Adventures and lessons learned by an Italian/American AFS Egypt, NSLI-Y Turkish, Beloit Russian major, CLS Turkish, and ISEP University of Turku, Finland, alumnus and current Fulbright fellow at the University of Iceland the world over.
Today I'm here to nerd out as per usual, and discuss two parallel marvels of linguistic adaptability and versatility that I know from the two Nordic countries in which I have sojourned and whose languages I have studied - Finland and Iceland. It's always funny and fascinating to find little patterns like these between different cultures and languages; though Finland and Iceland certainly aren't too alien to each other as two Nordic cultures, but their two beautiful and complex languages come from entirely different language families (being Germanic/Indo-European and Finno Ugric respectively), so that makes this similarity all the more striking to me as a non-native learner of both.
Since this title probably makes very little sense to anyone who isn't familiar with a bit of Icelandic or Finnish, let alone someone who knows none of either of them, here is a little context:
First on the word "jæja," courtesy of my favorite Icelandic writer, the talented Alda Sigmundsdóttir (check out her great work on Icelandic culture, history, and language), from her book The Little Book of Icelandic: "A highly versatile word that can be tricky for those not well versed in the cultural nuances of Icelandic. It can be used to herald in a conversation, as in: Jæja, það er blessuð blíðan í dag - "jæja, the weather sure is nice today." It can also be used as a standalone when a silence becomes uncomfortable - you know, when you don't really know what to say but aren't comfortable saying nothing. The other person would then likely respond já - "yes," which would mean nothing except that they heard your jæja and they, too, are feeling kind of awkward. Jæja can also denote your mood or feeling, depending on the intonation. If the inflection goes up at the end you are probably feeling buoyant and would like to start a conversation in that vein. If the inflection drops at the end you are probably feeling downhearted and pessimistic, and the other person with pick up on this instantly. Jæja can also be a response to someone who has just told you something fascinating - as in jæjajá! It can also signal that you want to bring a conversation or exchange to an end. In such an instance you might arise from your seat with a jæ-ja that is slightly elongated on the second syllable, and the tone of that jæja would absolutely tell the other person that you think it's time to go."
Shortly into my stay in Finland, I learned about the word "noniin," sometimes rendered without the final "in" or with an extra "n," which I felt performed a pretty similar linguistic function:
(According to Paju N. Luola, a "native speaker and enthusiast" answering in a thread on Quora:)
“No niin” (or “noni” or “nonnih”) is a very versatile interjection which most people use at least a few different ways. The different meanings/implications are true vernacular and vary according to the area and the microdialect. Some variations are very widely understood and close to settled, while others may be understood in the same way by just a few people within a single group.
Ismo Leikola is also astute in noticing that this specific word has intensive homophone variation conveyed via stresses, elongations and constrictions as well as tonal shifts, which as a rule do not carry more meaning in Finnish than slight nuances and basic tonal questions which are well known in many languages. (As in “Savvy?”)
Just some examples of the variations that are best known around where I live: NON-ni (high-low) — “now you’ve gone and done it!” non-NI (high-low) — “whew, all done now” non-NI (low-high) — “let’s get going” no-NII (low-dipping) —”didn’t I tell you? yes I did” no-nii (neutral-falling) — “aww lookit you” (to babies/pets)
For an English counterpart, I’d suggest “yeah” or “sure”. They do gain a surprising list of meanings when you sit down and think about the many many ways they can be said.
(Here is a video by a well-known Finnish comedian named Ismo Leikola, for a vocal aid to help contextualize the various applications and usages of noniin.)
The similarity of the two words, and their multifaceted characterizations and usages, struck me, as two little versatile syntactic components of two of my favorite corners of the far north, so I thought I'd just share that special little linguistic feature with y'all.
This will be (at least for now) the last piece of purely academic writing that I share from my semester in Finland, the entrance exam from my "cross border areas in the Baltic Sea region" course. Hope you enjoy!
Löfgren largely characterizes the nature of borders as artificial projects, and the experience of crossing them as alienating and othering. He mentions cases such as the two sides of the opposing sides of the Öresund bridge, where nationalist characteristics are assigned even to the surrounding flora and fauna to act as cultural symbols and cement the physical sense of the nation-state, and its perception by others. The crucial notion that “marking differences of privilege and status and symbolic worlds of two territories” is highly important, bearing in mind that the flow of people across borders and their experiences vary greatly based on rather arbitrary aspects of who they are, where they come from, why they are coming, and what permission they may or may not have to do so. He describes “sharp divisions and distinctions” and “transgression” not only national but also physical and psychological in nature, such as intimidation and guilt, that are used to strategically other groups of people in transit, making them feel welcome or unwelcome in their passage into another nation state, often based on obsolete and biased traits of physical or stereotypical attributes associated with particular places.
One of my most defined experiences in moving across international borders has come from this very semester. Being the son of an Italian mother and an American father, I inherited two of the world’s most powerful citizenships upon birth. As such, I have been awarded an immense amount of privilege in where I am allowed to go and how I am allowed to move across the world, and how I am able to present myself in the context of my various identities in different contexts. Living in Finland as an exchange student, my possession of a European citizenship and its associated documents (my Italian passport and identity card), I can stay, study, and live here for up to three months at a time without even needing a residency permit, and was able to travel to Finland from Italy and between Finland and Sweden without having to show so much as my identity card, and undergo little to no scrutiny or even formal document control in the process, even though I was born in the United States and have been raised and educated there for the vast majority of my life. In contrast, I have met many other non-European citizens who have had to go through intensive bureaucratic processes in order to come to Finland, even flying across their homeland for fifteen-minute appointments at the Finnish embassy. As such, situational luck and individual privilege have greatly dictated my own ability to move freely across our ever more interconnected world and engage with different places therein, just as it has for others.
Continuing my little academic series from Finland, here are my essays from my Variations of the Finnish language class, which I had to write about the dialectal variation and the development of the written version of my first language, that being English.
Hope it's interesting!
Linguistic Variation in the English Language: Due to its status as an official language in many countries, and becoming the default lingua franca for international communication, many spoken variations of English exist. Some of the best known and most dominant across the Anglophone world include American English, British English, Irish English, and Australian English. Lesser-spoken variations include New Zealand English and Canadian English, which due to geographical proximity, cultural affinity, and political cooperation alike exist largely in tandem with Australian and American English respectively. Differences in pronunciation, vocabulary, and influences from other languages certainly exist in these variations, setting them apart as distinct dialects. But excepting perhaps isolated sub-dialects or thick parlances of older individuals, the divergence between these aforementioned dialects is usually not sufficient to hinder comprehension between their speakers. In general, it will become obvious quite quickly which country the speakers in question hail from, and they may occasionally be unfamiliar with specific vocabulary or slang pertaining to daily life in each others’ homelands, but overall communication will take place without issue. Due to the fact that speakers of English from these countries tend to be familiar with each other’s cultures to a certain extent, they will often know and somewhat stereotypically associate certain pronunciations and phrases with each other’s dialects. One example would be the name of the famous Australian Idol singer and drag queen Shane Gilberto Jenek, better known by the stage name of Courtney Act, which in non-rhotic dialects such as his native Australian becomes a play on the phrase “caught in the act,” whereas in rhotic dialects such as American English, the stage name loses its originally intended pun. Other spoken examples of divergence in the dialects can be seen in highly informal greetings, with “what’s up?” being popular in North America, compared to “wotcha” in southern Britain, “how ya goin’?” in Australia, and the famous greeting “what’s the craic?” in Ireland. Other spoken dialects in Anglophone countries are more than sufficiently distinct to hinder comprehension for other English speakers, even if their standard forms do not differ greatly. Two such examples could be spoken Jamaican English, which is often referred to as a patois or creole daughter language in its own right, and Singaporean English. In the case of Jamaican, words are pronounced in a highly condensed fashion and many letters are changed or cut, as can be seen in the dialect’s widely recognized greeting “wha’ gwan?” or “what [is] going on.” Word order and syntactical structure are often quite distinct from even Standard Jamaican English due to Carib and African influences. Singaporean English is known for often featuring the particle “lah,” borrowed from Malay, which is used to emphasize certain parts of a sentence or a whole sentence depending on use and context, and has no direct English translation. Aside from overarching national and geographical divergences, socio-economic and community-based variations also exist in English, within or across such geographical umbrellas. Prominent geographical variation in dialect is certainly present in the United States. The most general regional groupings consist of New England, the South, Midwest, West Coast, and Pacific Northwest. But aside from small variations in vocabulary, and a few unusually strong regional accents (namely in East Coast cities like Boston or New York that were established earlier in the country’s history), linguistic diversity in the United States is manifested more through sociolects. A key example of a prominent American sociolect is African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Often condescendingly dismissed as “improper speech” or “poor grammar,” in recent decades AAVE has gained more recognition as a defined sociolect with its own grammar, syntax, word order, and morphological features. Words are often shortened, particularly in the elimination of final consonants such as “r’s” and their frequent replacement with glottal stops (i.e. “four” becomes “fo’”) or schwas (i.e. “mother” becomes “mothuh”). Other commonly recognized features of AAVE include its distinctive usage of the verb “to be” in various sentence forms (such as “I been done,” meaning “I’ve finished”), double negation (i.e. “I didn’t go nowhere” to mean “I didn’t go anywhere,” which reverses the sentence’s original meaning in Standard English, and the common use of “ain’t” as a general particle of negation (i.e. “He ain’t know” instead of “he didn’t know”). Speakers of AAVE, particularly those living in urban areas and middle class neighborhoods, tend to code switch quite frequently, using AAVE in informal contexts among relatives and African American friends and acquaintances, but switching to a more standard American English register in school or work environments, or when communicating with non-AAVE speakers. Because of the influence that AAVE and its speakers have had in certain areas of American culture, particularly in various genres of music, it is often an object of imitation and appropriation by non AAVE-speakers and non-African Americans. Another common sociolect found in the United States is that of Chicano English, or “Spanglish,” which is widely used among Hispanic, particularly Mexican American, communities and neighborhoods. It uniquely fuses Spanish and English vocabulary, word order, and syntax, producing a combination that is not fully dominated by either language (i.e. instead of the fully English “I went to the store to buy some strawberries, but they were sold out,” or the fully Spanish “fui a la tienda a comprar unas fresas, pero ya no quedaban,” a Latino American might say “fui al store a comprar some strawberries, pero ya estaban sold out.”
The Development of the Written English Language: English as a written language has evolved dramatically from its original registers, and understanding these changes is key in classifying the language. Scant written records exist of the Germanic speech of the earliest Anglo-Saxon invaders of Great Britain, who absorbed or displaced many of the local Pictish and Celtic clans inhabiting the island (as well as their languages). Literacy became more widespread in Britain following its Christianization by St. Augustine and 40 other Roman missionaries in the year 597. The pagan Anglo-Saxons had used a runic alphabet which closely resembled those found in northern Europe, specialized for engraving on wood or stone, and fused it with the Latin alphabet introduced by these missionaries. The resulting written language included letters such as “ƿ (wynn),” “þ (thorn),” “ð (eth),” and “ȝ (yogh),” some of which have been retained in other Germanic languages, such as Icelandic and Faroese.Old English refers to the register and literary works of the English language hailing from from the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries.Old English was the dominant spoken language of the time, with Latin only being used regularly by the clergy and elite, but Latin borrowings, particularly religious terminology such as “priest,” baptism” “eucharist,” “candle,” and so on were increasingly adopted for common use. Literature published during the Old English period included numerous works by poets such as Caedmon from the 7th century, and epics such as Beowulf, still well-recognized and commonly read to this day. Old English was quite grammatically akin to Old Norse and modern Icelandic, showcasing more intricate features of expression such as three genders, seven strong verb classes and three weak ones, five potential case inflections, and consequentially freer word order, which modern English has all but lost. Further Germanic influence in Old English came from Viking invasions and political domination in following centuries. A dramatic and pivotal turning point came with the the Norman conquest of Britain, in which the French King William the Conqueror seized control of the island in 1066 and redistributed land to Norman lords, subjugating the Anglo-Saxons and making them second-class citizens. This manifested in the increasingly diglossic linguistic situation, with Anglo-Norman becoming the spoken language of the court, administration, and noble elite for more than three hundred years afterwards, and English being seen as an inferior, simple peasant’s tongue. Because of Old English and Anglo-Norman speakers being largely separated by rigid societal hierarchies, the two languages developed in tandem with each other for many decades, only beginning to fuse when intermarriage between speakers of the two sociolects becoming more acceptable. Romance-based prefixes such as “con-,” “pre-,” “ex-,” and “trans-,” and noun suffixes such as “-age,” “-ance/-ence,” “-ity,” and “-tion” made an appearance in written English at this time due to French influence, and huge numbers of French loanwords, particularly relating to positions of power (i.e. “government”), and artistic expression (i.e. “poet,” “literature”) were adopted. French scribes reversed the common Old English diphthong “hw” to “wh,” wishing to uphold an aesthetic consistency with other diphthongs such as “ch” and “th.” Other reappropriations of spellings common at the time seemed more arbitrary, such as adding a “w” to the word hal, a precursor to the modern “whole.” Following Norman rule, dialects became so divergent across Britain that mutual intelligibility was impossible over long distances, and the spoken register gradually shed the grammatical complexities of Old and Middle English. A monk called Orm from northern Lincolnshire crafted a text referred to as the “Ormulum,” in which he attempted to combat excessive mispronunciation by transcribing biblical passages exactly as they were pronounced. This was done by simplifying and altering the written language, shifting many common diphthongs (i.e.“cw” to “qu;” “queen” instead of “cween”), eliminating “h’s” at the beginning of many words (i.e. “neck” instead of “hnecca”), and perhaps most crucially, eliminating the use of the letters wynn, replacing it with "w," yogh, replacing it with g or gh, thorn and eth, replacing them with th, and so on.
Out of touch with their French roots, many of the Norman elite began to craft a more English identity, and the plague killed much of the Latin-speaking clergy, resulting in a more even linguistic playing field and adoption of common English by classes who had previously discredited it. By the 15th century, Old English was likely just as mutually unintelligible as it is for modern English speakers.
A defining benchmark in the development of Modern English was the so-called Great Vowel Shift, referring to an unusually swift evolution of long vowel sounds being pronounced higher and in a forward position in the mouth. Spelling changes that were made to reflect these changes rendered written English increasingly similar to its modern form. The last crucial facet in the development of Modern English was the invention of the printing press in 1476, which made literature of diverse genres and purposes accessible to more of the general population, and led to greater unity among the speakers who used it. Late Modern English has remained relatively unchanged in terms of vocabulary, grammar, and spelling; the greatest changes are reflected in vocabulary, as many words have been coined for technological inventions and newly discovered scientific concepts.
Today I'm going to continue my series of sharing my favorite assignments I wrote during my semester in Finland. Today's installment consists of my assignments from my Variations of the Finnish Language final, which details the development of the Finno-Ugric language family, and several specific languages therein.
Hope you enjoy!
Vocabulary and traceable relationships between different languages are a key tool for understanding culture. A language is a cornerstone of its culture’s expressive power and identity, and a microcosm of its history. By looking at when, where, and from where new terminology entered a language, it is possible to discern where its speakers came from, what people groups they interacted with, and in which capacities. A key example can be found in the Finnic word for “honey”, mesi, and that for “bee,” mehiläinen. These words have been identified as Indo-European borrowings, and have been cited as potential proof for the River Volga being a point of origin for Finno-Ugric speakers, as beekeeping has long been practiced there, and the terms could have been adopted from Indo-European Volgan beekeepers. Additionally, a set of words, mainly either personal pronouns (i.e. kuka, me) or body parts (silmä, suoni) have equivalent forms in the Balto-Finnic, Saami, Mordvin, Mari, Udmurt, Komi, Mansi, Khanty, and Hungarian branches of the Finno-Ugric family, indicating a relationship of common origin between them with 100% of etymological certainty.
Literary Finnish began with the work of Mikael Agricola as Protestant churches upped their efforts to conduct services in local languages across reformed European states. As mentioned in the preface of his 1548 New Testament translation, its linguistic foundations came from the southwestern dialects around Turku, as it was the capital at the time. A translation of the whole of the Bible was subsequently completed in 1642, with care taken this time to follow the standards of the southeastern dialects more consistently. The register found in this translation remained the literary default in Finland until the transfer of power between the Sweden and Russia in 1809. As nationalistic sentiment and the emerging Fennoman movement exerted greater influence on Finnish politics, the question of Finnish’s potential as an official language arose. Since most of the printed works from the Swedish era were highly influenced in structure by Swedish, German, and Latin as the literary languages of the time, and only offered vocabulary fit for religious concepts and contexts, the so-called “dialect struggle” took place. Great debate centered around which dialectal influences a new literary standard should feature (especially whether to include more typical elements of eastern dialects, largely ignored in all written standards up to that point). By the end of the nineteenth century, the debate largely subsided. Finnish gained official status equal with that of Swedish, validated through openings of Finnish-based schools, university departments, and the Finnish Literary Society, and widespread printing of a variety of literary materials in Finnish (including prose, fiction, journalistic, linguistic, and scientific works). Use of written language was aspired to as the most democratic option, to facilitate comprehension across dialects and not ostracize Swedish or German-speakers adopting Finnish as their primary language. The Eduskunta assembled this form in a comprehensive dictionary, the Nykysuomen Sanakirja.
The written lexicon and organized grammar for most Finno-Baltic languages originated in translations of religious material. Features of other prestigious literary lingua francas where Finno-Baltic languages were spoken were often applied in the written forms. Henrich Stahl produced a Latin-influenced German text on Estonian grammar in 1637, as German was the administrative language in Estonia at the time. German features that still survive today were added to the orthography, and certain aspects of syntax were somewhat dubiously described to be equivalent to German, such as the fusing of the singular forms of the genitive and ablative cases due to them both being rendered in German with the word “von.” Due to great dialectal variation between the south and the north, Johann Gutslaff published a grammar of South Estonian in 1648, which listed five cases, replacing ablative with a “rective” case inspired by Hebrew. Johann Hornung’s 1693 Grammatica Esthonica came closer to the contemporary register by referring to the vernacular rather than other literary languages, and organizing object markers. The first Finnish grammars date back to the early 17th century. The lost manuscript of Henricus Cragerus was cited in other works of the time, distinct from Latin influence in describing twelve Finnish cases. The need for civil servants to learn Finnish led to minor grammatical publications from the Academia Aboensis, such as Aeschilus Petraeus’s 1649 grammar that attempted to force Latin influence anew, basing itself on southwestern dialects like the 1642 Bible translation. Bartholdus Vhael was finally able to assemble a Finnish grammar relatively free of Latin influence in his 1733 Grammatica Fennica, using his own Ostrobothnian dialect as a point of reference, giving a more comprehensive overview of inflectional suffixes and their combinations. Finally, Reinhold van Becker’s 1824 Finsk grammatik solidified the regulations of contemporary Finnish syntax.
As I did in the months following my time in Russia, now that my grades have all been finalized and transferred successfully, I'd like to share some of my assignments from courses I was taking in Finland which contained important or relevant reflections on different aspects of experiences and learning.
Today I'll start by sharing a couple of my favorite lecture journals I wrote for my Finnish Society: Culture and Institutions course. Hope you guys enjoy!
20 March 2018: The Finnish Welfare State and Socioeconomic Inheritance:
The Nordic states are well renowned across the world for their distinctive welfare systems and the socio-economic protection that they allow Nordic citizens to benefit from. States vary widely in their provision of redistribution, public services, and social security or insurance. Nordic states tend to have quite strong welfare states, with emphasis placed on employment, progressive taxation, and universal social traits irrespective of inherent traits and identities (resulting in low poverty and high gender equality). Finnish citizens therefore can count on their government quite reliably for the provision of such privileges as housing, unemployment, sickness, and disability benefits, pensions, public health care, free education, and student stipends.
Due to the ample support from the state, poverty in Finland is astronomically less severe relative to poverty in many other countries. Also, crucially, the financial and logistical safety net provided guarantees a high amount of social mobility. Generally in Finland, even if a person is born in a family of fairly limited resources, it will be much easier for them to attain a higher social standing irrespective of their socioeconomic inheritance, as free education minimizes barriers to gaining necessary credentials for higher-paying jobs compared to countries where higher education is very expensive, and the state can offer help in times of dire financial or logistical need.
By comparison, the United States is considered to have quite a “liberal” welfare state compared to the social-democratic Nordic welfare states. Indeed, it is often strongly debated whether the United States can call itself a welfare state at all. Some benefits of social services (i.e. food stamps for those living below the poverty line) and unemployment benefits, for instance, are guaranteed by the state. But health care is typically run by private institutions and can be extremely expensive, leaving people vulnerable if they fall severely ill or are badly injured, especially without sufficient financial means to support themselves. Higher education in the United States is infamously expensive, and even highly performing students who are able to secure hefty scholarship deals often remain in debt for decades following their graduation.
As a result, social mobility in the United States tends to be much more static, due to the fact that educational credentials critical in obtaining higher paying jobs are far beyond many people’s means, and it is consequently much harder to break the cycle of poverty. For all the cultural glorification of “the American dream” and “pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps” being enough to achieve anything with sufficient hard work and dedication, in reality it is incredibly difficult for people born into families or neighborhoods of little means to be socially mobile.
A particularly interesting element in this issue is the role that public transportation plays in influencing someone’s chances of being socially mobile. Due to the United States’ immense size, city planning that typically separates residential and commercial quarters quite rigidly (resulting in great distances between them), and traditional importance of automobiles in American economy and culture, American public transportation systems are highly underfunded, low-quality, and nearly non-existent outside of major urban areas. They are thus greatly inferior to the public transportation systems present in much of Europe and Asia. It has been statistically proven that people born into difficult financial situations in the United States are more likely to be socially mobile if they live near a public transportation stop, as it enables them to reach potential workplaces and not be geographically bound to their socioeconomic inheritance. It would be interesting to know whether the logistical interconnectedness of city’s through efficient and well-functioning public transportation system has helped improve social mobility in the same way in a Finnish context, and how geographical features affect logistics.
27 March 2018: Multiculturalism in Finland:
The idea that Finland did not suddenly “become” multicultural throughout the 90s is important in defining Finnishness and its intersections with other national and ethnic identities in a contemporary context. Though communities of color in particular were not present in great numbers prior to the migration of the 90s, the presence of such groups as Swedish-speaking Finns, Saami, Jews, Tatars, Russians, Romani, and others attests to the fact that other group identities formed around distinctive cultures, and their intersections with Finnishness, have long formed a part of the country’s demographic landscape.
The policies used to account for minority identities, such as minority language education, exemption for religious holidays, and so on result in it being highly politicized at times. An example could be the right of return for Ingrian Finns. This law allowed people from the Russian region of Ingria with certain amounts of Finnish ancestry or quantities of close Finnish-speaking relatives to gain residency and citizenship in Finland with greater ease. This was largely based on a perceived kinship with this minority on the Russian side of the border, even though many who applied based on this policy were not native Finnish speakers themselves, and may have culturally identified more with their Russian upbringing and education for decades, struggling to integrate following their arrival.
The existence of such as group as the “City Saami” in Helsinki is also quite fascinating. This group represents not only a union and intersection between Finnishness and Saaminess, but also between an urbanized modernity and an identity based on highly traditional philosophies and ways of life. This fusion is shared with urbanized populations of indigenous origin the world over. In the United States for example, many Native Americans that do not live in their traditional reservations or territories have moved to larger towns and cities, adopt an Americanized urban style of living that incorporates varying degrees of their respective languages, faith, ceremonies, and overall culture with which they grew up, in much the same way as the City Saami.
One group which I was somewhat surprised to hear about was the Jews in Finland. Prior to this lecture, I was aware of little more than their objective existence, and was rather surprised to hear of their historical presence even in Turku, with a prominent synagogue located on Brahenkatu. Being interested in Jewish history and intersections of Jewishness with various national identities (and with construction of Israeli identity as well), I am interested to research the historic presence and migrations of Jews in Finland, and their presence in the society. It would also be interesting to know whether or not the Jews present in Finland are primarily Ashkenazi and historically Yiddish-speaking, which would seem logical given the geographical closeness of pre-World War II Ashkenazi strongholds such as current-day Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Belarus, and Yiddish’s contemporary status as an officially recognized minority language used by the Jewish community in neighboring Sweden.
Finally, the fact that census information, and in many ways identity as well, is largely built off of native language rather than ethnic affinity is crucial. Prior to coming to Finland, I wrote three papers about Swedish-speaking Finns in a political science class called “nationalism and ethnic conflict,” and was curious to see how their community tends to characterize and define itself; whether they might affiliate themselves more with Sweden, or be desirous of greater administrative autonomy. Coming to Finland, after conducting independent research and asking various Finnish acquaintances I feel inclined to conclude that Swedish-speaking Finns, generally speaking, do not feel any greater affinity to Sweden over Finland, and see themselves as proud Finns who just happen to, for familial and heritage reasons, speak Swedish as a native language. It was mentioned that some Finnish-born ethnic Kurds, physically unlikely to pass as Finns due to national stereotypes and profiling, look to their proficiency in the local Turku dialect as a marker of hometown pride and the validity of their local affiliation. This idea reminds me of my mother’s hometown in northern Italy, where the local Lombard dialect has been appropriated in reverse. It has become diluted through the generations due to the rise of standard Italian as the language of education and media. Older folk, who grew up speaking it as their mother tongue far more than Italian, have clung to it even harder as immigrant communities have established themselves in recent decades, overzealously guarding it as a marker of what they see as true local identity to exclude the newcomers.
In a course titled “Variations of the Finnish Language” earlier in the semester, I studied the development of written and spoken Finnish and other Finno-Ugric languages, as well as the contemporary state of Finnish dialects, in great detail. Mention was made of the distinctive accents and regional languages of formally Finnish regions now across the border in Russia, such as Petsamo and much of Karelia, and how much of the ethnically Finnish population from these regions chose to emigrate, bringing a distinctive and at times unfamiliar linguistic register to the various regions of Finland in which they were resettled. A close Finnish friend and University of Turku classmate of mine, a granddaughter of Karelian immigrants who grew up in Kuopio, has mentioned on multiple occasions the fact her accent is easily recognizable in Turku due to the strong east-west dichotomy present in contemporary Finnish dialects. I wonder to what extent this linguistic differentiation, and the differing cultural backgrounds of ethnic Finns such as Karelians and Ingrian Finns who were raised elsewhere, may influence interpersonal relations or contribute to unfamiliarity or even tensions among Finnish citizens in spite of shared ethnicity.
10 April 2018: Finnish Political Culture:
The structure and nature of a political culture in any given context is hugely important in influencing societal participation and order. Autonomy and participative rights of the populace in the affairs of their country, or lack thereof, greatly affect perception of a particular state by external international actors as well. Changing social movements play a key role in shaping political cultures. Such social movements are defined as being “forms of collective action that politicize issues, turn personal troubles into public issues, and seek to promote or hinder social change.” These typically have “common goals, create social conflicts in society, have a shared understanding of how these goals should be pursued, create a sense of solidarity, and have an organized form that gives them temporal continuity.”
In Finland, the political system is arranged as a multiparty parliamentary democracy with a president as the head of state. The unicameral Eduskunta consists of 200 MPs elected every four years, and the state has upheld universal suffrage since 1906. Finnish political culture has been defined by a very high rate of involvement in voluntary associations (around ¾ of the entire population, though there have been higher rates of recent decline) that have traditionally be seen as mediators between citizens and the state. At a rate of nearly 29%, volunteering is also widespread. In general there is minimal societal tendency towards violence or civil disobedience directed at property or people, due to close relationships and interplay between civil society and state institutions.
Overall, from impressions garnered in this course and others I have taken this semester (particularly Nordic Gendered Norms and Practices), I have been exposed to the marked differences among the political systems in Finland and my home country of the United States. Though structural organization and specific legal matters vary from state to state, the overall nature of the American political system can be characterized as significantly more decentralized and less involved compared to Finland and other Nordic states. The lack of a comparably comprehensive and generous welfare state is due to a greater historical importance on privacy and independence on a popular level. The political system in the United States is staunchly two-party, with the Democratic and Republican Parties representing center left and right interests and issues respectively, and largely dominating congressional positions and presidential elections. Other parties certainly exist, such as the Green Party, Communist Party, and so on, and there does tend to be at least a minimal independent (non-party affiliated) presence in many presidential elections and government bodies. But by and large, governmental power is highly concentrated in the structural dichotomy between Democrats and Republicans, which leads to a great lack of political representation for those espousing political beliefs outside of the party platforms compared to many other countries with multiparty political systems.
This division has become particularly pronounced during the last two or three years in the face of the debates and official candidacies for the 2016 presidential elections, and the destructive wake left by the erratic, illogical, and misinformed actions of the current presidential administration. Increased societal polarization has contributed to greater distance between people and geographical areas of differing political orientation. But on the other hand, outrage at the more pronounced state of disorganization, corruption, and oppression of marginalized people has led to greater cohesion around certain issues, creating mobilized social movements that canvas and fight for social change, both at official and grassroots levels. An excellent example from the current year would be the March for Our Lives, a movement started by survivors of a recent shooting at Parkland High School in Florida, which has brought an unprecedented level of continued attention and debate to the issue of finally bringing the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to a state of contemporary relevance in regulating gun control in the interest of civilian safety. Another which has gained prevalence due to the politics and expression of the current administration is the Women’s March, which was organized shortly after Donald Trump’s inauguration to protest his blatant misogyny and political issues affecting women and the advancement of gender equality in the United States. It was held in January 2018 on the anniversary of the inauguration for a second year in a row, garnering even further support across various political and identity spectrums.
24 April 2018: Ethnic Differences and Inequalities:
Finland’s traditional minorities typically fall into three distinct categories of classification. The first is by far the most numerous, a linguistic minority, that being the finlandssvenskar, or Swedish-speaking Finns. Then there is a prevalent indigenous minority in the form of several Saami groups found in the far northern province of Finnish Lapland. Finally, small communities of immigrant descent prior to the waves of immigration in the 1980s and 1990s, consisting of Roma, Tatar, Jewish, and Russian communities. For much of the 18th and 20th centuries, Finland was a country of emigration, experiencing waves of significant immigration quite a bit later than most other European states. Many of these newcomers originally hail from neighboring countries, such as Russia, Estonia, and other former Soviet republics, or have come to Finland as refugees from places such as Vietnam, Somalia, or the Kurdish-majority regions of the Middle East.
Organization of census data in Finland is distinct from that in many other states in that it quantifies the population by native language rather than ethnicity. Even if raised in bilingual or multilingual households, census data requires citizens to pick a single mother tongue when completing the paperwork. The proportions of the Swedish-speaking minority in particular have remained quite constant over the course of the last century in terms of numbers, shrinking as the Finnish-speaking population has grown, both due to natural population growth and native Swedish speakers adopting Finnish as a primary language to make a statement of national belonging and membership in Fennoman associations.
Certain aspects of structural bias can be noted in the system, with greater proportions and percentages of unemployment among speakers of immigrant languages compared to speakers of recognized national languages, and even a bias towards hiring of individuals who submit applications with Finnish-sounding names compared to those with, for example, Russian-sounding names. Significant differences can be noted among first and second generations of immigrant communities (meaning relatively recently arrived adults versus their children born and raised in the host country, or having arrived at a very young age before starting school) in terms of human capital. This is particularly manifested in terms of greater language skills, host country-specific educational or work experience, and possession of citizenship.
In the United States, most census data and other criteria for measuring proportions of different groups within the overall population are based on racial categories. Though these have diverged and evolved somewhat over time, they can still be overly simplistic and force certain people into leaving out specific information on their heritage, or to list themselves as groups which they do not consider themselves a part of and with which they may not share various privileges. A good example would be Middle Easterners, particularly Arabs, being forced to classify themselves as either “white” or “other” for a long time in spite of obvious differences and lack of privileges compared to such categories. Another would be Latino or Hispanic categories, which are rather nebulous cultural and linguistic labels respectively, designating individuals with Latin American and/or Spanish speaking origins, which encompass huge numbers of people across all sorts of racial, ethnic, religious, and national boundaries and intersections.
I wonder whether the distinction between linguistic, rather than racial or ethnic self-identification in census data, may contribute to greater linguistic preservation across generations in Finland versus the United States. My home country is sometimes referred to as “the graveyard of languages” in reference to how quickly populations of immigrant origin tend to be assimilated across generational lines - usually, by the second or third generation born on American soil, the original language will be lost. By comparison, it seems that immigrant communities in many European countries, including Finland, retain their mother tongues across generational lines much more effectively. In a specifically Finnish context, this may certainly be due at least in part to the laws requiring official instruction if there are certain amounts of pupils in a school who share a mother tongue. But in general, I theorize that the general structure of such provisions and bureaucratic categorizations being based around language rather than race or ethnicity may contribute to a stronger sense of community or identity through language itself, and thus enable immigrant communities to keep their languages in active use longer and more easily.
Today I'm going to be focusing on giving an overall impression of the five months I spent living as an exchange student in Turku, Finland, having just written about the specific adventures and trips that took me out of the mold of my everyday life in the Nordic countries that semester.
I left Italy on January 3 of this year, having been there for about three weeks with my extended family, joined as well by my parents and sister for part of the time when they came to spend Christmas with us all. I boarded my flight from Milan to Helsinki full of a disbelieving and surreal anticipation, watching a journey to a place I had dreamed of living in since I was eleven years old come to life before my eyes. I landed in the sleek and glassy architectural marvel of the Helsinki Vantaa Airport, and took a bus through darkness and belatedly hanging Christmas lights two hours to Turku to start the adventure of the next five months of my life.
I lived in a section of the Student Village housing in a neighborhood called Varissuo, about fifteen minutes from the center of Turku on the city bus service, in an apartment which I shared with two other exchange students, a French guy who had been there since the first semester, and a Mexican guy who had just arrived alongside me.
I studied at the University of Turku, one of about five or six different universities located in town, taking full advantage of my freedom as an exchange student to take courses across different departments: Finnish for Foreigners, Variations of the Finnish Language, Nordic Gendered Norms and Practices, Finnish Society: Culture and Institutions, Cross Border Areas in the Baltic Sea Region, and a Practical Swedish night class at a continuing education institute outside of the city's university systems entirely.
When I wasn't in class, I often did my work or studied in the plentiful work benches or little corners complete with couches and desks in the hallways of the academic buildings, or in the lovely Feeniks Library. I often walked around the center of the city, the old town square near the medieval cathedral, and the park on the hill where the Turku Art Museum looks down on the city. Turku, as I mentioned in one of my previous Finland posts, is full of adorable and high-quality cafes of all vibes and calibers, and I found it wonderful to sample all of them, forming a special connection in particular with my favorite, Kembuz Cafe, whose cardamom coffees and smoothie bowls I enjoyed on many occasions over good books and Finnish homework.
One of my favorite things about Finland in general, no less true of Turku as a city, is that there's a strong connection to, proximity to, and respect for nature. My neighborhood, fifteen minutes from the center of town, was located in a suburban area interspersed with tracks of fresh pine forest which, if you wandered in for a while, you might forget there was any city nearby at all. In particular, the banks of a nearby lake called Littoistenjärvi, about a twenty minute walk from my building, became a place of refuge. I would walk to the lake nearly every day, sitting on a vantage point atop a tall outcropping of rocks with a lovely view of the calm cobalt waters and twin islands that stood in the center of the lake, and as the days lengthened I was treated to some sublime and indescribably beautiful sunsets from that spot.
Overall, my time living and studying in Turku was a very happy and rewarding one in my life. I loved living and being in Finland, and being able to study Finnish and Swedish, which are two languages I very deeply love and have wanted to learn for a long time. Turku and Finland in general are very calm and safe places that it was easy to navigate, and I found quite comfortable operating within and adapting to the local culture. The things I was learning in my university courses were fascinating, fulfilling, and rewarding in a way I can barely begin to describe.
But it was also not without its challenges. Because I was underinformed both by my hosting organization and the Office of International Education back at my college about how many credits I needed to transfer, and the university's bureaucratic system was a nightmare to navigate and classes confusingly and contradictingly scheduled, I nearly landed myself in a place where I would have had too few credits to transfer home to keep my scholarships. Because of how long I'd been away from home, and constantly having to pack up, say goodbye to people I care about, and start over again in new places all the months prior, I felt deeply exhausted both mentally and emotionally, and this burning out led me to shut out many people around me, and avoid trying to put myself out there socially.
Perhaps the greatest challenge in my Finnish life was that I felt very disappointed and alienated in the social scene that unfolded around me as an exchange student. I came to Finland because I'd fostered a deep and personal investment in learning about Finnish culture and studying the Finnish and Swedish languages for a very long time, but this was not true for 99.9% of the others around me, many of whom didn't care about such things, and had chosen to come essentially on whims. Many of them did not care about meeting or connecting with Finns or their culture at all; only about belonging to international environments where they could speak English, and many even would go out of their way to socialize and associate only with exchange students, make fun of actual Finnish culture, and display disrespect towards locals who couldn't speak English "well enough." Many of them were younger than 20, and living away from home for the first time (going wild in the process naturally).
Drinking and partying culture was heavily dominant in the exchange student community; even though people did do other things, and there were some groups on the fringes of the community who didn't care too much about it, partying was still the centerpiece of the exchange student social scene, and anyone that wanted to do much else would be greatly hindered in making exchange student friends. In the first few months, because I was so lonely arriving without any kind of built in support system like I'd had with my fellow Beloiters and our international friends in Moscow, I grit my teeth and went to the parties. It was even kind of fun at first, as partying in Finland tends to be a pretty low pressure social thing that groups of friends do together, and people tend to be respectful of other's space even at the most crowded of times. But it was just so monotonous and shallow - meeting up at the same times, to play the same drinking games, drink the same things, playing the same playlists of background music, going to the same clubs...and not much else. I grew to hate it quite quickly because I felt just as alone as when I was by myself, because people weren't really talking to or connecting with each other. I found myself mystified as to how everyone seemed to find it fun, or how they could actually know anything about each other. People were also very disrespectful and tactless in how they handled themselves, destroying property, causing chaos, making shit tons of noise, and staying up until as late or 6 or 7 in the morning on a regular basis. At times I felt really alienated by feeling like I seemed to be the only person who disliked these things, or wanted something different out of my social experience. Because of how burnt out I felt emotionally by about the third month, and how difficult it seemed to be to find like-minded exchange students, I gave up on having an established friend group.
One of the silver linings of my experience was being able to live in the same city as my dear Finnish friend Maarit, who I met on the Icelandic program we both did two years ago in the Westfjords. I'm not a person who believes that everything happens for a reason, but that certainly most things do. And I understand now that the reason I got placed at the University of Turku by my hosting organization, rather than my first choice of the University of Helsinki, was so that I could be in the same city as her. Having a like-minded and familiar person, one who was a local and able to give wonderful insider perspective on life within Turku and all of Finland as a whole, was illuminating and therapeutic. We did so many fun things together, cooking, exploring, having fun, trying out new restaurants and cafes, going on little outdoor adventures when the weather got nice in the spring, hosting dear friends, and just learning about each other's lives, past and present. I'm so thankful that I got the chance to be in the same city as her, as that truly made my whole experience. Jos luet tänän nyt, Maarit, kiitos kaikesta sydammestä. Tuli ikävä sua.
Overall I'm incredibly thankful and happy that I got to spend my five months in Finland this past spring. There certainly were challenges. But I learned so much about things that I care about immensely, which validated my interests and dreams, changed my life, and taught me to find fulfillment in the things I learn and do privately, even when surrounded by difficulty in other aspects of life. I got to watch the transformation of twenty hours of darkness a day to twenty of sunlight, which was truly magical and allowed me to witness the land and all that defines it in a comprehensive and hollistic sense. I got to strengthen a friendship that has become one of the closest and most important in my life. Although I certainly didn't become fluent in Finnish or Swedish, I learned a lot more Swedish and became comfortable in simple conversations, and I gained a base in Finnish that I am continuing to work on and will go back to improve, hopefully soon. And even my imperfect and simplistic knowledge was enough to bring a new dimension to my interactions with locals - when I asked for directions, payed for my groceries, ordered my coffee, or other simple things like that, when I used Finnish, even more when it became obvious that I was foreign, people opened up, visibly smiled, and gave off such wonderful energy. In a more diverse university city like Turku it was easy for people to coast by using only English, and many did. But even my elementary Finnish skills brought a depth and intimacy to my Finnish experience that would have been out of reach otherwise.
I truly miss Finland, and feel nostalgic writing this. In spite of any challenges I may have faced, it definitely falls into the category of places that I now consider home at some level, and I hope to return for a longer period of time at the earliest opportunity.
Halauksia ja rakkautta Suomeen ja kaikille suomalaisille ystävilleni!
-Nico
