What Can Immigrants Bring with Them?A Sociolinguistic Perspective

摘要

According to 1985 statistics, foreign citizens in Finland numbered 16,478, a mere 0.3% of the population of about 5 million. People speaking languages other than the two official languages, Finnish and Swedish, corresponded roughly to the ratio of the foreign population. Finland then appeared to be rather linguistically monotonic with two official languages spoken by the vast majority of the population. By 2008, the number of foreigners grew to 155,705 — 2.9% of the total population, and an increase of almost ten times in twenty-three years.