“I want to take back the language” – new Kven speakers’ linguistic identity

Leena Maria Heikkola & Antti Saloranta
UiT – The Arctic University of Norway | University of Turku | Åbo Akademi University

Kven is one of Norway’s national minority languages, but it is classified as endangered. Future Kven speakers are likely to be new speakers, meaning they learn Kven outside the home. We examine new Kven speakers’ (n = 10) hopes to reclaim the language lost by their families.