Quote:
Originally Posted by JHikka
lol
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Norway was part of Sweden until 1905. So it's not as lol as you imagine. Had not Norway seceded from Sweden in 1905, do you think immigrants arriving in Oslo would have any incentive to learn the Norwegian language (which was considered like a boorish peasant version of Swedish, back in those days)? Sweden was always more populated, more prosperous, and with the larger urban centers than rural, backward Norway.
The same could be said about Finland by the way. In fact the Finnish situation is the one that resembles the Québec situation the most: a mostly rural Finnish population, conquered by the Swedes whose language is extremely different from Finnish, with the Swedes dominating Finland for several centuries, controlling its economy, being in the higher spheres of business and industries, with the largest cities of Finland being at some point majority Swedish-speaking, and a Finnish proletariat that was in the process of being Swedishified in the cities.
Then eventually Finnish nationalism appeared in the 19th century, they rejected that Swedish domination, very much like the Révolution tranquille in Québec, and eventually they gained independence in 1919, and set strict language laws to make Finnish the language of the state (in the 19th century they had already re-finishified the Finnish language which had become a sort of Finnish-Swedish pidgin, especially in the cities, but the Finnish nationalist movements eliminated that Swedish influence from the Finnish language to create a more "pure" Finnish language).
After independence, Finland's Swedes found themselves a bit in the same position as Anglophones in Québec: the formally dominant community, now a minority, but with recognized rights (Swedish speakers have the right to use the Swedish language in a certain number of urban municipalities recognized by the Finnish Constitution).
Now, imagine if Finland had remained part of Sweden (in the real history, it was detached from Sweden by the Russians, and it later gained independence in 1919, but under Russian rule the Swedes kept dominating Finland): you think an immigrant arriving in Helsinki would have an incentive to learn Finnish, a complicated language, with just 5 million speakers, when Swedish is the majority language in the country, and Stockholm by far the largest and most economically successful city? Also, most Finns would still be perfectly bilingual Finnish-Swedish speakers in the cities like Helsinki, as was the case in the 19th century, so that immigrant would be like hey, they understand Swedish, why would I make the effort to learn Finnish?
In today's Finland, the immigrant has no choice: you learn Finnish as otherwise you're isolated with no prospects. The idea of using Swedish doesn't cross the mind of any immigrant in Finland.
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