Meänkieli dialects

Meänkieli
meänkieli
Native to	Sweden, Finland
Region	Torne Valley
Native speakers	(60,000 cited 1997–2009)
Language family	Uralic Finnic Finnish Meänkieli
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Sweden
Language codes
ISO 639-3	fit
Glottolog	torn1244

Meänkieli (also known as Tornedalian Finnish, meaning "our language") is a Finno-Ugric language spoken in the River Torne valley in the north of Sweden, above the Arctic Circle. It is an official minority language of Sweden. The language could be seen as a mix between Finnish and Swedish, since it has been changed a lot by Swedish.

For many years, Swedish was the only language to be taught in the schools of the Torne valley. The population became bilingual. They spoke both Finnish and Swedish, but they were mostly only able to write in Swedish. Today many people in the younger generations only speak Swedish. Since 1999, Meänkieli is an official minority language of Sweden.

Since there are no Swedish statistics of the population's native languages, it is not known how many Meänkieli speakers there are. Taking statistics is also a bit controversial, as many people consider the language to be a dialect of Finnish.