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95-483: Tornio is unilingually Finnish with a negligible number of native Swedish speakers , although this does not count vast numbers of bilinguals who speak Swedish as a second language, with an official target of universal working bilingualism for both border municipalities. The delta of the Torne River has been inhabited since the end of the last ice age , and there are currently (1995) 16 settlement sites known in

190-819: 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

285-612: 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

380-575: A common golf course, situated astride the border. The IKEA store in Haparanda has signposting in Finnish as well as in Swedish, and all prices are signposted in two currencies. Tornion Palloveikot is a bandy club which plays in the Bandyliiga and has become Finnish bandy champion several times. They play their home matches in Haparanda, just on the other side of the Swedish border, which

475-473: 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

570-518: 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

665-763: A full regiment to outflank the Germans to the north of Tornio. What resulted was some of the fiercest fighting during the Lapland War. German attack from the north managed to cross the Keropudas river but was stopped and tied down by resolute Finnish defence while attack from east failed to throw Finns from their positions. Finnish 50th Infantry Regiment (JR 50) flanked the German Machine Gun Ski Brigade Finland which had been tied down in its attack against defending JR 53 and reached

760-460: 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

855-574: A language of the Eastern Sami group , while those of the town were mainly Swedish-speaking. The name 'Tornio' is an old Finnish word meaning "war spear": the city is named after the river. To Swedish it was borrowed as Torneå after Torne å , an alternative name of the river. The town received its charter from the King Gustavus Adolphus on 12 May 1621, and was officially founded on the island of Suensaari . At that time, it

950-497: A local uprising. Both battalions of JR 11 which had moved towards the station got tied down into a battle where Germans showed near fanatical resistance. Still on 1 October the third battalion of JR 11 was cautiously moving towards Kemi when it encountered and interned a small German detachment sent to subdue the uprising at Tornio. The Germans were finally realizing the extent of the Finish landing and uprising however they were not in

1045-475: 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

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1140-445: 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

1235-463: A position to take action against the Fins at the time. The Torne river valley was essentially devoid of German forces and their forces at Kemi, under command of Division Kräutler, consisted of 4 battalions most of which had already been committed to delaying against the Finish advance from the south along the coast. The Germans responded to the pleas for reinforcements by dispatching several units towards

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

1425-440: 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

1520-508: 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

1615-609: 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

1710-746: 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

1805-629: 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

1900-615: 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

1995-529: The Outokumpu steelworks . Highway 29 (part of the European route E8 ) between Keminmaa and Tornio is the world's northernmost motorway . Tornio is also the northern terminus of European route E4 . Tornio is twinned with: Finnish language Finnish ( endonym : suomi [ˈsuo̯mi] or suomen kieli [ˈsuo̯meŋ ˈkie̯li] ) is a Finnic language of

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2090-675: The USSR to forcibly remove German troops from their territory. Thus the invasion of Tornio was planned and executed to surprise the Germans and open a front behind their backs along the Swedish border. Lieutenant-General Siilasvuo was the officer in charge of the operations in Lapland and planned an amphibious assault near Tornio in time with an overland attack towards Kemi ; both operations had Oulu as their base. The Finns used three cargo vessels with an armament of single anti-aircraft machine gun in each ship. They had no air or naval support during

2185-532: 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

2280-465: 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,

2375-513: 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

2470-561: The 18th century Tornio was visited by several expeditions from Central Europe which came to explore the Arctic . The most notable expedition (1736–1737) was led by a member of the Académie française , Pierre Louis Maupertuis , who came to take meridian arc measurements along the Meänmaa which would show that the globe is flattened towards the poles. The church spire at Tornio was one of

2565-548: The 80 mile sail from Oulu to Tornio. German forces at the direction of Kemi (and Tornio) were grouped under Division Kräutler. These were 1st battalion of 139th Mountain Jaeger Brigade (Gebirgsjäger-Brigade 139), 6th Jaeger Battalion (Jäger-Bataillon 6), 6th SS Mountain Reconnaissance Battalion (SS-Gebirgs-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 6), and 6th SS Infantry Battalion (SS-Schützen-Bataillon "Nord" 6). Due to

2660-681: The Finish failures. On 6 October started the final German effort to drive Finns away from the Tornio and regain the transportation junction located there. They had deployed 6 infantry battalions with armor and artillery support for the operation, however instead of facing what two infantry regiments like they had expected Germans were on 6 October already facing 10 Finnish infantry battalions who had very limited armor (a company of T-26 tanks had been reactivated) and artillery support. Again both sides choose to press on with attacks. Germans chose to attack simultaneously from north and east while Finns dispatched

2755-458: The Finnish civic guard had planned an uprising to take place at border town of Tornio . Major Thure Larjo, utilizing Finnish soldiers at the time on leave at the location and a single company of air defence soldiers, managed to take control of the town of Tornio on the west bank of the Torne (Finnish and Swedish river) and contain the few Germans who were at the site. However the planned attack on

2850-469: The Finnish JR 50 which had been rushed to the battle had left most of its equipment to Röyttä and the supplies had to be carried by hand over swamps or marshy terrain. German attempts to relieve the encircled units did not succeed during 7 October. On 8 October Finns started to clean up the encirclement and attacked from all directions against surrounded Germans. Though many Germans were taken as POWs from

2945-684: The Finnish and German troops the relations between the two sides in northern Finland had remained fairly good. As per earlier planned Operation Birke Germans had been evacuating material and troops to safer positions further north in the Finland. The actual German interest in the Finnish Lapland was in keeping hold of the Petsamo area and its nickel mines . On the other hand, the German and Finnish troops had been fighting together for three years, and many personal friendships had been forged between

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3040-463: The Finnish and Swedish railway systems. A bogie exchange and variable gauge axle track gauge changing facility are provided. Tornio has a passenger service provided from Tornio-East station by Finnish Railways VR three days a week overnight. Kemi-Tornio Airport is located in Kemi , about 18 kilometres (11 mi) south-east from Tornio city centre. The Port of Tornio is a cargo port adjacent to

3135-458: 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

3230-427: The Finnish pressure from the south only the 6th SS Mountain Reconnaissance Battalion could be moved towards Tornio while the rest were tied down against the advancing Finns. The Finns had managed to get German permission to stage a battalion worth of men known as 'Detachment Pennanen' (fi. Osasto Pennanen) behind their lines in the subterfuge of protecting the key industrial facilities at Kemi. In addition to this force

3325-472: The Finns' landing at Tornio and the capturing of German troops, the Germans started to take Finnish civilians as hostages: 132 from Kemi and a further 130 from Rovaniemi , and attempted to trade these for the captured Germans. During fighting at Tornio, a German negotiator arrived with the demand that the Finns were required to release their prisoners and withdraw back to Röyttä, or else the Germans would execute

3420-625: The Germans. The Germans realized their mistake and on 12 October they abandoned the hostages to the advancing Finns at Jaatila. While the fighting at Tornio still continued the German leadership made a decision to move from Operation Birke to Operation Nordlicht and abandon the most of northern Finland and Norway. Soviet offensive near Petsamo started soon after Germans had made their decision. Strict marching discipline enforced by Germans, German motorized units and effective demolition of transportation network meant that after battle of Tornio Finnish troops could effectively engage withdrawing Germans only at

3515-534: The Kemi river valley. Due to lack of roads, the supplies to the troops around Kemi would have to be routed through Rovaniemi. By October 8 the whole Kemi-Tornio area had been cleared. The German commander in the North, General Lothar Rendulic considered the capture of Tornio a betrayal by the Finns and ordered the scorched earth destruction of Lapland in retaliation. By attacking Tornio the Finnish government had proven to

3610-648: The Russians to their Western allies. It was also through Tornio that Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia from exile in Switzerland in March 1917. After the independence of Finland in 1917 Tornio lost its garrison and experienced further decline, although its population increased steadily. The town played no role of importance in the Finnish Civil War , but was the scene of some fierce street fighting at

3705-616: The Torne river shore north of the German positions. On 7 October situation had grown bad to worse for the Germans, not only had their attacks been repulsed but attacking units had suffered heavy losses and the only reserve of the 20th Mountain Army, Brigade Finland had been encircled north of Tornio just when the Soviet offensive in the Arctic started. However Germans were not the only ones in trouble,

3800-694: 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

3895-488: The afternoon of 4 October the Germans attacked again this time managing to push the Fins to the Raumo river where the lines froze. Further German attempts to cross the Raumo river on 5 October were easily repulsed by the Fins. On the night preceding the 4 October German forces north of Tornio also attacked Fins who had advanced to Alavojakkala. Fins were forced to abandon the already surrounded fuel depot and withdraw further to

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3990-482: The area lost a whole day and allowed Germans to marshal their forces. The Finns were starting to lose the initiative. On 3 October the forces the Germans had gathered together between Tornio and Kemi started moving towards Tornio. Two Finish battalions from JR 11 and one from JR 53 faced three German battalions supported with armor and artillery. The initial German attempt in the morning was repulsed and several tanks were lost. Both sides now planned to attack which caused

4085-584: The area, similar to those found in Vuollerim ( c.  6000–5000 BC ). The Swedish part of the region is not far from the oldest permanent settlement site found in Scandinavia . A former hypothesis that this region was uninhabited and colonised from the Viking Age onward has now been abandoned. Until the 19th century, inhabitants of the surrounding countryside spoke Finnish , and Kemi Sámi ,

4180-493: The area. One armored unit, the second company of Panzer Abteilung 211, was sent from Rovaniemi towards Kemi over railroad with unit arriving already on morning of 2 October. Several infantry formations were detached from the groupings and rushed towards Tornio, these included one battalion from 379th Grenadier Regiment (Grenadier-Regiment 379), one from 206th Mountain Jaeger Regiment (Gebirgs-Jäger-Regiment 206) as well as

4275-529: 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

4370-439: The border has also been a growing industry. The town is a centre of education for Western Lapland, with a vocational college and a university of applied sciences . Tornio and Haparanda have a history as twin cities , and are currently set to merge under the names TornioHaparanda and HaparandaTornio. A new city centre is under construction on the international border and several municipal services are shared. The towns also share

4465-644: The border, to balance the loss of Tornio, and Tornio became unilingually Finnish. During the Russian period, Tornio was a sleepy garrison town. Trade only livened up during the Åland War (part of the Crimean War ) and the First World War , when Tornio became an important border crossing for goods and people. During the First World War, Tornio and Haparanda had the only rail link connecting

4560-559: 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 ) Battle of Tornio The Battle of Tornio (October 1–8, 1944) was the first major engagement between Nazi Germany and Finland in the Lapland War ; although hostilities had already begun elsewhere (see Tanne Ost ). Though open fighting had erupted already in mid September at Gogland between

4655-404: 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

4750-478: 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

4845-445: The effect of the standard language is the development of the consonant gradation form /ts   : ts/ as in metsä : metsän , as this pattern was originally (1940) found natively only in the dialects of the southern Karelian isthmus and Ingria . It has been reinforced by the spelling "ts" for the dental fricative [θː] , used earlier in some western dialects. The spelling and the pronunciation this encourages however approximate

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4940-421: The encirclement, many Germans managed to escape though they had suffered heavy casualties. Though Germans had been able to sortie their aircraft to Röyttä even earlier the first serious attack as seen on 4 October when Germans were able to sortie a squadron of Stuka dive bombers to the port of Röyttä while Finnish fighters assigned to provide air cover remained grounded due poor weather at their base further to

5035-495: The evening of 1 October the Finnish troops of Infantry Regiment 11 captured a German supply depot – which were colloquially known as 'little-Berlins' – and found large stores of alcohol. Order and discipline disappeared from the 2nd battalion and from most of the 1st battalion as well. Later on, the newly arriving 2nd battalion of Infantry Regiment 53 was also accidentally directed to the same location with similar results. Events at 'little-Berlin' essentially meant that Finnish forces in

5130-485: The flanking Finish battalion to stumble into a German battalion which resulted in both getting tied down. This however did not prevent the German main attack from forcing the Fins to retreat who however managed to halt the German advance before the situation became too grave. Though the Fins had slight numerical superiority in infantry over the Germans the Fins had no artillery at all while the Germans could deploy several artillery batteries as well as several anti-tank guns. In

5225-551: 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

5320-446: 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

5415-461: 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

5510-401: The hostages. The Finnish response was that such an action would result in the immediate execution of all captured German POWs. The German plan backfired since it had negligible impact on Finnish actions and only managed to further stain the German - especially Rendulic's - reputation in Finland. Hostage drama also offered the Finnish media an excellent propaganda tool which could be worked against

5605-462: The important bridges across the Kemi river – however after learning from the Finnish forces which had secured the town that there could be a whole German battalion in the vicinity he chose more a cautious approach. Instead of moving towards Kemi JR 11 moved to secure the German supply depot located at Tornio railroad station. Arrival of Finish battalions from Röyttä took Germans by surprise since so far they had thought that they were dealing just with

5700-402: The landmarks used by Maupertuis in his measurements. The church was constructed in 1686 by Matti Joosepinpoika Härmä. The Lapland trade on which Tornio depended started to decline in the 18th century, and the harbour had to be moved downriver twice as a result of the rising of the land , which made the river too shallow for navigation. However, the greatest blow to the wealth of the town came in

5795-470: 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

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5890-475: The large German supply depot near the railroad station of Tornio on the east bank of the river failed. However the Finns were able to send a train to assist the arriving landing force. Though the uprising was not as successful as had been hoped for it contributed to the confusion on the German side and also made it easier for the landing force to arrive undetected to the port of Röyttä, the outer port of Tornio. Actions of Detachment Pennanen at Kemi, namely capturing

5985-484: The last war between Sweden and Russia in 1808, which saw the Russians capture and annex Finland. The border was drawn through the deepest channel of the Muonio and Tornio rivers, splitting Lapland into two parts, with deleterious effects on trade. Tornio ended up on the Russian side of the border by special request of the Russian czar. The Swedes developed the village of Haaparanta (present day Haparanda ) on their side of

6080-411: The location to both provide anti-aircraft fire and to suppress German battery located at Laivaniemi within firing distance from the port which had kept harassing the Finnish effort to unload their transports. Auxiliary gunboat Aunus arrived later on. On the same day – 6 October – several Focke-Wulf Fw 200 bombers bombed Ryöttä using Henschel Hs 293 glide bombs but without results. As a response to

6175-415: 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

6270-411: 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

6365-624: 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

6460-419: 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

6555-484: The onset of the Lapland War between Finland and Nazi Germany . The rapid liberation of the town by Finnish forces may have saved it from being burned down like so many other towns in Lapland. As a result, the wooden church from 1686 can still be seen today. After World War II, the town created new employment built on the success of the local Lapin Kulta brewery and the Outokumpu stainless steel mill. Tourism based on

6650-453: 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

6745-616: 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,

6840-447: 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

6935-454: The port of Ajos, further mislead the initial German response to the landing operation into believing that the Finns would concentrate on Kemi instead of Tornio. The first elements of the Finish 11th Infantry Regiment (JR 11) landed unopposed at the port of Röyttä at 07:45 on 1 October and were met by a train that started transporting troops closer to the town. Lieutenant Colonel Halsti had planned to move his forces swiftly towards Kemi to secure

7030-746: 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

7125-401: 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

7220-430: The south. Dive bombers scored several hits to the Finnish transports unloading at the port sinking two of them, Bore IX and Maininki near the pier greatly hampering the unloading. Air raids at Röyttä continued until the end of fighting at Tornio region. Later on 6 October 1944 first small squadron from Finnish Navy consisting of gunboats Hämeenmaa and Uusimaa and patrol boats VMV 15 and VMV 16 arrived to

7315-589: The south. Later on 4 October the German forces north of Tornio consisting of 3 infantry battalions, more heavily armed than their Finish counterparts, with artillery support faced 3 Finish infantry battalions. Fins expected main German effort to be coming from direction of Kemi and were ill-prepared for strong German attack from the north which advanced rapidly forcing Fins to retreat several kilometers before forming new defensive line at Keropudas river. Lack of maps, low morale – from fighting an 'unnecessary war' – and especially lack of heavy weapons contributed heavily to

7410-636: 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

7505-402: The time and place of Germans' choosing. The original Finnish plan had been to cut off the German troops around Kemi from all ways of retreat. However, the German troops were able to secure the road to Rovaniemi and retreat in an orderly fashion. On the other hand, the capture of Tornio effectively cut the German troops in Finland into two parts: one fighting in Tornio river valley, the other in

7600-465: 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

7695-442: The two armies. Thus, until now, there had been very few actual hostilities between the German and Finnish troops. Until the battle of Tornio Finnish and German troops had been performing 'autumn maneuvers' in which the pace of the German withdrawal was matched with pace of the following Finnish troops with mutual agreement thus avoiding open conflict between the two sides. The Finns, however, were forced by their peace agreement with

7790-422: 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

7885-499: 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

7980-492: 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

8075-565: The west of the city. Tornio has a subarctic climate ( Dfc ) that is slightly tempered in winter by its proximity to the sea, but retains warm continental summers that are quite short. The weatherbox below is from neighbouring city Haparanda and operated by the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute . Despite the fact that Tornio experiences polar day for 13 days between 15 and 27 June, it does not experience polar night . A break of gauge occurs at Tornio between

8170-626: 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

8265-403: 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

8360-549: The whole of the Machine Gun Ski Brigade Finland (MG-Ski-Brigade Finnland). Meanwhile, the Finns chose to further reinforce the landing instead of pushing hard from the south towards Kemi and started to ship more troops and equipment from Oulu to Tornio, the first of these to arrive was the 53rd Infantry Regiment (JR 53). The Finnish operation changed from a single regiment's diversionary attack into key operation involving several divisions. Very late in

8455-496: 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)

8550-525: 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

8645-545: 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

8740-417: Was the northernmost city in the world. The charter was granted in recognition of Tornio being the hub of all trade in Lapland throughout the 16th century. It was the largest merchant town in the North at the time, and for some years ranked as the richest town in Sweden. Despite the lively trade with Lapland and overseas, the population of the town remained stable for hundreds of years at little over 500. During

8835-543: 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

8930-416: Was the venue for games at the 2001 Bandy World Championship . Tornion Pallo -47 is the main association football club in the city. Teemu Tainio , a football player and manager, was born in Tornio. Jesse Puljujärvi , an ice hockey player, lived his childhood in Tornio. Ville Pokka , an ice hockey player, was born and raised in Tornio. The Finland-Sweden border runs through the golf course at

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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