81-611: Mestis (from Finnish : Mestaruussarja , meaning 'Championship series', stylized as MEST1S ) is the second-highest men's ice hockey league in Finland . The league was established by the Finnish Ice Hockey Association in 2000 to replace the I-divisioona ('First Division'). Being promoted to SM-liiga is possible if a Mestis team beats a SM-liiga club in the qualification series and matches all
162-430: A basket '. The status of /d/ is somewhat different from /b/ and /ɡ/ , since it appears in native Finnish words, too, as a regular "weak" correspondence of the voiceless /t/ (as a result of consonant gradation ), and even in the infinitives of many verbs, such as syödä , "to eat". At the time when Mikael Agricola , the "father" of literary Finnish, devised a system for writing the language, this sound still had
243-819: 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
324-612: 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
405-473: 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
486-803: A few cases where Finnish collation is different from the rules applied in English: Diacritics are never added to letters in native Finnish words (as the dots above the Finnish graphemes ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ö⟩ are not considered diacritics). Generally, diacritics are retained in foreign-language proper names, e.g. Vilén , if possible, but when arranging words alphabetically, diacritics are usually ignored (this also applies to ⟨ š ⟩ and ⟨ ž ⟩ , despite them being an officially recognized part of Finnish orthography). There are, however, some exceptions: The standard does not specify how one should alphabetize
567-518: 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
648-460: 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
729-506: A long sound is written with a double letter ( digraph ). It is necessary to recognize the difference between such words as tuli /ˈtu.li/ 'fire', tuuli /ˈtuː.li/ 'wind' and tulli /ˈtul.li/ 'customs'. However, long consonants are sometimes written as short consonants in morpheme boundaries (see Finnish phonology#Sandhi for this phenomenon), thus, /ˈhɑ.kel.lɑ.vɑ/ is written as hake l ava "open-box bed for wood chips" instead of expected *hake ll ava , and /ˈtu.let.tæn.ne/
810-465: A monosyllabic or bisyllabic word. In practice, the names of the letters are rarely spelled, as people usually just type the (uppercase or lowercase) glyph when they want to refer to a particular letter. The pronunciation instructions enclosed in slashes are broad transcriptions based on the IPA system. In notes, more narrow transcriptions are enclosed in square brackets. In addition, ⟨ w ⟩
891-488: A more specialized term diagnoosi /di.aɡ.noː.si/ ' diagnosis ', and in a word-initial position gn uu /ɡnuː/ " gnu ". Following the typical Finnish pronunciation pattern, ko ng estio " congestion " is often pronounced /ˈkoŋ.ŋes.ti.o/ , but /ˈkoŋ.ɡes.ti.o/ may also occur. Traditionally, /b/ and /ɡ/ are not counted as Finnish phonemes, since they only appear in loanwords. However, these borrowings being relatively common, they are nowadays considered part of
SECTION 10
#1732772795927972-475: 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
1053-445: 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
1134-532: A position, /ŋ/ can be seen as an allophone of /n/ . However, if the /k/ is weakened (because of a phenomenon called consonant gradation that occurs when the word is inflected ), the result is a long, or geminated , velar nasal /ŋː/ that is written with digraph ⟨ng⟩ , as in ke ng ät /ˈkeŋ.ŋæt/ 'shoes'. The geminated /ŋː/ is not an allophone of geminated /nː/ , since minimal pairs do exist: kangas /ˈkɑŋ.ŋɑs/ ' textile ' vs. kannas /ˈkɑn.nɑs/ ' isthmus '. The treatment of
1215-555: 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
1296-440: 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
1377-429: A vowel remains the same regardless of whether the vowel is long or short, or whether it is stressed or unstressed. The velar nasal /ŋ/ (generally referred to as äng-äänne 'the eng sound') does not have a letter of its own. Natively, a short /ŋ/ only occurs before /k/ , and it is simply written with ⟨n⟩ , as in ke n kä /ˈkeŋ.kæ/ 'shoe'. Since the alveolar nasal /n/ can not occur in such
1458-429: Is tule t änne "come here" instead of *tule tt änne or *tule t t änne . In syllabification , a long consonant is always regarded as having a syllable break in the middle (as in /ˈtɑ p.p ɑː/ ), but a long vowel (or a diphthong ) is regarded as a single unit that functions as the nucleus of a syllable. Either a long or short vowel may occur in a stressed as well as unstressed syllable. The phonetic quality of
1539-437: 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,
1620-508: 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
1701-436: Is inapplicable in Finnish. Moreover, in Finnish, both ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩ are vowel sequences, not single letters, and they have independent meanings (e.g. haen "I seek" vs. hän "he, she"). In handwritten text, the actual form of the extra marking may vary from a pair of dots to a pair of short vertical bars, to a single horizontal bar, or to a wavy line resembling a tilde . In practice, almost any diacritic situated above
SECTION 20
#17327727959271782-510: Is not actually needed in Finnish). In Finnish, these extra letters are collectively called ääkköset when they need to be distinguished from the ISO basic Latin alphabet ; the word is a somewhat playful modification of aakkoset , which is Finnish for "alphabet". Another informal term is skandit or skandimerkit , short for skandinaaviset merkit " Scandinavian characters" (however,
1863-609: 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
1944-746: 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
2025-485: Is sometimes listed separately and after ⟨v⟩ , although officially it is merely a variant of the latter and can be alphabetized as ⟨v⟩ . Similarly, ⟨ š ⟩ and ⟨ ž ⟩ are variants of ⟨s⟩ and ⟨z⟩ , but they are often overlooked, as they are only used in some relatively new loanwords and foreign names, and may be replaced with ⟨sh⟩ and ⟨zh⟩ , respectively, if it
2106-629: 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
2187-480: Is technically impossible to reproduce ⟨š⟩ and ⟨ž⟩ . The Finnish keyboard layout on Microsoft Windows does not include ⟨š⟩ or ⟨ž⟩ ; thus, in practice, only highly formal sources such as official texts, encyclopedias or Helsingin Sanomat use them. The main peculiarities in the Finnish alphabet are the two extra vowels ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ö⟩ (and Swedish ⟨å⟩, which
2268-702: The Danish and Norwegian ⟨ æ ⟩ and ⟨ ø ⟩ are usually not taken into account). In Finnish, ⟨ä⟩, ⟨ö⟩ and ⟨y⟩ are the "front vowel" counterparts to the "back vowels" ⟨a⟩, ⟨o⟩ and ⟨u⟩; grammatical endings and suffixes using these letters, use either the front or back form depending on the vowel harmony of the word. The glyphs for ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ö⟩ are derived from the similar-looking German umlauted letters, but as with ⟨y⟩ versus ⟨u⟩, they are considered letters in their own right and thus alphabetized separately (after ⟨z⟩). The Germanic umlaut or convention of considering digraph ⟨ae⟩ equivalent to ⟨ä⟩, and ⟨oe⟩ equivalent to ⟨ö⟩
2349-615: 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
2430-532: 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
2511-514: The sound value of each letter tends to correspond with its value in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) – although some discrepancies do exist. The following table describes how each letter in the Finnish alphabet ( Finnish : suomen aakkoset ) is spelled and pronounced separately. If the name of a consonant begins with a vowel (usually ⟨ä⟩ [æ] ), it can be pronounced and spelled either as
Mestis - Misplaced Pages Continue
2592-513: 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
2673-458: 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
2754-409: The Finnish language spoken by native Swedish speakers is not anymore considered paradigmatic, but as a result of their long-lasting prestige, many people particularly in the capital district acquired the new [d] sound. Due to diffusion of the standard language through mass media and basic education, and due to the dialectal prestige of the capital area, the plosive [d] can now be heard in all parts of
2835-441: The Finnish language. Thus, they are not used in established Finnish words, but they may occur in newer loanwords as well as in foreign proper names , and they are included in the Finnish alphabet in order to maintain interlingual compatibility. The pronunciation of these letters varies quite a lot. In Finnish, words are ordered alphabetically according to the collation rules specified in the official standard SFS 4600. There are
2916-541: The SM-liiga was brought back for the 2024–25 season. Mestis got a new team, HK Zemgale/LLU , from Latvia for the 2022–23 season. HK Zemgale had never played in a Finnish league before and was added to Mestis to bring more entertainment and internationalization to Finnish ice hockey. According to Mestis themselves, they are talking with other international clubs about joining the Mestis league. The team names are usually
2997-417: The Swedish pronunciation [d] , which eventually became the educated norm. Initially, few native speakers of Finnish acquired the foreign plosive realisation of the native phoneme. Still some decades ago it was not entirely exceptional to hear loanwords like deodorantti ' deodorant ' pronounced as /teotorantti/ , while native Finnish words with a /d/ were pronounced in the usual dialectal way. Nowadays,
3078-694: 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
3159-508: The base glyph (such as, á ā ã) would probably be interpreted as a carelessly written pair of dots (ä). However, in computerized character sets , these alternatives are incorrect. The front-vowel counterpart of ⟨u⟩ using ⟨y⟩ rather than ⟨ü⟩ is carried over from Swedish, and also avoids confusion in cursive script with ⟨ii⟩, which is common in Finnish. In the Finnish writing system, some basic Latin letters are considered redundant, and other letters generally represent sounds that are not inherent in
3240-529: 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
3321-647: The colloquial language) ei kö teillä ole e(i) ks teil(lä) oo "don't you (pl.) have (it)?" (compare eiks to standard Estonian confirmatory interrogative eks ) Finnish orthography Finnish orthography is based on the Latin script , and uses an alphabet derived from the Swedish alphabet , officially comprising twenty-nine letters but also including two additional letters found in some loanwords. The Finnish orthography strives to represent all morphemes phonologically and, roughly speaking,
Mestis - Misplaced Pages Continue
3402-465: The country, at least in loanwords and in formal speech. Nowadays replacing /d/ with a /t/ is considered rustic, for example /nyt tarvittais uutta tirektiiviä/ instead of /nyt tarvittaisiin uutta direktiiviä/ 'now we could use a new directive'. In Helsinki slang , the slang used by some, more rarely nowadays, in Helsinki, the voiced stops are found in native words even in positions which are not
3483-404: 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
3564-528: The criteria set by the SM-liiga. Mestis, however, is an open league where relegation and promotion are possible with the 3rd league, Suomi-sarja . Mestis is also the highest league governed by the FIHA. In the years 2000–2008, it was not practically possible for Mestis teams to get promoted to the SM-liiga, which was closed in 2000, but it was possible to drop down to the Suomi-sarja instead. However, KalPa
3645-478: 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
3726-445: The educated norm. The failure to use them correctly is sometimes ridiculed, e.g. if a news reporter or a high official consistently and publicly pronounces Belgia 'Belgium' as /ˈpel.ki.a/ . Even many educated speakers, however, still make no distinction between voiced and voiceless plosives in regular speech, although minimal pairs exist: /ˈbus.si/ ' bus ' vs. /ˈpus.si/ 'bag', /ˈɡo.ril.lɑ/ ' gorilla ' vs. /ˈko.ril.lɑ/ 'with/at
3807-445: 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
3888-551: 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
3969-399: The foundational principle is that each letter stands for one sound and each sound is always represented by the same letter, within the bounds of a single morpheme. The most notable exception to this rule is the velar nasal [ŋ] , which does not have an allotted letter. In Finnish, both vowels and consonants may be either short or long . A short sound is written with a single letter, and
4050-446: 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
4131-461: 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
SECTION 50
#17327727959274212-470: 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
4293-515: The letter ⟨ü⟩ when used in other languages than German, but at least as regards the Estonian or Hungarian ⟨ü⟩ , it seems consistent to treat it as equivalent to ⟨y⟩ (and even more so, since ⟨ü⟩ in Estonian and Hungarian is not considered a mere variant of ⟨u⟩ , as it is in German). It would seem problematic, however, to apply
4374-415: 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
4455-521: The middle of the 19th century, a significant portion of the Swedish-speaking upper class in Finland decided that Finnish had to be made equal in usage to Swedish. They even started using Finnish as their home language, even while very few of them really mastered it well. Since the historical */ð/ no more had a common way of pronunciation between different Finnish dialects and since it was usually written as ⟨d⟩ , many started using
4536-411: 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
4617-624: 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
4698-419: 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
4779-453: 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
4860-616: 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,
4941-447: 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
SECTION 60
#17327727959275022-746: 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
5103-550: The result of consonant gradation, e.g. /dallas/ 's/he walked' (← native verb root talla- ), /bonjata/ 'to understand' (← Russian /ponʲiˈmatʲ/ понимать). In the Southwestern dialects of Rauma-Eurajoki-Laitila area, /b/ , /d/ and /ɡ/ are commonplace, since the voicing of nasals spread to phonemes /p/ , /t/ and /k/ , making them half-voiced, e.g. /sendä/ ← sentään or /ninɡo/ ← niin kuin . They are also found in those coastal areas where Swedish influenced
5184-579: The same principle to e.g. ⟨ü⟩ ( u-diaeresis ) as used in Spanish or ⟨õ⟩ ( nasal vowel ) as used in Portuguese , as these letters represent quite different orthographic traditions. Other special cases: Ligatures are alphabetized as two individual letters: Letters and characters taken from other alphabets (e.g. Σ 'Greek capital letter sigma') or writing systems are collated after Latin letters. When writing Finnish,
5265-401: 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
5346-636: 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
5427-498: The traditional name of the club. All clubs are commonly known by the name of their team. Oy and Ab are the abbreviations for limited company in Finnish and Swedish respectively. capacity 4,200 2,372 1,358 8,200 700 1,200 1,100 2,004 3,500 3,000 Medal table: Finnish language Finnish ( endonym : suomi [ˈsuo̯mi] or suomen kieli [ˈsuo̯meŋ ˈkie̯li] )
5508-465: 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
5589-422: 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
5670-499: 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
5751-588: The value of the voiced dental fricative /ð/ , as in English "then". Since neither Swedish nor German of that time had a separate sign for this sound, Agricola chose to mark it with ⟨d⟩ or ⟨dh⟩ . Later on, the /ð/ sound developed in a variety of ways in different Finnish dialects: it was deleted, or became a hiatus , a flap consonant , or any of ⟨r⟩ , ⟨l⟩ , ⟨j⟩ , ⟨jj⟩ . For example, historical and rare dialectal meiðän , käðen "our" (gen.), "hand" (gen.) could be: In
5832-431: The velar nasal in loanwords is highly inconsistent, often mixing the original spelling of the word with an applied Finnish pronunciation pattern. E ng lanti "England" is pronounced /ˈeŋ.lɑn.ti/ (with a short /ŋ/ but no /ɡ/ ), and even ma gn eetti " magnet " is pronounced /ˈmɑŋ.neːt.ti/ (with plain ⟨g⟩ being pronounced as /ŋ/ when followed by ⟨n⟩ , as in classical Latin ) – cf.
5913-492: 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
5994-626: 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
6075-403: 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
6156-496: 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)
6237-525: 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
6318-449: Was promoted to the SM-liiga in the spring of 2005, when the number of teams in the league was increased from 13 to 14 teams. For the 2008–2009 season, the SM-liiga qualifiers were brought back for a few seasons, but in the 2013–2014 season, the qualifiers were removed again. After the elimination of the qualifiers, Sport , KooKoo and Jukurit have been promoted to the SM-liiga through the license system. The promotion and relegation between
6399-545: 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
6480-543: 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
6561-511: 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
#926073