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Statistics: mother-tongues in Sweden
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Statistics: mother-tongues in Sweden

While the Swedish official statistics since 1950 hasn't distinguished between the residents with different mother tongues, as this has been discredited together with data for race and religion, it is unusual in the serious Swedish debate to refer to mother tongues. Except for the three municipalities at the border to Finland there does not exist any local communities where another language than Swedish is dominating and/or the common lingua franca.

Data from the schools do however show that despite over 20% of the pupils having at least one immigrated parent, not more than 5,6% of the pupils are reported to have another mother tongue than Swedish.

Are these figures really reliable? Yes and no!
The data are from exhaustive statistics, not random samples, which is a general sign of reliability. Pupils with foreign mother tongues are offered instruction in "Swedish as a second language" and it is maybe probable that some parents chose not to apply for this - fearing it would be somehow dis-advantageous for their kids. It is also possible that the daily contacts with Swedish speaking kids (in day nurseries and at home) has made many immigrant kids equally proficient in Swedish as their mates with Swedish as mother tongue. Thus it could be assumed that some pupils who's mother tongue in the strict sense is another than Swedish get lost from the statistics, and it could maybe be said to show "native language" more than first language.

Below the major mother tongues among first graders in compulsory school are listed. Five of these languages are spoken in so many countries, that comparison with statistics over countries of origin would be erratic. For the other languages also the proportion of first and second generation immigrants among the first graders are given. Distinction is made between pupils from single-parent families, as it could be suspected that children from these families in average have more contacts with people of other ethnicity than have children from families where both parents have the same ethnic background. The data have been compiled from official Swedish statistics, Population statistics 1995, Part 3: Distribution by sex, age and citizenship etc (ISBN 91-618-0813-x), and regarding the instruction in Swedish as a second language the data are collected from Home language and home language instruction, Comprehensive school and integrated upper secondary school 1993/94 (Statistical report number U 72 SM 9401).

                                                                    
                              Country    1:st    2:nd  two parents   single-
 Mother         share among   Country     gen.    gen.   from same    parent
 tongue         first-graders of origin immig.  immig.     country    family
 ---------------------------- ---------------------------------------------
 Arabic            1,13%      n/a
 Finnish           0,98%      Finland     0,4%    5,0%        0,6%      1,6%
 Spanish           0,71%      n/a	  	    	               
 Persian           0,71%		  	    	               
 Kurdish           0,27%      Iran        0,5%    0,6%        0,6%      0,2%
 Turkish           0,48%      Turkey      0,2%    1,1%        0,9%      0,2%
 Serbo-Croatian    0,34%      no data	  	    	               
 Polnish           0,27%      Poland      0,2%    0,9%        0,2%      0,3%
 Assyrian          0,25%      n/a	  	    	               
 English           0,22%      n/a	  	    	               
 Somali            0,18%      Somalia     0,3%      0%                no data
 Greek             0,12%      Greece     0,02%    0,4%        0,09%     0,04%

Note: The Finland-Swedish immigration to Sweden was considerable in the first 20 years after the last world war, but among the school pupils of today this influence is neglectable. The overwhelming majority of the 5,4% immigrant kids in school have no Finland-Swedish roots.



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- Is the text above really reliable?
- See the discussion in section 1.2.2!
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FAQ-Related texts

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This page was last updated April the 27th in the year of 1998.

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