Number of Russian-speaking families on the rise in Finland

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The number of completely Russian-speaking families in Finland increased by 800 last year, Statistics Finland reports.
      Families formed by a totally Russian-speaking couple are already slightly more common than families with a Finnish-speaking man and a Russian-speaking woman.
      Currently there are 7,700 Russian-speaking couples in Finland, when only two decades ago the corresponding figure was a mere 300.
     
When single-parent families are included, the total number of Russian-speaking families reaches 11,200.
      Families formed by a Finnish-speaking woman and a Russian-speaking spouse are still somewhat rare, with just over a thousand cases. Nevertheless, this combination has also grown substantially from the situation in 1990.
     
Those speaking Russian continue to form the largest group of foreign-language families in Finland.
      In some 3% of all families in Finland, the native language of the only parent or both parents was not Finnish, Swedish, or Sámi [spoken by the indigenous minority in Lapland].
      The share of Russian-speaking families among these foreign-language speaking families was as much as nearly 30%.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Report: Russian-speakers often suffer abuse at school and at work (26.2.2009)

See also:
  Marrying into Finland (3.8.2010)
  Finnish language teaching for foreigners in Helsinki found to be inadequate (22.8.2008)

Links:
  Statistics Finland: Number of all-Russian speaking families has exceeded that of bilingual Finnish-Russian families

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