Linguistic richness like never before: 150 languages spoken in Tampere

Lecturer Sirkku Latomaa wrote the text for a brochure that encourages multilingualism and is translated into 24 languages.

Language encouragement to immigrant children

Learning one’s own native language supports learning Finnish, says Sirkku Latomaa, lecturer in Finnish language communication.

Immigrant families in Tampere will receive language encouragement as they are sent a brochure supporting multilingualism. Latomaa wrote the text for the brochure which was then translated into 24 different languages. It is distributed by the City of Tampere.

The brochure is really needed because there has never before been such linguistic richness in Tampere, 150 languages are now spoken here.

The brochure is meant for homes, not schools.

– The starting point is that the families themselves can make the choice of systematically speaking their native language with their children regardless of whether the child learns this language at school or not, Latomaa says.

Learning one’s native language is crucial if there are to be multilingual adults in Finland. Latomaa compares the immigrants who now live in Finland to the Finns who emigrated to Sweden in the 1960s and encouraged their children to become Swedish speakers.

– This is 2012 but we still have the same situation. New immigrants always want their children to have a better future and therefore they think it’s important to learn Finnish. Maybe the families get the same signal from the surrounding environment, too, of ‘just teach them Finnish’ or ‘why do you want to talk in such a language?’.

The brochure is an attempt to change this attitude and to support multilingualism.

Schools are hard-pressed to teach languages

Only a fraction of the 150 languages currently spoken in Tampere have been included in the school curriculum. Teaching is now given in 23 languages and four new ones are being considered.

About 50 languages are taught in the whole country. About 20-30 languages are taught in the larger cities. The number of lessons is small; the maximum is two hours per week.

Latomaa says that preserving the immigrants’ native tongues is especially important now that the Finnish pupils make narrower language choices. The language pool of the Finns becomes impoverished if everyone only studies English.

Even the Confederation of Finnish Industries is worried that the range of languages needed in working life is becoming one-sided.

– From a business point of view, one way of increasing the language pool is to let people preserve their native languages, Latomaa says.

The attitudes of schools and teachers must be changed. The surveys and interviews Latomaa has conducted show that the teachers and other pupils can even prevent the use of other languages than Finnish in school.

Teachers as interpreters of culture

The language question has become a party political issue. After the True Finns Party won the parliamentary election, Jussi Halla-aho demanded that the public funding for teaching one’s own native tongue should be discontinued. This demand has not been fulfilled.

According to Latomaa, no instant upheaval in the language question is to be expected even though there have been cutbacks.

The school curricula changed in 2004 so that the pupils’ native language was no longer graded in their school-leaving certificate. Teaching in the native tongue became extra-curricular teaching.

– I was involved in drafting the text of the curriculum. In the drafting stage native language teaching was still included, but then something happened behind the scenes, Latomaa reminisces.

What has happened in the Netherlands and Denmark, where the language teaching for immigrants was discontinued or limited to a minimum after a change in political power, has not happened in Finland.

Latomaa thinks it is impossible that the teachers of immigrant languages should leave Finnish schools. Teachers who are native Finnish speakers simply would not be able to survive the teaching load.

– The teachers of immigrant languages are resource persons who benefit their schools in multiple ways. They are contact persons, cultural interpreters and translators who can translate the class teacher’s messages in the pupils’ diaries into Albanian if needed.

Text: Heikki Laurinolli
Photo: Teemu Launis
Translation: Laura Tohka

This story was originally published in Finnish in Aikalainen 13/2012