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85-664: Finnish Americans ( Finnish : amerikansuomalaiset , pronounced [ˈɑmerikɑnˌsuo̯mɑlɑi̯set] ) comprise Americans with ancestral roots in Finland , or Finnish people who immigrated to and reside in the United States. The Finnish-American population is around 650,000. Many Finnish people historically immigrated to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and the Iron Range of northern Minnesota to work in

170-819: A "j", e.g. vesj [vesʲ] "water", cf. standard vesi [vesi] . The first known written account in Helsinki slang is from the 1890 short story Hellaassa by young Santeri Ivalo (words that do not exist in, or deviate from, the standard spoken Finnish of its time are in bold): Kun minä eilen illalla palasin labbiksesta , tapasin Aasiksen kohdalla Supiksen , ja niin me laskeusimme tänne Espikselle , jossa oli mahoton hyvä piikis . Mutta me mentiin Studikselle suoraan Hudista tapaamaan, ja jäimme sinne pariksi tunniksi, kunnes ajoimme Kaisikseen . There are two main registers of Finnish used throughout

255-612: A Latin-script alphabet derived from the Swedish alphabet, and is phonemic to a great extent. Vowel length and consonant length are distinguished, and there are a range of diphthongs , although vowel harmony limits which diphthongs are possible. Finnish belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family ; as such, it is one of the few European languages that is not Indo-European . The Finnic branch also includes Estonian and

340-566: A collaboration between Finnish-Americans and Finnish-Canadians: 2000 ( Toronto, Ontario ), 2005 ( Marquette, Michigan ) and 2010 ( Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario ). Finnish American culture is also celebrated at Finlandia University in Hancock, Michigan , formerly Suomi College, which has been the only Finnish American institution of higher learning in the United States since the closing of Work People's College in Duluth, Minnesota in 1941. Finlandia

425-473: A considerable influence upon the spoken word, because illiteracy is nonexistent and many Finns are avid readers. In fact, it is still not entirely uncommon to meet people who "talk book-ish" ( puhuvat kirjakieltä ); it may have connotations of pedantry, exaggeration, moderation, weaseling or sarcasm (somewhat like heavy use of Latinate words in English, or more old-fashioned or "pedantic" constructions: compare

510-472: A few individuals and groups dared make the move. This was largely due to the long distance between Europe and America, and the difficulties associated with crossing it. However, as the Industrial Revolution began with the turn of the 19th century, bringing with it such technological innovations as railroads and steam ships , these obstacles slowly began to disappear. While the rest of Europe

595-518: A few minority languages spoken around the Baltic Sea and in Russia's Republic of Karelia . The closest relative of Finnish is either Ingrian , or depending on the definition, Karelian . Finnic languages form a dialect continuum, where for instance Finnish and Estonian are not separated by any single isogloss that would separate dialects considered "Finnish" from those considered "Estonian", despite

680-606: A few years in North America, and then return to their native land once they had become rich. However, only about twenty percent of the migrants returned to Finland . Those who did, managed to import new ideas and technologies into Finland and put them into use there. Approximately ten thousand Finns returned from the New World, not to Finland but to the Soviet Union, in the 1920s and the 1930s to "build socialism" in

765-677: A group of Laestadian preachers and their followers immigrated to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan , bringing their faith with them. In 1873 the Finnish Laestadians started their own congregation at Calumet , Michigan . By 1906 the Laestadian or Apostolic Lutheran movement in America had 68 churches and a communicant body of over 8,000. The denomination was a significant minority within the Finnish Lutheran community in

850-580: A kind of "cultural capital" of the Finnish Americans. Finland Calling , a weekly Finnish cultural television program hosted by Carl Pellonpaa, was broadcast on WLUC-TV in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. In March 2015 the program's final episode aired, ending 53 years of weekly broadcasts. Stanton Township, Michigan , is the place in the U.S. with the largest proportion of people with Finnish ancestry, at 47%. The median Finnish-American household income

935-460: A language of administration, journalism, literature, and science in Finland, along with Swedish. In 1853 Daniel Europaeus published the first Swedish-Finnish dictionary, and between 1866 and 1880 Elias Lönnrot compiled the first Finnish-Swedish dictionary. In the same period, Antero Warelius conducted ethnographic research and, among other topics, he documented the geographic distribution of

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1020-475: A more systematic writing system. Along the way, Finnish lost several fricative consonants in a process of sound change . The sounds [ð] and [θ(ː)] disappeared from the language, surviving only in a small rural region in Western Finland. In the standard language, however, the effect of the lost sounds is thus: Modern Finnish punctuation, along with that of Swedish, uses the colon (:) to separate

1105-445: A north–south split as well as an east–west split. The northern dialects of Proto-Finnic, from which Finnish developed, lacked the mid vowel [ ɤ ] . This vowel was found only in the southern dialects, which developed into Estonian , Livonian , and Votian . The northern variants used third person singular pronoun hän instead of southern tämä (Est. tema ). While the eastern dialects of Proto-Finnic (which developed in

1190-569: A promisingly warm midsummer, freezing temperatures in early September ravaged crops; as a result, the harvest was about half the average. By the autumn of 1867, people were dying by the thousands. In addition to hunger, 1866–68 saw what was thought of at the time as typhus killing 270,000 people in the region. Municipalities that were particularly badly hit were Eno, Ilomantsi , Pielisjärvi and Rautavaara in North Karelia , and Ostrobothnia , Satakunta and Häme . The government of

1275-555: A separate taxonomic " Finno-Samic " node is controversial. The Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California , United States, classifies Finnish as a level III language (of four levels) in terms of learning difficulty for native English speakers. Finnish is spoken by about five million people, most of whom reside in Finland. There are also notable Finnish-speaking minorities in Sweden, Norway, Russia, Estonia, Brazil, Canada, and

1360-440: A total amount of Finnish-speakers roughly between 7,200 and 15,600. In the latest census , around 1000 people in Russia claimed to speak Finnish natively; however, a larger amount of 14,000 claimed to be able to speak Finnish in total. There are also forms of Finnish spoken by diasporas outside Europe, such as American Finnish , spoken by Finnish Americans , and Siberian Finnish , spoken by Siberian Finns . Today, Finnish

1445-674: Is $ 70,045. Finnish Americans by metropolitan statistical area in 2019: Architect and product designer Eero Saarinen immigrated to the United States in 1923 when he was thirteen years of age and grew up in Michigan . His father was architect Eliel Saarinen , the first president of the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He studied architecture at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and later

1530-437: Is a Finnic language of the Uralic language family, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland, alongside Swedish . In Sweden , both Finnish and Meänkieli (which has significant mutual intelligibility with Finnish ) are official minority languages . Kven , which like Meänkieli is mutually intelligible with Finnish,

1615-508: Is abbreviation of word-final vowels, and in many respects they resemble Estonian. The Tavastian dialects ( hämäläismurteet ) are spoken in Tavastia . They are closest to the standard language, but feature some slight vowel changes, such as the opening of diphthong-final vowels ( tie → tiä , miekka → miakka , kuolisi → kualis ), the change of d to l (mostly obsolete) or trilled r (widespread, nowadays disappearance of d

1700-714: Is named for Herman Keranen , of Puolanka , Finland. A significant number of Finnish immigrants also settled in northern Minnesota , especially in the Arrowhead Region , along with portions of Aitkin , Crow Wing , and Carlton counties, often working in the region's iron mines . A number of the Finns fleeing the Russification efforts in their native country also immigrated to many of the mill-towns of New England, where they became known for their woodworking skills. The first immigrants to North America arrived at

1785-485: Is of Finnish descent although she was born in Sweden . FinnFest USA is an annual festival held to celebrate Finnish heritage and culture in the United States. Organized by a non-profit organization of the same name, FinnFest USA has been held in a different location each year since 1983, often incorporating regional cultural elements of the local site into the year's event. To date there have also been three FinnGrandFests,

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1870-664: Is one of two official languages of Finland (the other being Swedish), and has been an official language of the European Union since 1995. However, the Finnish language did not have an official status in the country during the period of Swedish rule , which ended in 1809. After the establishment of the Grand Duchy of Finland , and against the backdrop of the Fennoman movement , the language obtained its official status in

1955-746: Is popular) and the personal pronouns ( me: meitin ('we: our'), te: teitin ('you: your') and he: heitin ('they: their')). The South Ostrobothnian dialects ( eteläpohjalaismurteet ) are spoken in Southern Ostrobothnia . Their most notable feature is the pronunciation of "d" as a tapped or even fully trilled /r/ . The Central and North Ostrobothnian dialects ( keski- ja pohjoispohjalaismurteet ) are spoken in Central and Northern Ostrobothnia . The Lapland dialects ( lappilaismurteet ) are spoken in Lapland . The dialects spoken in

2040-629: Is spoken in the Norwegian counties of Troms and Finnmark by a minority of Finnish descent. Finnish is typologically agglutinative and uses almost exclusively suffixal affixation . Nouns , adjectives , pronouns , numerals and verbs are inflected depending on their role in the sentence . Sentences are normally formed with subject–verb–object word order, although the extensive use of inflection allows them to be ordered differently. Word order variations are often reserved for differences in information structure . Finnish orthography uses

2125-615: The Finnish Diet of 1863. Finnish also enjoys the status of an official minority language in Sweden . Under the Nordic Language Convention , citizens of the Nordic countries speaking Finnish have the opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable to any interpretation or translation costs. However, concerns have been expressed about

2210-2038: The Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis, Missouri , the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, the TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport, and the main terminal of Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C. Eero's son, Eric Saarinen , is a cinematographer and film director, who has photographed and cinematographed several features, including The Hills Have Eyes , Lost in America , and Exploratorium . Notable Americans of some Finnish descent also include several film stars such as actresses Anna Easteden , Christine Lahti , Marian Nixon , Maila Nurmi , Pamela Anderson , Leslie Mann and Jessica Lange , actors Albert Salmi, Matt Damon , Richard Davalos and George Gaynes , and director David Lynch . Other notable individuals are author Jean M. Auel , historian Max Dimont (born in Finland of Russian Jewish parentage), cook and cookbook author Beatrice Ojakangas , politician Emil Hurja , labor activist T-Bone Slim , U.S. Communist Party leader Gus Hall (originally Arvo Kustaa Halberg), Finnish-Kiowa-Comanche U.S. Attorney Arvo Mikkanen , mathematician Lars Ahlfors , musicians Dave Mustaine , Jaco Pastorius , Einar Aaron Swan , Jorma Kaukonen and Mark Hoppus , singer-songwriter Amelia Presley, science fiction author Hannu Rajaniemi , computer scientists Linus Torvalds and Alfred Aho , former Google executive and CEO of Yahoo Marissa Mayer , co-founder of Apple Mike Markkula , chairman and CEO of General Motors Mary Barra , astronaut Timothy L. Kopra , special forces officer Larry Thorne , ice hockey player Matt Niskanen and serial killer Aileen Wuornos . Porn actress Puma Swede

2295-520: The Grand Duchy of Finland was ill-equipped to handle a crisis of such magnitude. There was no money readily available to import food from largely monopolized Central European markets, and the government was slow to recognize the severity of the situation. Finance minister Johan Vilhelm Snellman , in particular, did not want to borrow, lest Finland's recently introduced currency, the Finnish markka , be weakened because of high interest rates. When money

2380-519: The Karelian ASSR . This took place mainly for ideological reasons and was strongly supported by the political elite of the USSR. Today, the greatest concentration of Finnish Americans is in Michigan's Upper Peninsula , where they form 16% of the population, and are the largest ancestral group in the peninsula's western counties. Hancock , one city of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, could be considered

2465-747: The Lutheran Church was built for Finns. Finns started coming to the United States in large numbers in the late 19th century, and this movement continued until the mid-20th century. However, there were some Finns in the United States before this; they were instrumental in the development of the New Sweden colony on the Delaware River , later absorbed into New Netherland . Many townships were established by Finnish Americans, including Herman, located in Baraga County , Michigan. The town

2550-531: The New Sweden colony by the lower Delaware River in 1640. Finland was an integrated part of the Kingdom of Sweden at the time, and a Swedish colony in the New World thus had subjects from Finland as well. In two years' time, the number of Finns in the settlement had grown to fifty, and was increasing. New Sweden changed hands and came under Dutch control in 1655 and the Finnish community, while still small,

2635-649: The Torne Valley . Many of the emigrants left by ship from the port town of Hanko . Judging from municipalities of origin and later linguistic statistics, it is estimated that about 20-22% of all Finnish emigrants from 1893 to 1929 were Finland Swedes of which two thirds came from the Swedish-speaking coastal parts of Ostrobothnia, and also many from the Åland Islands which had a high share of emigrants relative to population. This would mean an over-representation of Swedish speakers emigrating from Finland at

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2720-532: The Ural Mountains region and/or the bend of the middle Volga . The strong case for Proto-Uralic is supported by common vocabulary with regularities in sound correspondences, as well as by the fact that the Uralic languages have many similarities in structure and grammar. Despite having overlapping geographical distributions, Finnic languages and Sami languages are not closely related, and the hypothesis of

2805-746: The Yale University and graduated in 1934. After touring Europe and Africa for a couple of years he returned to the States and became a citizen in 1940. During the Second World War Saarinen worked for Office of Strategic Services (OSS) which later became the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Saarinen is famous for his furniture and architectural designs. His designs include the Gateway Arch at

2890-513: The stem of a word and its grammatical ending in some cases, for example after acronyms , as in EU:ssa 'in the EU'. (This contrasts with some other alphabetic writing systems, which would use other symbols, such as e.g. apostrophe, hyphen.) Since suffixes play a prominent role in the language, this use of the colon is quite common. In the 19th century Johan Vilhelm Snellman and others began to stress

2975-497: The 1860s seemed doomed to remain laborious, stunted, and forever at the mercy of unpredictable weather. In 1867, a severe crop failure in Finland drove masses of Finns, especially from rural Ostrobothnia , to migrate into Norway , from where they later moved to the United States and Canada . The Laestadian Finns longed for a rural way of life and religious toleration which they believed they would find in America. Thus,

3060-570: The 1870s, there were only 3,000 migrants from Finland, but their number rapidly grew thereafter. New migrants often sent letters home, describing their life in the New World, and this encouraged more and more people to leave and try their luck in America. Rumours began of the acres of land that could be cleared into vast productive fields, and the opportunity to earn "a barrel of American dollars" in mines, factories, and railroads. There were also professional recruiters, or agents, employed by mining and shipping companies, who encouraged Finns to move to

3145-430: The 20th century, until U.S. authorities set up a quota of 529 Finnish immigrants per year in 1929. Initially, this led to an increase in Finnish immigration to Canada. But as social and economic conditions in Finland improved significantly during this era, overall immigration decreased by the middle of the century. The American revolutionary James P. Cannon noted that a considerable part of these immigrants tended towards

3230-704: The Finnish American Reporter newspaper. Salolampi Finnish Language Village is a Finnish language immersion camp in Bemidji , Minnesota . Founded in 1978, it is a member of the Concordia Language Villages , and celebrates Finnish and Finnish-American heritage, culture, and language. Finnish-Americans historically favored Democratic Party candidates, owing to their frequent employment in mining and other blue-collar industries. This has changed in recent decades as many of

3315-458: The Finnish dialects. The most important contributions to improving the status of Finnish were made by Elias Lönnrot . His impact on the development of modern vocabulary in Finnish was particularly significant. In addition to compiling the Kalevala , he acted as an arbiter in disputes about the development of standard Finnish between the proponents of western and eastern dialects, ensuring that

3400-534: The United States. More than 90% of the Finnish immigrants lived in urban centers. This recruitment activity was frowned upon by the authorities of the Grand Duchy, and it was mostly done in secret. It was eventually brought to an end in the late 1880s by legislation in the United States, but the decade still saw a 12-fold increase in the number of Finnish migrants compared to the previous decade, as 36,000 Finns left their home country for North America. The movement

3485-631: The United States. The majority of the population of Finland (90.37% as of 2010 ) speak Finnish as their first language . The remainder speak Swedish (5.42%), one of the Sámi languages (for example Northern , Inari , or Skolt ), or another language as their first language. Finnish is spoken as a second language in Estonia by about 167,000 people. The Finnic varities found in Norway's Finnmark (namely Kven ) and in northern Sweden (namely Meänkieli ) have

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3570-769: The Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Most Finnish immigrants at the time joined the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church of America , which eventually became part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and remains in Calumet, Michigan, alongside various Apostolic (Laestadian) Lutheran churches. The years between 1870 and 1930 are sometimes referred to as the Great Migration of Finns to North America. In

3655-515: The autumn were unfavourable. When stored food ran out, thousands took to the roads to beg. The following winter was hard, and spring was late. In Helsinki , the average temperature in May 1867 was +1.8  °C (35.2  °F ), about 8 °C (14 °F) below the long-time average and by far the coldest May in the meteorological record of Helsinki since observations commenced in 1829. In many places, lakes and rivers remained frozen until June. After

3740-647: The available farmland in the United States was already taken and Canada's was largely still available. While many immigrants pursued farming , others found employment in mining , construction , and the forest industry, while women usually worked as maids . In the case of the Finnish-American enclave in the Finger Lakes region south of Ithaca, New York early in the 20th century, Finns left urban jobs in order to acquire farms that had been sold by their previous owners. The migration continued well into

3825-529: The border created between Sweden and Finland in 1809 when Russia annexed Finland. This caused the speakers of Meänkieli to be isolated from the developments of standard Finnish and instead be influenced by the Swedish language. However, it is still mutually integible with Finnish, and is thus sometimes considered a dialect of the Finnish language. The Kven language is spoken in Finnmark and Troms , in Norway. Its speakers are descendants of Finnish emigrants to

3910-435: The colloquial language) ei kö teillä ole e(i) ks teil(lä) oo "don't you (pl.) have (it)?" (compare eiks to standard Estonian confirmatory interrogative eks ) Finnish famine of 1866%E2%80%931868 In Finland, the famine is known as "the great hunger years", or suuret nälkävuodet . About 8.5% of the entire population died of hunger; in the hardest-hit areas up to 20%. The total death toll

3995-404: The country. One is the "standard language" ( yleiskieli ), and the other is the " spoken language " ( puhekieli ). The standard language is used in formal situations like political speeches and newscasts. Its written form, the "book language" ( kirjakieli ), is used in nearly all written texts, not always excluding even the dialogue of common people in popular prose. The spoken language, on

4080-478: The difference between saying "There's no children I'll leave it to" and "There are no children to whom I shall leave it"). More common is the intrusion of typically literary constructions into a colloquial discourse, as a kind of quote from written Finnish. It is quite common to hear book-like and polished speech on radio or TV, and the constant exposure to such language tends to lead to the adoption of such constructions even in everyday language. A prominent example of

4165-445: The effect of the standard language is the development of the consonant gradation form /ts   : ts/ as in metsä : metsän , as this pattern was originally (1940) found natively only in the dialects of the southern Karelian isthmus and Ingria . It has been reinforced by the spelling "ts" for the dental fricative [θː] , used earlier in some western dialects. The spelling and the pronunciation this encourages however approximate

4250-551: The formal. However, in signalling the former in writing, syncope and sandhi – especially internal – may occasionally amongst other characteristics be transcribed, e.g. menenpä → me(n)empä . This never occurs in the standard variety. he mene vät ne mene e "they go" loss of a number contrast on verbs in the 3rd person ( menee is 3rd person singular in the formal language) ( minä) o le n mä o o n "I am" or "I will be" and no pro-drop (i.e., personal pronouns are usually mandatory in

4335-446: The future status of Finnish in Sweden, for example, where reports produced for the Swedish government during 2017 show that minority language policies are not being respected, particularly for the 7% of Finns settled in the country. The Uralic family of languages, of which Finnish is a member, are hypothesized to derive from a single ancestor language termed Proto-Uralic , spoken sometime between 8,000 and 2,000 BCE (estimates vary) in

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4420-461: The grammatical and phonological changes also include the most common pronouns and suffixes, which amount to frequent but modest differences. Some sound changes have been left out of the formal language. For example, irregular verbs have developed in the spoken language as a result of the elision of sonorants in some verbs of the Type III class (with subsequent vowel assimilation ), but only when

4505-470: The language, which he based on Swedish, German, and Latin. The Finnish standard language still relies on his innovations with regard to spelling, though Agricola used less systematic spelling than is used today. Though Agricola's intention was that each phoneme (and allophone under qualitative consonant gradation ) should correspond to one letter, he failed to achieve this goal in various respects. For example, k , c , and q were all used for

4590-415: The main cultural and political centres. The standard language, however, has always been a consciously constructed medium for literature. It preserves grammatical patterns that have mostly vanished from the colloquial varieties and, as its main application is writing, it features complex syntactic patterns that are not easy to handle when used in speech. The colloquial language develops significantly faster, and

4675-516: The mining industry; much of the population in these regions is of Finnish descent. Some Finns, like the ancestors of John Morton , came to the Swedish colony of New Sweden , located in Delaware in the mid-17th century. In Russian America , Finns came to Sitka (when it was still called New Archangel) as migrant workers. Arvid Adolf Etholén was the first Finnish governor of Russian America, and

4760-411: The modern-day eastern Finnish dialects, Veps, Karelian, and Ingrian) formed genitive plural nouns via plural stems (e.g., eastern Finnish kalojen < * kaloi -ten ), the western dialects of Proto-Finnic (today's Estonian, Livonian and western Finnish varieties) used the non-plural stems (e.g., Est. kalade < * kala -ten ). Another defining characteristic of the east–west split

4845-624: The most part, the dialects operate on the same phonology and grammar. There are only marginal examples of sounds or grammatical constructions specific to some dialect and not found in standard Finnish. Two examples are the voiced dental fricative found in the Rauma dialect , and the Eastern exessive case . The Southwest Finnish dialects ( lounaissuomalaismurteet ) are spoken in Southwest Finland and Satakunta . Their typical feature

4930-419: The need to improve the status of Finnish. Ever since the days of Mikael Agricola, written Finnish had been used almost exclusively in religious contexts, but now Snellman's Hegelian nationalistic ideas of Finnish as a fully-fledged national language gained considerable support. Concerted efforts were made to improve the status of the language and to modernize it, and by the end of the century Finnish had become

5015-453: The original pronunciation, still reflected in e.g. Karelian /čč   : č/ ( meččä : mečän ). In the spoken language, a fusion of Western /tt   : tt/ ( mettä : mettän ) and Eastern /ht   : t/ ( mehtä : metän ) has resulted in /tt   : t/ ( mettä : metän ). Neither of these forms are identifiable as, or originate from, a specific dialect. The orthography of informal language follows that of

5100-616: The other hand, is the main variety of Finnish used in popular TV and radio shows and at workplaces, and may be preferred to a dialect in personal communication. Standard Finnish is prescribed by the Language Office of the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland and is the language used in official communication. The Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish ( Nykysuomen sanakirja 1951–61), with 201,000 entries,

5185-447: The phoneme / k / . Likewise, he alternated between dh and d to represent the allophonic [ ð ] (like th in English this ), between dh and z to represent / θː / (like th in thin , but longer in duration), and between gh and g to represent the allophonic [ ɣ ] . Agricola did not consistently represent vowel length in his orthography. Others revised Agricola's work later, striving for

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5270-399: The radical left in politics: "Under the impact of the Russian Revolution the foreign-born socialist movement grew by leaps and bounds. The foreign-born were organized in language federations, practically autonomous bodies affiliated with the Socialist Party. [Among others] there were about 12 thousand Finns, organized in their own federation". Most Finnish migrants had planned to stay only for

5355-442: The region in the 18th and 19th centuries. Kven is an official minority language in Norway. The Eastern dialects consist of the widespread Savonian dialects ( savolaismurteet ) spoken in Savo and nearby areas, and the South-Eastern dialects now spoken only in Finnish South Karelia . The South Karelian dialects ( eteläkarjalaismurteet ) were previously also spoken on the Karelian Isthmus and in Ingria . The Karelian Isthmus

5440-469: The rural regions in which they are numerous have swung to the Republican Party . In 2010, the three congressional districts with the highest concentrations of Finnish Americans (Michigan 1st, Wisconsin 7th, and Minnesota 8th), all adjacent to Lake Superior, flipped from Democratic to Republican control. General: Finnish language Finnish ( endonym : suomi [ˈsuo̯mi] or suomen kieli [ˈsuo̯meŋ ˈkie̯li] )

5525-401: The second syllable of the word is short. The result is that some forms in the spoken language are shortened, e.g. tule-n → tuu-n ('I come'), while others remain identical to the standard language hän tulee "he comes", never * hän tuu ). However, the longer forms such as tule can be used in spoken language in other forms as well. The literary language certainly still exerts

5610-636: The status of official minority languages, and thus can be considered distinct languages from Finnish. However, since these languages are mutually intelligible , one may alternatively view them as dialects of the same language . No language census exists for Norway, neither for Kven, standard Finnish, or combined. As of 2023, 7,454 first- or second-generation immigrants from Finland were registered as having Norwegian residency, while as of 2021, 235 Finns were registered as foreigners studying at Norwegian higher education. Great Norwegian Encyclopedia estimates Kven speakers at 2,000-8,000. Altogether, this results in

5695-427: The time. In the years surrounding the turn of the 20th century, settlement was focused around three specific regions: The immigration of Finns gave birth to a strong Finnish-American culture, especially in cities such as Duluth and Ashtabula, Ohio. Many villages were named after places in Finland (such as Toivola, Minnesota , Savo, South Dakota , and Oulu, Wisconsin ). The Finnish exodus took place after most of

5780-405: The travel journal, the words are those of a Finnish bishop whose name is unknown. The erroneous use of gelen (Modern Finnish kielen ) in the accusative case, rather than kieltä in the partitive, and the lack of the conjunction mutta are typical of foreign speakers of Finnish even today. At the time, most priests in Finland spoke Swedish . During the Middle Ages, when Finland

5865-422: The two standard languages being not mutually intelligible. Finnish demonstrates an affiliation with other Uralic languages (such as Hungarian and Sami languages ) in several respects including: Several theories exist as to the geographic origin of Finnish and the other Uralic languages. The most widely held view is that they originated as a Proto-Uralic language somewhere in the boreal forest belt around

5950-447: The use of Finnish through parish clerk schools, the use of Swedish in church, and by having Swedish-speaking servants and maids move to Finnish-speaking areas. The first comprehensive writing system for Finnish was created by Mikael Agricola , a Finnish bishop, in the 16th century. He based his writing system on the western dialects . Agricola's ultimate plan was to translate the Bible , but first he had to develop an orthography for

6035-492: The vicinity of the Ural Mountains . Over time, Proto-Uralic split into various daughter languages , which themselves continued to change and diverge, yielding yet more descendants. One of these descendants is the reconstructed Proto-Finnic , from which the Finnic languages developed. Current models assume that three or more Proto-Finnic dialects evolved during the first millennium BCE. These dialects were defined geographically, and were distinguished from one another along

6120-626: The western dialects preferred by Agricola retained their preeminent role, while many originally dialect words from Eastern Finland were introduced to the standard language, thus enriching it considerably. The first novel written in Finnish (and by a Finnish speaker) was Seven Brothers ( Seitsemän veljestä ), published by Aleksis Kivi in 1870. The dialects of Finnish are divided into two distinct groups, Western and Eastern. The dialects are largely mutually intelligible and are distinguished from each other by changes in vowels, diphthongs and rhythm, as well as in preferred grammatical constructions. For

6205-403: The western parts of Lapland are recognizable by retention of old "h" sounds in positions where they have disappeared from other dialects. One form of speech related to Northern dialects, Meänkieli , which is spoken on the Swedish side of the border is recognized in Sweden as its own distinct language, having its own standardized language separate from Finnish. This form of speech developed from

6290-414: Was 270,000 in three years, about 150,000 in excess of normal mortality. The worst-hit areas were Satakunta , Tavastia , Ostrobothnia , and North Karelia . Parts of the country had suffered poor harvests in previous years, most notably in 1862. The summer of 1866 was extremely rainy, and staple crops failed widely: potatoes and root vegetables rotted in the fields, and conditions for sowing grain in

6375-496: Was a prescriptive dictionary that defined official language. An additional volume for words of foreign origin ( Nykysuomen sivistyssanakirja , 30,000 entries) was published in 1991. An updated dictionary, The New Dictionary of Modern Finnish ( Kielitoimiston sanakirja ) was published in an electronic form in 2004 and in print in 2006. A descriptive grammar (the Large grammar of Finnish , Iso suomen kielioppi , 1,600 pages)

6460-565: Was established by the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church of America and is now affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America . In 2023, Finlandia University announced that it would be permanently closing following the completion of spring semester classes. Finlandia Foundation National, based in Pasedena , CA is working with the Finnish American Heritage Center to preserve their archives and continue

6545-464: Was evacuated during World War II and refugees were resettled all over Finland. Most Ingrian Finns were deported to various interior areas of the Soviet Union. Palatalization , a common feature of Uralic languages, had been lost in the Finnic branch, but it has been reacquired by most of these languages, including Eastern Finnish, but not Western Finnish. In Finnish orthography, this is denoted with

6630-596: Was finally borrowed from the Rothschild bank of Frankfurt in late 1867, the crisis was already full blown, and grain prices had risen in Europe. In addition, it was difficult to transport what little aid could be mustered in a country with poor communications. A number of emergency public works projects were set up, foremost among them the construction of the railway line from Riihimäki to Saint Petersburg . The weather returned to normal in 1868, and that year's harvest

6715-420: Was growing. Among the Finnish settlers of New Sweden was Martti Marttinen, who came to North America in 1654 and changed his name to Morton. John Morton , the politician who signed the U.S. Declaration of Independence on behalf of Pennsylvania in 1776, was his great-grandson. Migration to North America from Finland continued throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, but it was very sporadic in nature and only

6800-494: Was industrializing, Finland, by now a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire , was to a great extent excluded from the revolutionary process. The society was largely agrarian, and unemployment was rising, thanks to population growth and the fact that there was now little land left to cultivate in the country. America, on the other hand, possessed abundant natural resources but lacked a workforce. Rural life in Finland during

6885-545: Was published in 2004. There is also an etymological dictionary, Suomen sanojen alkuperä , published in 1992–2000, and a handbook of contemporary language ( Nykysuomen käsikirja ). Standard Finnish is used in official texts and is the form of language taught in schools. Its spoken form is used in political speech, newscasts, in courts, and in other formal situations. Nearly all publishing and printed works are in standard Finnish. The colloquial language has mostly developed naturally from earlier forms of Finnish, and spread from

6970-435: Was somewhat better than average, yet, contagious diseases that had spread in the previous year took many additional lives. Programs were launched to increase the diversity of Finnish agriculture, and rapidly improving communications made a recurrence of such a famine less likely. In general, ordinary Finns at the time saw the famine as an act of God . Few would have expected the crown to be able to do much more, and blame

7055-486: Was strengthened even further in 1899, as the Russian government started an aggressive, coordinated campaign for the Russification of Finland. Many Finns chose to escape the repression by migrating to the New World, and, during the 1900s, there were 150,000 new migrants. Most Finns who left for America came from the impoverished rural regions of Ostrobothnia . Other prominent points of departure were Northern Savonia and

7140-543: Was the use of the reflexive suffix -(t)te , used only in the eastern dialects. The birch bark letter 292 from the early 13th century is the first known document in any Finnic language . The first known written example of Finnish itself is found in a German travel journal dating back to c.  1450 : Mÿnna tachton gernast spuho sommen gelen Emÿna daÿda (Modern Finnish: " Minä tahdon kernaasti puhua suomen kielen, [mutta] en minä taida; " English: "I want to speak Finnish, [but] I am not able to"). According to

7225-562: Was under Swedish rule , Finnish was only spoken . At the time, the language of international commerce was Middle Low German , the language of administration Swedish , and religious ceremonies were held in Latin . This meant that Finnish speakers could use their mother tongue only in everyday life. Finnish was considered inferior to Swedish, and Finnish speakers were second-class members of society because they could not use their language in any official situations. There were even efforts to reduce

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