FinLingDiv

This dataset is a resource developed to support research on linguistic diversity. Quantitative research in the field is limited by the lack of openly available spatiotemporal data on speaker numbers. While most such data would stem from either 1) national censuses or 2) estimates, Finland offers an exceptional possibility of studying linguistic diversity through its Population Information system, which records, among other data, the address and native language of any person residing in Finland. The speaker data is published by Statistics Finland (CC BY 4.0), and for each year from 1990 to 2024, we collected the number of native languages and their speakers registered in each municipality. As per statistic Finland, the data of a given year corresponds to the 31 december of that year.  

We structured and joined the data into a single CSV: speakers_time_series_municipality.csv.
We aggregated the speaker numbers across all municipalities to yield a national time series of L1-speaker statistics: speakers_time_series_finland.csv.

Furthermore, we provide three time series with pre-computed diversity measures according to the Leinster-Cobbold framework. One for each municipality: diversity_time_series_municipality.csv, one for each region: diversity_region_time_series.csv

 one for Finland as a whole: diversity_finland_time_series.csv, 

The data can be explored interactively at GitHub pages: or as a shiny app.

The code is available at: https://github.com/Eszettfors/FinLingDiv

This research was funded by WWTF (grant number ICT23-012). It is a part of the DIGILINGDIV-project.

Changelog:
- V1.1: updated with data from 2025.
- V1.1.1: added regional timeseries on speaker numbers and diversity indices.