Finnish language

Finnish is an official language of Finland, spoken by the majority of people there. It is a member of the Finno-Ugric language family and is an agglutinative language which modifies the forms of both noun and adjective depending on their roles in the sentence. It has a reputation for being difficult to understand and learn. This is mostly because there are few languages closely related to it, making the vocabulary unfamiliar. {| border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" align="right" width="300"\n! colspan="2" bgcolor="limegreen" style="font-size:120%"|Finnish (Suomi)\n|-\n| valign="top"|Spoken in:\n|Finland\n|-\n| valign="top"|Region:\n|Northern Europe\n|-\n| valign="top"|Total speakers:\n|6 million\n|-\n| valign="top"|Ranking:\n|Not in top 100\n|-\n| valign="top"|Genetic
classification:\n|Uralic languages
\n Finno-Ugric languages
\n  Finno-Lappic
\n   Baltic Finnic
\n    Finnish\n|-\n! colspan="2" bgcolor="limegreen"|Official status\n|-\n| valign="top"|Official language of:\n| valign="top"|Finland\n|-\n| valign="top"|Regulated by:\n| valign="top"|-\n|-\n! colspan="2" bgcolor="limegreen"|Language codes\n|-\n|ISO 639-1||fi\n|-\n|ISO 639-2||fin\n|-\n|SIL||FIN\n|}

Table of contents

1 History

1.1 Agricola's work

2 Classification
3 Geographic distribution

3.2 Dialects

3.2.1 Western dialects
3.2.2 Eastern dialects

4 Sounds
5 Grammar
6 Vocabulary

6.3 Borrowing
6.4 Neologisms

7 Orthographic Features
8 See also
9 Bibliography

9.5 Finnish books

10 External links

History

\nIt is believed that the Baltic Finnic languages evolved from a proto-Finnic language, from which Sami was separated around 1500–1000 BC. It has been suggested that this proto-Finnic had three dialects: northern, southern and eastern. The Baltic Finnic languages separated around the 1st century. The first written form of Finnish language was created by Mikael Agricola, a Finnish bishop in the 16th century. He based his writing system on Swedish (which was the official language of Finland at the time), German, and Latin. Later the written form was revised by many people. The Reformation marked the real beginning of writing in Finnish. In the 16th century major literary achievements were composed in Finnish by people like Paavali Juusten, Erik Sorolainen, and Jaakko Finno, as well as Mikael Agricola. In the 17th century books were written in Finland in Finnish, Danish, Norwegian, Estonian, Latvian, German, and Swedish. However, the most important books were still written in Latin. Finnish and Swedish (which in the late 17th century was decreed the sole language of government) were small languages of lesser importance.

Agricola's work

\nAgricola used dh or d to represent the voiced dental fricative (th in this) and tz or z to represent the unvoiced dental fricative (th in thanks). Later when these sounds disappeared or changed in the dialects, no-one knew how to pronounce them so they adapted the pronunciation as in German (z = /ts/ and d = /d/). Later the z became written 'ts'. Agricola made up some words during translation of the New Testament. Some of these words are still in use ('armo' mercy, 'vanhurskas' righteous). One word which is still widely known, but not in use, is 'jalopeura' which means lion - the word 'leijona' is more common nowadays. Agricola used about 8500 words and 60% of them are still in use. (In the eastern part of Finland, dh became j,v, or disappeared; and it became r or l, or remained as dh for some time, while tz became ht or tt, in the Western parts.) Ch, c or h was used for unvoiced velar fricative (ach-laut). Nowadays these sounds are allophones and thus represented only with h. Agricola used gh or g to represent the voiced velar fricative. Later this sound was lost and it wasn't written anymore.

Classification

\nFinnish is a member of the Finno-Ugric language family. Finnish is an agglutinative language and an inflected language which modifies both noun and verb forms depending on their role in the sentence.

Geographic distribution

\nFinnish is spoken by about 6 million people, mainly in Finland; there are small Finnish-speaking minorities in Sweden, Norway, Russia and Estonia; in addition, a few hundred thousand emigrated Finns live in Sweden, and also in North America there remain communities of Finnish speaking emigrants, notably in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.\n

Official status

\nFinnish is an official language of Finland. It enjoys the status of an official minority language in Sweden.

Dialects

\nThe Finnish dialects are divided into two distinct groups, the Western dialects and the Eastern dialects. [1]

Western dialects

\nThe South-West dialects (Lounaismurteet) are spoken in Finland Proper and Satakunta. The Tavastian dialects (H�m�l�ismurteet) are spoken in Tavastia. The Southern Ostrobothnian dialects (Etel�pohjalaiset murteet) are spoken in Southern Ostrobothnia. The Middle and North Ostrobothnia dialects (Keski- ja pohjoispohjalaiset murteet) which are spoken in Central and Northern Ostrobothnia. The Far-Northern dialects (Per�pohjalaiset murteet) are spoken in Lapland. Some linguists also include Me�nkieli, which is spoken in Swedish Westrobothnia, in the Far-Northern dialects. A Finnish dialect called Ruijan murre is spoken in Finnmark, Norway. It is remnant from Finnish emigrants in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Eastern dialects

\nThe Eastern dialects consist of the wide-spread Savonian dialects (Savolaismurteet) spoken in Savo and near-by areas. The South-Eastern dialects (Kaakkoismurteet) are spoken in South Karelia, on the Karelian Isthmus around St. Petersburg in Russia and Ingria.

Sounds

\nmain articles: Finnish phonetics, spoken Finnish

Grammar

\nmain article: Finnish language grammar

Vocabulary

\nSince Finnish is agglutinative and inflected, 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 letter [a piece of correspondence]), kirjasto (a library), kirjailija (an author), kirjallisuus (literature), kirjoittaa (to write), kirjoittaja (someone who writes), 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. (Here capital 'A' denotes that the suffix can have either 'a' or '�' depending on the word being suffixed; 'O' denotes either 'o' or '�'; 'U' either 'u' or 'y'.)\n*-jA : someone who does the thing (eg. lukea = to read -> lukija = reader)\n*-lAinen : inhabitant of (either noun or adjective) Englanti = England -> englantilainen = English person or thing; Helsinki -> helsinkil�inen = person from Helsinki\n*-stO : forms a noun indicating a collection (kirja = a book -> kirjasto = a library; laiva = a ship -> laivasto = navy, fleet)\n*-in : a tool or part (kirja = a book -> kirjain = a letter (of the alphabet); vatkata = to whisk -> vatkain = a whisk, mixer)\n*-Uri : someone or something that does the thing (kaivaa = to dig -> kaivuri = a machine that digs; laiva = a ship -> laivuri = shipper, shipmaster)\n*-Os : forming nouns describing the result of some action (tulla = to come -> tulos = result, outcome; tehd� to do -> teos = a piece of work)\n*-tOn : describing lack of something (onni = happiness -> onneton = unhappy; koti = home -> koditon = homeless)\n*-llinen : having (the quality of) something (lapsi = a child -> lapsellinen = childish; kauppa = a shop, commerce -> kaupallinen = commercial)\n*-kAs : another suffix similar to the above one (itse = self -> itsek�s = selfish; neuvo = advice -> neuvokas = resourceful)\n*-vA : doing or having something (taito = skill -> taitava = skillful; johtaa = to lead -> johtava = leading)\n*Plenty more to add ...

Borrowing

\nOver the course of many centuries, the Finnish language has borrowed a great many words from a wide variety of languages. Indeed, some estimates put the core Finno-Ugric vocabulary surviving in Finnish at only around 300 word roots! Some investigators believe that at extreme time-depth there is evidence of contact with the Dravidian language group. More recently, but still very old, there are borrowings from Baltic and other Indo-European languages. The usual example quoted is "kuningas" = "king" from Germanic *kuningaz, but another example is "�iti" = "mother" - interesting because borrowing of close-kinship vocabulary is a rare phenomenon. The original Finnish word for mother is 'emo', which still exists, though its use is now confined to animal species, as is the variant 'em�'. This latter is also used in compounds in a figurative sense, such as 'em�laiva' = 'mothership' and 'em�vale' = 'huge lie' ('a mother of lies').\nThere 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 due to present-day Finland being part of the kingdom of Sweden from the 12th century A.D. until ceded to Russia in 1809. It is still today the case that about 6% of Finnish nationals have Swedish mother tongue. The Swedish speaking part of Finnish is known as 'suomenruotsalaiset' (Finland-Swedes). 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 For example, Raamattu (The Bible) is 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 Orthdox 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 "cultural" 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" = "to date" (from Swedish, tr�ffa) to "deittailla" from English, to date.

Neologisms

\nSome modern terms have been synthesised rather than borrowed, for example:\n:puhelin = "telephone" (literally: "thing for speaking")\n:tietokone = "computer" (literally: "knowledge machine")

Orthographic Features

\nThe Finnish orthography is built upon the phonetic principle: with just a few subtle exceptions, 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 exceptions to the phonetic principle:\n* "W" (see above) and "V" correspond to the same phoneme, sounding like the English "V".\n* 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. \n* "NK" and "NG" are pronounced as in English, except that "NG" is a long consonant. "N", you will notice, does not sound like "N" when followed by either "K" or "G" in English!\n* "H" occurring before a consonant sounds slightly harder than when occurring before a vowel. The characters "�" and "�", although composed of "A" or "O" with the two dots of the umlaut diacritic, nevertheless are considered to be independent graphemes, even though "�" and "�" represent sounds similar to the corresponding sounds in German. An appropriate parallel from the English alphabet are the characters "C" and "G". They have a closer kinship than many other characters, but are indeed considered as graphemes in their own merits. The distinction made in Finnish by adding the � is a lot greater than that made when adding � or ` to vowels in French. How the Finnish � diacritic varies from the Germanic (German, Swedish, English) ones:\n* In German, the umlauted vowels are alphabetized together with their mother-characters, which is convenient as they often correlate with distinctions of tense, mood, or plurality such as Rad—R�der for "wheel"—"wheels". No such grammatic correlations occur in Finnish and the letters featuring '�' are placed at the end (see top of article for alphabetical order).\n* In German and Swedish, umlauts are replaceable by other letters; "�" may be written as "AE" and "�" is replaceable by "OE". This is used when the � diacritic is not available, on a computer with a British or American keyboard for instance. The German poet Goethe's name is written this way as a matter of historical loyalty, although it may be written as the equivalent 'G�the'. This is not possible in Finnish. Replacing 'l�ht�' (departure) with 'laehtoe' produces a word that is unrecognisable by a Finnish reader.\n* The "�" occurs more frequently than its Germanic equivalent; for example it occurs five times in p�iv�m��r� (calendar date).\n* The two dots on "�" and "�" are used in English and several other languages to mark dieresis; i.e. two consecutive vowels forming separate syllables (adjacent monophtongs), as in co�rdinate. This is again not the case in Finnish.\nThus it is a misnomer to call "�" and "�" umlauts when used in Finnish. However, no better name is known in English. For technical reasons or convenience, the letter combinations "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.

Bibliography

English books

Finnish for Foreigners 1 (Maija-Hellikki Aaltio: ISBN 951-1-08145-4)

This is the first of 2 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 0-340-56174-2)

Quite good: the pace is quite fast as it covers all of FFF1 and some of FFF2, and includes exercises.
There are a couple of irritations: the chapters are long and rambling without any clear focus, and the vocabularies don't always contain all the words used in the dialogs.

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 H�m�l�inen & Salli-Marja Bessonoff: ISBN 951-45-4895-7) [tr. Let's begin]\n*Jatketaan (Eila H�m�l�inen & Salli-Marja Bessonoff: ISBN 951-45-4872-8) [tr. 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 not very nice - typewriter font throughout and poor layout. This book is not of so much use without a teacher.