72-556: The Cobblers on the Heath (or Heath Cobblers in Douglas Robinson's 1993 translation; Finnish : Nummisuutarit ) is a play by Aleksis Kivi , considered one of the greatest Finnish writers. The play was originally written in 1864. However, the play's official premiere took place only three years after Kivi's death; it was performed for the first time in Oulu on 24 September 1875. The play
144-803: A "j", e.g. vesj [vesʲ] "water", cf. standard vesi [vesi] . The first known written account in Helsinki slang 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 bold): 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 . There are two main registers of Finnish used throughout
216-599: A Latin-script alphabet derived from the Swedish alphabet, and is phonemic to a great extent. Vowel length and consonant length are distinguished, and there are a range of diphthongs , although vowel harmony limits which diphthongs are possible. Finnish belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family ; as such, it is one of the few European languages that is not Indo-European . The Finnic branch also includes Estonian and
288-468: 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" ( puhuvat kirjakieltä ); 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
360-508: A few minority languages spoken around the Baltic Sea and in Russia's Republic of Karelia . The closest relative of Finnish is either Ingrian , or depending on the definition, Karelian . Finnic languages form a dialect continuum, where for instance Finnish and Estonian are not separated by any single isogloss that would separate dialects considered "Finnish" from those considered "Estonian", despite
432-455: 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
504-468: A more systematic writing system. Along the way, Finnish lost several fricative consonants in a process of sound change . The sounds [ð] and [θ(ː)] 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: Modern Finnish punctuation, along with that of Swedish, uses the colon (:) to separate
576-445: 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 [ ɤ ] . This vowel was found only in the southern dialects, which developed into Estonian , Livonian , and Votian . The northern variants used third person singular pronoun hän instead of southern tämä (Est. tema ). While the eastern dialects of Proto-Finnic (which developed in
648-546: A separate taxonomic " Finno-Samic " node is controversial. The Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California , United States, classifies Finnish as a level III language (of four levels) in terms of learning difficulty for native English speakers. 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
720-440: A total amount of Finnish-speakers roughly between 7,200 and 15,600. In the latest census , around 1000 people in Russia claimed to speak Finnish natively; however, a larger amount of 14,000 claimed to be able to speak Finnish in total. There are also forms of Finnish spoken by diasporas outside Europe, such as American Finnish , spoken by Finnish Americans , and Siberian Finnish , spoken by Siberian Finns . Today, Finnish
792-581: A young blacksmith, and the beneficiary of the will. The inheritance will be given to the person who marries first. Martta cannot stand Kristo and she is very demanding towards Jaana, and out of avarice tries to prevent the marriage between the young couple. To Martta's delight, the talks between Topias and the householder Karri in the Halfway House Inn result in Esko being sent to propose to Karri's lovely daughter, Kreeta. The village cantor Sepeteus comes to sign
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#1732872527396864-503: 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 change of d to l (mostly obsolete) or trilled r (widespread, nowadays disappearance of d
936-554: Is divided into five acts: the first act takes place in the room of Topias, the master cobbler , the second in the spacious house of Karri, the owner, and the third takes us to Hämeenlinna and the Halfway House Inn (’Puolmatkan krouvi’). The fourth act takes place in a forest, while the fifth and final act is played out outside Topias's room. In Finland, Heath Cobblers has been considered a masterpiece of dramatic literature, which has also been translated into more than ten languages. As many as three film adaptations have also been made on
1008-533: Is horrified by Esko's ‘murderous act’, but then Antres regains consciousness. Antres and Esko are reconciled. The men share stories about their unsuccessful journeys and agree that it will all be worth it once they get home, hand over the thief and get their reward. They head off towards the cobbler's house, followed by two uninvited guests who want to crash Esko's wedding. On the way, they find Mikko, who had earlier run away and who has now badly injured his leg. Despite Mikko's protestations, they start dragging him towards
1080-564: Is now dead. Eerikki tells him about Jaana's rather harsh fate in being Martta and Topias’ foster child, and how Martta will not let Jaana marry Kristo, but is instead trying her utmost to marry off Esko. Niko decides there and then to head off to help his long-lost daughter. Eerikki goes his own way. [The text of the play indicates an interval] The curtain closes and the scene switches to the Halfway House Inn, where Niko has already arrived, as well as Iivari and Sakeri. The pair are discussing their reckless use of money and planning how to get out of
1152-641: Is one of two official languages of Finland (the other being Swedish), and has been an official language of the European Union 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 the Grand Duchy of Finland , and against the backdrop of the Fennoman movement , the language obtained its official status in
1224-727: Is popular) and the personal pronouns ( me: meitin ('we: our'), te: teitin ('you: your') and he: heitin ('they: their')). The South Ostrobothnian dialects ( eteläpohjalaismurteet ) are spoken in Southern Ostrobothnia . Their most notable feature is the pronunciation of "d" as a tapped or even fully trilled /r/ . The Central and North Ostrobothnian dialects ( keski- ja pohjoispohjalaismurteet ) are spoken in Central and Northern Ostrobothnia . The Lapland dialects ( lappilaismurteet ) are spoken in Lapland . The dialects spoken in
1296-624: Is spoken in the Norwegian counties of Troms and Finnmark by a minority of Finnish descent. Finnish is typologically agglutinative and uses almost exclusively suffixal affixation . Nouns , adjectives , 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
1368-594: The Finnish Diet of 1863. Finnish also enjoys the status of an official minority language in Sweden . 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. However, concerns have been expressed about
1440-521: 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. Despite having overlapping geographical distributions, Finnic languages and Sami languages are not closely related, and the hypothesis of
1512-460: The Uralic language family, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland, alongside Swedish . In Sweden , both Finnish and Meänkieli (which has significant mutual intelligibility with Finnish ) are official minority languages . Kven , which like Meänkieli is mutually intelligible with Finnish,
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#17328725273961584-506: The stem of a word and its grammatical ending in some cases, for example after acronyms , as in EU:ssa '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. In the 19th century Johan Vilhelm Snellman and others began to stress
1656-453: 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
1728-674: The United States. The majority of the population of Finland (90.37% as of 2010 ) speak Finnish as their first language . The remainder speak Swedish (5.42%), one of the Sámi languages (for example Northern , 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 Finnic varities found in Norway's Finnmark (namely Kven ) and in northern Sweden (namely Meänkieli ) have
1800-666: The basis of the Heath Cobblers , The Village Shoemakers in 1923, and other adaptations in 1938 and 1957. The story begins with Topias the master cobbler and his irritable wife Martta, who, in their greed, want to marry off their underage and slightly dim son, Esko. They’re in a hurry, since an old will states that the inheritance will be given to the first to marry. It seems that their orphaned neighbour Jaana, whose father Niko ran off to sea, and who has been raised in Topias's house, might beat them to it, as she has fallen in love with Kristo,
1872-435: The beginning of the fourth act, Mikko and Esko, who had fled after the fight with the fiddler, are trudging home along a forest path. They’ve been taking their time, visiting one inn after another, and have by now squandered all their money. This is mostly Mikko's fault, since Esko doesn’t drink. They’re quarrelling about how to deal with the situation: Esko wants to tell the truth about their trip, but Mikko would rather not face
1944-524: The border created between Sweden and Finland in 1809 when Russia annexed Finland. This caused the speakers of Meänkieli to be isolated from the developments of standard Finnish and instead be influenced by the Swedish language. However, it is still mutually integible with Finnish, and is thus sometimes considered a dialect of the Finnish language. The Kven language is spoken in Finnmark and Troms , in Norway. Its speakers are descendants of Finnish emigrants to
2016-416: The cobbler's house, since it is known that cantor Sepeteus, who also has first aid skills, is there. As the curtain opens on the fifth act, Topias and cantor Sepeteus are drinking and singing while waiting for the wedding party to arrive. Martta is not at all pleased with the situation, nor is she happy that her sons are nowhere to be seen. Villagers begin to arrive, clamouring after their own purchases Iivari
2088-419: The consequences. Esko stops to gather some medicinal fir moss from the forest, because he thinks it will make amends for their unsuccessful trip. After Esko leaves, Mikko is joined by Kristo, Jaana's sweetheart, who is on his way to crash Esko's wedding. Mikko tells Kristo about the misfortunes they’ve had during their trip to the wedding, and they conclude that Kristo and Jaana might still be able to marry and get
2160-404: 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
2232-478: 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
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2304-414: The document authorising Esko's marriage licence, and even though he knows the background to the matter and states his view, he eventually signs it. The unlettered Esko also wants to make his mark on the document, which of course leads to a conflict. Mikko Vilkastus, who is more conniving than Esko, goes with him to speak on the simpleton's behalf. As a subplot Esko's alcoholic brother Iivari is sent in turn to
2376-445: The effect of the standard language is the development of the consonant gradation form /ts : ts/ as in metsä : metsän , 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 [θː] , used earlier in some western dialects. The spelling and the pronunciation this encourages however approximate
2448-428: The fix. Niko overhears their conversation and recognises the men. Yet he does not go to talk to them, since the innkeeper at that moment goes over to the pair to talk to them about a highwayman who has been seen wandering around the area and who has a huge bounty on his head. The innkeeper describes the thief, and the men fantasise about the relief that the reward would provide. Niko overhears this plan and decides to trick
2520-551: The formal. However, in signalling the former in writing, syncope and sandhi – especially internal – may occasionally amongst other characteristics be transcribed, e.g. menenpä → me(n)empä . This never occurs in the standard variety. he mene vät ne mene e "they go" loss of a number contrast on verbs in the 3rd person ( menee is 3rd person singular in the formal language) ( minä) o le n mä o o n "I am" or "I will be" and no pro-drop (i.e., personal pronouns are usually mandatory in
2592-446: 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. 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
2664-555: The girl. All the hate and anger begins to subside and everyone begins to make peace. Jaana whispers a secret that Niko then says out loud: Jaana wishes to give half of her inheritance to the family of Topias and Martta, so they can take care of the damage their sons have caused. This creates such joy that no one can be angry any longer. Martta is touched by Jaana's kindness. Iivari regrets his many drinking sprees and announces that he's going to sea. Esko announces that women are not for him and decides never to get married. Martta welcomes all to
2736-456: 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 of sonorants in some verbs of the Type III class (with subsequent vowel assimilation ), but only when
2808-435: The inheritance. Mikko, who had injured his leg, is carried in. He is chastised, and Sepeteus says that Mikko is getting what he deserves and will have to limp for the rest of his life. Then the parents and other villagers lambast Esko, Iivari and their entourage. Karri has brought an action against Esko for his reckless behaviour at Kreeta and Jaakko's wedding, so everyone finds out what Esko did. Topias demands that Esko return
2880-421: The inheritance. Kristo goes ahead to the cobbler's house to trick the family into believing that the wedding party is on its way. When Esko returns from gathering medicinal plants, Mikko forces him to drink alcohol for the first time in his life. Mikko's plan is to get Esko drunk, goad him into an argument, and then flee the scene, thus avoiding Martta's wrath. After the fight Mikko darts off, and Esko meets Antres
2952-478: The inn has meant a wasted journey, which ends with Esko being provoked into a fight with the fiddler Teemu. As a consequence, Esko has to flee the scene with the mischievous Mikko Vilkastus, who was the one to egg him on. In the third act we find ourselves in Hämeenlinna , where Esko's brother Iivari is roaming the streets, miserable and hung over. As he is prone to drink, he has, together with his uncle Sakeri, spent
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3024-497: The intention of spending their very last pennies at the Halfway House Inn. After they have left, Jaana's father, the sailor Niko, bumps into the justice of the peace, Eerikki, on the street. The old friends start chatting about Niko's adventures abroad and his brief gaol sentence in Turku Castle , as well as about Eerikki's good fortune in becoming a justice of the peace. Niko asks about his daughter's whereabouts, seeing as her mother
3096-470: The language, which he based on Swedish, German, and Latin. The Finnish standard language 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
3168-415: 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
3240-462: The marriage licence, on which Esko had made his mark, which of course further upsets the master cobbler and his family. Sepeteus declares that the righteous have been granted happiness and the wrongdoers punished. He congratulates Jaana, who is thankful for getting back her father and her beloved on the same day. She also whole-heartedly thanks Topias and Martta for taking care of her in spite of everything. This softens even Martta's stony heart towards
3312-402: The men and, on top of that, get a free ride home. He asks the innkeeper to play along and together they disguise Niko as the missing highwayman. Iivari and Sakeri, who have since fallen out because of the lost money, fall for the ruse and capture Niko as he enters the inn. After agreeing on how to split the reward, they finally make their way towards home – giving incognito Niko his free ride. At
3384-458: The men have of receiving the reward are lost. Chaos ensues, almost leading to a fight, but in the end Niko and Jaana embrace and she forgives her father. Niko's old friend Eerikki, the justice of the peace, arrives. Niko explains how he tricked his way there, asks about Kristo, and confirms that his daughter Jaana wants to marry him. Niko gives his blessing to the union, putting an end to the dreams of Martta, Topias and Esko ever getting their hands on
3456-411: The modern-day eastern Finnish dialects, Veps, Karelian, and Ingrian) formed genitive plural nouns via plural stems (e.g., eastern Finnish kalojen < * kaloi -ten ), the western dialects of Proto-Finnic (today's Estonian, Livonian and western Finnish varieties) used the non-plural stems (e.g., Est. kalade < * kala -ten ). Another defining characteristic of the east–west split
3528-426: The money raised for the wedding on booze. Iivari is racking his brains to find a way out of the financial pickle and to avoid the wrath of Martta and the other villagers. Sakeri, who was very helpful with emptying the bottles of liquor, comes up with a scheme – they will tell everyone that they have been robbed. They decide to run with the story and start heading towards Topias the (master) cobbler's house, obviously with
3600-607: 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 Southwest Finnish dialects ( lounaissuomalaismurteet ) are spoken in Southwest Finland and Satakunta . Their typical feature
3672-419: 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 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
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#17328725273963744-453: The original pronunciation, still reflected in e.g. Karelian /čč : č/ ( meččä : mečän ). In the spoken language, a fusion of Western /tt : tt/ ( mettä : mettän ) and Eastern /ht : t/ ( mehtä : metän ) has resulted in /tt : t/ ( mettä : metän ). Neither of these forms are identifiable as, or originate from, a specific dialect. The orthography of informal language follows that of
3816-596: 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. 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 ( Nykysuomen sanakirja 1951–61), with 201,000 entries,
3888-447: The phoneme / k / . Likewise, he alternated between dh and d to represent the allophonic [ ð ] (like th in English this ), between dh and z to represent / θː / (like th in thin , but longer in duration), and between gh and g to represent the allophonic [ ɣ ] . Agricola did not consistently represent vowel length in his orthography. Others revised Agricola's work later, striving for
3960-714: The region in the 18th and 19th centuries. Kven is an official minority language in Norway. The Eastern dialects consist of the widespread Savonian dialects ( savolaismurteet ) spoken in Savo and nearby areas, and the South-Eastern dialects now spoken only in Finnish South Karelia . The South Karelian dialects ( eteläkarjalaismurteet ) were previously also spoken on the Karelian Isthmus and in Ingria . The Karelian Isthmus
4032-401: The second syllable of the word is short. The result is that some forms in the spoken language are shortened, e.g. tule-n → tuu-n ('I come'), while others remain identical to the standard language hän tulee "he comes", never * hän tuu ). However, the longer forms such as tule can be used in spoken language in other forms as well. The literary language certainly still exerts
4104-636: The status of official minority languages, and thus can be considered distinct languages from Finnish. However, since these languages are mutually intelligible , one may alternatively view them as dialects of the same language . No language census exists for Norway, neither for Kven, standard Finnish, or combined. As of 2023, 7,454 first- or second-generation immigrants from Finland were registered as having Norwegian residency, while as of 2021, 235 Finns were registered as foreigners studying at Norwegian higher education. Great Norwegian Encyclopedia estimates Kven speakers at 2,000-8,000. Altogether, this results in
4176-412: The tailor, who was sent to meet up with the wedding guests. As they are speaking, the alcohol starts to go to Esko's head, and he loses control, running around erratically. Esko becomes argumentative, and in his anger grabs Antres, accidentally causing him to faint. Esko thinks he has killed Antres. Meanwhile, Iivari, Sakeri and Niko, who is disguised as the thief, arrive on the scene. For a moment, everyone
4248-406: The town of Hämeenlinna to buy various things for the celebration of Esko and Kreeta's arrival. In the parlour at Karri's house meanwhile the wedding is in full swing, with Kreeta as the bride, but the groom turns out to be Jaakko the clog maker. Karri is astonished: as far as he was concerned, the marriage arrangements between Esko and Kreeta were just a joke. Father Topias and Karri's hazy deal at
4320-459: The travel journal, the words are those of a Finnish bishop whose name is unknown. The erroneous use of gelen (Modern Finnish kielen ) in the accusative case, rather than kieltä in the partitive, and the lack of the conjunction mutta are typical of foreign speakers of Finnish even today. At the time, most priests in Finland spoke Swedish . During the Middle Ages, when Finland
4392-422: The two standard languages being not mutually intelligible. Finnish demonstrates an affiliation with other Uralic languages (such as Hungarian and Sami languages ) in several respects including: 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
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#17328725273964464-495: 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. 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
4536-492: 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 developed. 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
4608-462: The wedding table she had prepared for Esko and Kreeta: they can celebrate the engagement of Jaana and Kristo with this delicious food. Everyone goes inside while Antres plays ‘The March of the Pori Regiment’ on his reed whistle. Finnish language Finnish ( endonym : suomi [ˈsuo̯mi] or suomen kieli [ˈsuo̯meŋ ˈkie̯li] ) is a Finnic language of
4680-626: 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 ( Seitsemän veljestä ), published by Aleksis Kivi in 1870. 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
4752-403: 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 recognized in Sweden as its own distinct language, having its own standardized language separate from Finnish. This form of speech developed from
4824-492: Was a prescriptive dictionary that defined official language. An additional volume for words of foreign origin ( Nykysuomen sivistyssanakirja , 30,000 entries) was published in 1991. An updated dictionary, The New Dictionary of Modern Finnish ( Kielitoimiston sanakirja ) was published in an electronic form in 2004 and in print in 2006. A descriptive grammar (the Large grammar of Finnish , Iso suomen kielioppi , 1,600 pages)
4896-515: 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 , 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
4968-545: 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. The colloquial language has mostly developed naturally from earlier forms of Finnish, and spread from
5040-565: Was supposed to bring. Kristo arrives, falsely claiming that the wedding guests are on their way. Unexpectedly, a mixed crowd of people pull up in a cart: Iivari, Sakeri, Esko, Antres and Niko, who everyone still believes is the thief. The men relate sanitised versions of their journeys – to propose to Kreeta and to go Hämeenlinna to buy things for the wedding- and they proudly present the “thief” who, they assume, will make amends for their wrongdoings. Jaana arrives and Niko immediately cries out, revealing his true identity as her father, and all hopes
5112-543: Was the use of the reflexive suffix -(t)te , used only in the eastern dialects. 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 : Mÿnna tachton gernast spuho sommen gelen Emÿna daÿda (Modern Finnish: " Minä tahdon kernaasti puhua suomen kielen, [mutta] en minä taida; " English: "I want to speak Finnish, [but] I am not able to"). According to
5184-558: 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 , 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
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