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77-673: Kotka is situated in the southern part of the Kymenlaakso province of Finland. Kotka is a major port and industrial city situated on the coast of the Gulf of Finland . Kotka is a culturally diverse city with a variety of schools. It was previously a part of the former Kymi parish . Kymi, Haapasaari island, and Karhula, which was once a separate market town , were later incorporated into Kotka. Kotka's neighboring municipalities are Hamina , Kouvola , and Pyhtää . The neighboring municipalities of Kotka are Hamina , Kouvola , and Pyhtää . Kotka

154-819: 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

231-612: 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

308-473: 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

385-518: 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

462-475: A golden eagle , and in the lower field the anchor and caduceus diagonally crossed, both blue," while the current coat of arms is described as follows: "In a blue field, the wings of a golden natural eagle are raised, standing with a crossed anchor and caduceus, both of which are silver." The first coat of arms of the city of Kotka was confirmed in 1881. However, the Kotka City Council had to renew

539-460: 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

616-469: A migrant background living in Kotka, or 10.9% of the population. The number of residents who were born abroad was 5,071, or 10.0% of the population. The number of persons with foreign citizenship living in Kotka was 3,151. Most foreign-born citizens came from the former Soviet Union , Russia , Estonia and Iraq . The relative share of immigrants in Kotka's population is above the national average. Moreover,

693-475: 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

770-445: 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

847-555: 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

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924-530: A shift in political winds as Kymenlaakso became part of the Grand Duchy of Finland in personal union with the Russian Empire. However, the region's industrial spirit remained unfazed. In fact, this period saw further consolidation of its industrial base. The early 20th century witnessed another significant development – the rise of a powerful labor movement, a reflection of the growing importance of

1001-505: A small fishing lodge near rapids. Construction of the house began in the summer of 1888 and was inaugurated the following year. The museum is visited annually by about 14,000 visitors a year. Maretarium Aquarium opened in 2002, is located on Kotka Island, on the shore of the Gulf of Sapokka. It focuses on the presentation of Finnish fish species and water bodies. There are about 60 native and established fish species from Finland. The Maretarium

1078-440: 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

1155-491: 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,

1232-482: Is a region in Finland . It borders the regions of Uusimaa , Päijät-Häme , South Savo and South Karelia and Russia ( Leningrad Oblast ). Its name means literally The Valley of River Kymi . Kymijoki is one of the biggest rivers in Finland with a drainage basin with 11% of the area of Finland. The city of Kotka with 51,000 inhabitants is located at the delta of River Kymi and has the most important import harbour in Finland. Other cities are Kouvola further in

1309-405: Is a major Finnish seaport serving both Finnish and Russian foreign trade. The municipality is officially unilingually Finnish , with 88% being native Finnish speakers, 1% Swedish, and 10% speaking some other language. The description of the older coat of arms read that "the upper field of the split shield is blue, the lower field silver, and in the center of the shield a natural stone with

1386-508: 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

1463-573: Is actively pursuing economic diversification, attracting new businesses and exploring new avenues for growth. The region of Kymenlaakso consists of six municipalities , three of which have city status (marked in bold). Kotka-Hamina sub-region Kouvola sub-region Results of the 2019 Finnish parliamentary election in Kymenlaakso: Finnish language Finnish ( endonym : suomi [ˈsuo̯mi] or suomen kieli [ˈsuo̯meŋ ˈkie̯li] )

1540-605: 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

1617-746: 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

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1694-607: Is situated in the Kotka-Hamina subdivision and, along with Kouvola, is one of the main centres of the Kymenlaakso region. The city centre of Kotka is located on an island in the sea called Kotkansaari ("Island of Kotka"). The main road in Kotka is the Finnish national road 7 ( E18 ), which runs west through Porvoo to Helsinki , the capital of Finland, and extends east to St. Petersburg , Russia . The Port of Kotka

1771-629: 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

1848-615: 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

1925-625: The Senate of the Grand Duchy of Finland issued a declaration establishing a city on the southern part islands from the old Kymi parish , so in 1879 the islands of Kotkansaari and Hovinsaari were separated from Kymi and the city of Kotka was established. The Second All-Russian Conference of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party was held in Kotka, on 21–23 July (3–5 August) 1907. Historically, Swedish

2002-532: 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

2079-513: 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

2156-554: The 1920s. Alongside collections of museum items, the museum has an extensive archive of photographs. The collections are located at Metsola in Kotka. Langinkoski Imperial Fishing Lodge ( Langinkosken keisarillinen kalastusmaja ) is a museum and fishing lodge in the valley of River Kymijoki . Kymijoki is one of the biggest rivers in Finland with a drainage basin with 11% of the area of Finland. Emperor Alexander III of Russia first visited Langinkoski in 1880 as Crown Prince. During his second visit to Langinkoski, he stated that he wanted

2233-403: The 1980s, Baltic herring , salmon soup, head cheese , turnip potatoes called "lanttujyrkkö", and groat pie ("ryynipiirakka") were named Kotka's traditional parish dishes. Deep-fried doughnuts called " possos  [ fi ] " are also considered traditional pastries in Kotka. The local football team is KTP . Founded in 1927, KTP has long, and successful football history. KTP won

2310-426: The 21st most populous municipality in Finland. The Kotka-Hamina region has a population of 79,321. In Kotka, 10.9% of the population has a foreign background, which is above the national average. Population by mother tongue (2023) Kotka is a monolingual Finnish-speaking municipality. The majority of the population - 44,687 people or 88.5% - speak Finnish as their first language. In Kotka, 481 people, or 0.95% of

2387-458: 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

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2464-485: The Finnish football championship in 1951 and 1952, and Finnish Cup 4 times, in years 1958, 1961, 1967, and 1980. Currently the club plays in the Finnish second league Ykkönen . KTP-Basket plays in Korisliiga . There is also rugby club Griffins RFC. Kotka is twinned with: Kymenlaakso Kymenlaakso ( Finnish: [ˈkymenˌlɑːkso] ; Swedish : Kymmenedalen ; lit. " Kymi/Kymmene Valley")

2541-546: The Kotka Cultural Centre. In addition to this, the building holds classrooms, seminar rooms, a 200-seat auditorium, Restaurant Laakonki with 100 seats, and Museum Shop Plootu. The Kymenlaakso Museum operates at the Kantasatama Harbour in Kotka, at Maritime Centre Vellamo. The museum building, which has aroused much attention, was designed by the architect Ilmari Lahdelma. The area of operation of

2618-464: The Kymenlaakso museum, which is maintained by the City of Kotka, covers seven municipalities. The museum information services and the work of the regional archaeologist cover the entire region of Kymenlaakso. In building research, the museum serves as a public authority, with duties such as the issuing of opinions in building protection matters. The collections of Kymenlaakso museum have been compiled since

2695-694: 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

2772-479: The beginning of 2018 were the City of Kotka, the Social and Health Services in Kymenlaakso (Kymsote), and Steveco. The largest livelihoods in 2004 were social services (31.7%) and local industry (21.9%). In 2006, the city's total expenditure was just over EUR 370 million and municipal tax revenue amounted to EUR 141.3 million with an income tax rate of 18.75%. At the end of 2015, the unemployment rate in Kotka

2849-529: 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

2926-484: The city's new residents are increasingly of foreign origin. This will increase the proportion of foreign residents in the coming years. In 2023, the Evangelical Lutheran Church was the largest religious group with 59.9% of the population of Kotka. Other religious groups accounted for 3.0% of the population. 37.2% of the population had no religious affiliation. Kotka's three largest employers at

3003-404: 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

3080-478: 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

3157-445: 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

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3234-551: 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

3311-446: 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

3388-461: 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

3465-629: The inland which has after a municipal merger 81,000 inhabitants and the old bastion town Hamina . Kymenlaakso was one of the first industrialized regions of Finland. It became the most important region for paper and pulp industry in Finland. Since the late 1900s many plants have closed, which has caused some deindustrialization , unemployment and population decline in Kymenlaakso, especially in those communities that were built around plants in Kouvola. For history, geography and culture see: Uusimaa , Karelia and Tavastia Kymenlaakso, cradled by

3542-462: The land. For centuries, Kymenlaakso found itself under Swedish rule. Its strategic location transformed it into a vital trade corridor between Sweden and Russia . This era also witnessed the birth of its industrial prowess, with the 18th century ushering in an iron and steel boom. Sawmills and paper mills sprouted like mushrooms along the riverbanks, laying the groundwork for Kymenlaakso's future industrial dominance. The 19th century brought

3619-470: 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

3696-415: 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

3773-411: 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

3850-624: 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

3927-419: 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

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4004-549: The neoclassical church was constructed between 1799–1801, and it is the oldest building in Kotka today. Facade consists of pillars for three entries, the bell tower and a cross dome. The numerous well-maintained parks and green areas make the centre of Kotka can be visited with a walk of about five kilometers, which can reach these park sites: Sapokka Watergarden, Katariina Seaside Park, Sibelius Park, Isopuisto ("Big Park"), Sculpture Promenade, Palotornivuori Park, Redutti-Kotka herb garden, Fuksinpuisto Park and Toivo Pekkanen Park. In

4081-421: The old coat of arms in 1954 because it did not meet heraldic requirements. The new coat of arms was designed by Olof Eriksson in 1957, Eriksson kept the new coat of arms as the main emblem of Kotka referring to the name of the city. From the images of the current coat of arms, the anchor reflects the importance of Kotka as a port town and caduceus in trade , industry and maritime traffic . On 16 April 1878,

4158-453: 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

4235-616: 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,

4312-447: 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

4389-501: The population, speak Swedish . 10.6% of the population of Kotka have a mother tongue other than Finnish or Swedish. As English and Swedish are compulsory school subjects, functional bilingualism or trilingualism acquired through language studies is not uncommon. At least 30 different languages are spoken in Kotka. The most common foreign languages are Russian (5.2%), Estonian (0.7%), Ukrainian (0.6%), Arabic (0.4%) and English (0.4%). As of 2023, there were 5,503 persons with

4466-746: 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

4543-401: 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

4620-636: 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

4697-465: 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

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4774-422: 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

4851-499: 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

4928-492: 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

5005-626: 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

5082-403: 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

5159-540: The winding Kymi River , boasts a history as dynamic as its waterways. Unlike Finland's traditional provinces, Kymenlaakso emerged as a distinct region much later, a testament to its ever-evolving character. The earliest whispers of human presence in Kymenlaakso echo back to the Stone Age . These settlements laid the foundation for later inhabitants like the Tavastians and Karelians , who etched their own stories onto

5236-410: The working class in Kymenlaakso's industrial landscape. Following World War II , Kymenlaakso embraced its place in independent Finland. While industry remained the cornerstone of its economy, forestry and tourism began carving out niches for themselves. However, recent years haven't been without challenges. The decline of the forest industry has cast a shadow over the region. Undeterred, Kymenlaakso

5313-591: Was 22.2%, which is one of the highest and largest cities in Finland. In 2005, the unemployment rate in Kotka was 14.4% and in 2006 12.9%. In 2010, the relative number of unemployed in the city started to rise and at the end of 2012 the rate was 17.1%. Maritime Centre Vellamo is home to the Maritime Museum of Finland , the Museum of Kymenlaakso, the Coast Guard Museum, Information Centre Vellamo and

5390-496: 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)

5467-670: Was created in collaboration between the City of Kotka, the University of Helsinki and the Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute. In addition to aquariums, there are also facilities for researchers and the nature school. There is also the Maritime Theater, Meri Café Kristina and a souvenir shop. The Church of St Nicholas is located in Isopuisto Park in Kotka city centre. Based on designs by Jakov Perrin,

5544-525: 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

5621-435: Was founded in 1885. Kotka region was one of the first heavily industrialized regions of Finland. Paper and pulp mills remain important employers. In the last decades several factories have undergone restructuring which has led to an increasing unemployment. Since the 1980s the population of Kotka has been slowly decreasing, mostly due to domestic migration to Helsinki region. The city of Kotka has 50,336 inhabitants, making it

5698-545: 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

5775-444: Was the official language in the city until 1902. From 1902 until 1906, the city was officially bilingual. Kotka has a Swedish speaking minority (see: Swedish-speaking population of Finland ), which in the 1890s accounted for 16% of the city population and 3% in the 1950s. Today around 1% of the city's population are Swedish speakers. There is one school in Kotka where Swedish is the language of instruction, Kotka Svenska Samskola , which

5852-543: 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

5929-562: 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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