Finland Swedish - Official Status

Official Status

Further information: Languages of Finland

Swedish is one of the two national languages of the republic of Finland, the other being Finnish. These two language have formally equal status in nearly all legislation. The other minority languages (such as Sami) are regulated separately.

Finland Swedish is regulated by the Institute for the Languages of Finland. Official Swedish is not supposed to be much different from Swedish as found in Sweden. There are however e.g. words regarded as archaic in Sweden, but commonly used in Finland, and terms that differ from their counterparts in Sweden, often because of slight differences in the related legislation.

Bilingualism of municipalities is regulated by the Language Act of 2003. If the minority has increased into at least 3,000 persons or 8% of inhabitants, then the municipality must become bilingual. If the minority has fallen below 3,000 persons and 6% of inhabitants, then the municipality must become monolingual, unless it decides to keep its bilingual status. At present, only one such municipality has done so, namely Lohja (Lojo in Swedish). The status is reviewed once in a decade, and enacted by a government decree issued by the Finnish Council of State.

The country's public broadcaster, YLE, provides two Swedish-language radio stations, Radio Vega and YLE X3M, as well a TV channel, YLE Fem.

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