Karelian ( Karelian Proper and Livvi-Karelian : karjala, karjalan kieli ; Ludian : kard'al, kard'alan kiel' ; Tver Karelian : kariela, karielan kieli ) is a Finnic language spoken mainly in the Russian Republic of Karelia . Linguistically, Karelian is closely related to the Finnish dialects spoken in eastern Finland , and some Finnish linguists have even classified Karelian as a dialect of Finnish, though in the modern day it is widely considered a separate language. Karelian is not to be confused with the Southeastern dialects of Finnish, sometimes referred to as karjalaismurteet ("Karelian dialects") in Finland. In the Russian 2020–2021 census, around 9,000 people spoke Karelian natively, but around 14,000 said to be able to speak the language. There are around 11,000 speakers of Karelian in Finland. And around 30,000 have at least some knowledge of Karelian in Finland.
81-508: Paavo Nurmi Stadium ( Finnish : Paavo Nurmen stadion , Swedish : Paavo Nurmis stadion ) is a multi-use stadium in Turku , Finland . It is currently used mostly for football matches and athletics meets. It holds 13,000 people and is named after the Turku-born runner Paavo Nurmi . Twenty athletics world records have been set at the stadium. John Landy broke the world records for
162-819: 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
243-534: A Shortened Catechism into North Karelian and Olonets (Aunus) dialects in 1804, and the gospel of St. Matthew in South Karelian Tver dialect, in 1820. Karelian literature in 19th century Russia remained limited to a few primers, songbooks and leaflets. In 1921, the first all-Karelian congress under the Soviet regime debated whether Finnish or Karelian should be the official language (next to Russian) of
324-473: 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
405-460: 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
486-475: 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
567-600: A national-cultural autonomy which guarantees the use of the Karelian language in schools and mass media. In Finland , Karelian has official status as a non-regional national minority language within the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages . The Karelian language has two main varieties, which can be considered as supradialects or separate languages: Karelian Proper , which comprises Northern Karelian and South Karelian (including
648-445: 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
729-555: 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
810-461: A spirit of brotherhood. Karelian is written with orthography similar to Finnish orthography. However, some features of the Karelian language and thus orthography are different from Finnish: /c/ and /č/ have length levels, which is not found in standard Finnish. For example, in Kalevala, Lönnrot 's orthography metsä : metsän hides the fact that the pronunciation of the original material
891-493: 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
SECTION 10
#1732783039828972-579: A variety of dialects across Finland — and the Finns saw Karelian simply as additional Finnish dialects. In the end Finnish was established as the official "local" language. An intense program of Finnicization , but called "Karelianization", began and Finnish-language schools were established across Soviet Karelia. Newspapers, literary journals were established and Russian literature was translated into Finnish, while much literature from Soviet Karelia in Finnish
1053-708: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Finnish language Finnish ( endonym : suomi [ˈsuo̯mi] or suomen kieli [ˈsuo̯meŋ ˈkie̯li] ) 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
1134-508: 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
1215-781: Is actually /mettšä : metšän/ , with palatalization of the affricate . The exact details depend on the dialect, though. See Yleiskielen ts:n murrevastineet . Karelian actually uses /z/ as a voiced alveolar fricative . (In Finnish, z is a foreign spelling for /ts/ .) The plosives /b/ , /d/ and /ɡ/ may be voiced. (In most Finnish dialects, they are not differentiated from the unvoiced /p/ , /t/ , and /k/ . Furthermore, in Karelian except North Karelian, voiced consonants occur also in native words, not just in loans as in standard Finnish.) The sounds represented by č, š and ž are native to Karelian, but not Finnish. Speakers of Finnish do not distinguish /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ from /s/ , nor /tʃ/ from /ts/ (medial) or /s/ (initial). For example,
1296-484: Is mutually intelligible with Finnish, 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
1377-609: 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
1458-746: 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
1539-410: Is present before /g/, /k/ and /kk/, and the combination is represented with multigraphs ⟨ng⟩ , ⟨nk⟩ or ⟨nkk⟩ . Karelian Proper does not geminate /ŋ/ in consonant gradation unlike Finnish: kengät 'shoes' pronounces as [ˈkeŋɡæt] instead of Finnish [ˈkeŋŋæt] . Olonets, Ludic, and Tver Karelian have the voiced affricate / dʒ /, represented in writing by
1620-622: Is seen as a distinct language. Besides Karelian and Finnish, the Finnic subgroup also includes Estonian and some minority languages spoken around the Baltic Sea . Karelian is a language in danger of extinction, with 45% of speakers being over 65 years old and with around 1% of speakers being under 15 years of age. The language is also not known or used at all by a majority of the people in the Republic of Karelia, with around 43% of people using
1701-669: Is today also considered a separate language. Like Finnish, the Karelian language has 8 phonemic vowel qualities , totalling 11 vowel phonemes when vowel length is considered: Only the close vowels /i/ , /y/ and /u/ may occur long. The original Proto-Finnic long mid and open vowels have been diphthongized: * ee, *öö, *oo > /ie/, /yö/, /uo/ (as also in Finnish ); *aa, *ää > /oa/, /eä/ or /ua/, /iä/ (as also in Savonian dialects of Finnish). North Karelian and Olonets Karelian have 21 diphthongs : In addition to
SECTION 20
#17327830398281782-547: Is usually considered a part of the Eastern Finnic subgroup. It has been proposed that Late Proto-Finnic evolved into three dialects: Northern dialect, spoken in western Finland ; Southern dialect, spoken in the area of modern-day Estonia and northern Latvia , and Eastern dialect, spoken in the regions east of the Southern dialect. In the 6th century, Eastern dialect arrived at the western shores of Lake Ladoga, and in
1863-637: 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 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
1944-615: 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
2025-579: The Tver enclave dialects )) and Olonets Karelian (Livvi Karelian). Ludic Karelian also appears in writing. All variants are written with the Latin -based Karelian alphabet , though the Cyrillic script has been used in the past. Each writer writes in Karelian according to their own dialectal form. Based upon toponymic and historical evidence, a form of Karelian was also spoken among the extinct Bjarmians in
2106-532: 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
2187-513: 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
2268-420: The 1,500 m and the mile (1954), Nurmi for the 3,000 m (1922), Emil Zátopek (1950) and Ron Clarke (1965) for the 10,000 m, Viljo Heino for the one-hour run (1945) and the 20 km (1949), Matti Järvinen for the javelin throw (1932) and Charles Hoff for the pole vault (1925). Paavo Nurmi Games , a track and field meet, is held at the stadium annually. This article about a Finnish sports venue
2349-709: The 15th century. Karelian is a Finnic language from the Uralic language family, and is closely related to Finnish . Finnish and Karelian have common ancestry in the Proto-Karelian language spoken in the coast of Lake Ladoga in the Iron Age , and Karelian forms a dialect continuum with the Eastern dialects of Finnish. Earlier, some Finnish linguists classified Karelian as a dialect of Finnish, sometimes known in older Finnish literature as Raja-Karjalan murteet ('Border Karelian dialects'), but today Karelian
2430-1340: The 19th century used the Cyrillic alphabet . With the establishment of the Soviet Union, Finnish, written with the Latin alphabet, became official. However, from 1938 to 1940 Karelian written in Cyrillic replaced Finnish as an official language of the Karelian ASSR (see "History" below). Example from Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Cyrillic Karelian script, transliteration and translation : Cyrillic : Каи рахвас роиттахeс вäллиннÿ да тазаарвозинну омас арвос да оигeвуксис. Ёгахизeлe хeис он аннeтту миeли да оматундо да хeил вäлтäмäттäх пидäÿ олла кeскeнäх, куи вeллил . Latin : Kai rahvas roittahes vällinny da taza-arvozinnu omas arvos da oigevuksis. Jogahizele heis on annettu mieli da omatundo da heil vältämättäh pidäy olla keskenäh, kui vellil. Translation : All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in
2511-540: The 9th century, Northern dialect reached the same region. These two dialects blended together and formed Old Karelian. By the end of the 13th century, speakers of Old Karelian had reached the Savo region in eastern Finland , increasingly mixing with population from western Finland. In 1323 Karelia was divided between Sweden and Novgorod according to the Treaty of Nöteborg , which started to slowly separate descendants of
Paavo Nurmi Stadium - Misplaced Pages Continue
2592-418: The Cyrillic alphabet. A new form of standardized Karelian was hurriedly introduced in 1938, written in Cyrillic, with only nine grammatical cases, and with a very large and increasing number of words taken directly from Russian but with Karelian grammatical endings. During this period about 200 titles were published, including educational materials, children's books, readers, Party and public affairs documents,
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
2754-629: The Karelian language in Karelia and Finland. In 2007 a standard alphabet was adopted to write all dialects (Tver Karelian adopted it in 2017). In 2008, Joensuu University launched Finland's first Karelian language professorship, in order to save the language. A year later, Finland's first Karelian language nest (pre-school immersion group) was established in the town of Nurmes . Croatian singer Jurica Popović collaborated with Tilna Tolvaneen on lyrics for his 1999 song "H.O.T. Hold On To Your Tradition", which are partly in Karelian. A sample from
2835-533: The Nerev excavation on the left coast side of Novgorod . The language used in the document is thought to be an archaic form of the language spoken in Olonets Karelia , a dialect of the Karelian language. A later manuscript, no. 403 (second half of the 14th century), apparently belonging to a tax collector, includes a short glossary of Karelian words and their translations. In the regions ruled by Novgorod,
2916-410: The Proto-Karelian language from each other. In the areas occupied by Sweden, Old Karelian started to develop into dialects of Finnish: Savonian dialects and Southeastern dialects. Birch bark letter no. 292 is the oldest known document in any Finnic language . The document is dated to the beginning of the 13th century. It was found in 1957 by a Soviet expedition, led by Artemiy Artsikhovskiy in
2997-548: The Tver enclave dialects); and Olonets Karelian . These varieties constitute a continuum of dialects, the ends of which are no longer mutually intelligible. Varieties can be further divided into individual dialects: The Ludic language , spoken along the easternmost edge of Karelian Republic, is in the Russian research tradition counted as a third main dialect of Karelian, though Ludic shows strong relationship also to Veps , and it
3078-584: The USSR as part of that Republic. Finnish, written in the Latin alphabet, was once again made the official "local" language of Soviet Karelia, alongside Russian. In the 1980s, publishing began again in various adaptations of the Latin alphabet for Olonets Karelian and the White Sea and Tver dialects of Karelian Proper. Since the 1990s the Union of Karelian people started to organize various projects to popularize
3159-694: 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
3240-584: 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
3321-440: 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 ) Karelian language There is no single standard Karelian language, so the Karelian language is a group of two supradialects . The two supradialects are Karelian Proper (which comprises Northern Karelian and South Karelian (including
Paavo Nurmi Stadium - Misplaced Pages Continue
3402-404: 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
3483-478: 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
3564-457: The digraph ⟨dž⟩ . Karelian is today written using a Latin alphabet consisting of 29 characters. It extends the ISO basic Latin alphabet with the additional letters Č, Š, Ž, Ä, Ö and ' and excludes the letters Q, W and X. This unified alphabet is used to write all Karelian varieties including Tver Karelian. The very few texts that were published in Karelian from medieval times through
3645-987: The diphthongs North Karelian has a variety of triphthongs : Olonets Karelian has only the triphthongs ieu, iey, iäy, uau, uou and yöy . There are 20 non-palatalized consonants in Karelian with their own single grapheme, and 2 are represented with multigraphs: Some palatalized consonants exist: /lʲ nʲ sʲ tʲ/ in Karelian Proper (North), /dʲ lʲ nʲ rʲ sʲ tʲ/ (/zʲ/ also exists, but only in loanwords) in Olonets Karelian, /dʲ lʲ nʲ rʲ sʲ tʲ zʲ/ in Ludic and Tver Karelian. Palatalized labials are also present in some loanwords: North Karelian b'urokratti 'bureaucrat', Livvi b'urokruattu 'bureaucrat', kip'atku 'boiling water', sv'oklu 'beet', Tver Karelian kip'atka 'boiling water', s'v'okla 'beet' (from Russian бюрократ, кипяток, свёкла). Voiced velar nasal / ŋ / (eng)
3726-445: 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
3807-459: 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 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
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
3969-446: 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
4050-461: 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
4131-584: The language at 30,000. Due to post-World War II mobility and internal migration, Karelians now live scattered throughout Finland, and Karelian is no longer spoken as a local community language. In the Republic of Karelia , Karelian has official status as a minority language, and since the late 1990s there have been moves to pass special language legislation, which would give Karelian an official status on par with Russian . Karelians in Tver Oblast have
SECTION 50
#17327830398284212-470: 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
4293-446: The language. In Russia , Karelian is spoken by about 13,880 people (2020), mainly in the Republic of Karelia , although notable Karelian-speaking communities can also be found in the Tver region ( Tver Oblast ) northwest of Moscow . Previously, it was estimated that there were 5,000 speakers in Finland , mainly belonging to the older generations, but more recent estimates have put the number of people with even slight knowledge of
4374-446: The literary journal Karelia . The newspaper Karjalan Sanomat was written in this new Karelian Cyrillic, rather than in Finnish. Karelians who did not speak Russian could not understand this new official language due to the amount of Russian words, for example, the phrase "Which party led the revolution" in this form of Karelian was given as "Миттўйне партиуя руководи революциюа?" ( Mittujne partiuja rukovodi revoljutsijua? ) where
4455-415: 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
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
4617-569: 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
4698-467: The native Karelian words kiza, šoma, liedžu and seičemen are kisa, soma, lietsu and seitsemän in standard Finnish. As all other Finnic languages, Karelian descends from Proto-Finnic , which in turn ultimately descends from Proto-Uralic . The most recent ancestor of the Karelian dialects is the language variety spoken in the 9th century at the western shores of Lake Ladoga , known as Old Karelian (Finnish: muinaiskarjala ). Karelian
4779-419: 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
4860-603: The new "Karelian Labour Commune" ( Karjalan Työkommuuni , Карялан тыöкоммууни in Cyrillic Karelian), which two years later would become the Karelian ASSR . Finnish communists as well as ethnic Finns from North America, who came to live in Soviet Karelia, dominated the political discourse, as they were in general far better educated than local Karelians. They favored the use of Finnish, which had just been through an 80-year period of standardization based on
4941-453: 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
SECTION 60
#17327830398285022-616: 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,
5103-447: 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
5184-518: The protolanguage started to evolve into Karelian language. In 1617 Novgorod lost parts of Karelia to Sweden in the Treaty of Stolbovo , which led the Karelian-speaking population of the occupied areas to flee from their homes. This gave rise to the Karelian speaking population in the Tver and Valday regions. In the 19th century, a few books were published in Karelian using the Cyrillic script , notably A Translation of some Prayers and
5265-696: 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
5346-401: 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
5427-636: 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
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
5751-492: 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
5832-626: 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
5913-403: 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
5994-578: The word for party, led, and revolution are all Russian words with Karelian grammatical endings, whereas the Finnish equivalent words have completely different roots: "Mikä puolue johti vallankumousta?" After the Winter War , in April 1940, political considerations changed again. The USSR established the Karelo-Finnish SSR with the idea that Finland proper would eventually be annexed to
6075-496: 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)
6156-495: Was branded a language of the bourgeois Finnish society in Finland proper, and was later regarded as a "fascist" language of the Finnish enemy. From early 1938 to April 1940, the Soviet authorities ceased publication in Finnish, all Finnish-language schools were closed and the children were prohibited from speaking Finnish even during recess. The Soviet government replaced Finnish in the Karelian ASSR with Karelian written in
6237-411: 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
6318-545: 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
6399-566: Was published. While this was happening in Soviet Karelia, in 1931–33, a Karelian literary language using the Latin alphabet was standardized for the Tver Karelian community of about 127,000 people, hundreds of kilometers to the south. Between 1935 and 1938 the Finnish-dominated leadership of Soviet Karelia including leader Edvard Gylling , was removed from power, killed or sent to concentration camps . The Finnish language
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
#827172