seventh, eight, ninght grades and then in vocational or upper secondary school and then few courses in university or university of applied sciences.
Most people don’t learn even conversational Swedish. Those that do most likely lose it after school is done. Only reason it’s at least somewhat maintained is because all public jobs require it and only reason why it’s staying like that is because RKP(Swedish peoples party) is good 5-10 votes for the government coalition and that’s their only requirement to join the coalition so they’re always in. Last time they weren’t the government coalition dropped mandatory exams from the upper secondary school and it was dramatic for RKP.
I always hated the forced study of Swedish in school. Finland was under Swedish rule for hundreds of years and still part of our population speaks Swedish as their mother tongue. Forced Swedish felt like a reminder of those times under Swedish rule. I personally despised the whole idea of learning that language. It was like forced Russian for countries under Soviet rule. I have nothing against Sweden and our countries are like siblings. When things get tough, we stand by each other.
I don’t mind. For me knowing Swedish has been very useful.
When I went to school in the nineties Swedish was universally despised and ridiculed by the students. This was Western Finland, in a completely Finnish speaking small town. I was always the outlier. Languages always came to me easily in school and I found Swedish rather easy to pick up. I have benefited from it in life, even living in Sweden in the 2010s for a time. I have many positive things to say about the country and the people.
As to my thoughts on teaching Swedish in school, it never hurts to know more languages. Sweden is a good neighbour of ours, as are the other Nordics. Historically the period of Swedish rule made us a culturally Nordic country, so the historical ties are definitely there. There’s also a practical angle, knowing Swedish helps you ease into the Scandinavian job market (though these are of course countries with excellent English proficiency too). This matters at least somewhat in the short run, as the Finnish economy is currently doing very badly and many of us might soon have to take a look at other countries job and career wise.
All that said, it is truly a minority language in Finland, only five percent of us are Swedish first language speakers (comparing our two countries, a quick Google search tells me around 20 % of Canadians have French as their first language). It is entirely possible to go your whole life without ever having to use it, if you never happen to enter any Swedish speaking areas. This and the language being a mandatory subject creates resistance among Finnish speaking students, leading to poor motivation and dismal learning results: I can almost guarantee that the average Finnish speaking Finn won’t be able to carry a conversation of any complexity in Swedish despite studying it for many years in school.
This situation has slowly led me to consider that maybe an optional third mandatory language (in addition to Finnish and English) would be a better choice for the school of today. We are short on German, French and Spanish speakers already, for example. Naturally Swedish could be one of the options.
I think it should be abolished. I didn’t object studying, as languages come easily to me, but I have gone through life having absolutely no use for it, despite having been in official or international jobs. So i’ve had to come to a conclusion that it being mamdatory was a scam. And I consider it robbing entire generations of the chance of learning some actually useful language.
I grew up in the 90s/00s in an area where there were close no one who natively spoke swedish. Hence in classes kids had hard time understanding why we were learning swedish. It was really hard for some. It was a lot of work for me too and I was super excited when I got Magna Cum Laude finally from B-level swedish (which in hindsight still doesnt mean I would know shit 🤣). It was 6 years if studying.
Later in life I moved to the capital area where there are more people with swedish as their first language, which helped understand the commection, even though we would 100% of time speak finnish.
I live i a swedish-majority town. They have worked the local politics so that swedish starts from the first grade. It didn’t help. Finnish speakers just hate swedish more. The local swedish-speaking kids have mandatory finnish, and they hate it just as much.
Obligatory swedish is an artifact of the past that no politician wants to abolish. That’s the sentiment of most of us living outside the swedish speaking regions. We don’t hear swedish at all and we don’t really speak it. We might understand a few words though.
Basically it’s seen as a civil right issue as swedish is a national language. I think the swedish spoken by most finns is so poor that it wouldn’t make a difference anyway if it was not obligatory in school.
Well, swedish is more closely related to german language and many words are quite similar but it’s hard for me to see a real benefit in learning swedish. I’d have prefered learning german directly or italian in school.
I don’t have any hate towards the swedish language, but I think students would benefit more if the third mandatory language to learn beside english could be decided between Sweden, Germany and France
The way things are going in Finland parents really should teach kids atleast to take Swedish somewhat seriously in school.
You sit in classes and cry. Does not matter how shit you are in it you allways pass.
Complete waste
ost juustoo
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