In phonetics and phonology , gemination ( / ˌ dʒ ɛ m ɪ ˈ n eɪ ʃ ən / ; from Latin geminatio 'doubling', itself from gemini 'twins' ), or consonant lengthening , is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from stress . Gemination is represented in many writing systems by a doubled letter and is often perceived as a doubling of the consonant. Some phonological theories use 'doubling' as a synonym for gemination, while others describe two distinct phenomena.
83-629: Kimitoön ( Finnish : Kemiönsaari ) is a municipality and island of Finland . It was created on 1 January 2009, when the municipalities of Dragsfjärd , Kimito and Västanfjärd were consolidated into a single municipality. The municipality is located in the Archipelago Sea in the Southwest Finland region . The municipality has a population of 6,394 (31 October 2024) and covers an area of 2,800.99 square kilometres (1,081.47 sq mi) of which 2,113.94 km (816.20 sq mi)
166-492: A v after a u is geminated by most people: ruuvi 'screw' /ruːʋːi/ , vauva 'baby' [ʋauʋːa] . In the Tampere dialect, if a word receives gemination of v after u , the u is often deleted ( ruuvi [ruʋːi] , vauva [ʋaʋːa] ), and lauantai 'Saturday', for example, receives a medial v [lauʋantai] , which can in turn lead to deletion of u ( [laʋːantai] ). Distinctive consonant length
249-803: 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
332-491: A 3-to-1 ratio, compared with around 2-to-1 (or lower) in Japanese, Italian, and Turkish. Gemination of consonants is distinctive in some languages and then is subject to various phonological constraints that depend on the language. In some languages, like Italian, Swedish, Faroese , Icelandic , and Luganda , consonant length and vowel length depend on each other. A short vowel within a stressed syllable almost always precedes
415-570: A casa ('I am going home') [ˈvaːdo a kˈkaːsa] . All consonants except / z / can be geminated. This word-initial gemination is triggered either lexically by the item preceding the lengthening consonant (e.g. by preposition a 'to, at' in [a kˈkaːsa] a casa 'homeward' but not by definite article la in [la ˈkaːsa] la casa 'the house'), or by any word-final stressed vowel ([ parˈlɔ ffranˈtʃeːze ] parlò francese 's/he spoke French' but [ ˈparlo franˈtʃeːze ] parlo francese 'I speak French'). In Latin , consonant length
498-468: 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
581-468: A diacritic ( ḥaraka ) shaped like a lowercase Greek omega or a rounded Latin w , called the شَدَّة shadda : ّ . Written above the consonant that is to be doubled, the shadda is often used to disambiguate words that differ only in the doubling of a consonant where the word intended is not clear from the context. For example, in Arabic, Form I verbs and Form II verbs differ only in
664-410: A geminated consonant is always preceded by a short vowel, while an ungeminated consonant is preceded by a long vowel. Lengthened fricatives , nasals , laterals , approximants and trills are simply prolonged. In lengthened stops , the obstruction of the airway is prolonged, which delays release, and the "hold" is lengthened. In terms of consonant duration, Berber and Finnish are reported to have
747-455: 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
830-491: A long consonant or a consonant cluster, and a long vowel must be followed by a short consonant. In Classical Arabic , a long vowel was lengthened even more before permanently-geminate consonants . In other languages, such as Finnish , consonant length and vowel length are independent of each other. In Finnish, both are phonemic; taka /taka/ 'back', takka /takːa/ 'fireplace' and taakka /taːkːa/ 'burden' are different, unrelated words. Finnish consonant length
913-698: A long consonant to a short one, which is called degemination . It is a pattern in Baltic-Finnic consonant gradation that the strong grade (often the nominative ) form of the word is degeminated into a weak grade (often all the other cases) form of the word: taakka > taakan (burden, of the burden). As a historical restructuring at the phonemic level , word-internal long consonants degeminated in Western Romance languages: e.g. Spanish /ˈboka/ 'mouth' vs. Italian /ˈbokka/, both of which evolved from Latin /ˈbukka/. Written Arabic indicates gemination with
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#1733085134398996-468: 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
1079-445: 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
1162-546: 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
1245-489: 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
1328-699: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Finnish language Finnish ( endonym : suomi [ˈsuo̯mi] or suomen kieli [ˈsuo̯meŋ ˈkie̯li] ) is a Finnic language of 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
1411-503: 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
1494-487: Is also affected by consonant gradation . Another important phenomenon is sandhi , which produces long consonants at word boundaries when there is an archiphonemic glottal stop |otaʔ se| > otas se 'take it ( imperative )!'. In addition, in some Finnish compound words, if the initial word ends in an e , the initial consonant of the following word is geminated: jätesäkki 'trash bag' [jætesːækːi] , tervetuloa 'welcome' [terʋetːuloa] . In certain cases,
1577-590: Is distinctive (as is vowel length). Gemination in the syllabary is represented with the sokuon , a small tsu : っ for hiragana in native words and ッ for katakana in foreign words. For example, 来た ( きた , kita ) means 'came; arrived', while 切った ( きった , kitta ) means 'cut; sliced'. With the influx of gairaigo ('foreign words') into Modern Japanese, voiced consonants have become able to geminate as well: バグ ( bagu ) means '(computer) bug', and バッグ ( baggu ) means 'bag'. Distinction between voiceless gemination and voiced gemination
1660-609: Is distinctive in Punjabi, for example: In Russian , consonant length (indicated with two letters, as in ва нн а [ˈva nn ə] 'bathtub') may occur in several situations. Minimal pairs (or chronemes ) exist, such as по д ержать [pə d ʲɪrˈʐatʲ] 'to hold' vs по дд ержать [pə dʲː ɪrˈʐatʲ] 'to support', and their conjugations, or дли н а [dlʲɪˈ n a] 'length' vs дли нн а [dlʲɪˈ nː a] 'long' adj. f. There are phonetic geminate consonants in Caribbean Spanish due to
1743-473: Is indicated with two identical letters. Examples: Consonant length is distinctive and sometimes is necessary to distinguish words: Double consonants are common on morpheme borders where the initial or final sound of the suffix is the same as the final or initial sound of the stem (depending on the position of the suffix), after devoicing . Examples: Punjabi is written in two scripts, namely, Gurmukhi and Shahmukhi . Both scripts indicate gemination through
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#17330851343981826-813: Is lexically contrastive. The distinction between single and geminate consonants is attested in medial position as well as in absolute initial and final positions. In addition to lexical geminates, Berber also has phonologically-derived and morphologically-derived geminates. Phonological alternations can surface by concatenation (e.g., [fas sin] 'give him two!') or by complete assimilation (e.g. /rad = k i-sli/ [rakk isli] 'he will touch you'). Morphological alternations include imperfective gemination, with some Berber verbs forming their imperfective stem by geminating one consonant in their perfective stem (e.g., [ftu] 'go! PF', [fttu] 'go! IMPF'), as well as quantity alternations between singular and plural forms (e.g., [afus] 'hand', [ifassn] 'hands'). Austronesian languages in
1909-478: Is mostly located on the mainland. Kimitoön is a bilingual municipality with Finnish and Swedish as its official languages. The population consists of 30% Finnish speakers, 66% Swedish speakers, and 4% speakers of other languages. Results of the 2015 Finnish parliamentary election in Kimitoön: [REDACTED] Media related to Kimitoön at Wikimedia Commons This Western Finland location article
1992-479: Is mutually intelligible with Finnish, 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
2075-538: Is no longer distinctive. In Nepali , all consonants have geminate counterparts except for /w, j, ɦ/ . Geminates occur only medially. Examples: In Norwegian , gemination is indicated in writing by double consonants. Gemination often differentiates between unrelated words. As in Italian, Norwegian uses short vowels before doubled consonants and long vowels before single consonants. There are qualitative differences between short and long vowels: In Polish , consonant length
2158-467: Is not distinctive within root words . For instance, baggage is pronounced / ˈ b æ ɡ ɪ dʒ / , not */bæɡːɪdʒ/ . However, phonetic gemination does occur marginally. Gemination is found across words and across morphemes when the last consonant in a given word and the first consonant in the following word are the same fricative , nasal , or stop . For instance: With affricates , however, this does not occur. For instance: In most instances,
2241-641: 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
2324-746: Is phonemically /ˈbevve/ and pronounced [ˈbevːe] , while beve ('he/she drinks/is drinking') is /ˈbeve/ , pronounced [ˈbeːve] . Tonic syllables are bimoraic and are therefore composed of either a long vowel in an open syllable (as in beve ) or a short vowel in a closed syllable (as in bevve ). In varieties with post-vocalic weakening of some consonants (e.g. /raˈdʒone/ → [raˈʒoːne] 'reason'), geminates are not affected ( /ˈmaddʒo/ → [ˈmad͡ʒːo] 'May'). Double or long consonants occur not only within words but also at word boundaries, and they are then pronounced but not necessarily written: chi + sa = chissà ('who knows') [kisˈsa] and vado
2407-727: 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
2490-545: Is represented by the Shadda diacritic, which is usually omitted from writings, and mainly written to clear ambiguity. In Hindi, gemination is represented by doubling the geminated consonant, enjoined with the Virama diacritic. Gemination of aspirated consonants in Hindi are formed by combining the corresponding non-aspirated consonant followed by its aspirated counterpart. In vocalised Urdu,
2573-437: Is usually restricted to certain consonants and environments. There are very few languages that have initial consonant length; among those that do are Pattani Malay , Chuukese , Moroccan Arabic , a few Romance languages such as Sicilian and Neapolitan , as well as many High Alemannic German dialects, such as that of Thurgovia . Some African languages, such as Setswana and Luganda , also have initial consonant length: it
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2656-542: Is very common in Luganda and indicates certain grammatical features. In colloquial Finnish and Italian , long consonants occur in specific instances as sandhi phenomena. The difference between singleton and geminate consonants varies within and across languages. Sonorants show more distinct geminate-to-singleton ratios while sibilants have less distinct ratios. The bilabial and alveolar geminates are generally longer than velar ones. The reverse of gemination reduces
2739-544: Is visible in pairs of words such as キット ( kitto , meaning 'kit') and キッド ( kiddo , meaning 'kid'). In addition, in some variants of colloquial Modern Japanese, gemination may be applied to some adjectives and adverbs (regardless of voicing) in order to add emphasis: すごい ( sugoi , 'amazing') contrasts with すっごい ( suggoi , ' really amazing'); 思い切り ( おもいきり , omoikiri , 'with all one's strength') contrasts with 思いっ切り ( おもいっきり , omoikkiri , ' really with all one's strength'). In Turkish gemination
2822-464: Is water. The population density is 9.31 inhabitants per square kilometre (24.1/sq mi). The actual island is the largest coastal island of Finland with an area of 524 square kilometres (202 sq mi). It is situated in the Southwest Finland region in Western Finland province. The island has a population of 7,500 divided between the two municipalities: Kimitoön and Salo of which Salo
2905-457: Is written above the geminated consonant. In the cases of aspirated consonants in the Shahmukhi script , the shadda remains on the consonant, not on the do-cashmī he . Gemination is specially characteristic of Punjabi compared to other Indo-Aryan languages like Hindi-Urdu, where instead of the presence of consonant lengthening, the preceding vowel tends to be lengthened. Consonant length
2988-685: 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 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
3071-594: 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
3154-743: The Philippines , Micronesia , and Sulawesi are known to have geminate consonants. The Formosan language Kavalan makes use of gemination to mark intensity, as in sukaw 'bad' vs. sukkaw 'very bad'. Word-initial gemination occurs in various Malay dialects, particularly those found on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula such as Kelantan-Pattani Malay and Terengganu Malay . Gemination in these dialects of Malay occurs for various purposes such as: The Polynesian language Tuvaluan allows for word-initial geminates, such as mmala 'overcooked'. In English phonology , consonant length
3237-521: 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
3320-546: The shadda is placed on the unaspirated consonant followed by the short vowel diacritic , followed by the do-cashmī hē , which aspirates the preceding consonant. There are few examples where an aspirated consonant is truly doubled. Italian is notable among the Romance languages for its extensive geminated consonants. In Standard Italian , word-internal geminates are usually written with two consonants, and geminates are distinctive. For example, bevve , meaning 'he/she drank',
3403-474: The standard and most other varieties , with the exception of Cypriot (where it might carry over from Ancient Greek or arise from a number of synchronic and diachronic assimilatory processes, or even spontaneously), some varieties of the southeastern Aegean, and Italy . Gemination is common in both Hindi and Urdu . It does not occur after long vowels and is found in words of both Indic and Arabic origin, but not in those of Persian origin. In Urdu, gemination
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3486-506: 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
3569-453: 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
3652-674: 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
3735-431: The absence of this doubling does not affect the meaning, though it may confuse the listener momentarily. The following minimal pairs represent examples where the doubling does affect the meaning in most accents: Note that whenever [(ɹ)] appears (in brackets), non-rhotic dialects of English don't have the gemination, but rather lengthen the preceding vowel. In some dialects gemination is also found for some words when
3818-626: The assimilation of /l/ and /ɾ/ in syllabic coda to the following consonant. Examples of Cuban Spanish: Luganda (a Bantu language ) is unusual in that gemination can occur word-initially, as well as word-medially. For example, kkapa /kːapa/ 'cat', /ɟːaɟːa/ jjajja 'grandfather' and /ɲːabo/ nnyabo 'madam' all begin with geminate consonants. There are three consonants that cannot be geminated: /j/ , /w/ and /l/ . Whenever morphological rules would geminate these consonants, /j/ and /w/ are prefixed with /ɡ/ , and /l/ changes to /d/ . For example: In Japanese , consonant length
3901-646: The border created between Sweden and Finland in 1809 when the Russian Empire 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 intelligible 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
3984-711: The colloquial language) ei kö teillä ole e(i) ks teil(lä) oo "don't you (pl.) have (it)?" (compare eiks to standard Estonian confirmatory interrogative eks ) Gemination Consonant length is a distinctive feature in certain languages, such as Japanese . Other languages, such as Greek , do not have word-internal phonemic consonant geminates. Consonant gemination and vowel length are independent in languages like Arabic, Japanese, Finnish and Estonian; however, in languages like Italian, Norwegian , and Swedish , vowel length and consonant length are interdependent. For example, in Norwegian and Swedish,
4067-441: The conditional (and possibly the future tense) from the imperfect: courrais 'would run' /kuʁ.ʁɛ/ vs. courais 'ran' /ku.ʁɛ/ ; or the indicative from the subjunctive: croyons 'we believe' /kʁwa.jɔ̃/ vs. croyions 'we believed' /kʁwaj.jɔ̃/ . In Ancient Greek , consonant length was distinctive, e.g., μέ λ ω [mélɔː] 'I am of interest' vs. μέ λλ ω [mélːɔː] 'I am going to'. The distinction has been lost in
4150-404: 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
4233-478: 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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#17330851343984316-417: The doubling of the middle consonant of the triliteral root in the latter form, e. g. , درس darasa (with full diacritics: دَرَسَ ) is a Form I verb meaning to study , whereas درّس darrasa (with full diacritics: دَرَّسَ ) is the corresponding Form II verb, with the middle r consonant doubled, meaning to teach . In Berber , each consonant has a geminate counterpart, and gemination
4399-445: 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
4482-459: The extensive use of inflection allows them to be ordered differently. Word order variations are often reserved for differences in information structure . Finnish orthography uses a Latin-script alphabet derived from the Swedish alphabet, and is 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
4565-551: 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
4648-446: 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
4731-456: 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
4814-470: 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
4897-415: 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
4980-411: 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
5063-548: 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
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#17330851343985146-419: 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
5229-453: 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
5312-596: 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,
5395-447: 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
5478-714: 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
5561-401: 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
5644-636: 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
5727-604: The suffix -ly follows a root ending in -l or -ll, as in: but not In some varieties of Welsh English , the process takes place indiscriminately between vowels, e.g. in money [ˈmɜn.niː] but it also applies with graphemic duplication (thus, orthographically dictated), e.g. butter [ˈbɜt̚.tə] In French, gemination is usually not phonologically relevant and therefore does not allow words to be distinguished: it mostly corresponds to an accent of insistence ( c'est terrifiant realised [ˈtɛʁ.ʁi.fjɑ̃] ), or meets hyper-correction criteria: one "corrects" one's pronunciation, despite
5810-459: 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
5893-422: 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
5976-495: 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
6059-518: The uses of diacritics. In Gurmukhi the diacritic is called the [[[ੱ|áddak]]] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 3) ( help ) which is written before the geminated consonant and is mandatory. In contrast, the shadda , which is used to represent gemination in the Shahmukhi script , is not necessarily written, retaining the tradition of the original Arabic script and Persian language , where diacritics are usually omitted from writing, except to clear ambiguity, and
6142-453: The usual phonology, to be closer to a realization that one imagines to be more correct: thus, the word illusion is sometimes pronounced [il.lyˈzjɔ̃] by influence of the spelling. However, gemination is distinctive in a few cases. Statements such as elle a dit ('she said') ~ elle l'a dit ('she said it') /ɛl a di/ ~ /ɛl l‿a di/ can commonly be distinguished by gemination. In a more sustained pronunciation, gemination distinguishes
6225-492: 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
6308-626: 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
6391-403: 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
6474-492: 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)
6557-1012: Was distinctive, as in a n us 'old woman' vs. a nn us 'year'. Vowel length was also distinctive in Latin until about the fourth century, and was reflected in the orthography with an apex . Geminates inherited from Latin still exist in Italian , in which [ˈanno] anno and [ˈaːno] ano contrast with regard to /nn/ and /n/ as in Latin. It has been almost completely lost in French and completely in Romanian . In West Iberian languages , former Latin geminate consonants often evolved to new phonemes, including some instances of nasal vowels in Portuguese and Old Galician as well as most cases of /ɲ/ and /ʎ/ in Spanish, but phonetic length of both consonants and vowels
6640-515: 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
6723-545: 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
6806-623: Was the use of the reflexive suffix -(t)te , used only in the eastern dialects. The Birch bark letter no. 292 from the early 13th century is the first known document in any Finnic language ; it is written in a variety that is closest to modern Karelian or Veps . 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
6889-558: 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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