Do all Swedish-speaking Finns speak Finnish? Do other Finns understand Swedish?
Torvalds: Most Swedish-speaking Finns do indeed speak Finnish too, mostly fluently. Not all, though — there are still areas where Swedish is common enough that you’ll find a very small percentage of the Swedish-speaking Finns that really don’t much understand Finnish at all. It’s quite uncommon these days, though. The reverse is not true — most Finnish-speaking Finns know some Swedish (you have to learn the rudiments of it in school), but it’s a very rudimentary knowledge in most cases, and fairly few can actually speak it fluently. Many more Finns speak and understand English. Question: What languages does a person have to know to work in government? Torvalds: In theory, since Swedish is an official language, government officials are supposed to be able to understand and speak Swedish, but in practice that’s usually true only in areas where Swedish is reasonably common (mainly along the southern coast of Finland). Question: And is Finnish a must for government officials? Torvalds: Y
