Finnish (
endonym
An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group, ...
: or ) is a
Uralic language of the
Finnic branch, spoken by the majority of the population in
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bo ...
and by
ethnic Finns
Finns or Finnish people ( fi, suomalaiset, ) are a Baltic Finnic ethnic group native to Finland.
Finns are traditionally divided into smaller regional groups that span several countries adjacent to Finland, both those who are native to these ...
outside of Finland. Finnish is one of the two
official languages of Finland (the other being
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 ...
). In
Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...
, both Finnish and
Meänkieli (which has significant
mutual intelligibility with Finnish) are official
minority languages. The
Kven language, which like Meänkieli is mutually intelligible with Finnish, is spoken in the
Norwegian county
Troms og Finnmark by a minority group of Finnish descent.
Finnish is
typologically agglutinative and uses almost exclusively
suffixal affixation.
Nouns,
adjective
In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ...
s,
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 a Latin-script alphabet derived from the Swedish alphabet, and is
phonetic to a great extent.
Vowel length and
consonant length are distinguished, and there are a range of
diphthongs
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...
, although
vowel harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is an Assimilation (linguistics), assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is t ...
limits which diphthongs are possible.
Classification
Finnish is a member of the
Finnic group of the
Uralic
The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian ...
family of languages. The Finnic group also includes
Estonian
Estonian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe
* Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent
* Estonian language
* Estonian cuisine
* Estonian culture
See also ...
and a few minority languages spoken around the
Baltic Sea and in Russia's
Republic of Karelia
The Republic of Karelia (russian: Респу́блика Каре́лия, Respublika Kareliya; ; krl, Karjalan tašavalta; ; fi, Karjalan tasavalta; vep, Karjalan Tazovaldkund, Ludic: ''Kard’alan tazavald''), also known as just Karelia (rus ...
.
Finnish demonstrates an affiliation with other
Uralic languages (such as
Hungarian) in several respects including:
*Shared morphology:
**case suffixes such as
genitive
In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
,
partitive / ( <
Proto-Uralic *-ta, originally
ablative),
essive / ( < *-na, originally
locative
In grammar, the locative case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases, together with the ...
)
**plural markers and ( < Proto-Uralic *-t and *-j, respectively)
**possessive suffixes such as 1st person singular ( < Proto-Uralic *-n-mi), 2nd person singular ( < Proto-Uralic *-ti).
**various derivational suffixes (e.g.
causative
In linguistics, a causative (abbreviated ) is a valency-increasing operationPayne, Thomas E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 173–186. that indicates that a subject either ...
< Proto-Uralic *-k-ta)
*Shared basic vocabulary displaying regular sound correspondences with the other Uralic languages (e.g. "fish" ~
North Saami
North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography.
Etymology
The word ''north'' is ...
~
Hungarian ; and "disappear" ~ North Saami ~ Hungarian 'leave (behind)'.
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 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.
The
Defense Language Institute in
Monterey, California
Monterey (; es, Monterrey; Ohlone: ) is a city located in Monterey County on the southern edge of Monterey Bay on the U.S. state of California's Central Coast. Founded on June 3, 1770, it functioned as the capital of Alta California under bo ...
, United States, classifies Finnish as a level III language (of 4 levels) in terms of learning difficulty for native English speakers.
Geographic distribution
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 the United States. The majority of the population of Finland (90.37%
) speak Finnish as their
first language. The remainder speak
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 ...
(5.42%),
one of the
Sámi languages (for example
Northern
Northern may refer to the following:
Geography
* North, a point in direction
* Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe
* Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States
* Northern Province, Sri Lanka
* Northern Range, a ra ...
,
Inari
Inari may refer to:
Shinto
* Inari Ōkami, a Shinto spirit
** Mount Inari in Japan, site of Fushimi Inari-taisha, the main Shinto shrine to Inari
** Inari Shrine, shrines to the Shinto god Inari
* Inari-zushi, a type of sushi
Places
* 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 varieties of Finnish found in Norway's
Finnmark (namely
Kven) and in northern Sweden (namely
Meänkieli) have the status of official minority languages, and thus can be considered distinct languages from Finnish. However, since all three are
mutually intelligible
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...
, one may alternatively view them as
dialects of the same language.
There are also
forms of Finnish spoken by diasporas in Siberia, by the
Siberian Finns and in America, where
American Finnish is spoken by
Finnish Americans.
There are 8,500 speakers of Finnish in
Karelia
Karelia ( Karelian and fi, Karjala, ; rus, Каре́лия, links=y, r=Karélija, p=kɐˈrʲelʲɪjə, historically ''Korjela''; sv, Karelen), the land of the Karelian people, is an area in Northern Europe of historical significance for ...
.
Official status
Today, Finnish is one of two
official languages of Finland (the other being
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 ...
), and has been an official language of the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been ...
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
Grand Duchy of Finland, and against the backdrop of the
Fennoman movement, the language obtained its official status in the
Finnish Diet of 1863.
Finnish also enjoys the status of an official
minority language in Sweden. Under the
Nordic Language Convention The Nordic Language Convention is a convention of linguistic rights that came into force on 1 March 1987, under the auspices of the Nordic Council. Under the Convention, citizens of the Nordic countries have the opportunity to use their native lang ...
, citizens of the
Nordic countries
The Nordic countries (also known as the Nordics or ''Norden''; literal translation, lit. 'the North') are a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe and the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic. It includes the sovereign states of Denmar ...
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 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.
History
Prehistory
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 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
The Finnic (''Fennic'') or more precisely Balto-Finnic (Balto-Fennic, Baltic Finnic, Baltic Fennic) languages constitute a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples. There are around 7  ...
developed,
and which diverged from
Proto-Samic (a reconstructed ancestor of the
Sámi languages) around 1500–1000 BCE.
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 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 . This vowel was found only in the southern dialects, which developed into Estonian, Livonian, and Votian. The northern variants used third person singular pronoun instead of southern (Est. ). While the eastern dialects of Proto-Finnic (which developed in the modern-day eastern Finnish dialects, Veps, Karelian, and Ingrian) formed genitive plural nouns via plural stems (e.g., eastern Finnish < *''kaloi-ten''), the western dialects of Proto-Finnic (today's Estonian, Livonian and western Finnish varieties) used the non-plural stems (e.g., Est. < *''kala-ten''). Another defining characteristic of the east–west split was the use of the
reflexive suffix , used only in the eastern dialects.
Medieval period
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: (Modern Finnish: "" English: "I want to speak Finnish,
utI am not able to"). According to the travel journal, the words are those of a Finnish bishop whose name is unknown. The erroneous use of (Modern Finnish ) in the accusative case, rather than in the partitive, and the lack of the
conjunction are typical of foreign speakers of Finnish even today. At the time, most priests in Finland were
Swedish speaking.
During the Middle Ages, when
Finland 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
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 ...
, 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 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.
Writing system
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 the language, which he based on Swedish, German, and Latin. The Finnish
standard language
A standard language (also standard variety, standard dialect, and standard) is a language variety that has undergone substantial codification of grammar and usage, although occasionally the term refers to the entirety of a language that includes ...
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 the phoneme . Likewise, he alternated between ''dh'' and ''d'' to represent the allophonic
voiced dental fricative (like ''th'' in English ''this''), between ''dh'' and ''z'' to represent the
geminate voiceless dental fricative (like ''th'' in ''thin'', but longer in duration), and between ''gh'' and ''g'' to represent the allophonic
voiced velar fricative . Agricola did not consistently represent
vowel length in his orthography.
Others revised Agricola's work later, striving for a more systematic writing system. Along the way, Finnish lost several
fricative consonant
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...
s in a process of
sound change
A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chang ...
. The sounds and 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:
* became . The sound was written ⟨d⟩ or ⟨dh⟩ by Agricola. This sound was lost from most varieties of Finnish, either losing all phonetic realization or being pronounced as , , , or instead (depending on dialect and the position in the word). However, Agricola's spelling ⟨d⟩ prevailed, and the pronunciation in Standard Finnish became through
spelling pronunciation.
* became . These interdental fricatives were written as ⟨tz⟩ (for both
grades
Grade most commonly refers to:
* Grade (education), a measurement of a student's performance
* Grade, the number of the year a student has reached in a given educational stage
* Grade (slope), the steepness of a slope
Grade or grading may also r ...
: geminate and short) in some of the earliest written records. Though these developed into a variety of other sounds depending on dialect (, , , , , or ), the standard language has arrived at
spelling pronunciation (which is treated as a
consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education f ...
and hence not subject to consonant gradation).
* became but only if the appeared originally between
high
High may refer to:
Science and technology
* Height
* High (atmospheric), a high-pressure area
* High (computability), a quality of a Turing degree, in computability theory
* High (tectonics), in geology an area where relative tectonic uplift ...
round vowels and , otherwise it was lost entirely (cf. 'kin, family' :
enitive formfrom earlier *suku : *suɣun, and : 'ability, skill'
ominative and genitive, respectivelyfrom *kükü : *küɣün, contrasting with : 'pig, pork'
ominative and genitivefrom *sika : *siɣan). (A similar process explains the /f/ pronunciation for some English words with "gh", such as "tough".)
Modern Finnish punctuation, along with that of Swedish, uses the
colon (:) to separate the
stem
Stem or STEM may refer to:
Plant structures
* Plant stem, a plant's aboveground axis, made of vascular tissue, off which leaves and flowers hang
* Stipe (botany), a stalk to support some other structure
* Stipe (mycology), the stem of a mushro ...
of a word and its grammatical ending in some cases, for example after
acronym
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in '' NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, a ...
s, as in "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.
Modernization
In the 19th century
Johan Vilhelm Snellman and others began to stress 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
Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends a ...
ian
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 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 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 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
7 is a number, numeral, and glyph.
7 or seven may also refer to:
* AD 7, the seventh year of the AD era
* 7 BC, the seventh year before the AD era
* The month of
July
Music Artists
* Seven (Swiss singer) (born 1978), a Swiss recording artist ...
'' (), published by
Aleksis Kivi
Aleksis Kivi (; born Alexis Stenvall; 10 October 1834 – 31 December 1872) was a Finnish author who wrote the first significant novel in the Finnish language, ''Seitsemän veljestä'' ("Seven Brothers") in 1870. He is also known for his 1864 p ...
in 1870.
Future
The Finnish language has been changing in certain ways after
World War II, as observed in the spreading of certain dialectal features, for example the spread of the Western dialectal variant for the written cluster ''ts'' ( : /
orest : forest'sinstead of : ) and the Eastern disappearance of ''d'' ( 'I know' instead of ) and the simultaneous preference to abandon the more visible dialectal features. Some scientists have also reported the
low
Low or LOW or lows, may refer to:
People
* Low (surname), listing people surnamed Low
Places
* Low, Quebec, Canada
* Low, Utah, United States
* Lo Wu station (MTR code LOW), Hong Kong; a rail station
* Salzburg Airport (ICAO airport code: LO ...
front
Front may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* ''The Front'' (1943 film), a 1943 Soviet drama film
* '' The Front'', 1976 film
Music
*The Front (band), an American rock band signed to Columbia Records and active in the 1980s and e ...
vowel
Near-open front unrounded vowel">æ">Near-open_front_unrounded_vowel.html" ;"title="nowiki/>
æ(orthographic ⟨ä⟩) moving toward [
Open back unrounded vowel">ɑ">Near-open front unrounded vowel">æ(orthographic ⟨ä⟩) moving toward [
Open back unrounded vowel">ɑ(orthographic ⟨a⟩), theorising that the Finnish speakers would start to pronounce even more distantly from the changing in order to preserve the system of
vowel harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is an Assimilation (linguistics), assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is t ...
.
Dialects
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 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 classification of closely related dialects spoken outside Finland is a politically sensitive issue that has been controversial since Finland's independence in 1917. This concerns specifically the
Karelian language in Russia and
Meänkieli in Sweden, the speakers of which are often considered oppressed minorities. Karelian is different enough from standard Finnish to have its own orthography. Meänkieli is a northern dialect almost entirely intelligible to speakers of any other Finnish dialect, which achieved its status as an official minority language in Sweden for historical and political reasons, although Finnish is an official minority language in Sweden, too. In 1980, many texts, books and the
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts o ...
were translated into Meänkieli and it has been developing more into its own language.
Western dialects
The
Southwest Finnish dialects () are spoken in
Southwest Finland and
Satakunta. Their typical feature is abbreviation of word-final vowels, and in many respects they resemble Estonian. The Tavastian dialects () 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 ( → , → , → ), the change of d to l (mostly obsolete) or trilled r (widespread, nowadays disappearance of d is popular) and the personal pronouns ( (we: our), (you: your) and (they: their)).
The South Ostrobothnian dialects () are spoken in
Southern Ostrobothnia. Their most notable feature is the pronunciation of "d" as a tapped or even fully trilled . The Central and North Ostrobothnian dialects () are spoken in
Central
Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object.
Central may also refer to:
Directions and generalised locations
* Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...
and
Northern Ostrobothnia. The Lappish dialects () are spoken in
Lapland
Lapland may refer to:
Places
*Lapland or Sápmi, an ethno-cultural region stretching over northern Fennoscandia (parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia)
**Lapland (Finland) (''Lappi''/''Lappland''), a Finnish region
*** Lapland (former pr ...
. The dialects spoken in 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 taught in some Swedish schools as a distinct
standardized language
A standard language (also standard variety, standard dialect, and standard) is a language variety that has undergone substantial codification of grammar and usage, although occasionally the term refers to the entirety of a language that include ...
. The speakers of Meänkieli became politically separated from the other Finns when Finland was
annexed
Annexation (Latin ''ad'', to, and ''nexus'', joining), in international law, is the forcible acquisition of one state's territory by another state, usually following military occupation of the territory. It is generally held to be an illegal act ...
to Russia in 1809. The categorization of Meänkieli as a separate language is controversial among some Finns, who see no linguistic criteria, only political reasons, for treating Meänkieli differently from other dialects of Finnish.
The
Kven language is spoken in
Finnmark and
Troms, in Norway. Its speakers are descendants of Finnish emigrants to the region in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Kven is an official minority language in Norway.
Eastern dialects
The Eastern dialects consist of the widespread Savonian dialects () spoken in
Savo
Savo may refer to:
Languages
* Savo dialect, forms of the Finnish language spoken in Savonia
* Savo language, an endangered language spoken on Savo
People
* Savo (given name), a masculine given name from southern Europe (includes a list of peo ...
and nearby areas, and the South-Eastern dialects now spoken only in Finnish
South Karelia. The South Karelian dialects () were previously also spoken on the
Karelian Isthmus and in
Ingria. The Karelian Isthmus 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
Palatalization may refer to:
*Palatalization (phonetics), the phonetic feature of palatal secondary articulation
*Palatalization (sound change)
Palatalization is a historical-linguistic sound change that results in a palatalized articulation ...
, 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 a "j", e.g. "water", cf. standard .
The language spoken in those parts of Karelia that have not historically been under Swedish or Finnish rule is usually called the
Karelian language, and it is considered to be more distant from standard Finnish than the Eastern dialects. Whether this language of
Russian Karelia is a dialect of Finnish or a separate language is sometimes disputed.
Example Helsinki slang (Stadin slangi)
The first known written account in
Helsinki slang
Helsinki slang or ('Helsinki's slang', from Swedish language, Swedish , 'city'; see #Etymology, etymology) is a local dialect and a sociolect of the Finnish language mainly used in the capital city of Helsinki. It is characterized by its abunda ...
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 ''italics''):
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''.
Dialect chart of Finnish
* Western dialects
**
Southwest Finnish dialects
***Proper Finnish dialects
**** Northern dialect group
**** Southern dialect group
***Southwest Finnish middle dialects
****Pori region dialects
****Ala-Satakunta dialects
****dialects of Turku highlands
****Somero region dialects
****Western Uusimaa dialects
****
Helsinki slang
Helsinki slang or ('Helsinki's slang', from Swedish language, Swedish , 'city'; see #Etymology, etymology) is a local dialect and a sociolect of the Finnish language mainly used in the capital city of Helsinki. It is characterized by its abunda ...
\dialects
**Tavastian dialects
***Ylä-Satakunta dialects
***Heart Tavastian dialects
***Southern Tavastian dialects
***Southern-Eastern Tavastian dialects
****Hollola dialect group
****Porvoo dialect group
****Iitti dialect group
**
South Ostrobothnian dialect
South Ostrobothnian dialect ( fi, Etelä-Pohjanmaan murre) is a Western Finnish dialect. It is traditionally spoken in the region of South Ostrobothnia and parts of Coastal Ostrobothnia. The South Ostrobothnian dialect has many features that are ...
s
**
Central and North Ostrobothnian dialects
***Central Ostrobothnian dialects
***North Ostrobothnian dialects
**
Lappish dialects
***Torne dialects (''"
Meänkieli"'' in Sweden)
***Kemi dialects
***Kemijärvi dialects
***
Gällivare dialects (''"Meänkieli"'' in Sweden)
***Finnmark dialects (''"
Kven language"'' in Northern Norway)
*Eastern dialects
**
Savonian dialects
***North Savonian dialects
***South Savonian dialects
***Middle dialects of Savonlinna region
***East Savonian dialects or North Karelian dialects
***
Kainuu dialects
***Central Finland dialects
***Päijänne Tavastia dialects
***Keuruu-Evijärvi dialects
***
Savonian dialects of Värmland (Sweden)
**
South Karelian dialects
***Proper South Karelian dialects
***Middle dialects of Lemi region
***
Dialects of Ingria (in Russia)
Linguistic registers
There are two main
registers of Finnish used throughout the country. One is the "standard language" (), and the other is the "
spoken language" (). The standard language is used in formal situations like political speeches and newscasts. Its written form, the "book language" (), is used in nearly all written texts, not always excluding even the dialogue of common people in popular prose. The spoken language, on 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.
Standardization
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 ( 1951–61), with 201,000 entries, was a
prescriptive dictionary that defined official language. An additional volume for words of foreign origin (, 30,000 entries) was published in 1991. An updated dictionary,
The New Dictionary of Modern Finnish () was published in an electronic form in 2004 and in print in 2006. A
descriptive grammar (the
Large grammar of Finnish, , 1,600 pages) 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.
Colloquial Finnish
The colloquial language has mostly developed naturally from earlier forms of Finnish, and spread from 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 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
In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run toget ...
of
sonorant
In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels are ...
s in some verbs of the
Type III class (with subsequent vowel
assimilation
Assimilation may refer to:
Culture
*Cultural assimilation, the process whereby a minority group gradually adapts to the customs and attitudes of the prevailing culture and customs
**Language shift, also known as language assimilation, the progre ...
), but only when the second syllable of the word is short. The result is that some forms in the spoken language are shortened, e.g. → ("I come"), while others remain identical to the standard language 'he comes', never *). However, the longer forms such as can be used in spoken language in other forms as well.
The literary language certainly still exerts 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" (); 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 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 the effect of the standard language is the development of the consonant gradation form /ts : ts/ as in , 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 , used earlier in some western dialects. The spelling and the pronunciation this encourages however approximate the original pronunciation, still reflected in e.g.
Karelian /čč : č/ (). In the spoken language, a fusion of Western /tt : tt/ () and Eastern /ht : t/ () has resulted: /tt : t/ (). It is notable that neither of these forms are identifiable as, or originate from, a specific dialect.
The orthography of informal language follows that of the formal. However, in signalling the former in writing,
syncope and
sandhi – especially internal – may occasionally amongst other characteristics be transcribed, e.g. . This never occurs in the standard variety.
Examples
:
Note that there are noticeable differences between dialects. Also note that here the formal language does not mean a language spoken in formal occasions but the standard language which exists practically only in written form.
Phonology
Segmental phonology
The phoneme inventory of Finnish is moderately small, with a great number of vocalic segments and a restricted set of consonant types, both of which can be long or short.
Vocalic segments
Finnish monophthongs show eight vowel qualities that contrast in duration, thus 16 vowel phonemes in total. Vowel
allophony is quite restricted. Vowel phonemes are always contrastive in word-initial syllables; for non-initial syllable, see
morphophonology below. Long and short vowels are shown below.
The usual analysis is that Finnish has long and short vowels and consonants as distinct phonemes. However, long vowels may be analyzed as a vowel followed by a
chroneme, or also, that sequences of identical vowels are pronounced as "diphthongs". The quality of long vowels mostly overlaps with the quality of short vowels, with the exception of u, which is centralized with respect to uu; long vowels do not morph into
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
s. There are eighteen phonemic diphthongs; like vowels, diphthongs do not have significant allophony.
Consonants
Finnish has a consonant inventory of small to moderate size, where voicing is mostly not distinctive, and fricatives are scarce. Finnish has relatively few non-
coronal consonant
Coronals are consonants articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. Among places of articulation, only the coronal consonants can be divided into as many articulation types: apical (using the tip of the tongue), laminal (using the bla ...
s. Consonants are as follows, where consonants in parentheses are found either only in a few recent loans or are allophones of other phonemes.
Almost all consonants have phonemic short and long (
geminated) forms, although length is only contrastive in consonants word-medially.
Consonant clusters are mostly absent in native Finnish words, except for a small set of two-consonant sequences in
syllable coda
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of Phone (phonetics), speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered t ...
s, e.g. "rs" in . However, because of a number of recently adopted loanwords that have them, e.g. from Swedish , meaning "ostrich", clusters have been integrated to the modern language to different degrees.
Finnish is somewhat divergent from other Uralic languages in two respects: it has lost most fricatives, as well as losing the distinction between
palatalized and non-palatalized consonants. Finnish has only two fricatives in native words, namely and . All other fricatives are recognized as foreign, of which Finnish speakers can usually reliably distinguish and . The alphabet includes "z", usually pronounced
s While standard Finnish has lost
palatalization
Palatalization may refer to:
*Palatalization (phonetics), the phonetic feature of palatal secondary articulation
*Palatalization (sound change)
Palatalization is a historical-linguistic sound change that results in a palatalized articulation ...
, which is characteristic of Uralic languages, the Eastern dialects and the Karelian language have redeveloped or retained it. For example, the
Karelian word , with a palatalized , is reflected by in Finnish and
Savo dialect is in standard Finnish.
A feature of Finnic phonology is the development of labial and rounded vowels in non-initial syllables, as in the word .
Proto-Uralic had only "a" and "i" and their vowel harmonic allophones in non-initial syllables; modern Finnish allows other vowels in non-initial syllables, although they are uncommon compared to "a", "ä" and "i".
Prosody
Characteristic features of Finnish (common to some other Uralic languages) are
vowel harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is an Assimilation (linguistics), assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is t ...
and an
agglutinative morphology; owing to the extensive use of the latter, words can be quite long.
The main stress is always on the first syllable, and is in average speech articulated by adding approximately 100 ms more length to the stressed vowel. Stress does not cause any measurable modifications in vowel quality (very much unlike English). However, stress is not strong and words appear evenly stressed. In some cases, stress is so weak that the highest points of volume, pitch and other indicators of "articulation intensity" are not on the first syllable, although native speakers recognize the first syllable as being stressed.
Morphophonology
Finnish has several morphophonological processes that require modification of the forms of words for daily speech. The most important processes are
vowel harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is an Assimilation (linguistics), assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is t ...
and
consonant gradation.
Vowel harmony is a redundancy feature, which means that the feature
backis uniform within a word, and so it is necessary to interpret it only once for a given word. It is meaning-distinguishing in the initial syllable, and suffixes follow; so, if the listener hears
backin any part of the word, they can derive
backfor the initial syllable. For example, from the stem ("product") one derives ("into his product"), where the final vowel becomes the back vowel "a" (rather than the front vowel "ä") because the initial syllable contains the back vowels "uo". This is especially notable because vowels "a" and "ä" are different, meaning-distinguishing
phonemes, not interchangeable or
allophonic. Finnish front vowels are not
umlauts, though the
graphemes ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ö⟩ feature
dieresis.
Consonant gradation is a partly nonproductive
lenition process for P, T and K in inherited vocabulary, with the oblique stem "weakened" from the nominative stem, or vice versa. For example, "precise" has the oblique stem , as in "of the precise". There is also another gradation pattern, which is older, and causes simple elision of T and K in suffixes. However, it is very common since it is found in the partitive case marker: if V is a single vowel, V+ → Va, e.g. * → .
Grammar
Finnish is a
synthetic language
A synthetic language uses inflection or agglutination to express Syntax, syntactic relationships within a sentence. Inflection is the addition of morphemes to a root word that assigns grammatical property to that word, while agglutination is the ...
that employs extensive
agglutination
In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative la ...
of affixes to verbs, nouns, adjectives and numerals. However, Finnish is not generally considered
polysynthetic, its morpheme-to-word ratio being somewhat lower than a prototypical polysynthetic language (e.g.,
Yup'ik).
The
morphosyntactic alignment of Finnish is nominative–accusative, but there are two
object cases: accusative and partitive. The contrast between accusative and partitive object cases is one of
telicity, where the accusative case denotes actions completed as intended ( "I shot the/an elk (dead)"), and the partitive case denotes incomplete actions ( "I shot (at) the/an elk"). Often telicity is confused with
perfectivity, but these are distinct notions. Finnish in fact has a
periphrastic
In linguistics, periphrasis () is the use of one or more function words to express meaning that otherwise may be expressed by attaching an affix or clitic to a word. The resulting phrase includes two or more collocated words instead of one infl ...
perfective aspect
The perfective aspect (abbreviated ), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect that describes an action viewed as a simple whole; i.e., a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the imp ...
, which in addition to the two inflectional tenses (past and present), yield a
Germanic-like system consisting of four tense-aspect combinations: simple present, simple past,
perfect
Perfect commonly refers to:
* Perfection, completeness, excellence
* Perfect (grammar), a grammatical category in some languages
Perfect may also refer to:
Film
* Perfect (1985 film), ''Perfect'' (1985 film), a romantic drama
* Perfect (2018 f ...
(present + perfective aspect) and
pluperfect (past + perfective aspect). No morphological future tense is needed; context and the telicity contrast in object grammatical case serve to disambiguate present events from future events. For example, "I eat a fish (completely)" must denote a future event, since there is no way to completely eat a fish at the current moment (the moment the eating is complete, the simple past tense or the perfect must be used). By contrast, "I eat a fish (not yet complete)" denotes a present event by indicating ongoing action.
Finnish has three grammatical
persons;
finite verbs
agree with subject nouns in person and number by way of suffixes. Non-finite verb forms bear the infinitive suffix (often
lenited to due to
consonant gradation). There is a so-called "passive voice" (sometimes called impersonal or indefinite) which differs from a true passive in various respects. Transitivity is distinguished in the
derivational morphology of verbs, e.g. "to solve something" vs. "to solve by itself". There are also several
frequentative and
momentane affixes which form new verbs derivationally.
Nouns may be suffixed with the markers for the aforementioned
accusative case
The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘the ...
and
partitive case, the
genitive case
In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
, eight different
locatives, and a few other oblique cases. The case affix must be added not only to the head noun, but also to its modifiers; e.g. , literally "big-in house-in". Possession is marked with
possessive suffixes; these suffixes appear on nouns and pronouns alike (Finnish
possessive pronouns
A possessive or ktetic form (abbreviated or ; from la, possessivus; grc, κτητικός, translit=ktētikós) is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict owner ...
are thus not
suppletive like English ''her'').
Lexicon
Finnish has a smaller core vocabulary than, for example, English, and uses
derivational suffixes to a greater extent. As an example, take the word "a book", from which one can form derivatives "a letter" (of the
alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a s ...
), "a piece of correspondence, a letter", "a library", "an author", "literature", "to write", "a writer", "a scribe, a clerk", "in written form", "to write down, register, record", "a font", and many others.
Here are some of the more common such suffixes. Which of each pair is used depends on the word being suffixed in accordance with the rules of
vowel harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is an Assimilation (linguistics), assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is t ...
.
Verbal derivational suffixes are extremely diverse; several
frequentatives and
momentanes differentiating
causative
In linguistics, a causative (abbreviated ) is a valency-increasing operationPayne, Thomas E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 173–186. that indicates that a subject either ...
, volitional-unpredictable and
anticausative are found, often combined with each other, often denoting indirection. For example, "to jump", "to be jumping", "to be jumping wantonly", "to make someone jump once", "to make someone jump repeatedly" (or "to boss someone around"), "to make someone to cause a third person to jump repeatedly", "to, without aim, make someone jump repeatedly", "to jump suddenly" (in
anticausative meaning), "to jump around repeatedly", "to be jumping repeatedly and wantonly".
Caritives are also used in such examples as "without jumping" and "without jumping around". The diversity and compactness of both derivation and inflectional agglutination can be illustrated with "I wonder if I should sit down for a while after all" (from , "to sit, to be seated"):
* "to sit down" ( "I sit down")
* "to sit down for a while"
* "I'll sit down for a while"
* "I would sit down for a while"
* "should I sit down for a while?"
* "I wonder if I should sit down for a while"
* "I wonder if I should sit down for a while after all"
Borrowing
Over the course of many centuries, the Finnish language has borrowed many words from a wide variety of languages, most from neighbouring
Indo-European languages. Owing to the different grammatical, phonological and phonotactic structure of the Finnish language, loanwords from Indo-European have been assimilated.
While early borrowings, possibly even into
Proto-Uralic, from very early
Indo-European languages can be found, Finnic languages, including Finnish, have borrowed in particular from Baltic and Germanic languages, and to a lesser extent from Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages (all of which are subgroupings of Indo-European). Furthermore,
a certain group of very basic and neutral words exists in Finnish and other Finnic languages that are absent from other Uralic languages, but without a recognizable etymology from any known language. These words are usually regarded as the last remnant of the
Paleo-European language spoken in Fennoscandia before the arrival of the proto-Finnic language. Words included in this group are e.g. (hare), (black), (island), (swamp) and (cape (geography)).
Also some place names, like
Päijänne and
Imatra, are probably from before the proto-Finnic era.
Often quoted loan examples are "king" and "
sovereign prince
A prince is a male ruler (ranked below a king, grand prince, and grand duke) or a male member of a monarch's or former monarch's family. ''Prince'' is also a title of nobility (often highest), often hereditary, in some European states. The ...
, high ranking nobleman" from Germanic ''*kuningaz'' and ''*druhtinaz''—they display a remarkable tendency towards phonological conservation within the language. Another example is "mother" (from Germanic ''*aiþį̄''), which is interesting because borrowing of close-kinship vocabulary is a rare phenomenon. The original Finnish and occurs only in restricted contexts. There are other close-kinship words that are loaned from Baltic and Germanic languages ( "bride", "dear", "whore"). Examples of the ancient Iranian loans are "hammer" from
Avestan
Avestan (), or historically Zend, is an umbrella term for two Old Iranian languages: Old Avestan (spoken in the 2nd millennium BCE) and Younger Avestan (spoken in the 1st millennium BCE). They are known only from their conjoined use as the scrip ...
, and "slave" from ''
arya'', ''airya'' "man" (the latter probably via similar circumstances as ''slave'' from
Slav in many European languages).
More recently, Swedish has been a prolific source of borrowings, and also, the
Swedish language
Swedish ( ) is a North Germanic language spoken predominantly in Sweden and in parts of Finland. It has at least 10 million native speakers, the fourth most spoken Germanic language and the first among any other of its type in the Nordic countr ...
acted as a proxy for European words, especially those relating to government. Present-day Finland was a part of Sweden from the 12th century and was ceded to Russia in 1809, becoming an autonomous Grand Duchy. Swedish was retained as the official language and language of the upper class even after this. When Finnish was accepted as an official language, it gained legal equal status with Swedish. During the period of autonomy, Russian did not gain much ground as a language of the people or the government. Nevertheless, quite a few words were subsequently acquired from
Russian (especially in older
Helsinki slang
Helsinki slang or ('Helsinki's slang', from Swedish language, Swedish , 'city'; see #Etymology, etymology) is a local dialect and a sociolect of the Finnish language mainly used in the capital city of Helsinki. It is characterized by its abunda ...
) but not to the same extent as with Swedish. In all these cases, borrowing has been partly a result of geographical proximity.
Especially words dealing with administrative or modern culture came to Finnish from Swedish, sometimes reflecting the oldest Swedish form of the word ( – , "law"; – , "province"; – , "bishop"; – , "potato"), and many more survive as informal synonyms in spoken or dialectal Finnish (e.g. , from Swedish , "girl", usually in Finnish).
Some Slavic loanwords are old or very old, thus hard to recognize as such, and concern everyday concepts, e.g. "bean", "border" and "priest". Notably, a few religious words such as ("Bible") are borrowed from
Old East Slavic
Old East Slavic (traditionally also Old Russian; be, старажытнаруская мова; russian: древнерусский язык; uk, давньоруська мова) was a language used during the 9th–15th centuries by East ...
, which indicates language contact preceding the Swedish era. This is mainly believed to be result of trade with Novgorod from the 9th century on and
Russian Orthodox missions in the east in the 13th century.
Most recently, and with increasing impact, English has been the source of new
loanwords in Finnish. Unlike previous geographical borrowing, the influence of English is largely cultural and reaches Finland by many routes, including international business, music, film and TV (foreign films and programmes, excluding ones intended for a very young audience, are shown subtitled), literature, and the
Web
Web most often refers to:
* Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal
* World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system
Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to:
Computing
* WEB, a literate programming system created by ...
– the latter is now probably the most important source of all non-face-to-face exposure to English.
The importance of English as the language of global commerce has led many non-English companies, including Finland's
Nokia, to adopt English as their official operating language. Recently, it has been observed that English borrowings are also ousting previous borrowings, for example the switch from "to date" (from Swedish, ) to from English "to go for a date".
Calque
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language ...
s from English are also found, e.g. (hard disk), and so are grammatical calques, for example, the replacement of the impersonal () with the English-style
generic you, e. g. "you cannot", instead of the proper impersonal "one cannot" or impersonal third-person singular "one cannot". This construct, however, is limited to colloquial language, as it is against the standard grammar.
However, this does not mean that Finnish is threatened by English. Borrowing is normal language evolution, and neologisms are coined actively not only by the government, but also by the media. Moreover, Finnish and English have a considerably different
grammar,
phonology and
phonotactics, discouraging direct borrowing. English loan words in Finnish slang include for example "PlayStation", "hot dog", and "headache", "headshot" or "headbutt". Often these loanwords are distinctly identified as
slang or
jargon, rarely being used in a negative mood or in formal language. Since English and Finnish grammar, pronunciation and phonetics differ considerably, most loan words are inevitably sooner or later
calque
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language ...
d – translated into native Finnish – retaining the semantic meaning.
Neologisms
Some modern terms have been synthesised rather than borrowed, for example:
: "telephone" (from the stem "talk" + instrument suffix to make "an instrument for talking")
: "computer" (literally: "knowledge machine" or "data machine")
: "diskette" (from "disc" + a diminutive )
: "email" (literally: "electricity mail")
: "bus, coach" (literally: line-car)
: "plastic" (from "to mould, form or model, e.g. from clay"; compare ''plastic'' from Ancient Greek () "mouldable, fit for moulding")
Neologisms are actively generated by the Language Planning Office and the media. They are widely adopted. One would actually give an old-fashioned or rustic impression using forms such as (computer) or (calculator) when the neologism is widely adopted.
Loans to other languages
The most commonly used Finnish word in English is , which has also been loaned to many other languages.
Orthography
Finnish is written with the
Latin alphabet including the distinct characters ''ä'' and ''ö'', and also several characters (''b, c, f, q, w, x, z, å, š'' and ''ž'') reserved for words of non-Finnish origin. The Finnish orthography follows the phoneme principle: each phoneme (meaningful sound) of the language corresponds to exactly one grapheme (independent letter), and each grapheme represents almost exactly one phoneme. This enables an easy spelling and facilitates reading and writing acquisition. The rule of thumb for Finnish orthography is ''write as you read, read as you write''. However, morphemes retain their spelling despite
sandhi.
Some orthographical notes:
*Long vowels and consonants are represented by double occurrences of the relevant graphemes. This causes no confusion, and permits these sounds to be written without having to nearly double the size of the alphabet to accommodate separate graphemes for long sounds.
*The grapheme ''h'' is sounded slightly harder when placed before a consonant (initially
breathy voiced, then voiceless) than before a vowel.
*
Sandhi is not transcribed; the spelling of morphemes is immutable, such as .
*Some consonants (''v, j, d'') and all consonant clusters do not have distinctive length, and consequently their allophonic variation is typically not specified in spelling; e.g. (I limit) vs. (I haul).
*Pre-1900s texts and personal names use ''w'' for ''v''. Both correspond to the same phoneme, the
labiodental approximant , a ''v'' without the fricative ("hissing") quality of the English ''v''.
*The letters ''
ä'' and ''
ö'' , although written with
diaereses, do not represent
phonological umlauts (as in German, for example), and they are considered independent graphemes; the letter shapes have been copied from Swedish. An appropriate parallel from the Latin alphabet are the characters ''C'' and ''G'' (uppercase), which historically have a closer kinship than many other characters (''G'' is a derivation of ''C'') but are considered distinct letters, and changing one for the other will change meanings.
Although Finnish is almost completely written as it is spoken, there are a few differences:
* The ''n'' in the sequence ''nk'' is pronounced as a
velar nasal , as in English. When not followed by ''k'', is written ''ng''. The fact that two spellings correspond to this one sound (putting aside the difference in
length
Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a base unit for length is chosen, from which all other units are derived. In the Interna ...
) can be seen as an exception to the general one-to-one correspondence between sounds and letters.
*
Sandhi phenomena at word or clitic boundaries involving gemination (e.g., is pronounced , not ) or the
place assimilation of
nasals ( would usually be pronounced as , and as )
* The after the letter ''i'' is very weak or there is no at all, but in writing it is used; for example: . Indeed, the ''j'' is not used in writing words with consonant gradation such as and .
* In speech there is no difference between the use of in words (like , but ), but in writing there are quite simple rules: The ''i'' is written in forms derived from words that consist of two syllables and end in ''a'' or ''ä'' (, "to write song-lyrics", from ''sana'', "word"), and in words that are old-stylish (). The ''i'' is not written in forms derived from words that consist of two syllables and end in ''o'' or ''ö'' ( "to discern, to differentiate" from difference), words which do not clearly derive from a single word ( can be derived either from the stem seen in such adverbs as , or from the related verb ), and in words that are descriptive () or workaday by their style ().
When the appropriate characters are not available, the graphemes ''ä'' and ''ö'' are usually converted to ''a'' and ''o'', respectively. This is common in e-mail addresses and other electronic media where there may be no support for characters outside the basic
ASCII
ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because ...
character set. Writing them as ''ae'' and ''oe'', following German usage, is rarer and usually considered incorrect, but formally used in passports and equivalent situations. Both conversion rules have minimal pairs which would no longer be distinguished from each other.
The sounds ''š'' and ''ž'' are not a part of the Finnish language itself and have been introduced by the Finnish national languages body for more phonologically accurate transcription of loanwords (such as , "
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. Th ...
") and foreign names. For technical reasons or convenience, the graphemes ''sh'' and ''zh'' are often used in quickly or less carefully written texts instead of ''š'' and ''ž''. This is a deviation from the phonetic principle, and as such is liable to cause confusion, but the damage is minimal as the transcribed words are foreign in any case. Finnish does not use the sounds ''z'', ''š'' or ''ž'', but for the sake of exactitude, they can be included in spelling. (The recommendation cites the Russian opera as an example.) Many speakers pronounce all of them ''s'', or distinguish only between ''s'' and ''š'', because Finnish has no voiced sibilants.
The language may be identified by its distinctive lack of the letters ''b, c, f, q, w, x, z'' and ''å.''
Language examples
Article 1 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
:
:"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 a spirit of brotherhood."
Excerpt from
Väinö Linna's (The Unknown Soldier); these words were also inscribed in the 20
mark note.
:
:"The sun smiled down on them. It wasn't angry – no, not by any means. Maybe it even felt some sort of sympathy for them. Rather dear, those boys."
(translation from Liesl Yamaguchi's 2015 "Unknown Soldiers")
Basic greetings and phrases
Phonaesthetics and influences
Professor
J. R. R. Tolkien, although
better known as an author, had a keen interest in languages from a young age, and became a professional
philologist, becoming Professor of
Anglo-Saxon
The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...
at
Oxford University. He described his first encounter with Finnish was:
:"like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me..."
[J. R. R. Tolkien (1981), '' Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien'', George Allen & Unwin, letter no. 163 (to W. H. Auden, 7 June 1953), p. 214; ]
Aspects of Finnish, particularly its sound, were a strong influence on
Quenya
Quenya ()Tolkien wrote in his "Outline of Phonology" (in ''Parma Eldalamberon'' 19, p. 74) dedicated to the phonology of Quenya: is "a sound as in English ''new''". In Quenya is a combination of consonants, ibidem., p. 81. is a constructed la ...
, one of the
languages constructed by Tolkien spoken by the
Elves. Within his fantasy writings set in the world of
Middle-earth, Quenya is a highly revered language and is to his world as
Latin is to modern Europe; he often referred to it as "elf-Latin". However, Quenya lacks consonant gradation and vowel harmony – two remarkable aspects of Finnish grammar.
See also
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Hungarian language
*
Finland's language strife
*
Finnish cultural and academic institutes
*
Finnish name
*
Finnish numerals
*
Finnish profanity
*
Swedish-speaking Finns
References
Further reading
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*
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External links
Collection of Finnish bilingual dictionariesFSI Finnish Language Course (Public Domain)Finnish phrases for beginners (Public Domain)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Finnish Language
Agglutinative languages
Finnic languages
Languages of Estonia
Languages of Finland
Languages of Norway
Languages of Russia
Languages of Sweden
Vowel-harmony languages
Subject–verb–object languages