American Finnish, or is a form of the Finnish language spoken in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

. It has been heavily influenced by the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

. American Finnish was used actively until the 1950s and after that it has been declining, and

Finnish Americans Finnish Americans ( fi, amerikansuomalaiset, ) comprise Americans with ancestral roots from Finland or Finnish people who immigrated to and reside in the United States. The Finnish-American population numbers a little bit more than 650,000. Man ...

have been switching to

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

. Even some basic phrases like 'that's right' were borrowed from English. The form of speech was studied by Pertti Virtaranta in 1960, and the first American Finnish dictionary was made in 1992. It has influence from English both in syntax and vocabulary. In 2013 Finnish was spoken by 26,000 people in their homes. In the town of

Oulu, Wisconsin Oulu ( ) is a town in Bayfield County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 527 at the 2010 census. The town is named after Oulu, the fifth most populous city of Finland located in the North Ostrobothnia region. Geography According to th ...

, there are documented third-generation speakers of American Finnish, and in

Stanton Township, Michigan Stanton Township is a civil township of Houghton County in the Upper Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 1,590 at the 2020 census. Stanton Township has the distinction of having the highest concentration of people with F ...

, there are children who speak the language. American Finnish also retained loanwords from

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

, which Modern Finnish lost. Those in the second and third generations who speak American Finnish are usually bilingual and tend to use English most often. There have been some negative attitudes to "impurities" in American Finnish, however American Finns usually consider it a language of their own and dislike

linguistic purism Linguistic purism or linguistic protectionism is the prescriptive practice of defining or recognizing one variety of a language as being purer or of intrinsically higher quality than other varieties. Linguistic purism was institutionalized th ...

. Finnish Americans sometimes have problems understanding modern

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

of Finland. There is not much areal variation in American Finnish; however, first, second and third generation speakers have more variation in their speech, especially as the amount of English influence differs in generations.

Features

There are also grammatical differences from Finnish, such as

consonant gradation Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation (mostly lenition but also assimilation) found in some Uralic languages, more specifically in the Finnic, Samic and Samoyedic branches. It originally arose as an allophonic alternation bet ...

. In American Finnish the letter k remains unchanged, unlike in Finnish: laki 'law', lakit 'laws' (Finnish: laki, lait). And in American Finnish the first person plural ending has often been dropped: me ei saa 'we can't' (

: me emme saa). Another difference in American Finnish is that the sound doesn't change into an when conjugated: kieli 'language', kielit 'languages' (Finnish: kieli, kielet). Martin 1993, s. 97–101.

Vocabulary

American Finnish has many loanwords from English, but also retained older Swedish loanwords that Finnish lost.

Grammar

Cases

In American Finnish the possessive suffixes are rarely used..

Examples of American Finnish

"There are more of them, but they are moose hunting." "to fix" "Now I have to call to Albert fast."

References

External links

American-Finnish recordings (in Finnish)

Amerikansuomalaisten kieli (about Fingelska, in Finnish)

American Finnish examples at Wikisource

American Finnish incubator plus
{{Authority control Finnic languages Finnish dialects Languages of the United States Languages of Canada