‘You Might All Be Speaking Swedish Today’: language change in 19th-century Finland and Ireland
2009; Routledge; Volume: 35; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/03468750903315215
ISSN1502-7716
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Legal Studies and Society
ResumoAbstract In 1800, almost four times as many people spoke Irish as Finnish. That year the Act of Union joined Ireland to Great Britain; half of the population, over three million, were monoglot Irish speakers. Finland was then a part of the Kingdom of Sweden. An increasing number, perhaps 15%, spoke Swedish; the remainder, less than one million, spoke Finnish. A century later in 1900, however, as national agitation for independence grew in both countries, Ireland and Finland had become almost reverse mirror images linguistically. A tiny fraction of Irish people habitually spoke Irish, but Finnish had become the overwhelmingly dominant language in Finland. The present exploratory comparative study in language change points to three major conclusions: the importance of contingency, or chance, in such historical developments; the importance of individual agency; and the complexity and dynamic nature of the relationship between national identity and language. Keywords: language changeFinnish languageSwedish languageRussian languageIrish languageEnglish languageKingdom of SwedenRussian EmpireFinlandUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and IrelandRepublic of IrelandNorthern Ireland Acknowledgements Over the decades, I have discussed this issue with many Irish and Finnish people, especially Finnish students, often in large groups; I would like to acknowledge many views provided in these discussions, not all of which I can specifically acknowledge. Also: Aiden Coleman, Donagh Coleman, Sirkka Coleman, Anssi Halmesvirta, Pasi Ihalainen, Toni Kauppinen, Helen Kelly-Holmes, Bill Kissane, Ilja Koivisto, Marko Lamberg, Patrick Long, Henrik Meinander, Cormac ÓGráda, Sari Pietikainen, Ossi Päärnilä, Ilkka Rekiaro, Päivi Rekiaro, Laura Stark and Tuulikki Tuomainen; and the editor and anonymous referees for the Scandinavian Journal of History. Shortcomings are, of course, my own. Notes 1 Kemiläinen, Finns, 16. Broad generalizations on Finnish history based on, in addition: Lilius, History of Scandinavian Language Studies; Kirby, Concise History; Lavery, History of Finland; Kuisma, History of Finnish Aesthetics; Jutikkala and Pirinen, History of Finland; Jussila, Hentilä, and Nevakivi, From Grand Duchy; Lehtonen, Europe's Northern Frontier; Huss, Reversing Language Shift; Singleton, Short History; Meinander, 'On the Brink'. I thank Prof. Meinander for providing me with a copy of this article, and 'Russia'. 2 Ahlqvist, 'Irish and Finland Swedish', 50–2; Singleton, Short History, 1. See also Suomen perustusläki (The Constitution of Finland), Section 17: 'Suomen kansalliskielet ovat suomi ja ruotsi' ('The national languages of Finland are Finnish and Swedish'). The rights of Sámi (Lapps) and Romanis (Gypsies) 'to maintain and develop their own languages and cultures' and of those who use sign languages or have problems of interpretation are also recognized. 3 McMahon, Grand Opportunity, 215; between 1851 and 1901, the number of monoglot Irish-speakers dropped from around 320,000 to 21,000, in a population of around four million! Hindley, Death, 19; also Crowley, War of Words; Mac Giolla Chríost, Irish Language, Part I; Kelly, Compulsory Irish; Coleman, American Indians, the Irish, 70–5. 4 David Crystal, Language Death. Hindley also notes the importance of 'Historic accident' in language history, Death, 240, for example. See also Coleman, American Indians, the Irish, 296, n. 27. 5 I thank Anssi Halmesvirta, especially, for emphasizing the issue of agency. 6 In Death, Hindley briefly compares the fates of Irish, Finnish and Swedish (237–40). He touches on factors that I do in the present essay, but less on others, such as religious influences. Hindley's themes are the complexity of language persistence and change, along with the highly pragmatic reasons for desertion of the vernacular by the majority of Irish people (as I also argue). 7 Bill Kissane, 'Nineteenth-Century Nationalism', for figures to 1910. Later figures: Tilastokeskus/Statistics Finland; Central Statistics Office of Ireland; Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. I have rounded out recent figures, some of which related to different years such as 2006, 2007, 2008. 8 Broad generalizations on the complex interconnections of Irish/British history based on, for example, Coleman, American Indians, the Irish; Bew, Ireland; English, Irish Freedom, Kenny, Ireland and the British Empire; Jackson, Home Rule; Howe, Ireland and Empire. 9 Coleman, American Indians, the Irish, 72–5; Duffy et al., Atlas, 94. 10 Hindley notes how, even in the mid-19th century, high illiteracy was usually correlated with the strong survival of Irish, Death, 17; Mac Giolla Chríost, Irish Language, 90, notes the association of printing with English, modernity and social advancement; and 97 on the work of the Ordnance Survey (1825–41) which replaced many Irish place names with English ones. 11 For example, McManus, Irish Hedge School. 12 Hindley, Death, 12–13. He sees the steady advance of bilingualism as the 'quantitative' change taking place then, leading to this most drastic 'qualitative' change around the time of the Union: 'parents came to see it as a hindrance to the prospects of their children …'; Crowley, War of Words; Mac Giolla Chríost, Irish Language, ch. 4; pragmatism is also a major theme of Wright, Language Policy. See 112, for example: Wright accepts that the key factor in linguistic assimilation and language shift 'may however be material advantage'. She also notes how, generally, 'one learns the language of the group with more power than one's own' (103). 13 Lehtonen, Europe's Northern Frontier, 37–48; Jutikkala and Pirinen, History of Finland, 59, 110–12. At least first to be printed in Finnish; Singleton, Short History, 22–3, 73; Kemiläinen, Finns, 16–18, 32; Lavery, History of Finland, 40: Agricola's New Testament 'is widely considered the origin of Finnish as a written language'. 14 Jussila, Hentilä, and Nevakivi, From Grand Duchy, 4; Singleton, Short History, 41–2, 52–3; Kemiläinen, Finns, 107–9; Kirby, Concise History, 98; Juttilkala, History of Finland, 160–1. For a map showing areas and percentages of Swedish speakers in western and southern Finland c. 1880, see Lilius, The History of Scandinavian Language Studies, 10. 15 Kemiläinen, Finns, 188–9 and ch. 8 on the Swedish-speaking svekomani movement; Huss, Reversing Language Shift, 62–3; Kissane, 'Nineteenth-Century Nationalism'. See also Hroch, Social Preconditions, especially ch. 10. 16 Singleton, Short History, 61–8, for example; Jutikkala and Piirinen, History of Finland, 290. 17 Jussila, Hentilä, and Nevakivi, From Grand Duchy, 23; Kirby, Concise History, 91; Singleton, Short History, 63; Lavery, History of Finland, ch. 3. Hroch, Social Preconditions, 74: 1809 was one of 'the objective relations which acted as agents of integration during the formation of the modern Finnish nation'. 18 Kissane, 'Nineteenth-Century Nationalism', 30; Singleton quotes the 'Magna Carta' description, Short History, 90, also 73; Andersson, 'The Struggle over History', 5–6. 19 Kuisma, History of Finnish Aesthetics, 125. 20 On the Russification campaigns: Meinander ('On the Brink') sees a growing fear of the German Empire as motivating Russia; Jussila notes, in Jussila, Hentilä, and Nevakivi, From Grand Duchy, 34, and ch. 15,16, how, despite their bad press in Finnish history, some of the governor-generals may in fact have helped to promote Finnish autonomy. A major theme of Jussila is tensions between increasing Finnish separatism and Russian attempts to integrate the Duchy into empire – while ensuring Finland's on-going separation from Sweden; Kirby, Concise History, 128–30, 137–49; Singleton, Short History, 76–7, 91–5; Andersson, 'The Struggle over History', esp. 12–15; Lavery, History of Finland, 71–8. 21 Jussila, Hentilä, and Nevakivi, From Grand Duchy, 64. This was the tsar's perhaps facetious response in 1889 to the Finnish Senate's proposals on customs, the postal service and the currency. 22 In general at mid-century, writes Kirby (Concise History, 100–2), the Russian authorities maintained a benevolent attitude towards the Finnish language, culminating in the 1863 decree recognizing the language. There were, however, some half-hearted attempts during the century to impose Russian for ecclesiastical, military or civil servant posts, but nothing remotely compared to the English-language national schools in Ireland, to be examined in my next section. 23 Jussila, Hentilä, and Nevakivi, From Grand Duchy, 88. A further counterfactual speculation, which I cannot follow through in this essay is what if the Tsarist regime had not collapsed in 1917 and Russia had emerged strong from the First World War? Would the Tsarist government have continued – and to what extent succeeded – with 'the great Russification programme' of 1914? 24 For example, Stearns, Schools and Students. 25 Coleman, American Indians, the Irish. Hindley validly rejects the idea that the schools alone were the cause: 'The Irish people adopted English and had their children taught it not because they liked it but because it opened boundless opportunities to them', Death, 39. Also, Mac Giolla Chríost, The Irish Language, 88–9; also 98–107. He almost totally ignores the crucial role of the national schools! Cf. 107: these schools 'merely reinforced' the accelerating perception of English as 'the language of social, economic and political emancipation'; also 113. I would argue that the national schools did powerfully speed up the already-begun process. 26 Coleman, American Indians, the Irish, 54–63. Catholic national school children enjoyed equal rights. On the central role of the modern national state (since the time of the 1789 French Revolution) in the 'minoritization of languages', see May, 'Language Policy', esp. 259–62. 27 Crystal, Language Death, 76–90; Coleman, American Indians, the Irish, esp. 70–5; also a major theme of Hindley, Death. 28 Wright, Language Policy, 8. And see ch. 2 and 3 on the broad context, medieval to contemporary, for the development of complex relationships between the emergence of the nation state and national languages. Hroch gives little attention to language in early stages of Finnish nationalism; it became more important later, Social Preconditions, 75. 29 Kirby, Concise History, 91. 30 Just as scholarly research on Finnish developed from the mid-19th century, so did research on Swedish (as spoken in Finland and in Sweden), Lilius, The History of Scandinavian Language Studies, esp. 60. 31 For an examination of the complex aesthetic and cultural values of many of these thinkers, see Kuisma, The History of Finnish Aesthetics, esp. ch. I–III. 32 Pulkkinen, 'One Language, One Mind', 130, see all ch. 3; and Lyytikäinen, 'Birth of a Nation'; Kissane, 'Nineteenth-Century Nationalism'. On the 'Language Conflict' between the fennomani and the svecomani in the later 19th and early 20th centuries, Jutikkala and Pirinen, History of Finland, 335–41, 413–15, 428; Singleton, Short History, ch. 3; Kemiläinen, Finns, esp. ch. 7 and 8. See also Andersson, 'The Struggle over History', 5–15; Lavery, History of Finland, 44–8, 56–61; Meinander, 'On the Brink'; Hroch, Social Preconditions, ch. 10. Cf; Mac Giolla Chríost: by the late 17th century 'it was the English language, and not Irish, that was the language of popular literacy', Irish Language, 90. 33 Jussila attributes this famous statement to a number of different Finns, including A.I. Arwidsson, in Jussila, Hentilä, and Nevakivi, From Grand Duchy, 24. Also ch. 9, 13; Kirby also notes a number of possible originators, but credits Arwidsson too, Concise History, 90. I have heard the phrase used many times since I arrived in Finland 1969. 34 Hindley, Death, 13–14; Mac Giolla Chríost, Irish Language, 100–1. In the first half of the 19th century, Daniel O'Connell helped achieve Catholic emancipation (the right to sit in Parliament) and worked unsuccessfully to repeal the Union. He was, according to English, 'arguably the most important politician in the entire history of Irish nationalism' (Irish Freedom, 127). Although a fluent Irish-speaker, O'Connell 'showed no striking interest' in the revival or preservation of Irish (ibid., 138). 35 Mac Giolla Chríost notes how such groups introduced Gaelic ideas through English, Irish Language, 91; quotation 100. 36 McMahon, Grand Opportunity. Hindley notes the even earlier existence, from 1876, of the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language; and how, as early as 1870, The Irish National [primary/elementary] Teachers' Organization (INTO) officially favoured the use of Irish for instruction in Irish-speaking areas, Death, 23; Mac Giolla Chríost, Irish Language, 102–3, on this figure (less than 4%) and on the increasingly nationalist and political tendencies of the Gaelic League, thus alienating non-Catholics and Unionists from possible sympathy with the Irish language cause; also a major theme of McMahon, Grand Opportunity. 37 Singleton, Short History, 31–6. 38 Singleton, Short History, 45; also 32–6, 43–4; Jutikkala and Piiranen, History of Finland, 110–2, 190–1. They also note that the influence of the Lutheran Church should not be over-stated: the clergy 'made the Finns a literate nation, but the Church considered its educational objective to be achieved when the members of a parish had learned to read the Holy Bible, and devotional literature, and could recite the main points of the Christian doctrine', 333; Kemiläinen, Finns, 109, 119; Lehtonen, Europe's Northern Frontier, 15–16, 44. 39 On Latin, Mac Giolla Chríost, Irish Language, 71. He also notes how, even in late-medieval times, many of the new Catholic religious orders introduced into Ireland 'were vehicles for Anglicization', 77–9; also ch. 3, on the rich literature in Irish during this period. The gradual exclusion of Irish from urban areas, administration, law, and canonical learning, is a major theme of this chapter; in press, 90. 40 See, for example, Farren, The Politics, 3–4: 'Constitutionally the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was a "Protestant" state and still, in the early nineteenth century, suspicious and at times openly hostile to Roman Catholicism'; Hastings, The Construction. 41 Summarizing the Penal Laws, Coleman, American Indians, the Irish, 33; English, Irish Freedom, 83–6. These laws also discriminated again non-state church (Anglican) Protestant dissenters such as Presbyterians. 42 McMahon, Grand Opportunity, 35–6, and ch. 2 on the differing views of clergy to the language; Hindley also notes the broad Catholic support for the new national schools that predominantly taught through English, Death, 13–14. Indeed, the local manager of most such schools was the parish priest, Coleman, American Indians, the Irish, 54–60; Mac Giolla Chríost, Irish Language, 100, on Maynooth; English, Irish Freedom, 215–19, on the tightening bind between Catholicism and Irish nationalism. On the Finnish Lutheran clergy: Lavery, History of Finland, 40. 43 This is a major theme of Whelan, The Bible War; McMahon, Grand Opportunity, 36; MacGiolla Chríost notes that this process began much earlier: the first book printed in Irish was a translation the Presbyterian Book of Common Order, Irish Language, 91. 44 Strangely, Hroch does not assign much importance to different linguistic influences of the Finnish or Irish clergy, Social Preconditions, 139–45. 45 Kenny, Irish and the British Empire; Huss, Reversing Language Shift, 19. 46 The pragmatic approach of Irish people to their vernacular is a major theme of: McMahon, Grand Opportunity; Coleman, American Indians, the Irish; Hindley, Death; Crowley, War of Words (quotation, 122). Also, Mac Giolla Chríost, Irish Language; he notes the influence of the post-Famine diaspora on language developments: for example, emigrants' letters from America were almost always written in English, 101. 47 Results of the Famine: Ó Gráda, Black '47, ch. 3, esp. 85, 105. 48 Kissane, 'Nineteenth-Century Nationalism', 28–9; Jussila, Hentilä, and Nevakivi, From Grand Duchy, 37, 46. The faster growth was in industry, trade and communication. Also, Kirby, Concise History, 109–13; Singleton, Short History, ch. 5; Lavery, History of Finland, 61–4. 49 Kirby, Concise History, 112–13; Lehtonen, Europe's Northern Frontier, ch. 2. According to Singleton, between 1883 and 1917, about 300,000 Finns left for the United States, 'others went to Russia, Sweden and elsewhere', Short History, 86. There were about 40,000 Finns living in St. Petersburg, Lavery, History of Finland, 61. 50 Laura Stark, Professor of Ethnology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, personal communication, 5 May 2009. 51 By 1800, according to Lavery, the most likely future for Finland 'was continued association with the Swedish kingdom, although as a more visible part of it', History of Finland, 47–8. For a summary of recent counterfactual literature: Michael Coleman, 'Counterfactuals I'd Rather Not Contemplate'. 52 Kemiläinen, Finns, 132, 188–9; Kirby, Concise History, 101, 115–22; Andersson, 'The Struggle'; Lavery, History of Finland, 60–1; Pulkkinen, 'One Language', 126. 53 Huss, Reversing Language Shift, 73, n. 68 (Swedish national schools), ch. 3; 126, 137, 156. 54 Stearns, Schools and Students, 101–6 (account by a Breton); Coleman, American Indians, the Irish. Assimilation in Northern nations is a central theme of Huss, Reversing Language Shift. 55 On the United Irishmen and French connections, English, Irish Freedom, 86–111. 56 Crystal, Language Death; May, 'Language Policy', 258–59; Wright, Language Policy, 218–19, all ch. 11. On Native American languages: Johansen, 'Back from the (Nearly) Dead'. For an earlier, more pessimistic view: Bright, 'Native North American Languages', esp. 445–6. 57 Dufva and Pietikainen, 'Sami Languages'; Huss, Reversing Language Shift. 58 Quotation: Mac Giolla Chríost, Irish Language, ch. 5, on the Republic of Ireland, ch. 6, on Northern Ireland. Also, Kelly-Holmes, 'Living, Dying'; Coady, 'Attitudes Toward Bilingualism'. I thank Toni Kauppinen for bringing this article to my notice. 59 The devotion of some middle-class, urban groups to Irish – along with the resentment they sometimes provoke among native speakers of the Gaeltacht (supposedly Irish-speaking areas) – is a major theme of Hindley, Death, 163–4, for example. Most people of the Gealtacht, saw English as 'the liberating key … A country which cannot adequately support at home the people who speak its dying national language will have grave difficulties in sustaining it into the future', 182. 60 This conversation took place over three decades ago, and I cannot recall the student's name. 61 On chance: Hindley, Death, 240; also, Mac Giolla Chríost, Irish Language, 234–5. 62 Kissane, 'Nineteenth-Century Nationalism'; Kirby, Concise History, 300–2; Ahlquist, 'Irish and Finland Swedish', 50–4; Singleton, Short History, 158–62, on broad issues of identity. A number of these writers also touch on the particular linguistic situations facing Sámi/Lapp and Romani/Gypsy peoples, along with that in the predominantly Swedish-speaking Åland Islands (Ahvenenmaa) and see note 2, above, on the Finnish constitution. 63 Kissane ironically notes how such language developments implied the reversal of the stereotypical images of the 'pragmatic' Finnish character and the 'romantic' Irish character, personal communication, 15 December 2008. Also, Huss, Reversing Language Shift, 106–12, 185, for example. Indeed, a major theme of this book is how such people may internalize deep senses of shame about their own supposedly inferior cultures and languages. Also a theme of Hindley, Death. And Cormac ÓGráda notes how the key to language survival relates to political hegemony, personal communication, 24 November 2008. 64 Identity and language: see also, for example, Lehtonen, Europe's Northern Frontier, 16: 'The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have seen the construction of "Finnishness" and of a separate cultural and national identity largely based on language'; Meinander notes the complexity of Finnish identity as a country between the West and Russia, 'On the Brink'; and 'Russia in European History', part III. This is also a theme of, for example, Kemiläinen, Finns; also Huss, Reversing Language Shift, 15, 31. I base the statement also on personal experience: I have lived and worked for 34 years in Finland, and am now a dual Finnish–Irish citizen. 65 Blommaert, 'Language Policy', 239–53; quotation, 245. Also: Wright, Language Policy, 225–7; Pavlenko and Blackledge, Negotiations of Identities; Mac Giolla Chríost, Irish Language and Language, Identity and Conflict. For an American Indian people who, like many Irish people, found other markers than language as central to identity, see Anderson, 'Ethnolinguistic Dimensions'. I thank Ray DeMallie for bringing this article to my attention. 66 For some nationalists over the last two centuries Irish was (and still is) central to national identity, Hindley, Death, 211; Whelen, Grand Opportunity. For many of my own teachers at school in Ireland in the 1950s and 60s, who spoke Irish to us and encouraged us to join Ógra Éireann (Young People of Ireland, a voluntary Irish-speaking club) and to attend Irish-speaking camps, Irish certainly was central to national identity. By the age of 16, at a Christian Brothers junior high school, and although a native speaker of English, I was studying most of my subjects in the Irish language (this was not the case in all Irish schools then). I still happily regard myself as a (rusty!) speaker of Irish. I also knew many compatriots of all ages, however, who were indifferent to or openly hostile to Irish, especially to compulsory Irish at school. This mirrors a strong Finnish-speaker resentment of pakko ruotsi – the obligatory study of Swedish – as it existed until recently in Finland. 67 Ó Laoire, 'Language Use', 166. About 1.3% are 'native balanced speakers (mostly in the Gaeltacht areas), and 10% balanced but secondary bilinguals', 164; Mac Giolla Chríost, Irish Language, 111, 133. Cf. Mac Giolla Chríost, Language, Identity and Conflict, 94, on Irish language surveys. According to the Irish Census of 2002, 1,570,894 people were 'Irish Speakers' and 2,180,101 were 'Non-Irish speakers'; Mac Greil and Rhatigan 'The Irish Language and the Irish People'. 68 Quoted in Jutikkala and Pirinen, History of Finland, 310.
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