"Island är en ö."
Translation:Iceland is an island.
34 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
It's a fascinating read for those interested in the language situation in bilingual Finland. Åland enjoys a large degree of autonomy, and the islanders are very fierce about preserving their Swedish-speaking identity. Fact is that if you weren't born an Ålander, and want to become one, you will have to prove that you speak Swedish.
Åland is not a country, so you can't be a citizen of Åland. But the local autonomy allows for what's called åländsk hembygdsrätt, which you'll need to own a house or land, or to run a business. Finnish citizens who received hembygdsrätt before the age of 12 are also exempt from military service, due to Åland being a demilitarized territory.
If you weren't born to Ålander parent(s), and want to acquire the hembygdsrätt, you will have to prove you speak Swedish.
956
Not quite as much as you think; Icelandic is a relatively pure Germanic language, somewhat close to Old English, and all european languages share a common ancestor (with possible exceptions of Celtic and Basque languages) in Proto-Indo-European. Asian, African, American, and Pacific languages would likely all be farther removed, unless they've been very strongly influenced by a European language recently.
In Europe, Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian are not PIE languages. The Celtic languages are PIE languages.
Many major languages of Asia are PIE languages, which account for about half the PIE speakers across the world today. The "Indo" in Proto-Indo-European should be a big hint :) Rather than list them here, I suggest taking a look at the Indo-Iranian langauges Wikipedia article. That's not to mention Russian (150 million speakers), which is spoken from the Atlantic to the Pacific in Asia, though it's usually classified as a European language.
636
Just a minor comment: the intonation sounds a bit misleading, as if it was a question with wrong word order. Or is it just me hearing this?
235
The word for 'island' is priceless. I suppose that if you don't pronounce it right, it might be mistaken for something else (?)