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Week 3/ 2006: Damn competent academically

English calls the shots and Finnish tries to keep up. The status of Finnish in the increasingly international academic world is marginal, but as recently as 150 years ago it was non-existent. In her doctoral dissertation, Katja Huumo, MA, sees the development of academic Finnish as an essential constituent of the societal life of the time. “It was a vital part of constructing the national identity. Academic language was developed as an important aspect of correct language use.”

In the early 19th century, Finnish was even perceived as a threat to competent academic work. As late as 1865, L.G. von Haartman, the Vice-Chairman of the Senate’s Economic Division, said that “that damn language” was a handicap to civil servants who had to use civilised European languages in their work.

Indeed, developing academic Finnish was quite a political issue. The Finnish-speaking ‘ordinary folk’ would have been a threat to the powers that be had they gained access to official positions, and using Finnish was also easily associated with revolutionary ideas and Finnish nationalism. The pro-Russian governing elite, on the other hand, maintained a certain self-censorship in academic life.

However, the setting was not only that of the elite versus the people. “The language had different roles in different situations. An academic who advocated Finnish in some contexts might be cautious in official situations,” says Huumo.

J.V. Snellman is a good example. On the one hand, he defended the status of Finnish, but, on the other hand, was shy to use it himself. Many doctors in particular, such as Wolmar Schildt-Kilpinen, who coined the Finnish word for science (tiede), and F.J. Rabbe defended using Finnish in academic contexts.

In her work, Huumo concentrated on the impact of the two first scientific articles published in Finnish. E.A. Ingman’s 1849 publication caused outrage in the Medical Society of Finland, as did mathematician J.H. Eklöf’s in the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters.

The folk school decree of 1866 and the emergence of a new generation of academics in the following decades paved the way for the development of Finnish as a language of higher education. According to Huumo, Finnish did not achieve the status of a fully-fledged academic language until the 1920s.
“My conclusion is based on the fact that from that time forward special attention was no longer given as to whether an academic work was written in Finnish or not.”

Text: Kai Maksimainen
Picture: University Museum
www.helsinki.fi/digitalcommunications

Translation: Valtasana Oy