(I mean, at least in the Metropolitan area) Earlier I waited in line at a shop in Helsinki and behind me was a large group of schoolkids, all various people of colour and all speaking American English with each other. It’s a fairly common occurrence in Eastern Helsinki and makes you feel like you’re in the US or Canada
It’s interesting how quick things have developed just since I was a kid
I think it’s cool but it seems to cause Finnish boomers enormous existential anxiety of the Great Replacement variety
at least language is something we made up to communicate and two people not being able to is a failure, there’s no analogy to species extinction in that regard.
Language and culture arguably can’t be seperated. Language extinction is the loss of human cultural legacies. It’s the assimilation of indigenous peoples. There’s a reason language rights are often such a fraught political issue.
feel like there’s a difference between what was deliberately done to indigenous people and a more gradual “common second language” thing going on.
I think it’s a continuum. It’s less stick and more carrot now, but also the last speakers of languages are dying. Kids don’t necessarily understand the importance of learning their ancestral language when anglophonic pop culture seems more vibrant.