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79-424: Soile is a Finnish female given name . Notable people [ edit ] Soile Isokoski , singer Soile Lautsi , who brought the case Laustsi v. Italy References [ edit ] ^ "Vrk:Väestörekisterikeskus" . verkkopalvelu.vrk.fi . Retrieved 16 September 2016 . [REDACTED] Name list This page or section lists people that share

158-803: 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

237-468: 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

316-474: A few rhotic dialects, such as Scottish English and Northern Irish English . It also plays a lesser phonetic role in Cantonese , unlike in other varieties of Chinese , which do not have phonemic vowel length distinctions. Many languages do not distinguish vowel length phonemically, meaning that vowel length does not change meaning. However, the amount of time a vowel is uttered can change based on factors such as

395-455: 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

474-468: 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

553-445: 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

632-546: 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

711-1054: A shift: /kjauto/ → /kjoːto/ . Another example is shōnen ( boy ): /seuneɴ/ → /sjoːneɴ/ [ɕoːneɴ] . As noted above, only a relatively few of the world's languages make a phonemic distinction between long and short vowels. Some families have many such languages, examples being the Dravidian languages and the Finno-Ugric languages . Other languages have fewer relatives with vowel length, including Arabic , Japanese , Scottish Gaelic . There are also older languages such as Sanskrit , Biblical Hebrew , and Latin which have phonemic vowel length but no descendants that preserve it. In Latin and Hungarian, some long vowels are analyzed as separate phonemes from short vowels: Vowel length contrasts with more than two phonemic levels are rare, and several hypothesized cases of three-level vowel length can be analysed without postulating this typologically unusual configuration. Estonian has three distinctive lengths, but

790-469: A single vowel phoneme, which may have then become split in two phonemes. For example, the Australian English phoneme /æː/ was created by the incomplete application of a rule extending /æ/ before certain voiced consonants, a phenomenon known as the bad–lad split . An alternative pathway to the phonemicization of allophonic vowel length is the shift of a vowel of a formerly-different quality to become

869-605: A third one was then introduced. For example, the Finnic imperative marker * -k caused the preceding vowels to be articulated shorter. After the deletion of the marker, the allophonic length became phonemic, as shown in the example above. In the International Phonetic Alphabet the sign ː (not a colon, but two triangles facing each other in an hourglass shape ; Unicode U+02D0 ) is used for both vowel and consonant length. This may be doubled for an extra-long sound, or

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948-489: 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

1027-621: Is [poʃ] "guava", [poˑʃ] "spider", [poːʃ] "knot". In Dinka the longest vowels are three moras long, and so are best analyzed as overlong e.g. /oːː/ . Four-way distinctions have been claimed, but these are actually long-short distinctions on adjacent syllables. For example, in Kikamba , there is [ko.ko.na] , [kóó.ma̋] , [ko.óma̋] , [nétónubáné.éetɛ̂] "hit", "dry", "bite", "we have chosen for everyone and are still choosing". In many varieties of English, vowels contrast with each other both in length and in quality, and descriptions differ in

1106-518: Is a short vowel found in a syllable immediately preceded by a stressed short vowel: i-s o . Among the languages with distinctive vowel length, there are some in which it may occur only in stressed syllables, such as in Alemannic German , Scottish Gaelic and Egyptian Arabic . In languages such as Czech , Finnish , some Irish dialects and Classical Latin , vowel length is distinctive also in unstressed syllables. In some languages, vowel length

1185-503: 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

1264-441: Is contrastive vowel length in closed syllables between long and short /e/ and /ɐ/ . The following are minimal pairs of length: In most varieties of English, for instance Received Pronunciation and General American , there is allophonic variation in vowel length depending on the value of the consonant that follows it: vowels are shorter before voiceless consonants and are longer when they come before voiced consonants. Thus,

1343-704: Is different from Wikidata All set index articles 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

1422-479: 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

1501-404: Is often reinforced by allophonic vowel length, especially when it is lexical. For example, French long vowels are always in stressed syllables. Finnish , a language with two phonemic lengths, indicates the stress by adding allophonic length, which gives four distinctive lengths and five physical lengths: short and long stressed vowels, short and long unstressed vowels, and a half-long vowel, which

1580-641: 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

1659-727: 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

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1738-403: Is sometimes better analyzed as a sequence of two identical vowels. In Finnic languages , such as Finnish, the simplest example follows from consonant gradation : haka → haan . In some cases, it is caused by a following chroneme , which is etymologically a consonant: jää "ice" ← Proto-Uralic * jäŋe . In non-initial syllables, it is ambiguous if long vowels are vowel clusters; poems written in

1817-528: The THOUGHT vowels can occur, depending on morphology (compare falling [ˈfɔʊlɪn] with aweless [ˈɔəlɪs] ). In Cockney, the main difference between /ɪ/ and /ɪə/ , /e/ and /eə/ as well as /ɒ/ and /ɔə/ is length, not quality, so that his [ɪz] , merry [ˈmɛɹɪi] and Polly [ˈpɒlɪi ~ ˈpɔlɪi] differ from here's [ɪəz ~ ɪːz] , Mary [ˈmɛəɹɪi ~ ˈmɛːɹɪi] and poorly [ˈpɔəlɪi ~ ˈpɔːlɪi] (see cure-force merger ) mainly in length. In broad Cockney,

1896-685: 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

1975-594: 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

2054-463: The Kalevala meter often syllabicate between the vowels, and an (etymologically original) intervocalic -h- is seen in that and some modern dialects ( taivaan vs. taivahan "of the sky"). Morphological treatment of diphthongs is essentially similar to long vowels. Some old Finnish long vowels have developed into diphthongs, but successive layers of borrowing have introduced the same long vowels again so

2133-521: 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

2212-506: 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

2291-453: 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

2370-675: 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 varieties found in Norway's Finnmark (namely Kven ) and in northern Sweden (namely Meänkieli ) have

2449-646: 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

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2528-563: 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 ) Vowel length Whether vowel length alone changes word-meanings in English depends on the particular dialect; it is able to do so in a few non-rhotic dialects, such as Australian English , Lunenburg English , New Zealand English , South African English , and possibly some Southern British English , and in

2607-447: The contrast between /æ/ and /æʊ/ is also mainly one of length; compare hat [æʔ] with out [æəʔ ~ æːʔ] (cf. the near-RP form [æʊʔ] , with a wide closing diphthong). In the teaching of English, vowels are commonly said to have a "short" and a "long" version. The terms "short" and "long" are not accurate from a linguistic point of view—at least in the case of Modern English—as the vowels are not actually short and long versions of

2686-404: 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

2765-478: 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

2844-412: The diphthong and the long vowel now again contrast ( nuotti "musical note" vs. nootti "diplomatic note"). In Japanese, most long vowels are the results of the phonetic change of diphthongs ; au and ou became ō , iu became yū , eu became yō , and now ei is becoming ē . The change also occurred after the loss of intervocalic phoneme /h/ . For example, modern Kyōto ( Kyoto ) has undergone

2923-445: 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

3002-459: 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

3081-551: 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

3160-446: 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

3239-456: 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

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3318-470: 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

3397-430: The lateral [ l ] than fall [fɔʊː] . The distinction between [ɔʊ] and [ɔʊː] exists only word-internally before consonants other than intervocalic /l/ . In the morpheme-final position only [ɔʊː] occurs (with the THOUGHT vowel being realized as [ɔə ~ ɔː ~ ɔʊə] ), so that all [ɔʊː] is always distinct from or [ɔə] . Before the intervocalic /l/ [ɔʊː] is the banned diphthong, though here either of

3476-419: The long [ɔʊː] corresponds to the non-prevocalic sequence /ɔːl/ (see l-vocalization ). The following are minimal pairs of length: The difference is lost in running speech, so that fault falls together with fort and fought as [ˈfɔʊʔ] or [ˈfoːʔ] . The contrast between the two diphthongs is phonetic rather than phonemic, as the /l/ can be restored in formal speech: [ˈfoːɫt] etc., which suggests that

3555-415: 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

3634-411: 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

3713-607: 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

3792-419: 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

3871-453: 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

3950-596: 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,

4029-447: 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

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4108-470: The phonetic characteristics of the sounds around it, for instance whether the vowel is followed by a voiced or a voiceless consonant. Languages that do distinguish vowel length phonemically usually only distinguish between short vowels and long vowels . Very few languages distinguish three phonemic vowel lengths; some that do so are Estonian , Luiseño , and Mixe . However, languages with two vowel lengths may permit words in which two adjacent vowels are of

4187-535: The presence or absence of phonological length ( chroneme ). The usual long-short pairings for RP are /iː + ɪ/, /ɑː + æ/, /ɜ: + ə/, /ɔː + ɒ/, /u + ʊ/, but Jones omits /ɑː + æ/. This approach is not found in present-day descriptions of English. Vowels show allophonic variation in length and also in other features according to the context in which they occur. The terms tense (corresponding to long ) and lax (corresponding to short ) are alternative terms that do not directly refer to length. In Australian English , there

4266-508: The pronunciation of bared as [beːd] , creating a contrast with the short vowel in bed [bed] . Another common source is the vocalization of a consonant such as the voiced velar fricative [ɣ] or voiced palatal fricative or even an approximant, as the English 'r'. A historically-important example is the laryngeal theory , which states that long vowels in the Indo-European languages were formed from short vowels, followed by any one of

4345-714: 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

4424-426: The relative importance given to these two features. Some descriptions of Received Pronunciation and more widely some descriptions of English phonology group all non-diphthongal vowels into the categories "long" and "short", convenient terms for grouping the many vowels of English. Daniel Jones proposed that phonetically similar pairs of long and short vowels could be grouped into single phonemes, distinguished by

4503-413: The same given name . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change that link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Soile&oldid=1174962321 " Categories : Given names Finnish feminine given names Feminine given names Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description

4582-424: The same quality: Japanese ほうおう , hōō , "phoenix", or Ancient Greek ἀάατος [a.áː.a.tos] , "inviolable". Some languages that do not ordinarily have phonemic vowel length but permit vowel hiatus may similarly exhibit sequences of identical vowel phonemes that yield phonetically long vowels, such as Georgian გააადვილებ , gaaadvileb [ɡa.a.ad.vil.eb] , "you will facilitate it". Stress

4661-682: The same sound; the terminology is a historical holdover due to their arising from proper vowel length in Middle English . The phonetic values of these vowels are shown in the table below. In some types of phonetic transcription (e.g. pronunciation respelling ), "long" vowel letters may be marked with a macron; for example, ⟨ā⟩ may be used to represent the IPA sound /eɪ/ . This is sometimes used in dictionaries, most notably in Merriam-Webster (see Pronunciation respelling for English for more). Similarly,

4740-401: 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

4819-465: The several "laryngeal" sounds of Proto-Indo-European (conventionally written h 1 , h 2 and h 3 ). When a laryngeal sound followed a vowel, it was later lost in most Indo-European languages, and the preceding vowel became long. However, Proto-Indo-European had long vowels of other origins as well, usually as the result of older sound changes, such as Szemerényi's law and Stang's law . Vowel length may also have arisen as an allophonic quality of

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4898-458: The short counterpart of a vowel pair. That too is exemplified by Australian English, whose contrast between /a/ (as in duck ) and /aː/ (as in dark ) was brought about by a lowering of the earlier /ʌ/ . Estonian , a Finnic language , has a rare phenomenon in which allophonic length variation has become phonemic after the deletion of the suffixes causing the allophony. Estonian had already inherited two vowel lengths from Proto-Finnic , but

4977-411: The short vowel letters are rarely represented in teaching reading of English in the classroom by the symbols ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, o͝o, and ŭ. The long vowels are more often represented by a horizontal line above the vowel: ā, ē, ī, ō, o͞o, and ū. Vowel length may often be traced to assimilation . In Australian English, the second element [ə] of a diphthong [eə] has assimilated to the preceding vowel, giving

5056-636: 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

5135-493: The third is suprasegmental , as it has developed from the allophonic variation caused by now-deleted grammatical markers. For example, half-long 'aa' in saada comes from the agglutination * saa+tta+k */sɑːtˑɑk/ "send (saatta-) +(imperative)", and the overlong 'aa' in saada comes from * saa+dak "get+(infinitive)". As for languages that have three lengths, independent of vowel quality or syllable structure, these include Dinka , Mixe , Yavapai and Wichita . An example from Mixe

5214-518: The top half ( ˑ ) may be used to indicate that a sound is "half long". A breve is used to mark an extra-short vowel or consonant. Estonian has a three-way phonemic contrast : Although not phonemic, a half-long distinction can also be illustrated in certain accents of English: Some languages make no distinction in writing. This is particularly the case with ancient languages such as Old English . Modern edited texts often use macrons with long vowels, however. Australian English does not distinguish

5293-459: 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

5372-422: 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

5451-425: The underlying form of [ˈfɔʊːʔ] is /ˈfoːlt/ (John Wells says that the vowel is equally correctly transcribed with ⟨ ɔʊ ⟩ or ⟨ oʊ ⟩, not to be confused with GOAT /ʌʊ/, [ɐɤ] ). Furthermore, a vocalized word-final /l/ is often restored before a word-initial vowel, so that fall out [fɔʊl ˈæəʔ] (cf. thaw out [fɔəɹ ˈæəʔ] , with an intrusive /r/ ) is somewhat more likely to contain

5530-495: 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

5609-492: 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

5688-537: The vowel in bad /bæd/ is longer than the vowel in bat /bæt/ . Also compare neat / n iː t / with need / n iː d / . The vowel sound in "beat" is generally pronounced for about 190 milliseconds, but the same vowel in "bead" lasts 350 milliseconds in normal speech, the voiced final consonant influencing vowel length. Cockney English features short and long varieties of the closing diphthong [ɔʊ] . The short [ɔʊ] corresponds to RP /ɔː/ in morphologically closed syllables (see thought split ), whereas

5767-626: 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

5846-403: 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

5925-492: 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)

6004-466: 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

6083-545: 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

6162-623: 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

6241-558: 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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