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Comment by sepnax | Hacker News Reader

I don't see Swedish city officials being required knowledge of Finnish language, even though the Finnish minority in Sweden is roughly the same size.

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With the important difference being that the Finnish minority in Sweden moved for economic reasons and Finnish is forgotten within a generation or two, while the Swedish minority in Finland are the remnants of the Swedish colonial project and largely marry within that same groups. That said government websites in both countries are available in both languages.

> remnants of the Swedish colonial project

If in a few centuries some part of Finland (say, Päijät-Häme or something) is an independent nation, do you think it would be natural for them to talk about the old days — our present — as "back when we were part of Finland", or should they say "our dark age of oppression under the bootheel of the Finnish colonial project"?

The arrangements aren’t all that reciprocal because one of those countries used to occupy the other.

It’s the same(ish) as Russian minority speakers having more rights in Estonia and Ukraine than Ukrainian or Estonian in Russia.

I think each of those countries hates the “invading” language though. It’s a memory of oppression. Finns certainly mentioned that they hated Swedish when I was there and I’m also aware of Estonians hating Russian.

Russian minority in Estonia does not even have guaranteed citizen rights, not to mention any special rights.

Ditto for Ukraine where Russian language in some respects threated as third class citizen, i.e., the only language that you can't use in education or in official contexts. They still pretty much continue to speak it, though.

No, none of those countries "used to occupy the other". No more than Finland at the moment is "occupying", say, Päijät-Häme or Ostrobothnia.

I have no way of saying this constructively.

You’re very wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland_under_Swedish_rule?wpr...

> I have no way of saying this constructively.

That should have been a clue.

> You’re very wrong.

No, I'm not. The very first sentence in the WP article you cite:

   "In Finnish history, Finland under Swedish rule refers to the historical period when the bulk of the area that later came to constitute Finland *was an integral part of Sweden."*

Integral parts of countries are not "colonies". That was exactly my point: What is now Finland was an integral part of Sweden, like any other. Calling it a colony is exactly like calling the current region of Dalecarlia a colony of Sweden, or calling Ostrobothnia or Päijät-Häme colonies of Finland. It's absurd on the face of it.

Are you saying it would be correct in a future where they are independent countries to retroactively say Ostrobothnia-now and Päijät-Häme-now were "colonies of Finland" back in the twentieth century? If not, then Finland wasn't a "colony of Sweden" either.

The rest of the article is liberally sprinkled with

A) Tendentious phrasing like "Finland was annexed as part of the Western Christian domain" ("annexed" to a religion?), and

B) Grammatical mistakes typical of Finnish-speakers with a bad grounding in Germanic languages like Swedish and English.

So... No. If you think the bigoted view on history some parts of that WP article espouses are to be taken seriously, it is you who are wrong.

Nope, that's why that requirement continues to be despised in Finland (and quite hilarious tbh)

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