95-617: The Centre Party , ( Finnish : Suomen Keskusta [ˈsuo̯men ˈkeskustɑ] , Kesk; Swedish : Centern i Finland , C) officially the Centre Party of Finland , is an agrarian-centrist political party in Finland . Ideologically, the Centre Party is positioned in the centre of the political spectrum. It has been described as liberal , social-liberal , liberal-conservative , and conservative-liberal . The party’s leader
190-606: A federal Europe . The Centre Party was originally opposed to Finland's membership in the euro currency, but the party later stated that it would not seek to withdraw from the Economic and Monetary Union once Finland had entered. In Finland, there is no large party that supports liberalism per se . Instead, liberalism is found in most major parties including the Centre Party which supports decentralisation, free will, free and fair trade and small enterprise. The Centre Party characteristically supports decentralisation , particularly
285-819: 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
380-612: 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
475-674: A breakthrough in the major southern cities. In the 2011 Finnish parliamentary election , the party received 4.5% of the votes cast in the capital, Helsinki, compared to the 33.4% in the largely rural electoral district of Oulu . In the organisation of the Centre Party, local associations dominate the election of party leaders, the selection of local candidates and drafting of policy. The headquarters in Apollonkatu, Helsinki leads financing and organisation of elections. The party has 2,500 local associations which have 160,000 individual members. The local associations elect their representatives to
570-470: A considerable defeat, losing 18 of 49 seats. As a Nordic agrarian party , the Centre Party's political influence is greatest in small and rural municipalities, where it often holds a majority of the seats in the municipal councils. Decentralisation is the policy that is most characteristic of the Centre Party which has been the ruling party in Finland a number of times since Finnish independence . Twelve of
665-473: 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
760-518: 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
855-571: A key role in Centre Party politician speeches and writings. From the very beginning of its presence, the party has supported the idea of decentralisation. Despite belonging to the Liberal International, the Centre Party does not play quite the same role in Finnish politics as do liberal parties in other countries because the party evolved from agrarian roots. The party has a more conservative wing, and prominent conservatives within
950-405: 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
1045-617: A member of the party, served in the European Commission for ten years between 2004 and 2014 and was the European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs and the Euro from 2010 to 2014. The Centre Party was the biggest loser of the 2011 Finnish parliamentary election , losing 16 seats and going from largest party to fourth place. Its support was lower than in any parliamentary election since 1917 . It won
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#17327761886761140-475: 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
1235-445: 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
1330-555: 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
1425-495: A temporary nadir in support, the party managed to continue to attract voters. The Liberal People's Party (LKP) became a member party of the Centre Party in 1982. The two separated again after the success of the Liberal People's Party in the 1985 Swedish general election . The Centre Party was a key player in making the decision to apply for Finnish EU membership in 1992. As the leading governing party, its support for
1520-440: 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
1615-499: A well known veteran politician Paavo Väyrynen in the voting. The previous chairperson Mari Kiviniemi succeeded Matti Vanhanen as Prime Minister in 2010, serving in the office for one year. At the time, she was the Centre Party’s third Prime Minister of Finland in succession. Anneli Jäätteenmäki preceded Vanhanen, she was also the first woman to be Prime Minister of Finland. She did not seek another term as party chair. Olli Rehn,
1710-532: Is Antti Kaikkonen , who was elected in June 2024 to succeed former minister Annika Saarikko . As of June 2023, the party has been a part of the parliamentary opposition. Founded in 1906 as the Agrarian League (Finnish: Maalaisliitto ; Swedish: Agrarförbundet ), the party represented rural communities and supported decentralisation of political power from Helsinki . In the 1920s, the party emerged as
1805-437: 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,
1900-508: 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
1995-609: 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
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#17327761886762090-746: 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
2185-629: 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
2280-898: The 1933 Finnish parliamentary election , the main campaign issues were the differing attitudes toward democracy and the rule of law between the Patriotic Electoral Alliance (the National Coalition Party and the Patriotic People's Movement) and the Legality Front (the Social Democrats , the Agrarian League, the Swedish People's Party and the Progressives ). The Patriotic Electoral Alliance favoured continuing
2375-571: The 2015 Finnish parliamentary election and formed a coalition with the Finns Party and the National Coalition Party . In March 2016, the Centre Party announced that its candidate for the 2018 Finnish presidential election would be the former Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, the first declared presidential candidate in the race. The Centre Party was again the biggest loser in the 2019 Finnish parliamentary election , losing 18 seats and going from largest party to fourth place. The party's support
2470-685: The Etelä-Pohjanmaan Nuorsuomalainen Maalaisliitto ("Young-Finnish Countrymens' Union of Southern Ostrobothnia"), which he later fused into the less ideological Maalaisväestön liitto ("Union of the Rural Population", later Centre Party of Finland). Alkio became the chief ideologue of the Maalaisliitto, and is still considered the father of the party in spirit. The party still refers to alkioish tendencies in some of its factions. Alkio
2565-747: The European Committee of the Regions , the Center Party sits in the Renew Europe CoR group with one full and two alternate members for the 2020-2025 mandate. Mirja Vehkapera is Coordinator in the COTER Commission. National groups: * observer *associate member **observer Finnish language Finnish ( endonym : suomi [ˈsuo̯mi] or suomen kieli [ˈsuo̯meŋ ˈkie̯li] )
2660-598: The Finnish Declaration of Independence on 6 December ( Independence Day of Finland ). After independence, Alkio continued in parliament as the minister of social affairs from 1919 to 1920. He was the minister of social affairs of the Vennola government from (15 August 1919 – 15 March 1920). An ardent temperance-movement activist, he participated in drafting the Finnish Prohibition and also was
2755-615: 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
2850-701: The Kingdom of Finland . The Agrarian League opposed monarchism fiercely, even though monarchists claimed that a new king from the German Empire and Hohenzollern would have safeguarded Finnish foreign relations. At this time, anti- anarchist peasants threatened the existence of the party. Because around forty Social Democratic members of the Parliament had escaped to Russia after the Finnish Civil War and about fifty others had been arrested,
2945-797: The Prime Ministers of Finland , three of the Presidents and a former European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs have been from the party. The Centre Party is the mother organisation of the Finnish Centre Students , the Finnish Centre Youth and the Finnish Centre Women [ fi ] . The party was founded in 1906 as a movement of citizens in the Finnish countryside. Before Finnish independence, political power in Finland
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3040-532: 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
3135-513: 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
3230-554: The Agrarian League members of the Parliament became the only republicans in Parliament in 1918. Nevertheless, the news about the problems of the German Empire from German liberals encouraged the fight of Agrarian League in the Parliament. The Agrarian League managed to maintain the republican voices in the Parliament until the fall of the German Empire which ruined the dreams of the monarchists. The relentless opposition to
3325-462: The Agrarian League, the centrist governments were just a transitional period toward an era which would integrate the red and white sides of the Civil War into one nation. Nevertheless, not everyone was happy with the conciliatory politics of centrist governments. The extreme right Lapua Movement grew bigger and bigger in the Agrarian League strongholds in the countryside. Many party members joined
3420-458: 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
3515-694: 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
3610-623: The active neutrality policy of his predecessor Juho Kusti Paasikivi , a doctrine which came to be known as the Paasikivi–Kekkonen line . Under it, Finland retained its independence while being able to trade with NATO members and those of the Warsaw Pact . Veikko Vennamo , a vocal agrarian politician, ran into serious disagreement particularly with the then-Party Secretary of the Agrarian Party Arvo Korsimo, who
3705-561: The application was crucial. The party itself, both leadership and supporters, was far from united on the issue. In the Parliament, 22 out of 55 Centre MPs voted against the application. In June 1994, the party congress decided to support EU membership (by 1607 votes to 834), but only after the Prime Minister and Party Chair Esko Aho threatened to resign if the party were to oppose the membership. The centrist tradition of defending equal political and economic rights for peripheral areas
3800-529: 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
3895-500: 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 ) Santeri Alkio Santeri Alkio (born Aleksander Filander ; 17 June 1862 – 24 July 1930) was a Finnish politician, author and journalist. He is also considered to be the ideological father of the Finnish Centre Party . Alkio
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3990-404: 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
4085-412: The decrease of central power, increase of the power of municipalities and the even population of the country. During the party's premierships between 2003 and 2011, these policies were also manifested as transferrals of certain government agencies from the capital to smaller cities in the regions. Throughout the period of Finland's independence, the Centre Party has been the party most often represented in
4180-478: 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
4275-445: 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
4370-470: The first centre-left government to be formed in Finland and a new era had begun. With the outbreak of the Winter War, a government of national unity was formed. President Kallio died shortly after the war. In 1956, Urho Kekkonen , the candidate of the Agrarian League, was elected President of Finland after serving as prime minister several times and remained president until 1982. Kekkonen continued
4465-551: 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
4560-446: 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
4655-403: The government. The country's longest-serving President, Urho Kekkonen , was a member of the party as were two other Presidents. Today, only a small portion of the votes given to the party come from farmers. As such, the Centre Party draws support from a wide range of professions. Rural Finland and small towns still form the strongest base of support for the party, although it has also strived for
4750-461: 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
4845-417: The ideas of humanity, education, the spirit of the land, peasant-like freedom, decentralisation , "the issue of poor people", progressivism and later the "green wave" became the main political phrases used to describe the ideology of the party. Santeri Alkio was the most important ideological father of the party. At the dawn of Finnish independence, conservative social forces made an attempt to establish
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#17327761886764940-470: 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
5035-625: The leader of the Centre Party to replace Katri Kulmuni . During late 2022, The Centre Party was polling at its lowest record in support in polls with less than 10% support. The ideology of the party is unusual in the European context. Unlike many other large parties in Europe, its ideology is not primarily based on economic systems. Rather, the ideas of humanity, education, the spirit of the land, peasant-like freedom, decentralisation , "the issue of poor people", environmentalism and progressivism play
5130-446: The longest period of any president. The name Centre Party was adopted in 1965 and Centre of Finland in 1988. The Centre Party was the largest party in Parliament from 2003 to 2011, during which time Matti Vanhanen was prime minister for seven years. By 2011 , the party was reduced in parliamentary representation from the largest party to the fourth largest, but it reclaimed its status as the largest party in 2015 . In 2019 , it suffered
5225-415: 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
5320-575: The main decision-making body between the party congresses. The party council elects the party government (excluding the leaders elected by the party congress) and the working committee. The party council, the party government and the Working Committee must have at least 40% representation of both sexes. The Finnish Centre Students , the Finnish Centre Women [ fi ] and the Finnish Centre Youth have their own local and regional organisations which also name their representatives to
5415-524: The main rival to the SDP and Kyösti Kallio , the party's first prime minister, held the office four times between 1922 and 1937. After World War II , the party settled as one of the four major political parties in Finland, alongside the SDP, the National Coalition Party and the Finnish People's Democratic League until the 1980s. Urho Kekkonen served as President of Finland from 1956 to 1982, by far
5510-412: The minister responsible for the confirmation of president K. J. Ståhlberg . Alkio was an extremely prolific author. He founded the newspaper Ilkka and was its editor through the years 1906–1930. His likeness graced a Finnish stamp on 17 July 1962. Alkio was a fervent spokesman for democracy and Finnish national independence. He led the youth association movement, which above all wanted to defend
5605-411: 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
5700-606: The monarchy was rewarded in the 1919 Finnish parliamentary election and the party became the biggest non- socialist party in Finland with 19.7% of the votes. After the 1919 Finnish parliamentary election, the centrist and progressive forces, including the Agrarian League, were constant members in Finnish governments. Their moderate attitude in restless post-war Finland secured a steady growth in following elections. The party formed many centrist minority governments with National Progressive Party and got its first Prime Ministers ( Kyösti Kallio in 1922 and Juho Sunila in 1927). For
5795-624: 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
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#17327761886765890-419: 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
5985-534: The new radical movement. The Lapua Movement organised assaults and kidnappings in Finland between 1929 and 1932. In 1930, after the kidnapping of progressive president Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg , the Agrarian League broke off all its ties to the movement and got a new political enemy in the countryside, the Patriotic People's Movement (IKL) which was founded after the Lapua Movement was outlawed. In
6080-453: 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
6175-616: 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,
6270-399: The party congress which elects the party leadership and decide on policy. The local associations form also 21 regional organisations which have also their representatives in the party congress. The party congress is the highest decision-making body of the party. It elects the chairperson, three deputy chairs, the secretary-general and the party council. With 135 members, the party council is
6365-692: The party congress. The party is a member of the Liberal International and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party and subscribes to the liberal manifestos of these organisations. The Centre Party has been a full member of the Liberal International since 1988, having first joined as an observer member in 1983. In the European Parliament , the Center Party sits in the Renew Europe group with two MEPs. In
6460-459: The party such as Paavo Väyrynen have criticised overt economic and cultural liberalism . In addition, the 2010 party congress voted to oppose same-sex marriage . When the Finnish Parliament voted on same-sex marriage in 2014, 30 of the 36 Centre MPs voted against it. The party is also divided on the issue of deepening European integration and contains a notable Eurosceptic faction based on its more rural interests. The party expressly rejects
6555-447: 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
6650-469: The president Pehr Evind Svinhufvud , the Social Democrats remained outside the government and the Agrarian League was part of the centre-right governments until 1937. In the 1937 Finnish presidential election , the Agrarian League candidate Kyösti Kallio was elected president with the votes of centrist (Agrarian and Progressive) and social-democratic coalition which wanted to ensure that President Svinhufvud would not be re-elected. The new president allowed
6745-442: 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
6840-479: The search for suspected communists, the Communist Party and its affiliated organisations in the spirit of the Lapua Movement. The Legality Front did not want to spend any significant time on searching suspected communists but rather wanted to concentrate on keeping the far-right in check. The Legality Front won the elections, but the Agrarian League lost a part of its support. Because of fierce opposition of
6935-401: 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
7030-636: 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
7125-454: The support of the state from one confession and to proclaim it to all." As a nationalist, Alkio supported the independent Senate of Svinhufvud. During the summer of 1917, he had supported usurping the highest power in the land from Russia via the Power of Government Act ( Lex Tulenheimo ) while the parties on the right still opposed it. Alkio thought the red revolt supported by Russian soldiers
7220-465: 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
7315-422: 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
7410-499: 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
7505-413: The values of rural life and foster temperance and healthy living, a desire the movement held in common with the coeval Christian revivalist and labor movements . Despite his Christian background, Alkio was a strong opponent of the state church . In 1906 Alkio wrote that "We want to liberate the beautiful and simple teachings of Jesus from the tyranny of theology and that is why we would like to withdraw
7600-492: 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
7695-626: 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
7790-403: 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
7885-496: 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)
7980-827: Was a member of the Finnish House of Representatives from 1907 to 1908 and again from 1914 to 1922. He was vice-chairman of the Eduskunta in 1917 and 1918. When the October Revolution began in Russia, the Bolshevik Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia led to controversy in the Finnish parliament on how to respond. Based on Alkio's proposal, the Parliament of Finland assumed sovereignty in Finland on 15 November, eventually leading to
8075-553: Was able to raise the party to new success and into government in 1983, but after this the Rural Party's support declined steadily and eventually the party went bankrupt in 1995. Immediately after this, the right-wing populist Finns Party ( Perussuomalaiset ) was founded by former members of SMP. In 1965, the party changed its name to the Centre Party ( Keskustapuolue ) and in 1988 took its current Centre Party of Finland name ( Suomen Keskusta ). Despite urbanisation of Finland and
8170-437: Was an attempt to return Finland to Soviet Russia: "It [the revolt] is meant to set Finnish independence at nought." ( Sen [kapinan] tarkoituksena on tehdä tyhjäksi Suomen itsenäisyys. ) Alkio was also a pacifist . He attributed this to the influence of Mahatma Gandhi . On 15 January 1920, he wrote in the newspaper Maan Ääni that Europe should consider the question of the United States of Europe. This article made him one of
8265-576: Was born in Laihia ; his parents were Juho and Maria (née Jakku) Filander. He married teacher Anna Augusta Falenius in 1896. Initially Santeri Alkio was active in the Young Finnish Party , but in the end decided it was too liberal for the farming population; urbanized parties did not, in his estimation, pay enough attention to the causes that were most important to farmers. To keep the agrarian folk from becoming ensnared by socialism, he founded
8360-456: Was centralised in the capital and to the estates of the realm . The centralisation gave space for a new political movement. In 1906, two agrarian movements were founded. They merged in 1908 to become one political party known as the Agrarian League or Maalaisliitto . An older, related movement was the temperance movement which had overlapping membership and gave future to Agrarian League activists experience in working in an organisation. Soon
8455-525: 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
8550-524: Was even lower than in 2011. Due to the devastating defeat, Sipilä consequently announced that he would continue as the party chair only until the Centre Party's next convention in September 2019. The party congress in September 2019 elected the Minister of Economic Affairs Katri Kulmuni to replace Sipilä as the party's chair. On 5 September 2020, during a party congress, Annika Saarikko was elected as
8645-530: Was excluded from the parliamentary group. As a result, Vennamo immediately started building his own organisation in 1959 and founded a new party, the Finnish Rural Party ( Suomen maaseudun puolue , SMP). Vennamo was a populist and became a critic of Kekkonen and political corruption within the old parties, particularly the Agrarian League. Although this party had some success, it was essentially tied to Veikko Vennamo's person. His son Pekka Vennamo
8740-545: 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
8835-453: Was reflected in the internal resistance that opposed chairperson Aho's ambitions to lead Finland into the EU. The Centre Party was in opposition from 1995 to 2003 and opposed adopting the euro as Finland's currency. The party accepted the euro after regaining power in 2003. The party congress in June 2012 elected the newcomer Juha Sipilä to replace Mari Kiviniemi as the party's chair. Sipilä defeated young deputy chairperson Tuomo Puumala and
8930-543: 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
9025-562: 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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