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iTWire: Do you teach your kids about their heritage and encourage them to learn their mother-tongue?
LT: We speak Swedish at home, although with the kids going to regular English-speaking school all their friends obviously speak English, and it has become the stronger language for them, even if Patricia (our eldest) didn't really hear any English at all until she was two or three years old.
They don't even know any Finnish - both me and my wife are of the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland ("finlandssvenskar") and in fact my English is much stronger than my Finnish. I went to Swedish-speaking school all the way to high school, and did 90 percent of my university studies in Swedish too. So to me Finnish was always a distant second language that I'd use mainly when shopping or something like that. My wife went to Finnish-speaking school, but spoke Swedish at home, so while her Finnish is rather stronger than mine, Swedish is her "emotional" language too.
But "teach them about their heritage"? Outside of the language we speak at home, not really.
iTWire: Where do you stand on this whole debate about multiculturalism? Both the US and Australia are melting pots with lots and lots of cultures so the debate is very much alive here. As I guess it must be there too, especially during a time like this when the economy is shot to pieces.
LT: Well, I think one reason I've avoided having to think too much about that discussion is that realistically, it's not like I come from some wildly different cultural background. It's not like the whole "move from Western Europe to the US" was a huge shift of culture. Sure, there are differences, but we're still fundamentally talking "Western culture" and it's not exactly hard fitting in with light skin, blue eyes and brown hair.
And I'm not a huge fan of some rigid multiculturalism and some hardline "you should protect your own culture". If you move to a new place, you certainly don't need to adopt every single cultural notion of that place, but I also think it's crazy and inflexible to think that you should try to take your culture with you. You moved. Deal with it. Don't try to re-create your homeland in the new place. I think it's really sad to see all those "enclaves" where people of the same background move together to make it easier for them to stay the same and keep their old culture. They may make for some great tourist areas or interesting food places, but still...
But as mentioned, it's easy for me to say. I didn't feel (or look) all that out of place.
