[endanke]

I've been living in Helsinki for 3 years and while I like the idea of supporting foreigners, I also find this a bit disappointing. I only know a handful of expacts who even attempted to learn Finnish, but I know a bunch of people who live here for 10-15 years and still not integrated because they only communicate in English. The simplest alternative would be to replace Swedish with English as the secondary official language, but support people more who wants to learn Finnish, especially because the local language courses were always full when I checked.

[nickff]

The non-integration you’re talking about is common in multi-cultural cities. Vancouver, Canada is a very strong example of this, with distinctly Chinese, Philippino, and Indian areas with large proportions of the population who do not integrate. It’s almost the opposite of a melting pot, seems stable, and could be described as ghetto-ized.

[robotresearcher]

There's also a large English-speaking population that never learned Squamish, since they settled in Granville about 150 years ago.

[jszymborski]

I'd argue it's a bit harder to endanger a majority language without violent relocation and re-education camps that the Squamish people suffered; but point taken.

[nickff]

I am sure the Kunda, Comb Ceramic, Corded Ware, Kiukainen, and Pöljä who used to occupy most of Finland didn't speak modern Finnish, yet here we are.

I understand the desire to make political points about the status of native/first nations populations in Canada, but frankly, English and French are Canada's official languages.