Estonian Janeli Kuustik (left) and Sofia Jaldiani Iranian immigrants in vocational education vocational trail on February 27, 2013 in Helsinki. Photo Lehtikuva.
The number of foreign-language speakers in the country stood at 266,949 at the end of 2012, which is 4.9 percent of the total population, according to the Statistics Finland.
The report released Friday said that the largest group of the foreign-language speakers are migrated from Russia and a total of 62,554 people speak in Russian Language.
The group speaks in Estonian language are second in the list of foreign language speakers where 38,364 persons speak in the language followed by Somali (14,769 persons), English (14,666 persons) and Arabic (12,042 persons).
Source Statistics Finland
The report also said that 11.8 percent of the residents in the Helsinki region speak in foreign-language. in Uusimaa 9.3 percent of the people, in Åland, 6.1 percent of the people and in Varsinais-Suomi 5.1 percent of the people speak in foreign language.
The number of foreign language speakers is lower in South Ostrobothnia, 1.6 percent and in North Ostrobothnia, 1.9 percent.
The report also said that the official total population of Finland at the end of 2012 was 5,426,674, of whom 2,666,622 were men and 2,760,052 women.
Kurdish Haval Hossa Ahmad (left), Vietnamese Le Van Hai and Algerian Benlarbi Bilal Finnish language lesson immigrants vocational education vocational trail in Helsinki on February 27, 2013. Photo Lehtikuva
In the course of 2012, Finland’s population grew by 25,407 persons. The number of people whose native language is a foreign language grew by 22,122, which represented 87 per cent of the population growth. The number of people whose native language is Finnish grew by 3,497, those with Swedish as their native language decreased by 242 and the number of people that speak Sami as their native language grew by 30, the report added.
