Language Shift in Colonia Finlandesa, Misiones, Argentina

Authors

  • Eeva Sippola Universidad de Helsinki
  • Iida Vitikka Universidad de Turku

Keywords:

Finish, migrant languages, ethnolinguistic vitality, language shift, language loss

Abstract

This article is a sociolinguistic description of the community of Finnish speakers in Colonia Finlandesa, a migrant community that settled in Misiones, Argentina, at the beginning of the 20th century. Based on a corpus of interviews from the 1970s, we analyze the process of language loss and factors relevant to the ethnolinguistic vitality of Finnish in the community (Giles et al., 1977). The results provide new information about the historical Finnish communities outside Europe as well as the sociolinguistic and ideological motivations for the loss of Finnish as a language of everyday life in this immigrant community.

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Published

2022-11-29

Issue

Section

Dossier: Situaciones singulares o poco tratadas con relación a las lenguas de inmigración o extranjeras