A new citizen initiative called Multi Mother-Tongued Citizens' Initiative (Äidinkielenä monikielisyys in Finnish) has been launched by Familia ry that works for the multicultural families’ rights.
“Being able to officially register more than one mother tongue would make many families’ life easier, when the parents wouldn’t have to choose the language that will be registered.
It would also make many statistics more reliable and would help organize services according to the knowledge of citizens’ lingual background“, says Familias’ executive director Elina Helmanen.
You can sign the initiative online in the address https://www.kansalaisaloite.fi/fi/aloite/11710. by July 11th 2023.
Currently in Finland a person can officially have only one mother tongue as their official registered language. Since Finland, as well as many other countries are multilingual, it should be possible to register multiple languages as a person's mother tongue. It would make sense since Finland already is a country with two official languages.
Current statistics do not tell the truth about multilingualism. According to Statistics Finland, the number of persons speaking a foreign language at the end of 2021 was 8.3 percent of the entire population.
Enabling the registration of more than one mother tongue would:
· support better planning and improvement of ie. social services and education
· give a more realistic idea of the languages being spoken in Finland
· promote equality of multi-lingual families
· allow to form a better picture of the lingual identity of multilingual individuals.
Authorities use the data in the Finnish population information system to plan services and evaluate the needs of a certain municipal area. With the current legislation the system does not give truthful information about minority languages nor does it tell the truth about the languages that our children speak.
Enabling the registration of more mother tongues would also mean that parents of multilingual families would not have to place the child's languages in an unequal position, and the child could be offered better conditions to maintain the languages and cultural heritage used by his parents.
This grievance has also been noted by the European council, based on the principle of self-identification, and the individual’s choice to belong to more than one population or language group should be enabled.
MiB International supports the cause, because it strenghtens the position of multilinguistic families in Finland both in society and in the working life.
MiB strives to support international mothers' wellbeing, networking and employment opportunities through a three-year long International project.
Visit www.mothersinbusiness.fi/international to learn more about the work that we do!
Read more about the monikielinen-project: https://monikielinen.fi/
