77-597: The Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra ( Finnish : Helsingin kaupunginorkesteri ; Swedish : Helsingfors stadsorkester ; literal English translation: Helsinki City Orchestra; commonly abbreviated as HPO ) is an orchestra based in Helsinki , Finland. Founded in 1882 by Robert Kajanus , the Philharmonic Orchestra was the first permanent orchestra in the Nordic countries . Today, its primary concert venue
154-764: 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
308-437: A composer, Segerstam is especially known for his many symphonies, which numbered 371 by March 2024. Most of his symphonies last for about 20 minutes, are formed of a single movement and can be performed without a conductor. His 37th symphony, for example, at its premiere featured Segerstam at the piano, leading the orchestra "in a relatively free form". This is partially inspired by Sibelius' Seventh symphony . More than
385-473: 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
462-518: 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
539-418: A hundred of Segerstam's symphonies have been performed. Many of his compositions are influenced by nature, and he was often praised for his contributions to Nordic music. He developed a personal approach to aleatory composition through a style called "free pulsation" in which musical events interact flexibly in time, with his composition method persistent throughout his œuvre . His Fifth String Quartet,
616-460: 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
693-592: A libretto by Elisabeth Wärnfeldt . Segerstam was married to the violinist Hannele Segerstam [ fi ] , concertmaster of the Finnish RSO ; they had two children, Jan and Pia. Pia is a professional cellist ; Jan is a businessman. After they divorced, he married the Helsinki Philharmonic harpist Minnaleena Jankko in 2002; they had three children: Violaelina (born 1997), Selimoskar (born 1998) and Iirisilona (born 1999). In 2009 it
770-475: 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
847-552: A musical Swedish-speaking family. Selim made several song books as a living. The Segerstams then moved to Helsinki in 1947. During Leif's time at school, he played the violin and the viola with the Helsinki Youth Orchestra. Segerstam's debut concert as a violinist was in 1962, and his conducting debut was in 1963, with Rossini's The Barber of Seville , in Tampere . Following the premiere, Segerstam
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#1732802492395924-961: A need to guarantee the Orchestral Association a supply of domestically-trained musicians, Kajanus on 1 October 1885 founded an attendant music school; initially, the music school employed as its instructors the very foreign musicians it sought, in time, to replace with Finns. In the summer of 1894, the Orchestral Association—worried that its name implied amateurism—renamed itself the Helsinki Philharmonic Society (in Finnish: Helsingin Filharmoninen Seura ; in Swedish: Helsingfors Filharmoniska Sällskap ); at
1001-445: 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
1078-555: 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
1155-440: 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
1232-919: A variety of orchestras in Europe, the Americas and Australia. He was conductor at the Finnish National Opera , the Royal Swedish Opera and Deutsche Oper Berlin , and was chief conductor of the ORF Symphony Orchestra , Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz , the Danish National Radio Symphony , Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra . He is widely known through his recordings, including
1309-491: 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,
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
1463-664: 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
1540-746: 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
1617-629: 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
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#17328024923951694-790: Is the Helsinki Music Centre ; the current chief conductor is Jukka-Pekka Saraste , who has held his post since the start of the 2023–24 season.. In 1882, with the backing of two wealthy businessmen ( Waldemar Klärich and Nikolai Sinebrychoff ), the Finnish composer and conductor Robert Kajanus founded the Helsinki Orchestral Association (in Finnish: Helsingin Orkesteriyhdistys ; in Swedish: Helsingfors Orkesterförening ),
1771-402: The "Lemming Quartet" (1970), ushered in his new chapter of post-expressionistic writing of the 1960s. This composition approach proved to be a quick way of writing large blocks of sound (the temporal order of events being left to the performer) and permitted an exceptionally prolific output. Instead of constituting individual works, his music is more like a musical stream of consciousness (under
1848-899: The Danish National Radio Symphony (1988 to 1995), and the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra (2012 to 2019). He guest-conducted many orchestras in Europe, the Americas and in Australia, including the Chicago Symphony , the Los Angeles Philharmonic , the Toronto Symphony , the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra , and the Symphony Orchestra of the State of São Paulo . From autumn 1997 to spring 2013, he
1925-563: 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
2002-752: The Finnish National Opera in 1973 and 1974. He began working with Deutsche Oper Berlin in the early 1970s. He conducted as a guest at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, La Scala in Milan and the Royal Opera House in London, with a repertoire including Verdi's Aida and Don Carlo , R. Strauss' Salome and Elektra and Wagner's Tannhäuser and Der fliegende Holländer . Segerstam served as chief conductor of
2079-881: The Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra (literally, the Helsinki City Orchestra ). In part, the resolution was due to the dawn of the First World War in July 1914: the Helsinki Symphony Orchestra collapsed after the German musicians who formed its backbone were expelled from the country; Kajanus and Schnéevoigt initially co-served as chief conductors of the Philharmonic Orchestra, which then consisted of forty players surviving on starvation wages. During this time,
2156-599: The Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra from 1995 to 2007, and held the title of Chief Conductor Emeritus with the orchestra. At the same time, he was chief conductor of the Royal Swedish Opera again and of the Savonlinna Opera Festival in Finland until 2000. He held positions with numerous other orchestras, including the ORF Symphony Orchestra (1975 to 1982), the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz (1982 to 1989),
2233-641: The Juilliard School in New York City, violin with Louis Persinger , composition with Hall Overton and Vincent Persichetti , and conducting with Jean Morel , and received his postgraduate diploma in 1965. Segerstam took part, as second conductor, in a 1968 tour of the Helsinki Philharmonic to the United States. He was chief conductor and music director of the Royal Swedish Opera from 1970 to 1972, and music director of
2310-532: 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
2387-513: 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
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2464-439: The 2016–2017 season, with an initial contract of 3 years. She is the first female conductor to be named to the post in the orchestra's history. In October 2017, the orchestra announced the extension of Mälkki's contract as chief conductor through 2021. In June 2019, the orchestra announced a further extension of her contract as chief conductor through 2023, with an option for a further 2-year extension past 2023. In December 2021,
2541-572: The 2023–2024 season. The orchestra has recorded commercially for such labels as Ondine and Finlandia, as well as a smaller number for the EMI, Warner and Deutsche Grammophon labels. In November 2011, the orchestra was the first ensemble to perform reported sketches for the Symphony No. 8 of Jean Sibelius . Finnish language Finnish ( endonym : suomi [ˈsuo̯mi] or suomen kieli [ˈsuo̯meŋ ˈkie̯li] )
2618-458: 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
2695-495: The Philharmonic Orchestra struggled to survive: not only did Kajanus and Schnéevoigt quarrel with each other through the press, but also there were not—despite the orchestral school having been open for decades—enough Finnish musicians to supply the orchestra; in response, Kajanus sought to recruit musicians from neutral countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands. In 1916, Schnéevoigt left the Philharmonic Orchestra to assume
2772-631: 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
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
2926-606: The chief conductorship of the Stockholm Concert Society Orchestra (in Swedish: Stockholms Konsertförenings Orkester ). Until 1962, it also served as the orchestra for the Finnish National Opera . Leif Segerstam was chief conductor of the orchestra from 1995 to 2007, and is now its chief conductor emeritus. John Storgårds became principal guest conductor of the orchestra in 2003, and took up
3003-495: The chief conductorship of the orchestra in the autumn of 2008, with an initial contract of 4 years. Following an initial renewal of his contract through 2014., in October 2013, the orchestra announced a further extension of Storgårds' contract through December 2015, at which time he stood down as chief conductor. In September 2014, the orchestra announced the appointment of Susanna Mälkki as its next chief conductor, effective with
3080-490: 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 ) Leif Segerstam Leif Selim Segerstam ( / ˈ l eɪ f / LAYF , 2 March 1944 – 9 October 2024) was a Finnish conductor, composer, violinist, violist, and pianist, especially known for writing over 300 symphonies , along with other works. From 1963 onward Segerstam conducted
3157-655: The complete symphonies of Blomdahl , Brahms , Mahler , Nielsen , and Sibelius , as well as many works by contemporary composers. He is remembered for his contributions to the Finnish music scene , and his vibrant personality. He taught as professor of orchestra conducting at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. Leif Segerstam was born on 2 March 1944 in Vaasa , to Selim Segerstam and Viola Maria Kronqvist, into
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3234-404: 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
3311-478: 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
3388-445: 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
3465-586: The first permanent orchestra in the Nordic countries . Kajanus, who took no salary in the first year, conducted the Orchestral Association in its inaugural concert, on 3 October 1882; the program included, among other pieces, Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C ;minor , Mendelssohn's concert overture The Hebrides , and Weber's overture Jubel in E ;major . The orchestra comprised musicians from Imperial Germany and Imperial Russia , and sensing
3542-551: 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
3619-446: 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
3696-461: 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
3773-565: The headings of Thoughts , Episode and Orchestral Diary Sheet ). It also means that there are numerous scorings of the same piece. This method was first used in the "Lemming Quartet" . Among Segerstam's juvenilia (1960–1969) are four string quartets from 1962–1966, and the post- impressionist ballet Pandora from 1967. The quartets are usually labeled as from his "Post- Expressionist " period. He composed 30 string quartets and numerous concertos, for violin, viola, cello and piano. In 2015 Segerstam began work on an opera, Völvan , with
3850-470: 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
3927-415: 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
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#17328024923954004-411: 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
4081-624: 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
4158-419: 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
4235-427: The orchestra announced that Mälkki is to stand down as its chief conductor at the end of the 2022–2023 season, and subsequently to take the title of chief conductor emeritus with the orchestra. In April 2022, the orchestra announced the appointments of Jukka-Pekka Saraste as its next chief conductor, Pekka Kuusisto as its next principal guest conductor, and Anna Clyne as its composer-in-residence, all effective with
4312-453: 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
4389-616: 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,
4466-447: 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
4543-746: 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
4620-506: The same meeting, it changed its rules to allow female students to enroll in the orchestra's music school, although de facto discrimination continued. In 1912, the Finnish conductor Georg Schnéevoigt —who had served as the principal cellist of the Philharmonic Society from 1895 to 1912 and taught cello at the orchestra school from 1896 to 1902—founded the Helsinki Symphony Orchestra (in Finnish: Helsingin sinfoniaorkesteri ; in Swedish: Helsingfors symfoniorkester ). A bitter "feud" between
4697-401: 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
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#17328024923954774-636: 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
4851-405: 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
4928-404: The two competing organizations ensued: with 150,000 residents, Helsinki could not sustain rival orchestras, especially with the Swedish-speaking patrons supporting Schnéevoigt and the Finnish-speakers backing Kajanus. The city recognized the situation was unsustainable, and although each group proposed initially that the other should disband, the two merged and municipalized in 1914 under a new name,
5005-422: 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
5082-447: 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
5159-492: 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
5236-626: 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
5313-403: 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
5390-445: 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)
5467-416: Was announced that their marriage would end. In a 2024 interview, Segerstam mentioned being autistic . Segerstam died from pneumonia at a Helsinki hospital, on 9 October 2024, at the age of 80. Segerstam is widely known through his recordings, which include the complete symphonies of Blomdahl , Brahms , Mahler , Nielsen , and Sibelius , as well as many works by contemporary composers, such as
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
5621-615: Was hired to conduct the Finnish National Opera , and a year later he conducted the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra . He conducted contemporary works such as Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms and Shostakovich's First Symphony . Segerstam studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, piano with Jaakko Somero, violin with Leena Siukonen-Penttilä, composition with Einar Englund and Joonas Kokkonen , and conducting with Jussi Jalas . He received diplomas in violin and conducting in 1963. He studied further at
5698-430: Was professor of orchestra conducting at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. His students include Rune Bergmann, Susanna Mälkki , Mikk Murdvee , Sasha Mäkilä and Markku Laakso. In 2004 he made a cameo appearance in the Finnish film Pelicanman . In 2024, he was hospitalized after a "brief bout of pneumonia", dying after complications related to the disease at the hospital on the 9th of October of 2024. As
5775-545: 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
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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