Classification
Finnish is a member of the
Baltic-Finnic subgroup of the
Finno-Ugric group of languages which in turn is a member of the
Uralic family of languages. The Baltic-Finnic subgroup also includes
Estonian and other minority languages spoken around the
Baltic Sea.
Finnish demonstrates an affiliation with the
Finno-Ugric languages in several respects including:
Shared morphology:
:
case suffixes such as genitive ''-n'', partitive ''-(t)a'' / ''-(t)ä'' (< Finno-Ugric *''-ta''), essive ''-na'' / ''-nä''
:
plural markers ''-t'' and ''-i-''
:
possessive suffixes such as 1st person singular ''-ni'' (< Finno-Ugric *''-mi''), 2nd person singular ''-si'' (< Finno-Ugric *''-ti'').
:
various derivational suffixes
Shared basic vocabulary displaying regular sound correspondences with the other Finno-Ugric languages
Several theories exist as to the geographic origin of Finnish and the other Uralic languages, but the most widely held view is that they originated as a Proto-Uralic language somewhere around the northern
Ural Mountains region. Supporters of this theory point to the fact that the Uralic languages have many similarities in structure and grammar.
It has been posited that speakers of a Finno-Ugric language have been living in the region of current Finland since at least 3000 BC. The Finns are more genetically similar to their Indo-European speaking neighbors than to the speakers of the geographically close Finno-Ugric language,
Sami. Therefore it has been argued that a native Finnic population absorbed northward migrating Indo-Europeans who adopted the Finnic language, giving rise to the modern Finns.
[Virtual Finland: Where do Finns come from? .]
Geographic distribution
Finnish is spoken by about six million people that reside mainly in
Finland. There are also notable Finnish-speaking minorities in
Sweden,
Norway,
Russia,
Estonia,
Canada, and the
United States. The majority of the population of Finland, 91.51%
as of 2006, speak Finnish as their
first language. The remainder speak
Swedish (5.5%),
Sami (
Northern,
Inari,
Skolt) and other languages.
Official status
Finnish is one of two
official languages of Finland (the other being
Swedish, spoken by 5.49% of the population
as of 2006[http://www.stat.fi/tup/suoluk/suoluk_vaesto_sv.html]) and an official language of the
European Union. It enjoys the status of an
official minority language in Sweden. It is also one of the working languages of the
Nordic Council. 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.
[ Konvention mellan Sverige, Danmark, Finland, Island och Norge om nordiska medborgares rätt att använda sitt eget språk i annat nordiskt land , ''Nordic Council website''. Retrieved on April 25, 2007.][20th anniversary of the Nordic Language Convention , ''Nordic news'', February 22, 2007. Retrieved on April 25, 2007.]
History
Pre-Christian era
It is believed that the
Balto-Finnic languages evolved from a proto-Finnic language, from which
Sami was separated around
1500-
1000 BC. Current research indicates there were three or more proto-Finnic dialects.
The Baltic Finnic languages separated around the
1st century, but continued to influence each other. Therefore, the
Eastern Finnish dialects are genetically Eastern proto-Finnic, with many Eastern features, and the Southwestern Finnish dialects have many genuine
Estonian influences.
Medieval period
Since Finland was annexed to Catholic Sweden in the
Middle Ages, the status of Finnish was for long that of an oral language. The language of
business was
Middle Low German, the language of administration
Swedish, and religious activities were held in
Latin, leaving few possibilities for Finns to use their mother tongue in situations other than daily chores.
The first known written example of Finnish comes from this era and was found in a German travel journal dating back to c.
1450: ''Mynna tachton gernast spuho somen gelen Emyna dayda'' (Modern Finnish: "Minä tahdon kernaasti puhua suomen kieltä,
mutta en minä taida"; English: "I willingly want to speak Finnish,
but I cannot").
According to the travel journal, a Finnish bishop, whose name is unknown, was behind the above phrase.
Writing system
The first comprehensive writing system for Finnish was created by
Mikael Agricola, a Finnish
bishop, in the 16th century. He based his
orthography on
Swedish,
German, and
Latin. His ultimate plan was to translate the
Bible, but first he had to define rules on which the Finnish
standard language still relies, particularly with respect to spelling. He also invented single-handedly many words such as ''armo'' "mercy" and ''vanhurskas'' "righteous". More than fifty percent of these words are still in use.
Agricola's written language was based on western dialects of Finnish, and his intention was that each
phoneme should correspond with one letter. Yet, Agricola was confronted with many problems in this endeavour, failing to achieve uniformness. This is why he might use different signs for the same phonemes depending on the situation. For example he used ''dh'' or ''d'' to represent the
voiced dental fricative (English ''th'' in ''this'') and ''tz'' or ''z'' to represent the
geminate unvoiced dental fricative (the ''th'' in ''thin''). Additionally, Agricola might use ''gh'' or ''g'' to represent the
voiced velar fricative and either ''ch'', ''c'' or ''h'' for /h/. For example he wrote ''techtin'' against modern spelling ''tehtiin''.
Later others revised Agricola's work, striving for a more
phonetical system. In the process, Finnish ended up losing some of its
phonemes. The sounds and disappeared from the standard language, surviving only in a small rural region in Western Finland.
Elsewhere traces of these phonemes persist as their disappearance gave Finnish dialects their distinct qualities. For example, it has been deduced that the sound became ''ht'' or ''tt'' (e.g. meþþä → mehtä, mettä) in the eastern dialects and in some western dialects. In the standard language, however, the effect of the lost phonemes is thus:
became ''d''
became ''ts''
became ''v'' but only if the voiced velar fricative appeared originally between high labial vowels, otherwise lost entirely.
Modern Finnish punctuation has a rare feature of using the
colon character (:) where most other alphabetic writing systems would use an
apostrophe - to separate the stem of the word and its grammatical ending. (The
Swedish language has a similar language.)
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
Hegelian nationalistic ideas of Finnish as a full-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.
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 crucial. In addition to compiling the
Kalevala, he acted as an arbitrator in disputes about the development of stardard Finnish between the proponents of western and eastern dialects, ensuring that the western dialects Agricola had preferred preserved their preeminent role, while many originally dialectical words from Eastern Finland were introduced to the standard language enriching it considerably.
Dialects
The dialects of Finnish are divided into two distinct groups, the Western dialects and the Eastern dialects.
[http://www.internetix.ofw.fi/opinnot/opintojaksot/8kieletkirjallisuus/aidinkieli/murteet/] The dialects are entirely mutually intelligible and distinguished from each other by only minor changes in vowels, diphthongs and rhythm, and therefore might be better classified as
accents. For the most part, the dialects operate on the same phonology, grammar and vocabulary. 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
Rauma dialect and the Eastern
exessive case.
The classification of closely related dialects spoken outside of 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 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 regardless of the fact that Finnish is an official minority language in Sweden, too.
Western dialects
The South-West dialects ''(lounaismurteet)'' are spoken in
Finland Proper and
Satakunta. Their typical feature 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 Southern Ostrobothnian dialects ''(eteläpohjalaiset murteet)'' are spoken in
Southern Ostrobothnia. Their most notable feature is the pronunciation of 'd' as a tapped or even fully trilled /r/. The Middle and North Ostrobothnia dialects ''(keski- ja pohjoispohjalaiset murteet)'' are spoken in
Central and
Northern Ostrobothnia. The Far-Northern dialects ''(peräpohjalaiset murteet)'' are spoken in
Lapland. The dialects spoken in the western parts of Lapland are recognizable by retention of extraneous 'h' sounds in positions where they are not found in other dialects.
One of the Far-Northern dialects,
Meänkieli, which is spoken on the Swedish side of the border, is taught in some Swedish schools as a distinct
standardized language. The speakers of Meänkieli became politically separated from the other Finns when Finland was
annexed to
Russia in 1809. The categorization of Meänkieli as a separate language is controversial among the Finns, who see no linguistic criteria, only political reasons, for treating Meänkieli differently than other dialects of Finnish.
The Ruija dialect ''(Ruijan murre)'' is spoken in
Finnmark (Finnish ''Ruija),'' in
Norway. Its speakers are descendants of Finnish emigrants to the region in the
18th and
19th centuries.
Eastern dialects
The Eastern dialects consist of the widespread Savonian dialects ''(savolaismurteet)'' spoken in
Savo and nearby areas, and the Karelian dialects. The South-Eastern dialects ''(kaakkoismurteet)'' are spoken in
South Karelia, on the
Karelian Isthmus and in
Ingria.
Palatalization, a common feature of Uralic languages, had been lost in Baltic-Finnic languages, 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. ''vesj'', cf. standard ''vesi''.
The language spoken in the 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 stardard Finnish than the Karelian dialects. However, the terms ''Karelian'' and ''Karelian dialects'' are often used synonymously, primarily denoting dialects spoken on the Karelian Isthmus and in
Ingria, i.e. in the
Saint Petersburg area. Whether Karelian is a dialect of Finnish or a separate language is a matter of interpretation. The many refugees from
Finnish Karelia,
who were evacuated during
World War II and resettled all over Finland, speak ''Savonian dialects,'' although their dialects in everyday speech are often referred to as ''Karelian.''
Linguistic varieties
There are two main
varieties of Finnish used throughout 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 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.
The spoken language has mostly developed naturally from earlier forms of Finnish, and spread from main cultural and political centres. The book 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 spoken language develops significantly faster, and the grammatical and phonological simplifications include also the most common pronouns and suffixes, which sum up to frequent but modest differences. Some sound changes have been left out of the formal language, such as the irregularization of some common verbs by assimilation, e.g. ''tule-'' → ''tuu-'' (although ''tule'' can be used in spoken language as well).
Written language certainly still exerts a considerable influence upon the spoken word, due to the fact that illiteracy is nonexistent and many Finns are avid readers. In fact, it is still not entirely uncommon to meet people who "talk like a book" (''puhuvat kirjakieltä''), although this is seen as pedantic. More common is the intrusion of typically book-like constructions into a colloquial discourse, as a kind of quote from written Finnish. It should also be noted that 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.
The orthography of the informal language follows that of the formal language. However, sometimes
sandhi may be transcribed, especially the internal ones, e.g. ''menenpä'' → ''menempä''. This never takes place in formal language.
Examples
:
formal language — colloquial language
:''
he mene
vät —
ne mene
e'' "they go" (loss of distinction of
animacy and the difference between the plural and the singular)
:''on
ko(s) teillä — on
ks teil(lä)'' "do you have?" (vowel deletion)
:''me emme sano — me ei sanota'' or ''mei sanota'' "we don't say" (notice: fusion of ''me ei'' transcribed, also the first person plural is replaced with the
indefinite voice)
:''(
minun) kirja
ni —
mu(ŋ) kirja'' "my book" (notice: sandhi n+k → ŋk transcribed)
:''kuusikymmentäviisi — kuus(kyt)viis'' "sixty-five"
:''tu
len — tu
un'' "I'm coming" (irregular verb)
:''puna
inen — punane(n)'' "red" (unstressed diphthong becomes a very short vowel)
:''korjan
nee —
kai korjaa'' "probably will fix"
:''menty
ämme —
kumme oltii(m) menty'' "after we had gone" (notice:
sandhi nm → mm transcribed, note that it is written as "oltiin" rather than "oltiim").
Note that there are noticeable differences between dialects. These examples are mostly from the language as spoken in the Capital area (Helsinki dialect or even ''
Stadin slangi).
Phonology
Characteristic features of Finnish (common to other Finno-Ugric languages) are
vowel harmony and an agglutinative morphology; due to the extensive use of the latter, words can be quite long.
The main stress is always on the first syllable, and it is 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 a stressed syllable.
There are eight vowels, whose lexical and grammatical role is highly important, and which are unusually strictly controlled, so that there is almost no
allophony. Vowels shown in the table below, followed by the
IPA symbol when not identical. These are always different phonemes in the initial syllable; for noninitial syllable, see morphophonology below.
|-
|
| colspan="2" align="center" | Front
| colspan="2" align="center" | Back
|-
|
|Unrounded
|Rounded
|Unrounded
|Rounded
|-
|Close
| align="center" || align="center" || align="center" |
| align="center" ||-
|Mid1
| align="center" || align="center" |ö
| align="center" |
| align="center" ||-
|Open
| align="center" |ä
|
| align="center" |a
|
|
:
1 Although conventionally and conveniently written with the
close-mid symbols
e,
and
o, measurements indicate that they are
open-mid.
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
diphthongs. There are eighteen phonemic diphthongs; like vowels, diphthongs do not have allophony.
Finnish has a consonant inventory of small to moderate size, where voicing is not distinctive, and there are only
glottal and unvoiced alveolar fricatives. Finnish has very few non-alveolar
coronal consonants. Consonants are as follows, where consonants in parenthesis are found only in a few recent loans.
# is the equivalent of under weakening
consonant gradation, and thus occurs only medially, or in non-native words; it is actually more of an
alveolar tap rather than a true voiced stop, and the dialectal realization varies wildly; see main article.
# The
glottal stop can only appear at word boundaries as a result of certain sandhi phenomena, and it is not indicated in spelling: e.g. 'let it be', orthographically ''anna olla''. Moreover, this sound is not used in all dialects.
# The short
velar nasal is an allophone of in , and the long velar nasal , written ''ng'', is the equivalent of under weakening
consonant gradation (type of
lenition) and thus occurs only medially.
Almost all consonant have phonemic
geminated forms. These are independent, but occur only medially when phonemic.
Independent consonant clusters are not allowed in native words, except for a small set of two-consonant
syllable codas, e.g. 'rs' in ''karsta''. However, due to a number of recently adopted loanwords using them, e.g. ''strutsi'' "ostrich", Finnish speakers can pronounce them, even if it is somewhat awkward.
As a Finno-Ugric language, it is somewhat special in two respects: loss of fricatives and loss of
palatalization.
An interesting feature of Fennic phonology is the development of labial vowels in non-initial syllables.
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 (they are uncommon, however, compared to 'a', 'ä' and 'i').
Palatalization is characteristic of Finno-Ugric languages, but Finnish has lost it. However, the Eastern dialects and the
Karelian language have redeveloped a system of palatalization. For example, the
Karelian word ''d'uuri'' , with a palatalized , is reflected by ''juuri'' in Finnish and
Savo dialect ''vesj'' is ''vesi'' in standard Finnish.
Finnish has only two fricatives, namely and . All other fricatives are recognized as foreign, of which Finnish speakers can usually reliably distinguish and .
Morphophonology
Finnish has a thick layer of morphophonology between grammar ("logic") and phonology ("sounds"). The most important processes are
vowel harmony and
consonant gradation.
Vowel harmony is a redundancy feature, which means that the feature
±back is 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
±back in any part of the word, they can derive
±back for the initial syllable. For example, if the word begins ''tuottaa-'', it can be agglutinated to ''t
uotteeseens
a'', 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.
Consonant gradation is a
lenition process for P, T and K, with the oblique stem "weakened" from the nominative stem, or vice versa. For example, ''tarkka'' "precise" has the oblique root ''tarka-'', as in ''tarkan'' "of the precise". There is also another gradation pattern, which is older, and causes simple elision of T and K. However, it is very common since it is found in the partitive case marker: if V is a single vowel, V+''ta'' → Va, e.g.
''vanha+ta'' → ''vanhaa''. Another instance is the imperative, which changes into a glottal stop in the singular but is shown as an overt 'ka' in plural, e.g. ''mene'' vs. ''menkää''.
Grammar
The
morphosyntactic alignment is nominative-accusative; but there are two object cases: accusative and partitive. The contrast between the two is
telicity, where accusative denotes actions completed as intended (''Ammuin hirven'' "I shot the elk dead"), and partitive denotes incomplete actions (''Ammuin hirveä'' "I shot at the elk"). Often this is confused with perfectivity, but the only element of perfectivity that exists in Finnish is that there are some perfective verbs. Transitivity is distinguished by different verbs for transitive and intransitive, e.g. ''ratkaista'' "to solve something" vs. ''ratketa'' "to be solved by itself". There are several
frequentative and
momentane verb categories.
Verbs gain personal suffixes for each person; these suffixes are grammatically more important than pronouns, which are often not used at all in standard Finnish. The infinitive is not the uninflected form but has a suffix ''-ta'' or ''-da''; the closest one to an uninflected form is the third person singular indicative. There are four persons, first ("I, we"), second ("you, you"), third ("s/he, they") and indefinite (often called impersonal or "passive", similar to e.g. English "people say/do/…"). There are four tenses, namely present, past, perfect and pluperfect; the system mirrors the Germanic system. The future tense is not needed due to context and the telic contrast. For example, ''luen kirjan'' "I read a book (completely)" indicates a future, when ''luen kirjaa'' "I read a book (not yet complete)" indicates present.
Nouns may be suffixed with the markers for the aforementioned
accusative case and
partitive case, the
genitive case, eight different
locatives, and a few other cases. The case marker must be added not only to the main noun, but also to its modifiers; e.g. ''suure+ssa talo+ssa'', literally "big-in house-in". Possession is marked with a
possessive suffix; separate
possessive pronouns are unknown. Pronouns gain suffixes just as nouns do.
Lexicon
:''See the lists of
Finnish words and
words of Finnish origin at
Wiktionary, the free dictionary and Wikipedia's sibling project.''
Finnish extensively employs regular agglutination. It has a smaller core vocabulary than, for example,
English, and uses derivative suffixes to a greater extent. As an example, take the word ''kirja'' "a book", from which one can form derivatives ''kirjain'' "a letter" (of the
alphabet), ''kirje'' "a piece of correspondence, a letter", ''kirjasto'' "a library", ''kirjailija'' "an author", ''kirjallisuus'' "literature", ''kirjoittaa'' "to write", ''kirjoittaja'' "a writer", ''kirjuri'' "a scribe, a clerk", ''kirjallinen'' "something in written form", ''kirjata'' "to write down, register, record", ''kirjasin'' "a font", and 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.
-''ja/jä'' : agent (one who does) (e.g. ''lukea'' "to read" → ''lukija'' "reader")
''-lainen/läinen'': inhabitant of (either noun or adjective). ''Englanti'' "England" → ''englantilainen'' "English person or thing"; ''Venäjä'' → ''venäläinen'' "person from Russia".
''-sto/stö'': collection of. For example: ''kirja'' "a book" → ''kirjasto'' "a library"; ''laiva'' "a ship" → ''laivasto'' "navy, fleet".
''-in'': instrument or tool. For example: ''kirjata'' "to book, to file" → ''kirjain'' "a letter" (of the alphabet); ''vatkata'' "to whisk" → ''vatkain'' "a whisk, mixer".
''-uri/yri'': an agent or instrument (''kaivaa'' "to dig" → ''kaivuri'' "a digging machine"; ''laiva'' "a ship" → ''laivuri'' "shipper, shipmaster").
''-os/ös'': result of some action (''tulla'' "to come" → ''tulos'' "result, outcome"; ''tehdä'' "to do" → ''teos'' "a piece of work").
''-ton/tön'': lack of something, "un-", "-less" (''onni'' "happiness" → ''onneton'' "unhappy"; ''koti'' "home" → ''koditon'' "homeless").
''-llinen'': having (the quality of) something (''lapsi'' "a child" → ''lapsellinen'' "childish"; ''kauppa'' "a shop, commerce" → ''kaupallinen'' "commercial").
''-kas/käs'': similar to ''-llinen'' (''itse'' "self" → ''itsekäs'' "selfish"; ''neuvo'' "advice" → ''neuvokas'' "resourceful").
''-va/vä'': doing or having something (''taitaa'' "to be able" → ''taitava'' "skillful"; ''johtaa'' "to lead" → ''johtava'' "leading").
''-la/lä'': a place related to the main word (''kana'' "a hen" → ''kanala'' "a henhouse"; ''pappi'' "a priest" → ''pappila'' "a parsonage").
Verbal suffixes are extremely diverse; several
frequentatives and
momentanes differentiating
causative, volitional-unpredictable and
anticausative are found, often combined with each other, often denoting
indirection. For example, ''hypätä'' "to jump", ''hyppiä'' "to be jumping", ''hypeksiä'' "to be jumping wantonly", ''hypäyttää'' "to make someone jump once", ''hyppyyttää'' "to make someone jump repeatedly" (or "to boss someone around"), ''hyppyytyttää'' "to make someone to cause a third person to jump repeatedly", ''hyppyytellä'' "to, without aim, make someone jump repeatedly", ''hypähtää'' "to jump suddenly" (in
anticausative meaning), ''hypellä'' "to jump around repeatedly", ''hypiskellä'' "to be jumping repeatedly and wantonly", ''hyppimättä'' "without jumping", ''hyppelemättä'' "without jumping around". Often the diversity and compactness of this agglutination is illustrated with ''juoksentelisinkohan'' "I wonder if I should run around aimlessly".
Borrowing
Over the course of many centuries, the Finnish language has borrowed a great many words from a wide variety of languages, most from neighboring
Indo-European languages. Indeed, some estimates put the core Finno-Ugric vocabulary surviving in Finnish at only around 300 word roots. Due to the different grammatical, phonological and phonotactic structure of the Finnish language, loanwords from Indo-European have been assimilated.
In general, the first loan words into Finno-Ugric languages seem to come from very early
Indo-European languages, and later mainly from
Indo-Iranian,
Turkic,
Baltic,
Germanic, and
Slavic languages. Furthermore, a certain group of very basic and neutral words exists in Finnish and other Finnic languages that are absent from other Finno-Ugric languages, but without a recognizable etymology from any known language. These words are usually regarded as the last remnant of the Nordic language spoken in Fennoscandia before the arrival of the proto-Finnic language. Words included in this group are e.g. ''jänis'' (hare), ''musta'' (black), ''mäki'' (hill), ''saari'' (island), ''suo'' (swamp) and ''niemi'' (cape). Also some place names, like
Päijänne and
Imatra, are probably before the proto-Finnic era.
[Häkkinen, Kaisa. ''Suomalaisten esihistoria kielitieteen valossa'' (ISBN 951-717-855-7). Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura 1996. See pages 166 and 173.]
Often quoted loan examples are ''kuningas'' "king" and ''ruhtinas'' "prince, high ranking nobleman" from Germanic ''
kuningaz'' and ''*druhtinaz'', but another example is ''äiti'' "mother", from Gothic ''eiþai'', which is interesting because borrowing of close-kinship vocabulary is a rare phenomenon. The original Finnish ''emo'' has become a cranberry morpheme. There are other close-kinship words that are loaned from Baltic and Germanic languages (''morsian'' "bride", ''armas'' "dear"). Examples of the ancient Indo-Iranian loans are ''vasara'' "hammer" from Avestan ''vadžra'', ''vajra'' and ''orja'' "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 acted as a proxy for European words, especially those relating to government. Present-day Finland belonged to the kingdom 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 only legal "equal status" with Swedish, which persists even today. It is still the case today that about 5.5% of Finnish nationals, the
Swedish-speaking Finns, have
Swedish as their
mother tongue. 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) 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 (''lag'' - ''laki'', 'law'; ''län'' - ''lääni'', 'county'; ''bisp'' - ''piispa'', 'bishop'; ''jordpäron'' - ''peruna'', 'potato'), and many more survive as informal synonyms in spoken or dialectal Finnish (e.g. ''likka'', from Swedish ''flicka'', 'girl', usually ''tyttö'' in Finnish).
Typical Russian loanwords are old or very old, thus hard to recognize as such, and concern everyday concepts, e.g. ''papu'' "bean", ''sini'' "(
n.) blue" and ''pappi'' "priest". Notably, a few religious words such as ''Raamattu'' ("Bible") are loaned from Russian, which indicates language contact preceding the Swedish era. This is mainly believed to be result of trade with Novgorod 9th century and so on and the Orthodox converting in 13th century. There is a list of Russian loans to Finnish on the Finnish Wikipedia:
http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luettelo_ven%C3%A4j%C3%A4n_kielest%C3%A4_suomen_kieleen_lainatuista_sanoista
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 (except for the very young, foreign films and programmes are shown subtitled); literature; and, of course, the
Web — this 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 ''treffailla'' "to date" (from Swedish, ''träffa'') to ''deittailla'' from English "to go for a date".
Calques from English are also found, e.g ''kovalevy'' (hard disk). Grammatical calques are also found, for example, the replacement of the impersonal (''passiivi'') with the English-style
generic you, e. g. ''sä et voi'' "you cannot", instead of ''ei voi'' "one cannot".
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 ''pleikkari'' "PlayStation", ''hodari'' "hot dog", and ''hedari'' "headache". 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
calqued — translated into native Finnish — retaining the semantic meaning.
Neologisms
Some modern terms have been synthesised rather than borrowed, for example:
:''puhelin'' "telephone" (literally: "chatter" + instrument suffix "-in" to make "an instrument for chattering")
:''tietokone'' "computer" (literally: "knowledge machine")
:''levyke'' "diskette" (from ''levy'' "disc" + a diminutive ''-ke'')
:''sähköposti'' "email" (literally: "electrical mail")
:''linja-auto'' "bus" (literally: route-car)
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 ''telefooni'' or ''kompuutteri'' when the neologism is widely adopted.
Loans to other languages
Orthography
The Finnish orthography built upon the
phonetic principle: each phoneme (distinct sound) of the language is represented by exactly one grapheme (independent letter), and each grapheme represents exactly one phoneme. This makes the language easy for its speakers to spell, and facilitates learning to read and write. 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 ''n'' in ''nk'' is a velar nasal, as in English. As an exception to the phonetic principle, there is no ''g'' in ''ng'', which is a long velar nasal as in English ''singalong''.
The grapheme ''h'' occurring before a consonant sounds slightly harder (initially breathy voiced, then voiceless) than when occurring before a vowel.
Sandhi is not transcribed; the spelling of morphemes is immutable, e.g. ''tulen+pa'' /tulempa/.
Some consonants (v, j, d) and all consonants occurring in (always medial) clusters do not have distinctive length, and consequently, their allophonic variation is not indicated in spelling, e.g. ''rajaan'' /rajaan/ (I limit) vs. ''raijaan'' /raijjaan/ (I haul).
Pre-1900's 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''
æ and ''
ö''
ø, although written as
umlauted ''a'' and ''o'', do not represent
phonological umlauts, 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.
If the graphemes ''ä'' and ''ö'' are not accessible due to technical limitations, they must be replaced with ''a'' and ''o'', respectively. As they are not umlauts, it is wrong to write them as umlaut
digraphs ''ae, oe,'' as in German. Sequences ''ae and oe'' are distinct phonemes from ''ä and ö'', e.g. ''haen'' "I seek" vs. ''hän'' "he"/"she".
The sounds ''š'' and ''ž'' are not a part of Finnish language itself. Although they occur in some rare loanwords, their principal use is in the transcription of 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 play
Hovanshtshina as an example.) Many speakers pronounce all of them ''s'', or distinguish only between ''s'' and ''š'', because Finnish has no voiced sibilants.
[KOTUS. ''Kirjaimet š ja ž suomen kielen oikeinkirjoituksessa.'' http://users.tkk.fi/~tuhkanen/Sery-C/Kotus-sz-hatut-FI.html]
The language may be identified by its distinctive lack of the letters ''b, c, f, q, x,'' and ''z.''
Language example
''Hyväntahtoinen aurinko katseli heitä. Se ei missään tapauksessa ollut heille vihainen. Kenties tunsi jonkinlaista myötätuntoakin heitä kohtaan. Aika velikultia.''
|
—
Väinö Linna:
The Unknown Soldier; these words were also inscribed in the 20
mk note.
(Translation: "The benevolent sun watched them. By no means was it angry at them. Perhaps it even felt a kind of compassion towards them. Jolly good brothers.")
Basic greetings
(Hyvää) huomenta – Good morning
(Hyvää) päivää – Good afternoon (literally "Good day")
(Hyvää) iltapäivää – Good afternoon
(Hyvää) iltaa – Good evening
Hyvää yötä / Öitä – Good night / Good night
Terve! / Moro! – Hello!
Hei! / Moi! – Hi!
Heippa! / Moikka! / Hei hei! / Moi moi! – Bye!
Nähdään – See you later (literally "will be seen")
Hyvästi – Goodbye
Hauska tutustua! – Nice to meet you
Kiitos – Thank you
Kiitos, samoin – Likewise
Mitä kuuluu? – How are you / How you doing? (Not used among strangers.) (literally "what is heard?")
Kiitos hyvää – I'm fine, thank you
Tervetuloa! – Welcome!
Important words and phrases
kyllä – yes
joo - yeah (informal)
ei – no, not
minä, sinä, hän – I, you, he/she
me, te, he – we, you, they
minä olen – I am
sinä olet - you are
yksi, kaksi, kolme – one, two, three
neljä, viisi, kuusi – four, five, six
seitsemän, kahdeksan – seven, eight
yhdeksän, kymmenen – nine, ten
sata, tuhat, miljoona – hundred, thousand, million
minä rakastan sinua – I love you
anteeksi – forgive me, excuse me
olen pahoillani – I'm sorry (apology)
otan osaa – I'm sorry (sympathy)
totta kai – of course
pieni hetki, pikku hetki, hetkinen – one moment please!
Suomi – Finland
suomi – Finnish language
suomalainen – (noun) Finn; (adjective) Finnish
Mitä kuuluu? – How are you? (note: not used among strangers)
En ymmärrä – I don't understand
Ymmärrän – I understand
¹Ymmärrät(te)kö suomea? – Do you understand Finnish?
¹Puhut(te)ko englantia? – Do you speak English?
Olen englantilainen / amerikkalainen / kanadalainen / australialainen / uusiseelantilainen / irlantilainen / skotlantilainen – I am English / American / Canadian / Australian / New Zealander / Irish / Scottish
¹Olet(te)ko englantilainen? – Are you English?
Missä (sinä) asut/¹Missä (te) asutte? – Where do you live?
¹ -te is added to make the sentence formal. Otherwise, without the added "-te", it is informal. It is also added when talking to more than one person. The transition from second-person singular to second-person plural (''teitittely'') is a politeness pattern, advised by many "good manners guides". Elderly people, especially, expect it from strangers, whereas the younger might feel it to be too formal to the point of coldness. However, a learner of the language should not be excessively concerned about it. Omitting it is never offensive, but one should keep in mind that on formal occasions this custom may make a good impression.
Bibliography
English books
''Finnish for Foreigners 1'' (Maija-Hellikki Aaltio: ISBN 951-1-08145-4)
:This is the first of two volumes, each of which has an associated exercises book. There is also a reader.
:Volume 1 is grammar based, but takes things in nice small steps, so it isn't intimidating. It generally teaches the written language, but does point out the main differences in the spoken language. By the end of volume 1 you would have quite a good grasp of the language for everyday purposes.
''Teach Yourself Finnish'' (Terttu Leney: ISBN 0-07-145107-2) (Not to be confused with the following similarly-named book)
''Finnish (Teach Yourself)'' or ''Teach Yourself Finnish Complete Course'' (Arthur H. Whitney: ISBN 0-340-56174-2)
''Colloquial Finnish'' (Daniel Abondolo: ISBN 0-415-11389-X)
:This book tries to cover most of what you need to know in 300 pages: from complete beginner to familiarity with both the written and spoken languages. It uses an original approach to the grammar which is challenging, but well worth tackling.
:The book is intended for beginners willing to invest some time and energy into learning Finnish, as well as for those who have a fair grasp of the language already, but would like to improve their understanding of more colloquial aspects of Finnish — aspects largely neglected in other grammars. The spoken language dialogues are especially useful, as they let you know what you can expect to hear, rather than what you will read in the newspaper. The grammatical explanations are built around the dialogues, not cloned from previous grammars.
''Finnish: An Essential Grammar'' (Fred Karlsson: ISBN 0-415-20705-3)
:This book is much like ''Colloquial Finnish'' but deals mainly with the written form of the language (although pronunciation is dealt with). It is not laid out in a lesson-based format, so is suitable for those who are familiar with the language but need to consolidate their grammar, although 'no prior knowledge is assumed on the part of the reader'. If you are a beginner, use this as a reference to back up your course book.
Finnish books
''Aletaan'' (Eila Hämäläinen & Salli-Marja Bessonoff: ISBN 951-45-4895-7) Let's begin
''Jatketaan'' (Eila Hämäläinen & Salli-Marja Bessonoff: ISBN 951-45-4872-8) Let's continue
:Together, these books and their associated exercise books form a fairly complete course in Finnish, roughly equivalent to the ''Finnish for Foreigners'' books. However, the production quality is rather spare: typewriter font throughout and poor layout. This book is not of so much use without a teacher.
''Kato hei!'' (Maarit Berg & Leena Silfverberg: ISBN 951-792-028-8) Hey, look!
:This is an attempt to cover how spoken Finnish is often spoken. However, it is not designed to teach Finnish, and pulls no punches about the language, so the reader needs a good grasp to make use of it. There are no exercises.
''Tarkista tästä!'' (Hannele Jönsson-Korhola & Leila White: ISBN 951-792-007-5) Look for it here!
:Finnish relies heavily on changing the endings of words to indicate their role in a sentence. For example, there is one verb which means both "lend" or "borrow", but the direction is indicated by the ending of the person you are lending to or borrowing from. This book contains the rules for this and hundreds of similar situations.
''Suomen kielioppia ulkomaalaisille'' (Leila White: ISBN 951-8905-65-7) Finnish Grammar for Foreigners
:A comprehensive treatment of Finnish grammar, concentrating on the written language. Useful for reference only.
''Stadin snadi slangi (sanakirja)'' (Juhani Mäkelä: ISBN 951-0-22477-4) A little dictionary of city slang
:A Finnish-
Helsinki slang-Finnish dictionary. Useful to residents.
''Suomea ennen ja nyt'' (Laila Lehikoinen: ISBN 951-8905-80-0) Finnish before and now
:A comprehensive coverage of the history of both written and spoken Finnish, including a detailed discussion of the regional variations found in the spoken language.
The web presence of Finnish is also worth noting. There are about 50 million pages marked as Finnish. There are several e-books for learning Finnish:
Ymmärrä suomea
Keskellä Suomea
Trivia
The linguist and author
J.R.R. Tolkien considered Finnish to be a particularly beautiful language, and described his youthful discovery of Finnish as inspiring him to pursue a linguistic career. Several of Tolkien's invented languages, notably
Quenya, are stylistically related to Finnish.