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82-647: The Mannerheim Line ( Finnish : Mannerheim-linja , Swedish : Mannerheimlinjen ) was a defensive fortification line on the Karelian Isthmus built by Finland against the Soviet Union . While this was never an officially designated name, during the Winter War it became known as the Mannerheim Line, after Finnish Army's then commander-in-chief Field Marshal Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim . The line

164-803: 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

246-599: 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

328-468: 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

410-850: A few had crenels. Concrete pillboxes were side-firing in order to defend anti-tank obstacles . Maginot and Siegfried -like bunkers had numerous weaknesses, such as having destructible air inlets and firing holes, being too large ( camouflage and costs), and yet being vulnerable to small sapper teams (at Sedan a few German soldiers destroyed several MG bunkers with pre-fabricated bombs and smoke grenades), and being blinded by small concentrated smoke screens. The flexible defense lines were almost immune to small sapper teams or small smoke screens, and had no easily targetable objects. 60°30′N 29°25′E  /  60.500°N 29.417°E  / 60.500; 29.417 Finnish language Finnish ( endonym : suomi [ˈsuo̯mi] or suomen kieli [ˈsuo̯meŋ ˈkie̯li] )

492-508: 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

574-455: 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

656-468: 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

738-445: 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

820-567: A qualified workforce hampered the building of proper fortifications. With Germany's defeat in The Great War , von Brandenstein's plan was scrapped. During October 1919 Finnish Chief of Staff Major General Oscar Enckell sited the line, mostly following the original course that von Brandenstein had presented. Major J. Gros-Coissy, a member of the French military commission, designed the fortifications together with Finnish Lt Col Johan Fabritius . During

902-546: 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

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984-440: 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

1066-486: 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 is mutually intelligible with Finnish,

1148-503: 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

1230-641: 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

1312-727: 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

1394-624: 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

1476-615: The Continuation War the line was not re-fortified, although both Soviets and Finns used its natural benefits in defence during the Finnish advance in 1941 and the Soviet offensive in 1944 (see VT-line and VKT-line ). The first month of the Finnish campaign was humiliating for the Red Army. By the third week of the war, Soviet propaganda was working hard to explain the failure of the Red Army to

1558-594: 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

1640-452: The Maginot system was). The main intention of flexible type field fortification was to close potential traffic and attack barriers with multiplied anti-tank ditches , hedgehogs , and dragon's teeth . These were followed by a complex system of ditches and barbed wire obstacles , which protected the anti-tank barrier against sappers, bridge-layer tanks, and engineer teams. Therefore, the enemy

1722-696: The Red Guard during the Finnish Civil War in 1918. After the victory of the White Guard , a group of Finnish communists fled to Soviet Russia and established the Communist Party of Finland . The situation was considered dangerous for a new nation like Finland, especially as the capital of the new communist revolution was nearby Petrograd , (now Saint Petersburg ). Furthermore, before the Treaty of Tartu in 1920,

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1804-521: 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

1886-506: 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

1968-566: The European situation worsened. The Finns built new strongholds and modernized old ones. In Summakylä and Summajärvi they built two large Sk 11 bunkers, a "Peltola", a Sj 5, a "Miljoonalinnake", and an incomplete third Sk 17. These bunkers had better fire shelters, ventilation and an observation cloche . In Suurniemi near Muolaanjärvi , the Finns started the construction of seven new bunkers, Su 1–7. Two others, Su 3 and Su 4, were for accommodation, and

2050-453: 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

2132-483: The Finnish terrain and fortifications in 1938. The book included a seven-page report and 22 pages of maps and photographs. Every issue was numbered, running probably only into dozens. Soviet intelligence activity increased in 1938 and expanded still further in 1939. Before the start of the Winter War, Soviet intelligence published a book for Red Army officers. It was called " Finland. Written Description of March Routes ". It

2214-507: The Finns repelled the attacks, driving off the Revolutsiya by near misses on 18 December 1939. During the war, both Finnish and Soviet propaganda considerably exaggerated the extent of the line's fortifications: the former to improve national morale, the latter claimed it was stronger than the Maginot Line to explain the Red Army's slow progress against the Finnish defences. Subsequently,

2296-474: The French Maginot Line and other similar forts made with huge bunkers and lines of dragon's teeth , the Mannerheim Line was mostly built by utilizing the natural terrain. Many items such as fallen trees and boulders were incorporated into defensive positions. The Finns also mastered camouflage techniques, which they put to good use. The Mannerheim line was not constructed at great expense. Its purpose

2378-454: The Inkilä sector, were also built. New bunkers differed from earlier designs in that their troop accommodation was located between the gun chambers, thus saving the cost of expensive reinforced concrete ; the roof was protected by two to three meters of soil and one to three meters of stone rubble. The Karelian defensive fortifications received considerably more funds and resources from May 1938, as

2460-514: The Karelian Isthmus to the shorter land sections, as defensive positions, his plan was initially approved by the Finnish high command in August 1918. In October 1918, the Finnish government allocated 300,000 marks for the work, which was to be carried out by German and Finnish sappers as well as Russian prisoners of war. However, the money allocated was insufficient and a lack of building materials and

2542-507: The NKVD conducted espionage operations. The Finns exposed two espionage cases during the 1930s. Vilho Pentikäinen, a photographer serving on the Finnish general Staff, escaped to the Soviet Union in 1933. The second case was of Simo Haukka; he took photographs and measured roads and terrain for Soviet intelligence in 1935. Soviet intelligence published a top-secret and very detailed photobook of

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2624-690: The Soviet Union, had its own military reporting line to the Central Committee. Its intelligence concentrated on the Finnish army, recording the locations of Finnish artillery and defensive positions. The most important Soviet intelligence organisations in Finland were the NKVD and the Fourth Department of the Army General Staff . Leningrad Military District , the Baltic Fleet and border troops under

2706-471: The Soviet Union. The main such route was the Karelian Isthmus . The most endangered part of that isthmus was to the west, near the Gulf of Finland, the eastern part was better protected by the natural water-ways of Vuoksi , Suvanto and Taipaleenjoki . The first plans for a defensive line were commissioned by Mannerheim from the Swedish volunteer Lieutenant Colonel A. Rappe at the beginning of May 1918. Rappe's line

2788-669: The US, and until 1920 had its own fleet of ships. Ob Granit Oy stone is seen in the facings of several buildings in St. Petersburg , including the Fabergé House. Ab Granit Oy was involved in construction of the Mannerheim Line . After the 1939-1940 Winter War , the Soviet Union took the Hanko Peninsula and some other areas for its Hanko Naval Base . This disrupted Ob Granit Oy's operations, and

2870-674: 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

2952-629: The border area was restless. The former general of Imperial Russia, C.G.E. Mannerheim, strongly opposed the Bolsheviks (Communists). Construction work on the Karelian Isthmus had already begun when the Bolsheviks won the Russian Civil War in 1922. The line was constructed in two phases: In 1920–1924 and 1932–1939. During the civil war of 1918, the Finnish government and high command started to develop defence plans to protect against possible attacks from

3034-524: 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

3116-486: The building of Helsinki Central Station , Sokos department store , and many other Helsinki buildings. There were also quarries in other parts of Finland. The company's first plant was in operation until 1928. In 1896 a new plant, made of granite, was established. This building is still extant and can be seen from Hanko harbour . Ob Granit Oy exported granite to Russia, the Baltic States, Central Europe, England, and

3198-405: 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 ) Ab Granit Oy From the beginning, Ab Granit Oy engaged in finishing, export, and some installation of granite as well as quarrying. Even in its first year, the company provided polished granite columns for

3280-404: 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

3362-478: 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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3444-445: 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

3526-780: The equivalent length of the Maginot Line had 5,800 of these structures which were also linked by underground railway connections. The weakness of the line is illustrated by the fact that the amount of concrete used in the whole Mannerheim Line—14,520 cubic metres or 513,000 cubic feet—is slightly less than the amount used in the Helsinki Opera House (15,500 cubic metres or 550,000 cubic feet). The much shorter VT-line used almost 400,000 cubic meters (14,000,000 cu ft) of concrete . However, "flexible" defense lines (Mannerheim Line, Árpád Line , Bar Lev Line ) were not based on dense lines of concrete bunkers and pillboxes (as

3608-522: The first building period, Fabritius suggested moving the defensive line further to the south-east. The general staff discussed the issue, but Enckell's earlier plans were followed. Furthermore, insufficient funds resulted in a disagreement between the officers and Enckell resigned in 1924. Construction work was interrupted for a long period. The prime contractor of the fortifications was the Finnish construction company Ab Granit Oy . The first hundred small bunkers were built in 1920–1924. For reasons of cost,

3690-515: The first phase hard fortifications were of unreinforced concrete, which provided only partial protection. The compression density of the concrete was too low to offer resistance to anything larger than medium artillery . The second construction phase started on 1 April 1934, with Fabritius in command of the construction work. He designed two new kinds of bunker, Ink 1 and Ink 2. The bunkers were mainly designed for troop accommodation, but loopholes were crafted into armour plate in 1938 and 1939. A bunker

3772-551: 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

3854-446: 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

3936-456: 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

4018-573: The iconic Ateneum building in Helsinki, as well as a bridge in Wenden in Latvia. Their first paving stone project was in 1887 in Helsinki; In 1890, the company established a quarry on the nearby island of Stora Bergö as the granite there was more suitable for paving stones, and quickly opened quarries in various areas around Hanko, including Märaskär Island and Drottningberge. Later, the company provided granite for

4100-470: 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

4182-415: 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

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4264-411: 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

4346-607: 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

4428-456: The myth of the "heavily fortified" Mannerheim Line entered official Soviet war history and some western sources. The vast majority of the Mannerheim Line simply comprised trenches and other field fortifications. Bunkers along the line were mostly small and thinly spread out; the Line had hardly any artillery . Following the Winter War, Soviet combat engineers destroyed the remaining installations. In

4510-419: 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

4592-453: 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

4674-596: 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,

4756-447: 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

4838-408: The populace, and claimed that the Mannerheim Line was stronger than the Maginot Line . The Finns originally aimed to make its defence line impregnable, however actual construction progress came nowhere close to this goal by the time the Winter War broke out, in contrast to the Maginot Line which effectively deterred a cross-border assault. The Finns had funds and resources for only 101 concrete bunkers;

4920-656: 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

5002-496: The rest were for machine guns nests. They also modernised those structures built in the 1920s. The older bunkers were given added flank-fire capability and enlarged. Some bunkers' loopholes were simply closed-up as part of a plan to make them more suitable for accommodation or command posts. The line was still incomplete in November 1939. Soviet intelligence worked in Finland on multiple levels. The Finnish communist party, run from

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5084-401: 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

5166-468: The security of the fortification construction. First efforts were weak depots without any concrete. The Germans had ordered Colonel Otto von Brandenstein to investigate defensive positions on the Karelian Isthmus; he delivered his plan on 16 July. He was the first to suggest using the lake isthmuses, where smaller lakes like Lake Kuolemajärvi, Lake Muolaa, Lake Suvanto and the Taipaleenjoki river divided

5248-636: 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

5330-459: 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

5412-422: 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

5494-495: 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

5576-492: 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

5658-526: The west, through Summa to the Vuoksi River and ended at Taipale in the east. It consisted of 157 machine gun positions and eight artillery positions built of concrete. The area around Summa was the most heavily fortified because it was thought to be the most vulnerable position. The Gulf of Finland coast was guarded by Fort Saarenpää , the side of Lake Ladoga (Laatokka) by Fort Järisevä . These coastal artillery positions had 5", 6" and 10" guns. Unlike

5740-626: 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

5822-403: 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

5904-492: 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)

5986-543: Was constructed in two phases: 1920–1924 and 1932–1939. By November 1939, when the Winter War began, the line was by no means complete. After the October Revolution in the Russian Empire , the Finns declared independence in 1917. Although the Soviet Union recognized Finland's independence, the Finns did not trust their sincerity. The relationship between the two countries deteriorated, with Soviet Russia supporting

6068-460: 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

6150-617: Was forced to attack trenches as in World War I, at the cost of numerous losses, without armor and direct fire support. It was termed "flexible defense" because defending soldiers were not 'locked' into bunkers, but the defensive platoons could be regrouped between field fortifications ( wood-earth firing posts, dugouts and pillboxes ). They would also have the option of carrying out a counterattack . All soldiers and weapons had multiple firing positions in order to make it difficult to keep them under fire. Concrete bunkers were usually only shelters; just

6232-601: Was later translated and republished as the " Red Army March Guide to Finland ". The guide included over 200 pages of maps and photographs. Along with the intelligence, the Soviet Union received a detailed map of the defences on the Isthmus. A German military attaché in Helsinki , General Arniké, handed it over in Moscow in September 1939. The line ran from the coast of the Gulf of Finland in

6314-518: Was placed close to the border and designed to protect two rail lines that crossed the border, which could be used in a counterattack toward Petrograd. When Mannerheim resigned at the end of May, Rappe's plans were abandoned. The young nation possessed no guard troops, and the border area was insecure. Security of the border on the isthmus was the responsibility of the 2nd Division and local White Guard units in June 1918. In that form they were also entrusted with

6396-545: 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

6478-543: 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

6560-581: Was to delay more than repel an invasion. It used predominantly local materials. The line applied the methodology of the flexible defence , thus it used trenches and obstacles rather than large bunkers. The name Mannerheim Line was supposedly coined by Jorma Gallen-Kallela and spread by foreign journalists. In the Winter War, the line halted the Soviet advance for two months. The Soviet battleships Marat and Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya attacked Fort Saarenpää several times during December 1939 and January 1940, but

6642-583: Was typically 15–20 meters in length and 5–6 meters wide. A pioneer battalion constructed six bunkers in the Inkilä sector. Between 1932 and 1938 the defence budget was such that the Finns could only construct two or three bunkers per year. In 1936 and 1937 they constructed two large strong-points, Sk 10 and Sj 4 in the Summankylä and Summajärvi areas. Two smaller bunkers, Le 6 and 7, in the Leipäsuo sector, and Ink 6, in

6724-558: 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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