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Aims and objectives: This study examines fennicisms (i.e., Finnish loanwords and calques) in Finland-Swedish, a Swedish variety spoken in Finland. We investigate how fennicism frequency relates to speakers' regional backgrounds and fluency in Finnish. Methodology: 134 participants from four regions in Finland performed a picture-naming task designed to elicit fennicisms. The participants also rated their own fluency in Finnish. Data and analysis: A regression analysis with the outcome variable of fennicism frequency and the predictors of region, fluency in Finnish, and gender was performed. Findings: Results show that speakers from the more bilingual regions of Southern Finland and Helsinki used significantly more fennicisms than speakers from Ostrobothnia or Swedish-speaking Åland. The study suggests that fluency in Finnish was a strong predictor for fennicism use, as speakers with low or moderate knowledge of Finnish used fewer fennicisms than speakers with high or native(-like) fluency. No significant effect of gender was found. Originality: While fennicisms are considered widespread in Finland-Swedish, there is little previous research on their use and distribution. Implications: The results demonstrate that while many of the fennicisms are well-established in the Finland-Swedish variety, their use is limited to certain groups and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines regional and stylistic variation in the merger of front vowels /eː/ and /ɛː/ in Finland-Swedish. The study investigates the merger by comparing formant data from 141 speakers from four Swedish-speaking regions in Finland. Additionally, intraspeaker variation is explored by incorporating samples from three contextual styles. The results indicate cross-regional differences between Finland-Swedish dialects, with a more distinct variant of /ɛː/ being used on the monolingually Swedish-speaking Åland Islands, compared to other regions. However, the findings show that speakers from mainland Finland also demonstrate significantly different formant values for the vowels, particularly in formal speech styles. These results challenge the assumption of a complete /eː-ɛː/ merger in Finland-Swedish, instead pointing to a near-merger, whereby two sounds sound the same to speakers, despite them being differentiated in production. The findings also shed new light on stylistic variation in the variety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A global crisis, like the Covid-19 pandemic, can change not only societies but also languages by a great input of new terminology. For speakers of a minority language, media is in a key position to provide them with these new words in their own language. In the case of Finland-Swedish, the Swedish media in Finland is helped by professional language advisers in this language planning task. This study analyses the media language management in Finland-Swedish media, through a content analysis of language recommendations published between February 2020 and April 2021, as well as interviews with media language advisers. The analysis shows that about a quarter of the language recommendations published during these 15 months are coronavirus-related. The topics in the recommendations follow the development of the outbreak in Finland, showing how closely the language advisers work with the news organizations. Contrary to normal situations, the Finland-Swedish media language advisers could not fully rely on the language recommendations from Sweden, due to their different Covid-19 strategies. Instead, the norm authorities were experts in ministries and official institutions, illustrating how language planning is done collectively. The Finland-Swedish journalists rely heavily on the media language recommendations, showing a certain linguistic insecurity, which according to Muhr (2012) is typical for speakers of non-dominant varieties of a pluricentric language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this article we compare advice-giving in academic supervision meetings at Swedish-speaking university departments in Sweden and Finland. Working within the field of variational pragmatics and analyzing interaction in detail we show how Sweden-Swedish and Finland-Swedish supervisors and students, as experts and non-experts in an institutional setting, initiate and respond to advice. The data consist of video and/or audio recordings of eight naturally occurring supervision meetings. All meetings show a similar pattern regarding the frequency and sequential structure of advice initiation and reception. The main differences between the two data sets occur in how advice is formulated and acknowledged. In the Sweden-Swedish data, advice is often given with strong mitigation and responded to by upgraded acknowledgements. In the Finland-Swedish data, advice delivery is more succinct and acknowledgements are often neutral. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Compared to monolinguals, simultaneous bilingual Finnish and Finland-Swedish speakers demonstrate increased acoustic overlap when producing allophones of /ø/. • Intra-speaker variation is examined by comparing speaker production in different speech styles. • Informal speech samples in particular show increased overlap between allophones for bilinguals compared to monolinguals. This study investigates cross-linguistic transfer in the production of long mid front vowels [øː] and [œː] by simultaneous bilingual Finnish and Finland-Swedish speakers in Finland. In Swedish, the phoneme /ø/ can be realised as the allophones [ø] and [œ], while in Finnish, only [ø] is used. Combining approaches from sociophonetic and bilingual transfer research, the study used acoustic analysis to compare the height and fronting of [øː] and [œː] produced by bilingual and monolingual Finland-Swedish speakers in three different speech styles on a continuum of formality. The data from 115 participants are stratified according to language background, speech style, region, and age. The statistical analysis indicates increased overlap of [øː] and [œː] in the vowel spaces of bilingual speakers, particularly in informal speech. The results suggest a potential effect of Finnish transfer on the distinction of the phonetic variants in simultaneous Finland-Swedish bilinguals, as well as demonstrate the importance of considering speech style in bilingual transfer research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Second language comprehensibility and accentedness are highly complex phenomena, and numerous studies have been conducted to better understand these constructs. However, research has seldom addressed L2 comprehensibility and accentedness in relation to speakers' proficiency in the target language. This study explores L2 English comprehensibility and accentedness across three proficiency levels. The speakers were 60 teenaged Finns, half of them speaking Finnish as their L1 and half speaking Finland-Swedish as their L1. Using 20-s speech samples, the comprehensibility and accentedness of the speakers were rated by 34 English-speaking teenagers on a 9-point scale. Comparisons were made regarding comprehensibility and accentedness between L1 Finnish and L1 Finland-Swedish speakers, and the data were also analysed for a possible relationship between the ratings and the speakers' overall oral proficiency in English. The results revealed a surprising difference between the language groups for speakers at proficiency levels B1–B2: Despite an equal proficiency assessment, L1 Finland-Swedish speakers were rated as more comprehensible and less accented than L1 Finnish speakers. Overall, the ratings were found to correlate with the speakers' oral proficiency, but the correlations were rather weak and the steps from one proficiency level to another often had only small effects on comprehensibility and accentedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]