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Finnish ('') is the language spoken per majority of the people inside Finland (92%) and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. These are too an official language around Finland and an official minority language in Sweden in the form of standard Finnish when well as Meänkieli. Finnish occurs as member of the Finno-Ugric language family and is classified as an agglutinative language. It modifies a forms of two noun and adjective depending on their roles in the sentence. It has the reputation for existence hard to know & study. This is mostly because there are couple of languages closely related thereto, making a vocabulary unfamiliar.
History A number one written form of Finnish was created by Mikael Agricola, a Finnish bishop in the 16th century. He depending his orthography on Swedish, German, and Latin. Late a written form was revised by numerous population. A Reformation marked the real beginning of writing around Finnish. In the 16th century major literary achievements were composed within Finnish by humans such when Paavali Juusten, Erik Sorolainen, & Jaakko Finno, too as Agricola himself. In the 17th century books were written around Finland in Finnish, Danish, Norwegian, Estonian, Latvian, German, and Swedish. Even so, a first books were however written inside Latin. Finnish & Swedish were little languages of lesser importance. Finnish experienced the big array of different spirant, however has wasted virtually all of the babies, allowing /s/, /h/ & medially /ts/. Continuant deletion has flushed a voiced velar fricative /ɣ/, e.g. parghutin [parɣuttiin] becoming modern paruttiin. Assibilation together with vocalization has transformed the voiced palatal fricative /ʝ/, e.g. illative ending [ʝn] becoming -han in maahan however -eseen inside huoneeseen''. Postalveolar /ʃ/ has become /h/, or even /s/.
Agricola's work A basis for the many conventions in the Finnish standard language is found around Agricola's act, particularly sustaining respect to spelling. Agricola's language was according to Western Finnish, thus that phonology found its way into the standard Finnish spelling. Agricola utilized dh or even d to represent a voiced dental fricative became ht or even tt (e.g. meþþä → mehtä, mettä) in the east & a select few American accent, however became ts in the standard language & several American accent (meþþä → metsä). Agricola manufactured higher a select few words when you took translation of the New Testament. A select few one words come however around have, e.g. armo "mercy", vanhurskas "righteous". Agricola utilized astir 8500 words & 60% of the two come however inside utilize. Either ch, c or even h were utilized for the unvoiced velar fricative (the ach-laut, has been misused witharound phonemic terms; when velar fricativization can come out in 'h', spelling doesn't reflect it. For instance, Agricola's spelling techtin becomes modern tehtiin. Agricola utilized gh or even g to represent a voiced velar fricative. This healthy was late misplaced & besides suppressed inside spelling.
Classification
Geographic distribution
Official status
Dialects A classification of closely related idiom spoken outside of Finland occurs as politically sensitive issue that has been close to controversial since Finland's independence around 1917. A speakers of Karelian language in Russia and of Meänkieli in Sweden are typically considered laden minorities. Karelian is different plenty from either standard Finnish to stand its have writing system. Meänkieli occurs as northern idiom, completely perceivable & interchangeable using any more Finnish accent that had a status as a minority languge inside Sweden for historical & political reasons.
Western dialects One of a Far-Northern idiom, Meänkieli, which is spoken on the Swedish side of the border that was created in 1809, is taught in a select few Swedish schools as a distinct standardized language. A categorization of Meänkieli as a separate language is controversial among a Finns, world health organization understand there is no linguistic criteria, just political reasons, for caring for Meänkieli otherwise than more idiom of Finnish. A Ruija accent (Ruijan murre) is spoken within Finnmark (Finnish Ruija), in Norway. These are remnant from either Finnish emigre in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Eastern dialects Unremarkably, the distinction is mass produced between the extra distantly related Karelian language that is spoken in people area of Karelia that never have been ruled from either a West. Notwithstanding, a terms Karelian & Karelian accent are typically utilized forswearing distinctions, primarily denoting idiom spokenorth on the Karelian Isthmus & n Ingria, i.e. in the Saint Petersburg area, but inside how else that with diplomacy could leave open for interpretation a wonder of whether a speaker considers a Karelian language a accent of Finnish or even non. Hence, a several refugees from either Finnish Karelia, that were evacuated during World War II and resettled all above Finland, speak Savonian idiom, although their idiom within everyday speech typically is known as Karelian.
Formal and informal Finnish A Finnish linguistic situation is to a few extent like to it of great deal of the Arabic speaking world, inside which Classical Arabic is utilized around official & religious speech & around the literature, whereas conversational forms of Arabic come utilized in everyday conversation & in household letters. There are 2 independent varieties of Finnish used throughout a united states. A single is the "standard language" (yleiskieli), & a more is the "spoken language" puhekieli. A standard language is utilized inside formal situations such as church sermons, political speeches & newscasts. Its written form, a "book language" (kirjakieli), is utilized about all told of a written texts, non universally excluding potentially the dialogue of folk within popular prose. A term "standard language" doesn't actually exactly coincide by owning a term yleiskieli, because a definition is that yleiskieli lacks a everyday conversational register. the spoken language, then agawithwithin, is the main kind of Finnish to exist as utilized in popular TV & radio shows, at work & these are occasionally favorite to speaking a idiom in individual communication. Besides, a standard language is quite uncommon around family letters & around conversations using your internet browser, in which nonindulgent "correctness" is non good. A differences between them come like to differences between standard English & a select few English ethnolect. A spoken language has mostly developed naturally from either either earliest forms of Finnish, & spread from independent ethnic & political centers. the book language, still, has universally been a consciously constructed medium for literature. It preserves grammatical system that keep close at h& mostly vanished from either a conversational varieties and, after its independent application is writing, it features complex syntactical system that are non easily to manage when utilized inside speech. A spoken language develops significantly sooner, & a grammatical & phonologic simplifications includes likewise a usual pronouns & postfix, which sums as much as frequent however mild differences. A bit of healthy changes keep around been left retired from either a formal language, like a irregularization of occasionally most common verbs by assimilation, e.g. tule- → tuu-. Finnish tykes commonly get a cognition of the standard language whenever educated within school, however numbers of youngsters world health organization understand lot see it when their written "first language". Written language for certain however exerts a considerable influence upon the spoken word, due to the fact that illiteracy is wanting & that numbers of Finns come avid readers. As a matter of fact, these are however non completely rare to meet population world health organization "talk like a book" (puhuvat kirjakieltä), although this habit is perceived when average of "old elementary school teachers" & somewhat academic. Other green is the intrusion of often studious constructions into the essentially conversational discourse, as a kinda loan or even even quote from either written or formal Finnish. It should too become noted that these are quite park to hear studious & polished speech around radio or possibly TV, & a constant exposure to such carefully prepared language tends to lead to the adoption of studious constructions even in everyday language. potentially so, a foreign learner of Finnish world health organization aims to survive & operate around Finland should try to get the grasp of the usual conversational reductions witharound speech, because anybody non familiar by using the talk of the street would sense somewhat puzzled in a relaxed speech situation, even whenever s/he were totally a cappella to realize the formal language of the fourth estate. A writing system of the informal language follows that of the formal language. But, for instance sandhi can be transcribed, especially internal sandhi, e.g. menenpä → menempä. This never requires place around formal language; occasionally population suppose that a sandhi should non become possibly pronounced around formal language.
Examples Characteristic features of Finnish (green to more Finno-Ugric languages) come vowel harmony and an agglutinative morphology; due to the extensive utilise of the latter, words may be quite hanker. A independent stress is universally on the number 1 syllable. There are eight vowels, whose lexical & grammatical role is extremely significant, & which are then unco strictly controlled, and so that there exists well-nigh there is no allophony. Vowels come when follows, followed by IPA when nonidentical: a . A vowels the, o, u own front counterparts ä, ö, y in the vowel harmony, where we & e come neutral. 1 phoneme is the chroneme, such that Finnish appears to have hanker & short vowels & consonants; so, yearn vowels behave when vowels followed by the consonant, non when prolonged vowels. A quality of hanker vowels mostly overlaps by owning a quality of short vowels, by having a exception of u, which is centralized by using respect to uu. There are 18 phonemic diphthongs; even as vowels, diphthongs don't own allophony. Finnish has the consonant inventory of microscopic to moderate size, in which voicing is non distinctive, & there are only glottal & unsaid alveolar fricative consonant. About tons consonants come either alveolar or even pronounced such that a tongue doesn't keep around to move out of a alveolar ridge. Consonants come when follows, inside which consonants around parenthesis come observed lone in two or three recent loans.
About completely consonant develop phonemic geminated forms. Which are actually independent, however occur single medially whilst phonemic. Independent consonant clustering are non admit native words, except for the little placed of both-consonant syllable coda, e.g. 'rs' within torstai. But, referable the total of loan applying the children, e.g. strutsi "ostrich", Finnish speakers could pronounce the children, possibly in case these are somewhat awkward. As a Finno-Ugric language, these are somewhat favorite around ternion respects: noninitial labial vowels, loss of spirant & palatalization. An interesting feature of Fennic phonemics is the development of labial vowels within non-initial syllables. Proto-Uralic had only 'the' & 'we' & their vowel harmonic allophones inside non-initial syllables, however modern Finnish allows more vowels inside non-initial syllables, albeit it is rare in comparison 'the', 'ä' & 'we'. Palatalization is characteristic to Finno-Ugric languages, but standard Finnish has misused it. A palatalization is replaced by is vesi in standard Finnish. Finnish has exclusively 2 fricative consonant, videlicet .
Grammar Verbs benefit individual postfix per capita; these postfix come grammatically further significant than pronouns, which can be dropped. the infinitive is non a uninflected form however has a suffix -ta or even -da; a nearest of these to an uninflected form is the third human singular form imperative (!). There are quadruplet souls, foremost, 2nd, third & neutral (typically known as "passive"). There are 4 tenses, viz. present, retiring, perfective tense & past perfect; a rules mirrors a Germanic formulas. A new tense is non required due to context & a telic direct contrast. E.g., luen kirjan "I read a book (completely)" indicates the new, after luen kirjaa "I read a book (not yet complete)" indicates present. Nouns can be suffixed by owning a markers for the said accusative case and partitive case, the genitive case, eight different locatives, & two or three more events. A instance marker must exist as added non merely to the independent noun, however as well to its modifiers; e.g. suure+ssa talo+ssa, literally "big-in house-in". Possession is marked sustaining the possessive suffix; separate possessive pronouns are unknown. Pronouns benefit postfix even as more nouns.
Lexicon
On this button come a bit of of the additional green such postfix. Which of both pair utilized depends on the word existence suffixed using the system of vowel harmony.
Verbal postfix come highly diverse; many frequentatives and momentanes differentiating causative, volitional-unpredictable and anticausative are found, typically united by owning both more. For instance, hypätä "to jump", hypäyttää "to make someone jump once", hyppyytellä "to make someone jump repeatedly", hypähtää "to jump suddenly" (within anticausative meaning), hypellä "to jump around repeatedly". Typically a diversity & compactness of this agglutination is illustrated using juoksentelisinkohan "I wonder if I should run around aimlessly".
Borrowing
A 1st loan words into Finno-Ugric languages seem to are from either super early Indo-European languages, and late in the main from either Indo-Iranian, Turkic, Baltic, Germanic, and Slavic languages.
A common case quoted is kuningas "king" from either Germanic *kuningaz, however another example is äiti "mother", from either Gothic eiþai, which is interesting because borrowing of close-kinship vocabulary is a uncommon phenomenon. A original Finnish word for mother is emo, which however lives, though its utilize is currently confined to carnal metal money, when is the variant emä. This latter is too utilized inside compounds inside the nonliteral feel, like emälaiva "mothership", emolevy motherboard" and emävale "immense lie" ("the mother of 100% lies"). There are other close-kinship words that are loaned from Baltic and Germanic languages (morsian "bride", armas "dear").
More recently, Swedish has been a prolific source of borrowings. Present-day Finland belonged to the kingdom of Sweden from the 12th century and was ceded to Russia in 1809, becoming autonomous. The upper class held Swedish as their primary language even after this, because Russia did not have a written law nor legal bureaucracies and left the Swedish-originated system mostly intact. 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 6% of Finnish nationals, the Finland-Swedes, 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, a range of 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.
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". For example, Raamattu ("Bible") is a loanword from Russian, also other religious words are loaned from Russian. This is mainly believed to be result of trade with Novogorod 9th century and so on and the Orthodox converting in 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 "ethnical" and reaches Finland by many routes including: international business; music; film (except for the very young, foreign films are shown subtitled); literature; and, of course, the Internet — 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 not only ousting existing Finnish words, but also previous borrowings, for example the switch from treffailla "up to now" (from Swedish, träffa) to deittailla from English "to go for the date". Calques from English are also found, e.g kovalevy (hard disk). The replacement the impersonal (passiivi) with the English-style "that you-impersonal", e. g. sä et voi "smart shoppers can't", instead of ei voi is said to be English influence, but it may be actually an older phenomenon, since it appears to have appeared in Karelian dialects already in the beginning of the 20th century.
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 pleikkari "PlayStation", hodari "hot run", hedari "headache" (native word being päänsärky, and native slang words including jysäri).
Neologisms
Finnish loans to other languages
Orthography
A bit of orthographical notes:
A letters ä [æ] and ö [ø], although drawn as umlauted a and o, are withal considered independent character. An appropriate parallel from either a Latin alphabet come a characters C & G (uppercase), which historically have a nearer kinship than numerous more characters (G occurs as derivation of C) however come considered distinct letters.
How else a Finnish letters ä & ö differ from either their Germanic (German, Swedish) counterparts:
Finnish does notUtilize a visually similar diaeresis notation, as utilized around French & English words like coördinate or even naïve. Withinside such situations either dash (while a vowels behanker in different syllables) or even double vowel (once a wonder is astir long vowel) is utilized: koordinaatti, naiivi.
For even technical indicator reasons or convenience, a graphic symbol sh & zh come typically utilized inside quickly or even less carefully written texts instead of š & ž. This occurs as deviation from either a phonetic principle, & intrinsically is liable to reason confusion. Withinside practice even so, these letters come utilized nowhere else than in transcriptions (e. g. šakki, Tšekki, Saakašvili), and then a damage is minimum. Finnish doesn't utilize a sounds z, š or even ž, however for the sake of exactness, it may be involved around spelling. (A recommendation cites a Russian play Hovanshtshina as an example.) Many speakers pronounce 100% of the two s, or even distinguish simply between s & š, because Finnish has there are no sonant sibilant consonant.
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Finnish Characterized by Eugene Holman. General information about Finnish from the FAQ of soc.culture.nordic by a linguist specializing in Finnish and other Baltic-Finnic languages. The Finnish Language (Who's Afraid of Finnish?) by Hannele Branch. Virtual Finland's extensive guide to the distinctive features of Finnish, attempting to answer the question, "Is Finnish a difficult language?" Employment of Foreigners Hampered by Language Barriers and Attitudes by Vellamo Vehkakoski. Helsingin Sanomat article describing language acquisition as an obstacle for foreigners seeking jobs in Finland. Frequently Asked Questions about Finno-Ugrian Languages by Johanna Laakso. Is Finnish the most ancient language in the world? Where do Finnish words come from? A Finno-Ugric linguist answers these and other common questions. The Finnish Language Site Articles on the Finnish language and its history, learning resources, and a mailing list for beginners who wish to learn Finnish. Lingsoft, Inc. Finnish language technology company, offers proofreading and other software for Finnish and other Nordic languages. A Chance to Speak Finnish On this page you can learn Finnish words and phrases by listening. Plus a song about the Finnish language in RealAudio. An Electronic Corpus of Ingrian Finnish On-line corpus of spoken Ingrian Finnish. Includes transcriptions and sound samples. Verbix - Verb Conjugator On-line verb conjugation service for Finnish and 50+ other languages. Includes list of 10,000 most frequent Finnish words. Finnish Grammar / Finnische Grammatik / Suomen Kielioppi Brief, well-organized (if rather incomplete) introduction to Finnish grammar. Trilingual site (English/German/Finnish). |
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