Kotimaiset kielet työelämässä

This article deals with the workplace communication of bilingual Swedish-speaking Finns, the biggest linguistic minority of Finland. The article is based on a survey and focuses on the communication in the private sector. The three main questions here are: How often and in what kind of communication situations are the national languages and English used at work? How do the Swedish-speaking Finns themselves evaluate their Finnish skills in their working life? And, how do they view the language skills attained in their past education – are they transferable to the working life? The study shows that Swedish-speaking Finns working in the private sector need high skills of both national languages and English on a daily or weekly basis in different communication situations. It is also shown that there is a certain amount of criticism towards earlier language education concerning the education of the national languages.