Abstract
This article provides an overview of some sociocultural and demographic factors of language maintenance and shift among Hungarians in Finland and Sweden, predominately at the group level. Some of the factors described are: the historical background of Hungarian immigration, settlement patterns, demographic development, geographical areas, participation in Hungarian associations along with the attitudes of the majority group towards Hungarians and the Hungarian language. After this some data is presented about language choice, culture and identity of second-generation Hungarians. The article shows that Hungarians are not a single unified group in Sweden or Finland and both groups face factors that can support or hinder the preservation of the Hungarian language and culture. Swedish-Hungarians have a greater ability to preserve their Hungarianism as a group due to population size and concentration in certain areas, while Finnish-Hungarians can maintain their Hungarian identity due to their comparably high status in society and the positive attitudes of the Finnish majority.
Highlights
Many sociolinguistic studies carried out on language maintenance and shift focus on language choice and identity among immigrants and their descendants in the Nordic countries
Some surveys in recent years, for example Österlund-Pötzsch 2003; Otterup 2005; Ågren 2006; Iskanius 2006; Weckström 2008, underline the importance of roots and personal experiences with the parent’s language and culture to instill identity in the second-generation. Many of these studies show that the minority language has only a symbolic role in the identity of the second-generation and the majority language is frequently used in every domain
This study reveals that the support for maintaining immigrant languages in Sweden is less than the support for maintaining minority languages; a majority of the population are positive towards multilingualism (SOU 2002, 198, see Nygård 2002)
Summary
Many sociolinguistic studies carried out on language maintenance and shift focus on language choice and identity among immigrants and their descendants in the Nordic countries. There are other important studies about language choice and maintenance among different groups of immigrants carried out in the Swedish and Finnish contexts, e.g. Olkiewicz 1990; Sirén 1991; Namei 1993; Kosonen 1994; Kostoulas-Makrakis 1995; Janulf 1998; Jasinskaja-Lahti and Liebkind 1999a; 1999b; Kärkkäinen and Mononen 1999; Oinonen 1999 and some data has been collected about immigrants and their descendants in various contexts, presented in Lithman 1987; Boyd, Holmen and Jørgensen 1994a; 1994b; Liebkind 1994 In all of these studies the focus is on the language choice within the family during childhood and there is a clear link between the language use as a young person and language choice and identity later as an adult. I hope that by comparing persons of the same ethnocultural background who have migrated to different countries we can better understand how immigration policy and sociolinguistic variation in language contact can impact identity
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