Official minority languages of Sweden In 1999, the Minority Language Committee of Sweden formally declared five official minority languages: Finnish, Sami, Romani, Yiddish, and Meänkieli (Tornedal Finnish). The Swedish language dominates commercial and cultural life in Sweden but did not officially become the country's main language until 2009, when a new language law entered into effect. The need for this legal status had been the subject of protracted debate and proposed legislation was narrowly defeated in 2005. The minority languages have been legally recognized to protect the cultural and historical heritage of their respective speech communities. These communities are given certain rights on that basis, such as school education in their language, and its use in dealing with governmental agencies. Criteria for inclusion These are the criteria established by the Minority Language Committee, influenced by the directives from the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 1997. To be accorded official minority status, a language must have been spoken in Sweden for a significant amount of time. A precise figure has not been revealed, but qualified estimations consider 100 years to be reasonable, based on the included and excluded languages. A significant immigration to Sweden did not start until after World War I, and many languages currently spoken by a large number of people in Sweden are excluded, among them Arabic and Persian. It is also required that the language be spoken by a significant number of people and be centred in a specific geographical region (the latter, however, not applied for Romani and Yiddish). Furthermore, it is a condition that the granting of official minority language status should be of cultural benefit to the group speaking it. It is allegedly for this reason that Swedish Sign Language was not included – even though it is a unique language with a history dating back to the 18th century, it was considered to have a sufficiently stable basis already in Swedish culture. Common culture is yet another criterion for inclusion. Affected languages Finnish Finnish has been spoken in Sweden ever since the (then provincial) borders were drawn in the 13th century. Sweden has always had a significant migration to and from Finland. As the two languages belong to different language families it is easy to distinguish them, unlike the neighbouring languages Norwegian and Danish. The number of Finnish speakers in Sweden today has been estimated to over 460,000. Even though many current Swedes are of full or mixed Finnish descent, Swedish is the main language in practice for many bilinguals. Finnish and Meänkieli can be used in the northernmost municipalities of Gällivare, Haparanda, Kiruna, Pajala and Övertorneå and its immediate neighbourhood. On 11 December, 2007, Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE reported, that in Uppsala, Sweden, speaking Finnish was forbidden from municipal employees, and that this was the case also with small talk during breaks. According to an agreement between the city council and the municipal trade union the official working language is Swedish and two employees were not allowed to speak Finnish with one another in the common work premises or in break rooms. The Equality Ombudsman considered that a ban was permissible in that particular case.<ref>Stockholm County Board, Från erkännande till egenmakt, från ord till handling. Rapport från konferens om den minoritetspolitiska reformen. May 2010</ref> Meänkieli Meänkieli (also known as Tornionlaaksonsuomi [lit. Tornedalian Finnish] and Tornedalian) is spoken by a population in northern Sweden. It is closely related to and mutually intelligible with Finnish and sometimes considered a dialect thereof, with many loanwords from Swedish. Especially in Finland the distinction of Meänkieli as a separate language is seen as language