And that's the way the torta crumbles
The morning newscast informed us that the Toronto transit system is on strike again.
Which sucks, since I have to go to work later today, but fortunately
the Mississauga transit is working and the Go trains should be running,
so I should be all set even if the strike continues later today. So I
guess that it's no biggie for me. But since it's going to be +30C
during the day and there is already a smog alert, I don't think it was
really smart for the commies to choose this particular day for throwing
their little tantrum. We'll watch and see what happens.
In other news, I also noticed that Americans have recently passed some kind of new law that makes English their national language. I can't help but wonder what took them so long. The usual gang is already crying racism and oppression, of course. I guess that Canada must be a racist country then, since it has the nerve to require that its new citizens must be able to speak either one of the two official languages English or French, and enforces this requirement with a compulsory citizenship exam. And the same goes for pretty much every other country in the world. Pop quiz to all leftists: how many countries can you name in which absolutely anybody is allowed to immigrate to and become citizens of, and once they are inside, they get expect to get all government services in their native language?
Since the Hispanics are such a large minority in the USA these days, Americans could have followed the lead of Canada and declared both English and Spanish to be their official languages. I am not sure what percentage of Americans are of Hispanic descent, but I'm pretty certain that this number is way larger than, say, the percentage of ethnic Swedes in Finland, which is about 6. And with the possible exception of maybe a few thousand reactionary members of the bättre folk, every single ethnic Swede in Finland can speak perfect Finnish.
Despite this, Swedish is an official language of Finland to the extent that starting from the junior high, every student is required to study Swedish in school about four hours each week. One cannot get through high school without taking the compulsory Swedish courses and the final exam. But we're not through yet: the Swedish courses are compulsory even in the university level. In the Finnish universities, programs in both Finnish and Swedish languages are open to anybody who passes the entrance exam, but for some mysterious reason, way more than the proportionally appropriate 6% of the freshman slots in the most prestigious programs such as law and medicine are allocated to the Swedish-speaking side, so that you can get in these programs with significantly lower entrance exam scores than in the Finnish-speaking side. Let's see the Hispanics try to achieve that in America, even if Spanish really is in every possible sense about 1,000 times more important language in the world than Swedish.
It is absolutely hilarious how in every level of the Finnish society, Finns keep bending over backwards to appease their former colonial masters. This nasty relic of past colonialism has always caused resentment and anger among Finns, especially the traditionalists who dislike the real and imagined homosexual tendencies of Swedes. Of course, the Swedish minority and its "intellectual" bootlickers have historically been advancing every harebrained leftist goal and idea. To get an idea of the general sentiment among the inland population away from the Swedish-populated coastal areas, my American readers could imagine a parallel universe in which the French language was in a similar position in America due to some quirk of history so that this French minority, concentrated on the coastal areas, was constantly issuing edicts and declarations of how the Americans in the flyover country are hopelessly bigoted, uneducated and ugly and must thus be constantly taught by their betters. A humorous version of the famous anti-racist symbol in which the Nazi swastika is dropped into a trashcan, edited so that it is the Swedish letter "Å" that gets dropped into the can, is on the lighter side of this resentment.
It is probably needless to mention that despite the "shared history" (a common euphemism for the colonial history that is second in absurdity only to the claim that for centuries, there used to be a country named "Sweden-Finland", still taught to all schoolchildren) of these two Nordic nations, Sweden does not have anything even approaching this system, even though the percentage of ethnic Finns in Sweden is about the same as the percentage of ethnic Swedes in Finland. But where this thing gets really hilarious is the Åland archipelago that lies between Finland and Sweden. The ethnic Swedes who live there have a special autonomy and they get away with attitudes and actions against Finns that, were they aimed against any other ethnic group, would immediately be shouted down as blatantly racist violations of basic human rights. In one rather infamous poll, the majority of Ålanders said that they would rather have a Somali as a neighbour than a Finn, who placed the last in a long list of nationalities. And these ungrateful fuckers the Finns then have to generously support with their tax money. But all this is only theoretical anyways, since for all their Swedish-style rhetoric of open borders and embracing the Third World immigration, the Swedes make damn sure that not one Somali ever gets to live in Åland. On the legal front, Åland has a downright ban for Finns to purchase and own real estate in the islands, along with the strict restrictions of who is allowed to move and live there. Speaking Finnish in schools is forbidden, even though other foreign languages are allowed.
Curiously enough, not even the most ardent multiculturalists ever seem to decry these practices, nor do these people express any concerns about what such isolation will do to the gene pool of the roughly 20,000 islanders. It sounds like the bigoted people of Åland could really use a few diversity training seminars to help them get rid of the idea that they have some kind of right to remain ethnically homogeneous and rule their historical lands by keeping the hordes of willing newcomers away. But as we all have learned quite well, it is perfectly acceptable to be and act bigoted, as long as you are bigoted against the right groups of people.
For all these reasons, one of my super-duper-favourite things in Canada is the absolute lack of anything Swedish around here. In my years of living inside this delightfully colourful multiethnic tapestry, I have yet to meet or talk to even one Swede! And I sure do hope that it remains that way! Moving here was for me like a breath of fresh air and a mouthful of the sweet taste of individual freedom that the Anglosphere is universally known for, as opposed to the Swedosphere and its socialist traditions and ideological worldview. Give me a decent hamburger over a pankaka any day! My heart is filled with delight every time I read news about life becoming worse in Sweden, hoisted in its own ideological petard.
But I got away, so I don't really need to care any more. Besides, in the end, Finns have only themselves to blame for this sorry state of affairs. In the Finnish parliamentary system where no party ever gets a majority on its own but has to form a coalition, the little Swedish Party pretty much by default gets to be in every government, since everybody knows that as long as they get to maintain the historical privileges of the Swedish minority population, their party will not make waves but plays nicely with the big parties in every other issue. To turn this insult to injury, the English language doesn't make the following distinction, but in Finnish, being Swedish and merely speaking Swedish are two different words. My non-Finnish readers, dare to take a wild guess which word this party still uses in its name, explicitly flaunting its true allegiances? Yep.
In this era of the Internet and jet travel, the generation Y of Finns is not very enthusiastic about Swedish when compared to the generations before them, who still cling to the past and imagine Sweden to be some kind of guiding light of style and intellectual sophistication. Among these graying little Swedish-wannabes, speaking fluent Swedish is a status symbol, a sign of belonging to the upper crust of society. And if you play along nicely, maybe some day you might even be able to travel to Stockholm to see all these worldly wonders for yourself! Such worldview would be quaint and adorable if it wasn't so stupid and wasteful and cost the Finnish society billions each year.
You might think that I am joking here, but many "intellectuals" in this camp have explicitly declared that a person simply cannot be considered intelligent or educated unless he speaks fluent Swedish, a claim that I would imagine my readers outside the Nordic countries would find rather puzzling. But this is what these people claim explicitly and in all seriousness, still hopelessly mentally stuck to the rut of the 1950's. And don't even get me started on the absurd arguments that this gang uses to maintain the compulsory Swedish in school. For example, they merrily claim that it's really beneficial to learn Swedish first, because after that it is easier to learn other languages, as if Swedish was some kind of a root language of all other languages, or the universal language of science and arts.
In other news, I also noticed that Americans have recently passed some kind of new law that makes English their national language. I can't help but wonder what took them so long. The usual gang is already crying racism and oppression, of course. I guess that Canada must be a racist country then, since it has the nerve to require that its new citizens must be able to speak either one of the two official languages English or French, and enforces this requirement with a compulsory citizenship exam. And the same goes for pretty much every other country in the world. Pop quiz to all leftists: how many countries can you name in which absolutely anybody is allowed to immigrate to and become citizens of, and once they are inside, they get expect to get all government services in their native language?
Since the Hispanics are such a large minority in the USA these days, Americans could have followed the lead of Canada and declared both English and Spanish to be their official languages. I am not sure what percentage of Americans are of Hispanic descent, but I'm pretty certain that this number is way larger than, say, the percentage of ethnic Swedes in Finland, which is about 6. And with the possible exception of maybe a few thousand reactionary members of the bättre folk, every single ethnic Swede in Finland can speak perfect Finnish.
Despite this, Swedish is an official language of Finland to the extent that starting from the junior high, every student is required to study Swedish in school about four hours each week. One cannot get through high school without taking the compulsory Swedish courses and the final exam. But we're not through yet: the Swedish courses are compulsory even in the university level. In the Finnish universities, programs in both Finnish and Swedish languages are open to anybody who passes the entrance exam, but for some mysterious reason, way more than the proportionally appropriate 6% of the freshman slots in the most prestigious programs such as law and medicine are allocated to the Swedish-speaking side, so that you can get in these programs with significantly lower entrance exam scores than in the Finnish-speaking side. Let's see the Hispanics try to achieve that in America, even if Spanish really is in every possible sense about 1,000 times more important language in the world than Swedish.
It is absolutely hilarious how in every level of the Finnish society, Finns keep bending over backwards to appease their former colonial masters. This nasty relic of past colonialism has always caused resentment and anger among Finns, especially the traditionalists who dislike the real and imagined homosexual tendencies of Swedes. Of course, the Swedish minority and its "intellectual" bootlickers have historically been advancing every harebrained leftist goal and idea. To get an idea of the general sentiment among the inland population away from the Swedish-populated coastal areas, my American readers could imagine a parallel universe in which the French language was in a similar position in America due to some quirk of history so that this French minority, concentrated on the coastal areas, was constantly issuing edicts and declarations of how the Americans in the flyover country are hopelessly bigoted, uneducated and ugly and must thus be constantly taught by their betters. A humorous version of the famous anti-racist symbol in which the Nazi swastika is dropped into a trashcan, edited so that it is the Swedish letter "Å" that gets dropped into the can, is on the lighter side of this resentment.
It is probably needless to mention that despite the "shared history" (a common euphemism for the colonial history that is second in absurdity only to the claim that for centuries, there used to be a country named "Sweden-Finland", still taught to all schoolchildren) of these two Nordic nations, Sweden does not have anything even approaching this system, even though the percentage of ethnic Finns in Sweden is about the same as the percentage of ethnic Swedes in Finland. But where this thing gets really hilarious is the Åland archipelago that lies between Finland and Sweden. The ethnic Swedes who live there have a special autonomy and they get away with attitudes and actions against Finns that, were they aimed against any other ethnic group, would immediately be shouted down as blatantly racist violations of basic human rights. In one rather infamous poll, the majority of Ålanders said that they would rather have a Somali as a neighbour than a Finn, who placed the last in a long list of nationalities. And these ungrateful fuckers the Finns then have to generously support with their tax money. But all this is only theoretical anyways, since for all their Swedish-style rhetoric of open borders and embracing the Third World immigration, the Swedes make damn sure that not one Somali ever gets to live in Åland. On the legal front, Åland has a downright ban for Finns to purchase and own real estate in the islands, along with the strict restrictions of who is allowed to move and live there. Speaking Finnish in schools is forbidden, even though other foreign languages are allowed.
Curiously enough, not even the most ardent multiculturalists ever seem to decry these practices, nor do these people express any concerns about what such isolation will do to the gene pool of the roughly 20,000 islanders. It sounds like the bigoted people of Åland could really use a few diversity training seminars to help them get rid of the idea that they have some kind of right to remain ethnically homogeneous and rule their historical lands by keeping the hordes of willing newcomers away. But as we all have learned quite well, it is perfectly acceptable to be and act bigoted, as long as you are bigoted against the right groups of people.
For all these reasons, one of my super-duper-favourite things in Canada is the absolute lack of anything Swedish around here. In my years of living inside this delightfully colourful multiethnic tapestry, I have yet to meet or talk to even one Swede! And I sure do hope that it remains that way! Moving here was for me like a breath of fresh air and a mouthful of the sweet taste of individual freedom that the Anglosphere is universally known for, as opposed to the Swedosphere and its socialist traditions and ideological worldview. Give me a decent hamburger over a pankaka any day! My heart is filled with delight every time I read news about life becoming worse in Sweden, hoisted in its own ideological petard.
But I got away, so I don't really need to care any more. Besides, in the end, Finns have only themselves to blame for this sorry state of affairs. In the Finnish parliamentary system where no party ever gets a majority on its own but has to form a coalition, the little Swedish Party pretty much by default gets to be in every government, since everybody knows that as long as they get to maintain the historical privileges of the Swedish minority population, their party will not make waves but plays nicely with the big parties in every other issue. To turn this insult to injury, the English language doesn't make the following distinction, but in Finnish, being Swedish and merely speaking Swedish are two different words. My non-Finnish readers, dare to take a wild guess which word this party still uses in its name, explicitly flaunting its true allegiances? Yep.
In this era of the Internet and jet travel, the generation Y of Finns is not very enthusiastic about Swedish when compared to the generations before them, who still cling to the past and imagine Sweden to be some kind of guiding light of style and intellectual sophistication. Among these graying little Swedish-wannabes, speaking fluent Swedish is a status symbol, a sign of belonging to the upper crust of society. And if you play along nicely, maybe some day you might even be able to travel to Stockholm to see all these worldly wonders for yourself! Such worldview would be quaint and adorable if it wasn't so stupid and wasteful and cost the Finnish society billions each year.
You might think that I am joking here, but many "intellectuals" in this camp have explicitly declared that a person simply cannot be considered intelligent or educated unless he speaks fluent Swedish, a claim that I would imagine my readers outside the Nordic countries would find rather puzzling. But this is what these people claim explicitly and in all seriousness, still hopelessly mentally stuck to the rut of the 1950's. And don't even get me started on the absurd arguments that this gang uses to maintain the compulsory Swedish in school. For example, they merrily claim that it's really beneficial to learn Swedish first, because after that it is easier to learn other languages, as if Swedish was some kind of a root language of all other languages, or the universal language of science and arts.
The most usefull language I have ever studied, and the only one I have ever put any conscious real effor to, was Latin. I studied it by agreement with my school voluntarily myself instead of the mandatory English which I then considered vulgar.
In my adult days I just happened to come by a paper back novel "Ghostboat (Paperback)
by George Simpson, Neal Burger" and I saw that it would be a vastly charming book appealing to my romantic mind. With great difficulty I made my way through it loving every sentence and so I discovered the wonderfull world of English paper backs. The Swedish language has never had any practical or esthetic value to me whatsoever.
Posted by Catilina | 3:05 PM
Let's say you're a Finnish-speaking Finn and want to get into a competitive academic program such as medical school. If you've learned Swedish well enough during the compulsory classes in that language, can you apply for one of the Swedish-speaking entrance slots?
Peter
Iron Rails & Iron Weights
Posted by Anonymous | 4:48 PM
Yes, perfectly well but I think the addional burden is mostly considered unrewarding. Some do that though.
Posted by Catilina | 5:07 PM
Peter: Let's say you're a Finnish-speaking Finn and want to get into a competitive academic program such as medical school. If you've learned Swedish well enough during the compulsory classes in that language, can you apply for one of the Swedish-speaking entrance slots?
Yes. Like Catalina already answered, everybody has the right to apply in either slot, but of course they have to take the entrance exam in that language. If they get in, the courses and exams are also given in that language.
Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen | 5:36 PM
Actually, I think Cantonese is the best language in the world, and everyone should be learned to learn it.
Posted by beenaround | 8:38 PM
forced to learn it that is.
Posted by beenaround | 8:39 PM
Did you know Swedes are also drunkards, according to the inductivist? http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2006/04/swedes-race-of-drunkards-everybody.html
Finnish is a way cooler language than Swedish. Most Europeans can't say they speak a non-Indo-Aryan or whatever they're called language.
Posted by TGGP | 11:56 PM
The final exam in Swedish is not compulsory in Finnish high school anymore unless Swedish is your mother tongue:
The examination consists of at least four tests; one of them, the Test in the candidate's Mother Tongue, is compulsory for all candidates. The candidate then chooses three other compulsory tests from among the following four tests: the Test in the Second Domestic Language, a Foreign Language Test, the Mathematics Test, and the General Studies Test. The candidate may include, in addition, as part of his or her examination, one or more optional tests.
http://www.ylioppilastutkinto.fi/english.html
I haven't really thought that before, but in fact there are two separate certificates of graduation: one for final exams (a matriculation examination certificate granted by a national examination board) and another for all the courses you have took in high school (granted by your high school). I guess that in theory, you could get a matriculation examination certificate but not that another certificate without studying Swedish in high school. In practice you need both of the certificates to say that you have graduated.
Posted by Rebyk | 2:51 AM
Oh well, I did not write anything about Lappish (Sami) being someone's mother tongue and the former and present rules concerning that in Finnish high school. I hope that was not too big loss in this context.
Posted by Rebyk | 2:59 AM
The writer of this text is somehow gay.
He claims swedes as gays which is strange.
Att the same time Helsinki / Finland have been Europes Gay center for years.
Posted by Anonymous | 7:07 AM
"The writer of this text is somehow gay.
He claims swedes as gays which is strange.
Att the same time Helsinki / Finland have been Europes Gay center for years."
There's your typical so-called Finland-Swede making an argument in favor of forced Swedish.
Posted by Anonymous | 4:16 PM
I'm reminded of a joke I heard from a Danish friend of mine:
Q: What's the one thing Swedes have that the Danish do not?
A: Good neighbors.
Posted by Anonymous | 6:36 PM
Greetings from Sweden! :)
Couple of comments:
- Despite being part of Sweden for what, 700 years or so, you managed to keep enough distinctness to get a nation up and running quickly and without too much fuss when opportunity presented itself. Not bad.
- Despite all the whining about the Finnish Swedes, it's a language/culture in decline, and it shouldn't pose too much of a problem in the future.
- The Swedish bourgeoisie and lower-level aristocracy was pretty damn amazing before they went off the rails. *sobs* Plus, there was this Mannerguy something who I hear was pretty hard.
- Don't blame the people of Åland - they voted for getting with Sweden, but ended up in Finland anyways. Heh.
Posted by dobeln | 4:54 AM