Keywords

6.1 Introduction

Although German speakers are not anymore among the largest linguistic minorities in Finland, they make up a significant language group, not least from a historical point of view, looking back on several centuries of close cultural, economic, military, and private contacts with Finland. The role of Germans in Finland and German–Finnish relations have been studied relatively broadly from different angles (e.g., Hentilä, 2004; Hentilä & Hentilä, 2016; Hietala, 2017; Junila, 2006; Parry, 2022; Schirrmann & Richter-Vapaatalo, 2014; Schweitzer & Bastman-Bühner, 1998), but only some studies (e.g., Bentlin, 2008; Breier, 2017, 2020; Kolehmainen, 2022; Kortelainen & Kolehmainen, 2022; Martin, 1973; Schweitzer, 1993) focus on (socio-)linguistic issues. Breier (2017) sees Germans in Finland as an ‘invisible minority’, referring to Fortier (2000) and her studies on European migrants in the United Kingdom and Ruokonen-Engler’s (2012) study on Finns in Germany. This means that German immigrants do not in general stand out in Finnish society; they blend in rather smoothly, both culturally and due to their physical appearance (Breier, 2017, p. 28). Moreover, the background of Germans in Finland is mostly not stigmatised but characterised by predominantly positive relations—in history as well as today (Breier, 2020, p. 42). This enables Germans in Finland to have ‘a freedom of choice concerning their self-representation. They are able to direct how they want to be perceived depending on the situation’ (Breier, 2020, ibid.).

The study presented in this chapter analyses interviews of four German immigrants living in northern Finland. The interviews are part of the project ‘DNFi: Deutschsprachig(e) im Norden Finnlands’ (German speakers in northern Finland), the aim of which is to add more insights into the multilingual practices of German speakers in Finland with a focus on living in peripheral areas by collecting and analysing language biographies of German-speaking immigrants from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland in northern Finland, including the regions of North Ostrobothnia, Lapland, and Kainuu. According to Statistics Finland,Footnote 1 a total of 7,611 residents with German as their first language lived in Finland in 2022. In addition to these, there are many more with German as their second language, but they are not statistically recorded. Most of them live in the more densely populated south of Finland and in or around the capital Helsinki, but a large number of them have also settled in other regions. Multilingualism is mainly studied in the context of metropolitan areas whereas rural and urbanised peripheries have received less attention because they are supposed to be less ethnically mixed (Cornips & de Rooij, 2018, p. 3; cf. also Bijvoet & Östman, this volume). However, as Aronin et al. (2013, p. 4) note in relation to what they call current multilingualism—as opposed to historical multilingualism—, ‘multilingualism has become an inherent and, arguably, in many ways, the most salient property of post-modern human society as a whole and of large numbers of specific communities, whatever their size’. Because of this development, language practices change and must be reconsidered also by residents in rural and marginal areas (Cornips & de Rooij, 2018, pp. 10–11).

This chapter gives insights into the four informants’ experiences and views on one central aspect of their language biographies—the way to get access to the local majority language, Finnish. Although the acquisition of the Finnish language is only one topic among others, it takes a prominent place in the interviews and is strongly connected with different pragmatic and affective factors described by the informants. The informants have lived in Finland for different lengths of time and their competences in Finnish vary from a basic level to a good functional command. Two of the informants are young students, members of the so-called Erasmus generation, who came to Finland quite recently and who live in university towns. The other two informants are in their late 50s and early 60s and have stayed in Finland for more than 15 years, most of the time in small villages. The analysis focuses on the informants’ description of the process of learning Finnish, on the role different people and communities play in this process, and on their views on and experiences of supportive and hindering factors behind this process. In addition, the analysis looks at the significance of other languages, especially the lingua franca English. In the beginning of this chapter, I give some insights into the sociolinguistic background of Germans in Finland (Sect. 6.2). Thereafter, the data and the research approach will be presented (Sect. 6.3), followed by a summary of the language biographies of the four informants (Sect. 6.4). In Sect. 6.5, I report the results of the thematic analysis of the interviews by presenting the different topics that occur when the informants describe their ways of accessing the Finnish language. Finally, in Sect. 6.6, I summarise and discuss the results.

6.2 German Speakers in Finland

The project DNFi focuses on German-speaking migrants, primarily from the large German-speaking countries of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Persons who were born in Finland and grew up bilingually (German–Finnish) have not been considered in this study. As Kortelainen and Kolehmainen (2022, p. 9) point out, German speakers belong to the oldest language minorities in Finland, and they were already included in the first language statistics of Finland from the year 1874. Nowadays, German speakers are no longer among the largest foreign language groupsFootnote 2 in Finland. Although the number of German speakers has grown steadily since the beginning of the 1990s, the size of other language groups has increased faster during the same period. It is evident that over the past three decades both the number of migrants and the number of individual languages spoken have increased considerably.

According to Statistics Finland, in 1990, a total of 24,783 people were registered as speakers of a foreign language in Finland. By 2022, the number had risen to 495,992. In 1990, German speakers (2,427 in total) were the third largest foreign language group in Finland after Russian and English speakers. In 2022, the number of people with German as their first language had more than tripled (7,611 people), but German is now only the 16th most spoken foreign first language in Finland. German has been overtaken by Estonian, Arabic, Somali, Kurdish, Persian/Farsi, Chinese, Albanian, Vietnamese, Thai, Turkish, Spanish, Ukrainian, and Tagalog. While the situation in Finland at the beginning of the 1990s reflects historical multilingualism with relatively clearly defined categories of immigrants, the situation today reflects a diversification of transnational migration as well as linguistic societies, which has led to a strong increase in the nationalities, ethnicities, languages, and religions of migrants (Aronin et al., 2013; Blommaert & Rampton, 2011; Vertovec, 2007).

Even though the growth of inhabitants with migration background happens in all parts of Finland, there are regional differences in the number and size of individual language groups, also in the three regions considered in this research. In North Ostrobothnia, the largest of the three regions with a total of 416,542 inhabitants, German speakers are in 13th place of the language groups, while in Lapland (total population 175,757) they are in 5th place and in Kainuu (total population 70,506) in 11th place. In total, 620 people with German registered as their first language lived in these three regions in 2022, with most of them in North Ostrobothnia (293 residents), followed by Lapland (285 residents) and Kainuu (42 residents).

Looking at nationalities (although they do not directly allow conclusions to be drawn about the first language of the migrants, especially in the case of multilingual Switzerland), in all three regions the largest group is made up of migrants from Germany. In North Ostrobothnia, Austrians are the second largest group, while in Lapland and Kainuu, Swiss citizens outnumber Austrians. In addition, Lapland differs from the other two regions in that the German-speaking population is not only found in the administrative and educational centre, which in the case of Lapland is Rovaniemi. There is also a relatively large number of German-speaking residents in the tourist centres of Inari, Muonio, and Kittilä. In North Ostrobothnia and in Kainuu, on the other hand, the proportion of people living outside their administrative and educational centres, Oulu and Kajaani, is very small and, for the most part, not statistically recorded.

This distribution suggests that the attractiveness of the place of residence does not depend only on the available jobs for knowledge workers in international companies, universities, or alike, which are primarily found in the cities of Oulu, Kajaani, and Rovaniemi. Work opportunities in the tourism industry in Lapland, combined with the appeal of nature and outdoor life, seem to play an important role in the decision of where to live for immigrants from German-speaking countries.Footnote 3 In this sense they can be considered as lifestyle migrants for whom the reasons to move to another country are not based on the necessity to get access to better work or education, but on free choice and the availability of the option (cf. Codó, 2018; Lawson, 2017).

There are relatively few studies on sociolinguistic topics within the extensive research literature on German–Finnish contacts. From a historical perspective, the works by Bentlin (2008) on Low German–Finnish language contacts in the Middle Ages and early modern period, and by Schweitzer (1993) and Tandefelt (2002) on the Germans in Vyborg, are interesting. In addition, Breier (2017, 2020) and Kolehmainen (2022) have dealt, among other topics, with language-related questions. Breier’s (2017, 2020) analysis of interviews with Germans and German descendants in contemporary Helsinki focuses on questions about (not-) belonging and the boundaries between German- and Finnishness. In these studies, the role of language is one of the topics. According to Breier, language—especially the command of Finnish in the case of first-generation immigrants and balanced bilingualism in the case of the second generation—has a strong impact on the feeling of belonging or not-belonging and German-/Finnishness. Having a good command in both languages creates the opportunity for a ‘plural identity that manages to traverse traditional ethnic boundaries’ (Bergem, 2000, p. 10, as cited in Breier, 2017, p. 124).

Kolehmainen’s (2022) interview study, in contrast to Breier’s study, deals with the linguistic impact of mobility outside metropolitan areas and is therefore interesting in the context of the present project. The focus of her research is on national and international migration from various directions to the small industrial town of Varkaus in eastern Finland. Thus, Kolehmainen’s study deals with a mobility history that deviates from the mainstream, as the typical migration directions in Finland are from the north and east to the south or west (Kolehmainen, 2022, p. 252; Nuolijärvi, 2020, p. 335). Kolehmainen analyses the linguistic repertoire of older people aged between 71 and 93 years, one of them a German immigrant. German in general played an important role in this community at the time when the informants were active in working life and was, according to Kolehmainen (2022, p. 280), comparable to the position of Swedish at that time, while English, unlike today, was less important. Even though the language biographies of the migrants are not the focus of Kolehmainen’s study, it provides a revealing insight into the rich multilingual repertoire outside of typical international centres and the change of status of certain languages over time.

6.3 Data and Research Approach

The data of this study consist of four interviews with female immigrants from Germany, audio recorded in autumn 2021.Footnote 4 They are part of the corpus collected in the project DNFi, which at present consists of 17 interviews with German speakers living in northern Finland.Footnote 5 The four interviews have been chosen because they give exemplary insights into the ways the informants of DNFi acquire access to the Finnish language and how this process can relate to age, time of migration, occupation, and place of residence. Two of the four informants live in towns that are administrative and educational centres of the region, and the other two informants live in small villages. All of them have a tertiary education and the two younger informants are still studying at universities. Table 6.1 gives an overview of the informants, including their pseudonyms, approximate age, length of stay in Finland, place of residence, and the duration of the recorded interviews.Footnote 6

Table 6.1 Overview of the informants in this study
Full size table

In the semi-structured interviews, a range of topics according to the objectives of the DNFi project was covered. The topics included in this chapter are the informants’ migration history, their linguistic repertoire and practices, and the process of learning Finnish. In addition to these topics, the interviews also included questions on linguistic identity, language maintenance and intergenerational language socialisation, language shift, and language loss.

The objective of the DNFi project is to get insight into the participants’ language biographies, into their own experiences of and views on their linguistic practices in different domains of their life. Using interviews is one popular method in language biography research in the tradition of German sociological biography studies, and it has been adopted extensively in studies on language learning, language practices, and identity constructions in multilingual environments (cf. Busch, 2016, p. 4; Franceschini, 2002, p. 19; Haas, 2019, p. 107). According to Busch (2016, p. 2; 2017, p. 22), one central goal of language biography studies is to bring back the subject into linguistics and to emphasise the perspective of the experiencing and speaking individual. The research approach when analysing the interviews is qualitative, drawing on reflexive thematic analysis according to Braun and Clarke (2006, 2012). The thematic ana-lysis seems particularly appropriate for this work as it is flexible, allowing for a comprehensive description of the data and a theory-based interpretation of the explicit and implicit patterns of meaning within the data.

When studying multilingualism or multilingual repertoires of individuals and communities, it is important to reflect on the notion of language. Even though in this study we are looking at a relatively clearly identifiable migrant group and refer, when speaking about their multilingual repertoire, to what, at least at first glance, appears to be clearly distinguishable languages, it is important to be aware that languages in use are not clearly pre-established, distinct entities (Busch, 2017, p. 9). According to Busch (2017, p. 8), essentialising concepts of language disregard both the multilingualism inherent in each individual language (based on dialects, regiolects, and sociolects) and the multilingual practices and language-mixing phenomena that are part of many communication situations today. Therefore, in poststructuralist, subject-oriented approaches, ‘[t]he notion of language as a system is challenged in favour of a view of language as doing’ (Pennycook, 2010, p. 2), where ‘speakers’ heteroglossic language practices and repertoires’ (Busch, 2016, p. 2) stand in the foreground. This concept of languaging (cf. Swain, 2006) is also linked to the understanding of multilingualism as a repertoire (Gumperz, e.g., 1964, 1982). Gumperz (1982, p. 155) defines the linguistic repertoire as ‘totality of distinct language varieties, dialects and styles employed in a community’, but the concept is also applied on an individual level and includes a bodily, historic-political, and emotional dimension (Busch, 2016, p. 2; 2017, pp. 22–30).

6.4 Migration History and Linguistic Repertoire of the Informants

Firstly, the four informants in this study will be introduced by giving some insights into their migration history and linguistic repertoire. Andrea, one of the two younger informants, came to Finland for the first time as an exchange student two and a half years before the interview. During this stay of six months, she met her Finnish partner and decided to return, first for a three-month internship and then for her master’s studies. Altogether she has been living in the same place, a university town in the north of Finland, for about two years. She did not visit Finland prior to her exchange studies, nor did she speak Finnish. However, she says that she has always felt a connection to the North and she describes her decision to choose Finland for her student exchange in the following Example 1:

Example 1:

Andrea::

Ich war aber vorher noch nie in Finnland gewesen. Was ich gemacht hab, ich hab mir in meinem Bachelorstudium die Partneruniversitäten von meiner Uni angeschaut und hab mir die ausgewählt, die am nördlichsten war und das war mir auch … Das hätte irgendein Land sein können, war mir komplett egal. Ich wollte nur soweit es geht in den Norden und das war halt XFootnote 7 und genau so bin ich hier gelandet.

(But I had never been to Finland before. What I did, I looked at the partner universities of my university in my bachelor’s degree and chose the one that was the most northerly and I didn’t … That could have been any country, I didn’t care at all. I just wanted to go as far north as possible and that was [name of town] and that’s how I ended up here.)

Before Andrea came to Finland, she already had experiences of living abroad. During high school, she spent an exchange year in North America, where she also spent a work-and-travel year after school. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in another German-speaking country and did a second internship in a non-European country in addition to her internship in Finland. During her first stay in Finland, she did not learn any Finnish, but started to take Finnish courses at the university when she began her master’s studies. At the time of the interview, she participates in Finnish courses at the A2.1 (elementary) level according to the Common European Framework of References for Languages (CEFR, 2001), but does not use the language regularly ‘outside the classroom’. Besides her first language German, she speaks English at a near-native level as well as Spanish and Russian. The language she uses most often is English, which she speaks at home with her partner, at university, and in everyday situations. She uses German with some study colleagues from Germany at the university and with her family in Germany.

Katharina came to Finland four years before the time of the interview. She decided to go abroad as an au pair for nine months immediately after receiving her high school diploma (‘Abitur’) in Germany at the age of 19. It was her first longer period living abroad. Her first choice for the au pair stay was Iceland, but she found a family in Finland that seemed suitable for her, and so she decided to come to Finland. Like Andrea, she had not been to Finland before, but had a general interest in the North or Scandinavia, to which she also counts Iceland and Finland, as she describes in Example 2:

Example 2:

Katharina::

Also einfach der Wunsch so nach Skandinavien … Über Island habe ich viel gewusst. Und dass es dann Finnland geworden ist, das war ein bisschen Zufall. Und dann habe ich mich natürlich schon etwas informiert, bevor ich hierher geflogen bin. Aber ich muss echt sagen, ich habe fast gar nichts gewusst.

(So, it was simply the desire for Scandinavia ... I knew a lot about Iceland. And the fact that it ended up being Finland was a bit of a coincidence. And then of course I did some research before I flew here. But I really have to say that I knew almost nothing.)

Katharina did not have any Finnish skills when she came to Finland. She started to learn Finnish in a course she attended twice a week during her time as an au pair. With the au pair family, she spoke mainly English and German. She used some Finnish only with the family’s youngest child, who did not know any English or German. Like Andrea, Katharina met her partner during her stay and decided to apply to an international study programme in the closest university town. At the same time, she started to take Finnish courses at the university and at the time of the interview she is at the B1 (lower intermediate) level according to the CEFR (2001). In addition to English, Katharina learnt Spanish in school for three years. Katharina understands Finnish quite well and can manage everyday life in Finnish, but still prefers to use English; it is the dominant language in her studies and with her partner and most of her friends. She uses German with her family and friends in Germany and some close German-speaking friends in Finland in addition to also needing it in her studies.

The third informant, Birgit, has spent 15 years in Finland at the time of the interview. She was looking for a new start in her life and chose Finland because of a dream, as she explains. She had spent some summer holidays in Finland before her migration, but had no closer connections to Finland or skills in the Finnish language. She moved together with two school-age children to a small village in the north of Finland, where she later found a job and a partner. She acquired Finnish completely outside of formal language education, studying it by herself and through communicating with the local villagers, as seen in Example 3.

Example 3:

Birgit::

Ich habe nicht Finnisch gelernt. Ich bin mitten in ein fin-nisches Dorf geraten, wo niemand Englisch spricht, und ich war einfach gezwungen zu verstehen, was die Leute sagen.

(I didn’t learn Finnish. I was in the middle of a Finnish village where nobody spoke English and I was forced to understand what people were saying.)

She describes her Finnish skills as good, especially considering that she did not learn it in formal contexts. In addition to German and Finnish, Birgit speaks English, but it plays no role whatsoever in her present life. In her everyday life, she mostly uses Finnish. She uses German only with her children, who do not live at home anymore, and with her family in Germany.

Susanne, who has been in Finland the longest out of the four informants, migrated 27 years before the interview. When studying in Germany in the late 1980s and early 1990s, she had Finnish friends and after graduating from university she wanted to spend some time in Finland and learn the language. Through personal contacts, she found work and stayed in Finland. In the following Example 4, she explains her decision to come to Finland with a fascination for Finland’s nature which is very different to the nature in Germany.

Example 4:

Susanne::

Das war hauptsächlich so die Natur, die so total anders war als in Deutschland. Das hat mich dann begeistert. Ich bin dann aus dem Grund nach Finnland gezogen, als ich fertig war mit dem Studium.

(It was mainly the nature, which was so totally different from Germany, that excited me. That’s why I moved to Finland when I finished my studies.)

Susanne went through the process of acquiring access to Finland’s native languages twice. She spent the first ten years in the south and west of Finland, in predominantly Swedish-speaking regions. In the very beginning of Susanne’s stay in Finland, she had close friends with whom she spoke German and English, and in her first job she could use German. After around six months in Finland, she started to take Swedish and Finnish courses. Based on her experience that Swedish was easier to learn for her as a German speaker, she started to use it as her dominant language. During this time, she learnt and used only a little Finnish. In the following Example 5, she describes this phase of her language biography:

Example 5:

Susanne::

Die Sprache ging voran. Das war aber dann eben das Schwedische. Der Finnischkurs, der ging auch irgendwie relativ unkompliziert, aber der war nicht so […] anspruchsvoll. […] Und als dann eben das Schwedische so einen deutlichen Fortschritt zeigte, dann wurde mir klar, ok, dann ist es jetzt Schwedisch.

(The language made progress. But this was Swedish. The Finnish course was also relatively uncomplicated, but it wasn’t as [...] demanding. [...] And when Swedish showed such a clear progress, I realised, ok then it’s Swedish now.)

After ten years, she moved to a small village in the far north of Finland for a short-term job where she met her Finnish partner and decided to stay there. Only then did she start to learn more Finnish by taking some Finnish classes in an adult education centre and using it daily. She speaks it nowadays at a good level. Although Finnish is the dominant language in her life—at home, at work, and in her leisure time—she still would prefer to use Swedish. In addition to German, Finnish, and Swedish, Susanne also speaks English, which she used during the first months of her stay in Finland, but now very seldom. She has some contacts with German speakers living nearby. Otherwise, she speaks German only with her family in Germany.

Despite the differences in the migration histories of the four informants, some parallels can be observed. All of them had no prior experiences with living in Finland and no Finnish (or Swedish) skills when they came for their first longer stay in Finland. The reasons for moving to Finland were described with a partly indefinite fascination for the North and the nature of Finland. All of them met their Finnish partners later on during their stay in the country, which was one important reason to remain in Finland, more specifically in northern Finland. At the time of the interviews, none of the four informants considered moving back to Germany. However, for the students Andrea and Katharina, their future plans depend heavily on finding a job after graduating.

6.5 Getting Access to Finnish

Getting access to the Finnish language is one of the most important topics in all the DNFi interviews and a very prominent theme in the four interviews that have been chosen for this study. Even though all four informants moved to Finland without any prior skills in one of the official native languages of Finland, Finnish and Swedish, the above short insight into the language biographies already shows some significant differences between them. Birgit and Susanne learnt Finnish mainly outside of formal language education and started to communicate in Finnish or Swedish fairly soon after they moved to Finland. English played a minor or even non-existent role in their lives. Andrea and Katharina did not learn Finnish during their first stays in Finland because they considered English to be enough to get by in and Finnish too difficult to learn for living only a short period in Finland. Only when they decided to stay in Finland did they start to learn Finnish systematically in university language courses, but after two and four years in Finland, respectively, they both use mainly English in almost all domains of their lives. Still, they think it is essential to learn better Finnish if they are going to stay in Finland in the future. This difference in the use of English reflects, on the one hand, general developments that can be observed in Finland with English becoming more and more a lingua franca in certain domains, especially in higher education (cf. Saarinen, 2012; Saarinen & Ennser-Kananen, 2020). On the other hand, it can be explained by the age of the informants, the time of their migration, their occupation, and their place of residence. All four informants refer to these different factors when describing their own way to get access to Finnish, their learning history, and the role of other languages, especially English, in their everyday life. The thematic analysis of the theme ‘Getting access to Finnish’ shows two recurring main topics in all four interviews that are strongly interconnected: (1) being forced to speak Finnish versus being able to use English, and (2) the formal and informal learning of Finnish. In the following sections, these two topics will be discussed in more detail.

6.5.1 Being Forced to Use Finnish Vs. Being Able to Use English

Birgit’s and Susanne’s processes of getting access to the Finnish language show many parallels. For both, communicating in English was not an option when they moved 17 or 15 years earlier to the small villages in the north of Finland. In both cases it has been necessary to use Finnish from the beginning in almost all common domains of life, at the workplace as well as in the public and private domain. As Birgit expresses in Example 3: ‘Ich bin mitten in ein finnisches Dorf geraten, wo niemand Englisch spricht, und ich war einfach gezwungen zu verstehen, was die Leute sagen. (I was in the middle of a Finnish village where nobody spoke English and I was forced to understand what people were saying)’. The same was true for Susanne. She could speak English and Swedish with some acquaintances and colleagues, but her main means of communication was Finnish. Susanne and Birgit had the advantage, as they both expressed it, that the language level requirements for their jobs were quite open. They were both hired even though they had only a basic command of Finnish and they were given the opportunity to acquire the language alongside their work tasks. In both informants’ professions it is necessary to communicate orally with people of different ages and educational backgrounds. English can be an option in communicating with some persons, but in general the means of communication must be Finnish. Written skills in Finnish, on the other hand, play a minor role. In the following Example 6, Susanne has the following to say about her first job in an educational context in the beginning of her working life in northern Finland:

Example 6:

Susanne::

Und plötzlich hatte ich alle möglichen Schüler und Null Sprachkenntnisse (lacht). Ein totaler Sprung, genau ja, aber das war eigentlich gut, weil das war die einzige Möglichkeit wirklich ins Finnische irgendwie reinzukommen, über eine Arbeit. Es war furchtbar anstrengend, es war von Herbst bis Weihnachten, wo es eben auch dunkel wird […], aber das war eine riesige Herausforderung und irgendwie durch diese Freundin, ging das schon irgendwie, die hat mich da auch unterstützt.

(And suddenly I had all kinds of students and zero language skills (laughs). A total leap, yes, but that was actually good, because that was the only way to really get into Finnish somehow, through a job. It was terribly exhausting, it was from autumn to Christmas, when it also gets dark [...], but it was a huge challenge and somehow, through this friend, it worked out somehow, she also supported me.)

Birgit had similar experiences and describes her beginnings with Finnish in professional contexts as follows in Example 7:

Example 7:

Birgit::

Meine erste Aufgabe war X,Footnote 8 wir haben viel Spaß gehabt, (lacht) aber nichts Unangenehmes. […] Naja, ich hab mich sicher auch mal schlecht gefühlt, aber das Finnisch bessert sich auch sicher mit der Zeit.

(My first task was [profession], we had a lot of fun, (laughs) but nothing unpleasant. [...] Well, I certainly felt bad at times, but the Finnish also improves with time.)

Even though Birgit and Susanne describe the first months at their workplaces as challenging, they both emphasise that from their present perspective, having been forced to use Finnish in their work from the beginning had a positive effect. Both also underline that the attitudes and concrete support of superiors, colleagues, as well as clients were important for them to overcome the initial difficulties resulting from the lack of language skills. Both informants state themselves that it did not take long for them to acquire the necessary language skills to master the work tasks without any major language-related problems.

Finnish is the dominant language for Birgit and Susanne, not only in their professional but also in their private lives. For Birgit, who moved to Finland with two school-age children, German also plays an important role as a family language because she uses it primarily with her children. However, both informants only use Finnish with their partners, as they know no or very little German or English. Birgit met her husband when she already knew Finnish and found it uncomplicated to use Finnish as the family language. Susanne met her husband at the beginning of her stay in the north of Finland and knew very little Finnish at that time. In Example 8, she describes the first meetings with her future husband in a similar way to her experiences at work:

Example 8:

Susanne::

Das war nach drei Wochen, die ich da im Büro erst war und das Finnisch, das war noch ziemlich auf Null-Stadium. (lacht) Na egal, wir sind dann zusammen … wir sind Kaffeetrinken gegangen in eines der Hotels da in XFootnote 9 […] Wir waren vielleicht 10 Minuten da und ich konnte nur ja und nein und hm,Footnote 10 kiitos [Danke] und näkemiin [Auf Wiedersehen] (lacht).

(That was after three weeks that I had only been in the office and the Finnish was still pretty much at zero level. (laughs) Anyway, we went for coffee together ... we went to one of the hotels there in [name of village] [...] We were there for maybe 10 minutes, and I could only say yes and no and hm,Footnote 11 kiitos [thank you] and näkemiin [goodbye] (laughs).)

Despite this challenging start to the relationship, Susanne, much like Birgit, finds it unproblematic that Finnish is the sole language at home. Both informants have accepted that their husbands have not tried to learn German. Susanne in particular emphasises in the interview that she generally avoids speaking any language other than Finnish with Finns as it would negatively affect her relationship with them.

In contrast to Birgit and Susanne, it is uncomplicated for Andrea and Katharina to get by in English. When Katharina came to Finland as an au pair, she was supposed to communicate in English and German with the family members. The parents in the au pair family supported her Finnish studies but did so without any pressure. It was only with the youngest child or with the grandparents of the children, who did not know any English or German, that Katharina used some Finnish or communicated with ‘Händen und Füßen’ (non-verbally) as she puts it. But as she was neither alone with the grandparents nor the main responsible person for the care of the children, she managed with some basic Finnish skills, as she explains in the following Example 9:

Example 9:

Katharina::

Mit der Kleinsten war es am schwierigsten zu reden. Aber Kinder sind da sehr neugierig und einfallsreich. Also ich habe schon das Gefühl gehabt, dass man sich versteht. […] Und ich habe ihr auch finnische Bücher vorgelesen, auch wenn ich dann nicht verstanden habe – ok, was erzähl ich gerade (lacht).

(The smallest one was the most difficult to talk to. But children are very curious and imaginative. So, I had the feeling that we understood each other. [...] And I also read Finnish books to her, even if I didn’t understand – ok, what am I talking about (laughs).)

At the time of the interview, Andrea and Katharina studied in international study programmes at the university, where English is the predominant language (cf. the use of English at Finnish universities: e.g., Komppa et al., 2017; Saarinen, 2012; Saarinen & Rontu, 2018; Vaarala & Kyckling, 2017). They both use English with their partners and with most friends as they point out in the interviews. In their opinion, it is also easy to get by in English when dealing with public services, bank offices, and alike, as Andrea explains in the following Example 10:

Example 10:

Andrea::

Also, ich sag mal so, ganz praktisch gesehen, müsste ich nicht Finnisch lernen. Also ich denke, dass gerade auch die jüngeren Generationen … natürlich die sprechen alle supergut Englisch. Generell sprechen Finnen super Englisch. Praktisch gesehen müsste ich nicht Finnisch lernen. Also ich weiß auch, wenn ich hier die nächsten zehn Jahre leben würde, würde ich die nächsten zehn Jahre mit Englisch auskommen. Ich könnte auch in allen Behörden alles mit Englisch machen, das wäre, denke ich, kein Problem.

(I’ll say, from a practical point of view, I wouldn’t have to learn Finnish. I think that especially the younger generations … of course they all speak super good English. In general, Finns speak super English. Practically speaking, I wouldn’t have to learn Finnish. So, I also know that if I lived here for the next ten years, I would get by with English for the next ten years. I could also do everything in English in all the public offices, so I don’t think that would be a problem.)

Even though the experiences of the four informants show individual differences, they reveal interesting commonalities and bring to light aspects that have also been described in other research on migrants’ linguistic practices in Finland (cf. Iikkanen, 2020; Lehto, this volume; Leppänen et al., 2011; Scotson, 2018a, 2020). Although it may seem relatively uncomplicated today to get by in English in most domains, this cannot be generalised to all areas. Like in many other countries, there are socio-demographic differences between young, well-educated Finns who have a high level of proficiency in English and use it frequently, and the older generations, especially when they have attended only basic education (cf. Leppänen et al., 2011). This seems to be true in the rural regions in the north of Finland, where many people have only minimal skills in English. Birgit and Susanne, both aged around 60, and Andrea and Katharina, both in their 20s, each belong to the same generation. Birgit and Susanne came to Finland and the north of Finland about ten to twenty years earlier than Andrea and Katharina. While Andrea and Katharina study in English-language programmes and live in university centres, Birgit and Susanne live in small villages and work in fields where Finnish is the only or at least the main means of communication. On the axis of these differences, the dividing line can also be drawn between the domains and places where it seems unproblematic to use English and where English is not an option. While Finnish is the main means of communication for Birgit and Susanne in most domains, it is English for Andrea and Katharina. Birgit and Susanne know English and have sometimes used it in different situations, but because of the environment they live in, they both talk about how they were ‘forced’ to use Finnish. In the small villages where they live, there is hardly any job offer which would not require the knowledge of Finnish. On the other hand, the range of study programmes offered in English at Finnish universities is nowadays very extensive and, in this field, it is often not necessary to know Finnish to obtain an academic degree. While Birgit’s and Susanne’s husbands belong to a generation where a good knowledge of English is not self-evident, Andrea’s and Katharina’s partners speak English very well. However, Andrea and Katharina also described experiences with the non-existent English skills of different generations, for example with the parents or older relatives of their partners. There are also clear differences regarding leisure time. In the university towns where Andrea and Katharina live, there is a wide range of leisure activities where English can be used, and it is usually no problem to speak English among friends or even to find German-speaking friends. If Birgit and Susanne want to participate in sports or cultural activities in their villages, Finnish is necessary. This applies to most of their social contacts.

Finnish and English are the main languages used by the informants. As shown in the brief insight into the language biographies, German plays a role mainly in contact with family and friends in Germany and with a few friends in Finland for all four informants. For the two older informants Birgit and Susanne, however, German did play a role in contact with Finns when they came to Finland. Susanne had Finnish friends and acquaintances with whom she spoke German during her first time in southern and western Finland and had some jobs where she could use German. Birgit also says that she was repeatedly addressed in German by Finns from a certain generation who had learnt German at school. On the other hand, she says, younger people ‘kommen mit Englisch an’—they speak English. The younger informants Andrea and Katharina hardly ever had any experience of being addressed in German. Even if these individual experiences cannot be generalised, they do point to the change in the status of German and English in Finland, also described by Kolehmainen (2022). Whereas German used to be even more widespread than English in many areas, English now clearly dominates German.

6.5.2 Formal and Informal Learning of Finnish

The second topic which comes up when talking about the process of getting access to Finnish is the ways the informants have learnt Finnish inside and outside formal language education. Here, too, we can see some similarities, but also differences, between the four informants. As mentioned in the language biography, Birgit acquired Finnish completely outside of formal language education because no Finnish courses were offered in the village. She says that she did not learn the language (see Example 3) but describes the process as ‘growing into the language’, comparing it to the way children learn their first language: ‘Ich bin da eigentlich wie ein Kind da reingewachsen (I actually grew into it like a child)’. In Example 11 she explains the process in more detail:

Example 11:

Birgit::

Ja, also ich hab mir so kleine Sätze gemacht. Ich hatte ein Lehrbuch Yksi, kaksi, kolme und also so Drei-Wort-Sätze, mit denen habe ich mich durchgeschlagen. […] eigentlich mehr mit den Leuten, die sind sehr viel zu mir gekommen, zu uns und ich hab viel gehört. Und ich kann mich noch erinnern, so die erste Zeit habe ich gebraucht, bis ich gemerkt habe, wann ein Satz zu Ende ist. Und dann hat es noch mal ein paar Monate gedauert, dann habe ich gemerkt, aha, das ist ein Wort, dass ich die Worte voneinander trennen konnte. Und dann habe ich so einzelne Worte gehört, die immer wieder auftauchen und so ganz allmählich … Ich habe einfach gehört und nachgesprochen, sonst nichts, keinen Kurs nichts.

(So, I made little sentences. I had a textbook called Yksi, kaksi, kolme and I made my way with three-word sentences […] actually more with the people, they came to me a lot, to us, and I heard a lot. And I can still remember that it took me a while to realise when a sentence was finished. And then it took another few months, then I noticed, ah, that’s a word, that I could separate the words from each other. And then I heard individual words that came up again and again and so very gradually ... I just listened and repeated, nothing else, no course, nothing.)

Susanne also learnt Finnish mainly outside formal contexts. She took a Finnish and a Swedish course in parallel at an adult education centre at the beginning of her stay in Finland, as mentioned above in Example 5. However, as she progressed more quickly with Swedish, she concentrated on acquiring this language and did not attend Finnish courses during that period anymore. It was only after she moved to northern Finland and found it necessary to use Finnish in her work that she started learning Finnish in a course. Finnish courses were organised in her place of residence, but the offerings were limited. In Susanne’s opinion, the course was useful but grammar-oriented and she feels that she acquired most of her language skills through work, her husband, and Finnish acquaintances.

Andrea and Katharina did not think it was important to learn Finnish when they first came to Finland. Andrea did not attend a Finnish course at all during her exchange studies because she had heard that Finnish was a very difficult or even the most difficult language to learn (‘Hört man ja: oh, Finnisch ist so schwierig und schwierigste Sprache der Welt’/‘You hear: oh, Finnish is so difficult and the most difficult language in the world’) and it did not pay to learn it for such a short stay—where ‘it’s more about having fun’ (‘wo es ja eher darum geht, Spaß zu haben’). Katharina attended a Finnish course during her au pair year in Finland, but as can be seen in the following Example 12, learning Finnish was not a priority for her either:

Example 12:

Katharina::

Und ich bin auch zweimal die Woche – theoretisch – in den Finnischkurs gegangen. Ich muss aber sagen, dass ich es in diesem Jahr nicht als superwichtig empfunden habe, Finnisch zu lernen, weil es war nicht der Plan da, dazubleiben. Und für mich war dann eher so dieser Austausch mit Freunden und dass man sich trifft. Und ja, dass man Sachen unternimmt und wegfährt, war für mich dann wichtiger, als dann die neue Sprache wirklich zu lernen.

(And I also went to Finnish classes twice a week – theoretically. But I have to say that I didn’t feel it was very important to learn Finnish that year, because I didn’t plan to stay there. And for me, it was more about this exchange with friends and getting together. And doing things and going away was more important to me than actually learning the new language.)

When they started their studies at university, Andrea and Katharina began to learn Finnish systematically at their universities’ language centres, where a range of language courses are offered at different levels and for different skills. Although they are satisfied with the quality of the courses, they both feel that progress in the courses has little impact on their competence to communicate in Finnish. They both acknowledge that it is their own responsibility to use the language ‘outside the classroom’. Yet they rarely do so and mostly prefer to communicate in English, as Andrea describes in Example 13 where she speaks about the languages she uses in different situations:

Example 13:

Andrea::

Ja, also genau, zuhause mit meinem Freund: Wir sollten eigentlich Finnisch sprechen, damit ich es lerne, aber natürlich machen wir das nicht. Ja, also mit meinem Freund spreche ich komplett Englisch. […] Bei Geschäften, Lokalen: Ja, wie gesagt, das kommt dann auf den Themenbereich an. Mittlerweile, wenn ich ins Restaurant gehe, natürlich dann versuche ich es auf Finnisch, weil das ist halt mittlerweile ein Themenbereich, den ich, denke ich halt, dass ich den kann (lacht).

(Yes, right, at home with my boyfriend. We’re supposed to speak Finnish so that I learn it, but of course we don’t do that. Yes, so with my boyfriend I speak only English. [...] In shops, restaurants. Yes, as I said, it depends on the topic. Nowadays, when I go to a restaurant, of course I try to speak Finnish, because that is now a topic that I think I know (laughs).)

Regarding learning Finnish in formal language courses, two central themes can be identified. On the one hand, the informants who live in small villages are concerned with the possibility of attending courses at all. In rural areas, there are sometimes no or only insufficient Finnish courses on offer. In cases where courses are available, they are often at a low level of competence and offer little help with technical vocabulary for different professions. The situation is different in larger towns and in university towns, where there is a wide range of Finnish courses. On the other hand, the immediate usefulness of Finnish courses for gaining confidence in using the language is questioned by the informants although they are generally satisfied with the quality of the courses (similar experiences are described in Scotson, 2018b).

According to sociocultural approaches to language learning, developing language skills is primarily a social process in the context of which knowledge is first co-constructed before it is further processed individually (Aguado, 2010, p. 817; Mitchell et al., 2013, p. 220). This is also clearly reflected in the interviews. When talking about learning outside formal Finnish classes, all informants emphasise the role of the community and individual persons. For Birgit and Susanne who learnt Finnish mainly outside formal educational contexts alongside their jobs, it is evident that they could not have mastered this without the goodwill and help of the community. The support from other people is mentioned in the interviews by both informants as a key factor in the process of acquiring the Finnish language (cf. also Strömmer, 2017). In the case of Susanne, it was her superior who supported her during the early times of her job. Birgit emphasises several times in the interview that the people from the village helped her a lot in learning. She sees this form of support as typical for the inhabitants of the periphery in the north of Finland and explains it by saying that compared to cities, the people in the periphery are more dependent on each other due to the low population density, long distances, and sometimes extreme weather conditions. ‘Die Leute brauchen sich mehr’ (‘People need each other more’), as she expresses it.

Forms of support mentioned in the interviews and considered as helpful can be verbal or embodied, such as adapting one’s own language to the language level of the interlocutor, for example by speaking more slowly; paraphrasing; using simple language; different forms of translanguaging including English, German, and Swedish; non-verbal communication; and, more so for the younger informants, the use of different digital applications. In addition to these concrete forms of scaffolding, the general willingness to communicate in Finnish with interlocutors with limited language skills as well as attitudes towards possible communication problems come up several times in the interviews. As already seen in Example 7, humour is an important factor in situations where there are problems of communication. Both Katharina (see Example 9) and Birgit find it easier to work and communicate with children, which they attribute to children’s spontaneity and natural curiosity. In contact with adults, the informants repeatedly mention that they have the impression that many Finns have little experience in communicating with speakers of foreign languages. This insecurity often results in either avoiding communication or switching to English, as Andrea describes in the following Example 14:

Example 14:

Andrea::

Ich weiß nicht genau, wie ich es beschreiben soll, aber Finnen sind halt nicht daran gewöhnt, Leute zu hören, die ihre Sprache nicht gut sprechen. Also ich sag mal, wenn ich in XFootnote 12 unterwegs bin und mich jemand in gebrochenem Deutsch nach dem Weg fragt, dann ist das für mich normal. Also ich weiß, ok nicht jeder, der in X wohnt, kann Deutsch sprechen. Aber hier, ich habe bei den Finnen immer das Gefühl, dass die einfach nicht daran gewöhnt sind, jemanden gebrochen Finnisch sprechen zu hören und dass sie entweder dann verwirrt reagieren und dann gar nicht kommunizieren wollen oder dass sie direkt auf Englisch wechseln.

(I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but Finns are just not used to hearing people who don’t speak their language well. So, I say, when I’m walking in [name of town in Germany] and someone asks me for directions in broken German, it’s normal for me. I know, ok not everyone who lives in [name of town] can speak German. But here, I always have the feeling with Finns that they are just not used to hearing someone speak broken Finnish and that they either react in a confused manner and don’t want to communicate at all or they switch directly to English.)

Switching to English is a phenomenon that has been discussed in various contexts in Finland recently (see also Lehto, this volume) and is, according to Susanne, a phenomenon of cities (‘Das [Wechsel ins Englische] kann passieren, aber hier auf dem Land nicht.’/‘It [switching to English] can happen, but not here in the countryside.’) and it is indeed a topic primarily in the interviews with the two younger informants, Andrea and Katharina, who live in university cities. Andrea in particular, who is currently trying to use Finnish more often in certain situations, talks about this issue at length in the interview. She describes her own interpretation of the behaviour as contradictory. On the one hand, she thinks that switching language can be well-intentioned and understood by the interlocutor as a form of support. On the other hand, however, she understands it is a form of exclusion and a wasted opportunity for her to learn and use the language, as she describes in the following Example 15:

Example 15:

Andrea::

Ja, das ist mir schon super oft passiert, dass ich versucht habe, auf Finnisch zu sprechen und die gemerkt haben ok, die kann es nicht richtig gut und dann haben sie einfach auf Englisch gewechselt. Und ich muss sagen, das ist immer sehr, sehr demotivierend, weil man sich dann halt so denkt, ach komm, ich kann es ja nur lernen, wenn ich es übe.

(Yes, it has happened to me super often that I have tried to speak in Finnish, and they have noticed ok, she can’t really do it well and then they have simply switched to English. And I have to say, that’s always very, very demotivating, because then you think to yourself, oh come on, I can only learn it if I practise it.)

The behaviour described by Andrea—and similarly by Katharina—is also found in the research by Scotson (2018a), who examines the language choices in different conversational situations of highly educated migrants in Finland. Many of the migrants consciously use Finnish in certain situations that they interpret as manageable (Andrea gives the restaurant or cafeteria as examples here); in others they prefer English. In Andrea’s case, this involves situations related to her studies, but also, for example, a visit to the optician. To avoid her interlocutors switching to English, she has started to frame her conversations by explaining at the beginning that she is only learning Finnish and does not speak it very well yet but would like to use it. With this strategy of claiming agency and control over the language choice in a particular situation, she tries to make a language contract (cf. Eskildsen & Theodórsdóttir, 2017; Scotson, 2018a) with her interlocutors and is positioning herself as a language learner, as can be seen in Example 16:

Example 16:

Andrea::

Und deshalb leite ich halt immer ein, dass ich von mir aus auf Finnisch sage: Ok, ich lerne Finnisch, ich würde gerne auf Finnisch sprechen, aber ich spreche es halt nicht gut.

(And that’s why I always start by saying in Finnish: Ok, I’m learning Finnish, I’d like to speak in Finnish, but I don’t speak it well.)

According to Andrea, this strategy has led to her Finnish interlocutors switching less often to English and also adapting more to her language level. These examples and Andrea’s reflections can be theorised in what Saarinen and Ennser-Kananen (2020) have stated in relation to the role of English as a global or world language and the implications of this status for localised contexts. Even though the authors have dealt with institutional contexts, the ambivalent role of English is also clearly evident in Andrea’s subjective language experience. English is at the same time empowering and hegemonic; it is a resource, but it also consumes resources (Saarinen & Ennser-Kananen, 2020, p. 117).

6.6 Summary and Discussion

In this study, the process of getting access to the Finnish language for four German migrants in northern Finland was examined through their own narratives. The immigration of Germans to Finland is particularly remarkable from a historical perspective. Today, German speakers (i.e., people who claim German as their first language) and people with German, Austrian, or Swiss nationality are no longer among the largest minority groups in Finland, but they still play an important role regionally, for example in Lapland. According to Breier (2017), the German-speaking minority can be counted among the ‘invisible minorities’ that are not particularly noticeable—comparable to Finnish immigrants in Germany. This circumstance is also evident in the interviews. None of the informants recounts bad experiences as migrants in Finland and they all are well integrated into Finnish society in many respects, also through their Finnish partners. However, they become an ‘obvious’ minority through their use of language, for example, through an accent in Finnish or low proficiency in Finnish in general.

Getting access to the Finnish language played a very important role in the interviews. The different positions as language learners and language users that emerged among the four informants are related to the differences among them. For example, they belong to different generations as Andrea and Katharina are in their 20s and Susanne and Birgit are around 60. Significant differences between the informants are also their lengths of stay in Finland, between two to four years and over 15 years, and their places of residence. The two younger informants live in university towns, the two older ones in small villages. These differences affect linguistic practices and the processes of acquiring the Finnish language. For example, Birgit and Susanne learnt Finnish primarily in informal contexts and were more or less forced to use Finnish in their jobs, even though they did not speak it well at the beginning. Andrea and Katharina, on the other hand, have access to a wide range of Finnish courses in their places of residence, which they also use. However, they use mostly English in their university studies and everyday and private life. English takes on an important role in this research, like other studies on the language use of primarily highly educated migrants in Finland, and is perceived as ambivalent by the informants themselves. From their perspective, English is both a resource in gaining access to education, social contacts, and, in general, initial life in Finland. However, they are motivated to learn Finnish and they see English in this process as an obstacle that prevents them from gaining faster access to the Finnish language. This ambivalence regarding the use of Finnish or English is connected to strong emotional aspects. For example, Andrea and Katharina perceive situations where they, as language users, are deprived of agency in their choice of language by their Finnish interlocutors switching to English as a form of exclusion and frustrating in terms of their learning process.

The desire or even the necessity to learn Finnish is supported by both pragmatic and affective arguments. For Birgit and Susanne, for example, it was a necessity to use Finnish in their jobs, and Andrea and Katharina also assess their future chances in the labour market as relatively poor without a knowledge of Finnish. It is interesting to see here that it is not necessarily always the case that only good language skills give access to the labour market. Birgit’s and Susanne’s biographies show that doing a job with low language proficiency is possible and can actually provide access to the language. This process requires support from the social community, superiors, and work colleagues, but is described by Birgit and Susanne as extremely effective. However, affective arguments are at least as important as pragmatic arguments in the interviews when it comes to learning Finnish (or the surrounding language, as it was initially with Swedish for Susanne). Birgit and Susanne repeatedly emphasise in the interviews that knowledge of Finnish is important in order to be accepted as part of the local community in the small villages. But also for Andrea and Katharina, living in more internationally orientated university towns, it seems to be a key factor in their feeling of belonging—or as Andrea puts it, Finnish is very important ‘[…] fürs Gefühl und für, ja, für dieses Ankommen und Akzeptiertwerden’ (‘for the feeling and for this arriving and being accepted’).