Åland, an autonomous region of Finland, has the largest Swedish-speaking majority in Finland, with about 88% of the province, or about 25,500 people, speaking Swedish as their first language (specifically the Åland Swedish dialect). Swedish is also the sole official language of the province.[1] Finnish also has a presence, although it is small; only about 5% of Ålanders are Finnish-speaking.
| Mother tongue | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 2010 | 2020 | |||||
| Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | ||
| Swedish | 24,169 | 25,173 | 25,986 | ||||
| Finnish | 1,238 | 1,373 | 1,405 | ||||
| Romanian | 2 | 166 | 501 | ||||
| Latvian | 5 | 195 | 443 | ||||
| Estonian | 23 | 138 | 206 | ||||
| English | 69 | 97 | 164 | ||||
| Norwegian | 36 | 34 | 41 | ||||
| Other | 234 | 831 | 1,424 |
There are 59 spoken native languages in 2020 (with a total population of 29,884):[2]
While the number of Swedish-speakers grew from 24,169 in 2000 to 25,862 in 2019, their percentage has dropped from 93.7% in 2000 to 86.5% in 2019. For Finnish, the percentage and number of speakers has been about same (from 1,238 to 1,401; from 4.8% to 4.7%). The percentage of speakers of other languages grew from 1.5% in 2000 to 8.8% in 2019.