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110-567: Ahtium (known until 2017 as the Talvivaara Mining Company ; Finnish : Talvivaaran Kaivososakeyhtiö Oyj ) was a Finnish mining company that operated the Talvivaara nickel mine from the company's establishment in 2004 until the mining business was sold to the state-owned Terrafame  [ fi ] in 2015. Formerly listed on the London and Helsinki Stock Exchanges , the company

220-648: A European Commission investigation in June 2012 into Talvivaara's compliance with EU directives on mining waste. Both said that environmental officials have not efficiently taken issue with the violations, and have thereby violated Finland's EU obligations. Minister of the Environment Ville Niinistö indicated that the state may intervene with the operations unless the environmental impacts are brought under control. The Government of Finland responded in October 2012 with

330-803: 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

440-483: A 97-99% cancellation of the debt, essentially diluting the original stock nearly out of existence, and required €100 million of new funding. However, this new funding could not be secured and Talvivaara Sotkamo filed for bankruptcy on November 6, 2014, and trading of the shares of the parent company, Talvivaara Oyj, was stopped in the Helsinki stock exchange. Authorities estimate that the cost of needed environmental measures

550-453: A by-product from its normal mining operations in Sotkamo. The uranium produced will be in the form of yellowcake with an estimated annual production of approximately 350 tons. At a yellowcake price of $ 40/lb the uranium production could result in an additional €20m annual revenue. The capital investment costs were €30m and estimated annual production costs are €2m. The resulting uranium production

660-417: A coat of porous sulfide rock is left behind on the shrinking core of nickel in the grain. In contrast, in bioheap leaching, the oxidation of sulfides causes eventual disintegration of the porous rock, exposing more area than achievable by chemical means only. The ground ore is built into heaps 1.2 km long and 400 m wide, and a recycling irrigation system is used to keep the grains wet. The heat produced by

770-468: 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

880-657: A few weeks before the announcement of uranium production plans. Minister Lehtomäki's husband owned €270,000 worth of Talvivaara stock. The director of the Kainuu environmental office was appointed by Minister Lehtomäki in 2007. Solidium is 100% Finnish state owned unit that controls 11 state owned stock companies. According to Solidium in November 2012 the state ownership in Talvivaara was 8,9 % with value of €31 million. In April 2013 state invested €47 million more. The state ownership

990-513: A fine of 850,000 €, the legal maximum, to be imposed on the Talvivaara Mining Company. The court process will begin in Kainuu district court. Nevertheless, the board unanimously decided to continue the CEO's tenure; the company denies all charges of a criminal offense. The plaintiffs are three partition units , two property owners and two state agencies. On 14 December 2012, the demonstration

1100-497: A good investment. Apparently this decision was made without much discussion within the government. In October 2013, the Vaasa Administrative Court ruled that the company must limit waste water discharges. In September 2014, four directors including the current and former CEO were charged with an aggravated environmental offense, which carries a sentence of four months to six years imprisonment. The prosecutor also seeks

1210-455: 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

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1320-428: A leak that was noticed on Sunday. Before this leak there were 620,000 cubic meters of waste water in the reservoir, and Monday afternoon 370,000 cubic meters remained, with 250,000 cubic meters of contaminated liquid released into the environment, again. In comparison, a large oil tanker contains 100,000 cubic metres. On 9 April 2013 it was announced that the recent leak has been plugged, and the Talvivaara mining company

1430-468: 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

1540-445: 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

1650-610: 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 a few minority languages spoken around the Baltic Sea and in Russia's Republic of Karelia . The closest relative of Finnish

1760-622: A student at the University of Jyväskylä in the late 1960s and early 1970s, from where he graduated with a Master's in Social Studies in 1974. He had long held an interest in economics and society and began to take part in party politics at the age of 24. In 1979 Pekkarinen was first elected to parliament in the Central Finland constituency , after which he was re-elected with an increased vote share in 1983 , 1987 , and 1991 . After

1870-440: 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

1980-596: A uranium extraction circuit at the mine in Sotkamo . Talvivaara would then pay back the initial construction costs in the form of uranium concentrate; once the initial costs are paid Cameco would continue to purchase the uranium concentrate at a pricing formula based on market price on the day of delivery. A railway track was built in order to transport the nickel-cobalt concentrate to a Norilsk Nickel smeltery in Harjavalta , Finland. Based on stock exchange regulations according to

2090-413: A €20 million loan, which was strictly conditional on zinc ore deliveries. The official receiver tried to negotiate a financing method for the reorganization, and published the proposal for a company voluntary arrangement at the end of September 2014. According to the report, the mining business in Sotkamo was viable and could be made profitable. Unfortunately, the debt restructuring in the plan required

2200-449: A €40 million public offering were terminated as inconclusive. A corporate reorganization claim was filed in the Espoo district court. The company is deeply in debt to Nyrstar , Nordea Bank , Svenska Handelsbanken , Danske Bank , Varma , Cameco , Finnvera (the official export credit agency ) and a variety of equipment suppliers and other companies. Nyrstar continued to fund Talvivaara with

2310-616: Is 100 μg /l. Talvivaara was allowed to pump 300.000 m metal-containing wastewaters to natural lakes outside the mine area in November 2012. Environmental officials at the local Ely-keskus requested in January 2013 opinions on the proposal from the Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency Tukes and the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK). Finland's Minister for International Development, Heidi Hautala (Green Party) has recently criticized

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2420-439: Is 16.7% with value of €60 million. Finnish state has no members in the Talvivaara board of directors. Norilsk Nickel , the world's leading producer of nickel, has made a 10-year contract with Talvivaara Mining Company to purchase the latter's entire output of the nickel and cobalt production at market prices. The company has suffered poor profitability. In November 2013, metals recovery operations were ceased, and negotiations on

2530-518: Is a grass-root organization with a public site. 63°58′30″N 28°00′30″E  /  63.97500°N 28.00833°E  / 63.97500; 28.00833 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

2640-503: 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

2750-514: 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 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

2860-507: Is estimated to meet 80% of Finland's annual uranium demand, although reprocessing and enrichment would be required to be conducted abroad, and would effectively double the production of uranium in the EU. Currently, the uranium is deposited into the gypsum pond. The Government of Finland owns 8.89% of Talvivaara, and additionally, the pension funds Ilmarinen , Varma and Keva (the public sector pension fund) own stock. The Minister of Economic Affairs

2970-626: 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, 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

3080-641: 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

3190-401: Is planned to be released from the leaking gypsum pond, which contains high levels of uranium and other toxic metals. Releasing such a large amount of contaminated waste water into the environment would help take pressure off from the pond's containment structure, which has softened as a consequence of the recent spring thaw. Freezing winter temperatures had kept the waste water from leaking during

3300-727: 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

3410-607: Is responsible for management of the stock. The previous minister, Jyri Häkämies ( NCP ), resigned in 2012 and was appointed as the new CEO of Confederation of Finnish Industries . The government supported the mine project by building 60 million euros worth of infrastructure. In the Talvivaara startup were present three ministers of Centre Party of Finland : Minister of Environment Paula Lehtomäki 2007-2011, Minister of Trade and Industry Mauri Pekkarinen and Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen . The family of Paula Lehtomäki (mother, husband and two underaged children) acquired Talvivaara stock

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3520-404: Is the fourth major discharge from the mine since 2008, with three in the last six months. The troubled Talvivaara Mining Company requested permission on 10 April 2013 to release an additional 820,000 cubic meters of waste water into the local environment, on top of the 1.8 million cubic metres for which it already has permits. A portion of the additional 820,000 cubic meters (620,000 cubic meters)

3630-908: Is €100 million with present capacity. If the company does not take action, the government will, regardless of the consent of the company. The Talvivaara mine , since 2015 owned and operated by Terrafame , is one of the largest nickel mines in Finland . The mine is located in Sotkamo in Eastern Finland and employs 400 people. It is an open-pit mine , 22 km from Sotkamo and 28 km from Kajaani . The mine consists of two deposits 3 km apart, Kuusilampi and Kolmisoppi, and has an annual production capacity of over 10 million tonnes of ore . The mine has reserves amounting to 1 billion tonnes of ore grading 0.22% nickel , 0.13% copper , 0.5% zinc and 0.02% cobalt thus resulting 2.2 million tonnes of nickel , 1.3 million tonnes of copper , 5 million tonnes of zinc and 0.2 million tonnes of cobalt . 90% of

3740-602: The Courts of appeal in Finland Pekka Perä gave misleading information about Talvivaara mining production volume in 2012 and 2013. He was fined 240 euros by Courts of appeal in Finland in March 2019. Ahtium Oy (ex Talvivaara Kaivososakeyhtiö) was fined 20 000 euros. Prosecutors were considering a case against Talvivaara Mining in January 2014. Talvivaara had received seven penalty payments on waste water management in June 2014. None of

3850-643: 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

3960-551: The VTT study report that was ready in March 2013, but did not immediately publish it. Parts selected by the board of directors were published at the end of April. It revealed that Talvivaara had intentionally pumped unneutralized, highly acidic metal solution into the gypsum pond, which was intended only for neutralized tailings. This was contrary to the environmental permit and thus illegal by itself. The higher acidity allowed much higher concentrations of toxic metals to dissolve and spread into

4070-494: 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 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

4180-461: 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

4290-830: The 1991 election victory he was named Minister of the Interior in the Aho Cabinet . He served in this position for a full parliamentary term until 1995, when Aho's Centre Party lost the parliamentary majority to the Social Democrats in the parliamentary elections . In 2003, Pekkarinen was named the Minister of Trade and Industry in the Jäätteenmäki Cabinet . As new Minister of Trade and Industry, he stated his goal to "promote entrepreneurship and economic growth and thus contribute to diminishing unemployment, [and] to tackle large issues in

4400-529: The Finnish Economic Development, Transport and the Environment (ELY Centre) has apparently adopted a wait and see policy, as its mandate to monitor both economic development in the area and environmental concerns seem to be at odds, and such internal confusion tends to limit the ability of ELY to make such important decisions. It is also unclear if the company's insurance policy will cover cleanup if

4510-453: 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

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4620-464: The Geological Survey of Finland (GTK). Although the deposit was large, it was considered too poor for existing technology. Only bioheap leaching could concentrate the nickel enough, but the technology was still untested. The mining rights were eventually obtained by Outokumpu Corporation, which sold them at a nominal price of two euros to a former employee, Pekka Perä. The Talvivaara Mining Company

4730-589: The Government of Finland being the largest single owner through their investment company Solidium . In 2015, the newly established government-owned corporation Terrafame bought the mining business of Talvivaara. Since February 2017 Terrafame, operating the Talvivaara Mine, have new owners from Singapore Trafigura and its Galena Asset Management. Ahtium filed for bankruptcy in March 2018. The deposits, Kuusilampi and Kolmisoppi, were originally discovered in 1977, by

4840-459: The Talvivaara company goes into bankruptcy. On 12 April 2013, Talvivaara Mining Company submitted another application to release additional quantities of waste water into the local environment. After releasing even more contaminated water into the surrounding environment that spring, the Talvivaara Mining Company announced that mining operations restarted on Monday 13 May 2013. The mine was previously expected to restart no sooner than that summer, but

4950-444: The Talvivaara mining "has no immediate serious effects on human health". The Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Authority (STUK) reported uranium levels 3.5 times higher than the recommended limit of 100 micrograms per liter, but not high enough to be acutely dangerous to humans. In March 2012, the concentration of uranium was 600 micrograms of uranium per litre in a pond near the Talvivaara mine at Sotkamo. The upper limit for drinking water

5060-674: 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

5170-489: The amount of leaked liquid was sufficient to advance the schedule by several months. Certainly the company was eager to recover from the serious financial losses that came with the accidental leak that began last year, and an earlier restart should help to restore the bottom line for this troubled fiscal year. According to the company, the resumption of ore production will improve overall water levels and site water management. Apparently this improvement will come through dissolving

5280-581: The bacterial oxidation keeps the heap warm throughout the year. Extraction is done twice in primary and secondary heaps. In a pilot heap, over 90% of nickel and 80% of zinc was recovered within 500 days of leaching. Cobalt and copper recoveries were lower, 14% and 2%, respectively. The resulting green-colored solution is then refined to the metals. Treatment with hydrogen sulfide precipitates copper sulfide , then zinc sulfide and finally nickel - cobalt sulfide . In 2011 Cameco signed an agreement with Talvivaara, where Cameco would pay US$ 60 million to construct

5390-399: The beginning of 2012, an employee was killed in Talvivaara's Sotkamo site. Preliminary reports say that the death was caused by a lethal concentration of hydrogen sulfide in the air. Authorities shut the plant down temporarily until some rudimentary safety mechanisms were installed. The plant was later cleared to continue operation, but with to the shutdown in November 2012, Tukes denied

5500-524: 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

5610-623: 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 ) Mauri Pekkarinen Pekkarinen was born into a farmer's family in Kinnula , to father Niilo Matti Pekkarinen (1922–2004), and mother Hellin Inkeri (née Kinnunen, 1929–2018). He graduated from high school in Kannus in 1968. Pekkarinen first became interested in politics as

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5720-443: The company around the clock. Helicopters were in use, in addition to large-scale earth-moving equipment. About 200 people were involved in the hasty repair effort. According to the company, the leak has been stopped. The mining company's CEO Harri Natunen stated that "We have [a] legally mandated liability insurance that covers expenses if we're unable to pay". It was not clear, however, if all cleanup expenses would still be covered if

5830-419: The company went into bankruptcy. Natunen also stated that the risk for future leaks would be eliminated. He further promised that the leak at the mine would be its last. Local weather conditions have continued to improve, which should allow work crews to carefully inspect the repairs, and provide evidence based evaluations of the current situation. Preventative aerial application of lime has commenced, to curtail

5940-470: The conclusion that the local state authority, the Kainuu ELY Centre, has adequately monitored Talvivaara's operations. In November 2012, there was a major leak from the gypsum waste pond, which is contaminated with nickel, uranium and other toxic metals . Finland's Environment Minister visited the site, after calling it "a serious environmental crime ". The mining firm posted a 4.3 million euro loss in

6050-514: The contaminated waste water with more clean water. Additional waste water was leaked this spring to relieve stress on the walls of the leaky holding pond that was repaired last winter, to make room for the larger volumes of diluted waste water that is expected from the new waste management plan. There was no public mention of creating larger or additional holding ponds at this point, nor the possibility of simply cutting back on production. On 21 May 2013, Talvivaara waste water colored River Lumijoki near

6160-404: 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

6270-478: 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

6380-445: 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

6490-430: The environment again. The Talvivaara waste water pond leaked uranium and other toxic metals into the environment. Earlier than normal winter conditions provide an additional challenge to manage this problem. Freezing temperatures should help solidify the dams that are being built for the winter, but this temporary advantage will be lost in the spring. Teams of army conscripts and local volunteer firefighters worked with

6600-436: The environment when a leak occurred. Talvivaara had attempted to conceal this from the public and the government, hindering for instance the EU inquiry. There are two Talvivaara activist groups: The Talvivaara Expert Group ( Talvivaara asiantuntijaryhmä ) and Stop Talvivaara group (www.talvivaara.org). The former is centered around consultants and recently reformed universities and does not publish its information. The latter

6710-653: The environmental law demands immediate corrective action and restoration. In November 2012, Greenpeace demanded to close Talvivaara mining operations. Journalists have not been permitted to enter the area to acquaint themselves with the situation. In November 2012, Finland's largest environmental NGO, the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation , called for government intervention in the matter. About 100 claims for damages have been lodged by property owners, but more are expected. Janne I. Hukkinen, professor of environmental policy at University of Helsinki , criticized

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6820-406: The field of energy policy such as the carbon dioxide emissions trade between companies in the EU and the building a new nuclear power reactor in Finland", and has also stated an interest in preserving good relations with France . In 2008 his title was changed to Minister of Economic Affairs, a position in which he remained until 2011. During his tenure as Minister of Trade and Industry, Pekkarinen

6930-551: 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

7040-446: 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

7150-692: 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 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

7260-473: The government's state-run investment company Solidium for quietly doubling its share holdings in the beleaguered Talvivaara Mining Company. Solidium now controls 17 percent of Talvivaara shares, making it the company's largest single shareholder. On Monday 15 April, Hautala criticised Solidium's actions in the Talvivaara case, saying that the government investor (Solidium) should have engaged in serious reflection, since Talvivaara could not by any means be considered

7370-456: 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

7480-470: The gypsum pond, which was intended only for neutralized tailings. Thus, the effect of the leak was more severe as the acidic water dissolved more metals. Mr. Perä apologized for the emotional and potential environmental harm. While winter repairs had been stabilized by freezing temperatures, recent spring weather has allowed more contaminated liquid to escape from the holding pond. Talvivaara was leaking waste water 7,000 cubic metres an hour on 8 April 2013 from

7590-515: The hypothesis of 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

7700-665: The individual metal plumes released into Lumijoki are concentrated enough to potentially cause local fish kills far downstream. The largest problem is accumulation of aluminum into the gills, but nickel, zinc, cadmium and uranium are also expected to cause ichthyotoxicity. However, no prohibitions of fishing have been imposed, because aluminum and cadmium only accumulate in parts that are discarded as offal (gills and livers, respectively). However, with aggressive liming, acidification has been successfully limited and no fish kills have materialized. The Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) has declared that waste water leaked from

7810-470: 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

7920-415: 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

8030-667: The mine red and orange. Finland's Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Employment and the Economy informed that the company's operations cannot continue before further studies are completed. He said that results from waste water samples indicate that the environmental permits issued were not in line with its current operations. The Safety Investigation Authority, a government agency responsible for investigation of major accidents, has started an investigation about Talvivaara. The government agency Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) determined that

8140-574: The ministers responsible, Paula Lehtomäki and Jyri Häkämies, gave the responsibility for all the environmental permits and regulation of the Talvivaara mine to a single official. Häkämies, the Minister of Economic Affairs, resigned shortly after the event. Prof. Hukkinen demands that the independent environmental administration should be re-established such that it could be openly critical of business interests. The Finnish Association for Nature Conservation (SLL) demanded closing of Talvivaara mine in May 2013. At

8250-411: 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

8360-607: 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

8470-419: 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

8580-407: The new environmental administration of Finland. The previous government established local ELY centres, which are responsible for employment and economic policy, transport and environmental monitoring . Thus, the local environmental agencies, which were previously governed independently, were placed under the jurisdiction of an officer responsible to the Ministry of Employment and the Economy. Indeed,

8690-452: The nickel is deposited in black schist rock, which contains 31% sulfides, most of which consist of iron sulfide minerals. Nickel-bearing sulfide minerals pentlandite , altered pentlandite and pyrrhotite are present in low concentrations, but are accessible by bioheap leaching. The metals are extracted by bioheap leaching , a method where natural bacteria living in the rock accelerate metal leaching by oxidation. In conventional leaching,

8800-453: 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

8910-596: 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,

9020-449: The penalty payments had been convicted to charge yet. In addition to small lakes located nearby the mine, the waste waters have affected many larger and farther away lakes too, i.e. Lake Kivijärvi, Lake Jormasjärvi and Lake Nuasjärvi. The operation has caused controversy because of its environmental impacts. Sulfate concentration in the effluent (8000 mg/m) has exceeded the permitted levels (130 mg/m), causing severe pollution in

9130-425: The permission to restart the processes, citing lacking safety evaluations for planned changes in the process equipment. Later hydrogen sulfide poisoning was confirmed the cause of death of the worker. According to The Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency ( Tukes ) deficiencies in the planning and safety control of the plant for the metal recovery were the cause of the accident. A lethal concentration of hydrogen sulfide

9240-447: 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

9350-437: The previous four months, but the renewed leak on 8 April 2013 has demonstrated that this temporary advantage has now been lost. It is presently not clear if the mining company will wait for the integrity of the pond to fail in a catastrophic way, or if they will move ahead with an unauthorized release of waste water. It is unlikely that a permit will be granted in time that would allow a more managed response. The regional office of

9460-714: 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

9570-401: 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

9680-427: The spread of the toxic metal plume in the naturally acidic soil of the region. On 15 November 2012, the original CEO, Pekka Perä, returned to the post to stabilize the situation, and pledged to cover all the damages caused by the leak, and not sell his own stock in the mine. His analysis was that exceptionally high rainfall was the ultimate cause for the leak. This forced the workers to pump acidic overflowing water into

9790-636: 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

9900-420: The storage vessel. Calm weather did not disperse the emission. The company did not inform the environmental administration of the potential uranium leak risk before starting operations. When birds were killed in the pond, the company tried to contain the spread of information of the event, and sued, unsuccessfully, the person who noticed the event and informed the administration. Talvivaara promised to publish

10010-591: The third quarter of 2012, blaming weak output and low nickel prices. On the same day, Finland's largest newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat , published an editorial column that labeled the company "a large-scale failure, that casts a shadow on the efficiency of the Finnish society as a whole", criticizing Finnish officials for not taking administrative action against the mining company for its environmental problems. With warmer spring weather, this holding pond recently leaked an estimated 250,000 cubic meters of contaminated liquid into

10120-459: 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

10230-495: 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

10340-492: 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

10450-434: The water course. Insufficient mixing caused the formation of an artificial halocline in a lake where effluent was discharged, which led to the lake bottom becoming anoxic . Reduction of sulfate into hydrogen sulfide by bacteria caused odour problems. Also, dust emissions were reported, but the prosecutor declined to press charges after a police investigation was completed. MEPs Sirpa Pietikäinen and Satu Hassi initiated

10560-626: 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

10670-403: 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

10780-492: 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)

10890-511: Was a constituent of the OMXH25 index. Its mining business, Talvivaara Sotkamo, went bankrupt in November 2014, and it is bound for liquidation, with at least 98% of equity lost, and €1.4 million debt outstanding. The mine had suffered several leaks of toxic metal-contaminated tailings, which had threatened local waterways. Members of the management were charged with criminal environmental offenses. There has been considerable government involvement, with

11000-649: Was established in 2004 when it acquired the rights to mine sites at Sotkamo in Eastern Finland from Outokumpu . In 2006 a metals recovery trial was completed and the necessary financing was secured. Perä proceeded to list the company on the London Stock Exchange in 2007 and later on the Helsinki Stock Exchange in 2009. The firm was delisted from the London Stock Exchange in 2014, this

11110-515: 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

11220-460: Was organized by a citizen movement called Stop Talvivaara. One of the leaders is Hannu Hyvönen, who had filmed footage on the mine's area. Finnish Association for Nature Conservation and Greenpeace Nordic were invited to take part in the demonstration, and they both had a word in the citizen forum, as guests speakers of Stop Talvivaara. The demonstration took place in 14.11.2012 in Helsinki. Finnish Association for Nature Conservation reminded that

11330-446: Was portrayed in the Finnish political satire tv series The Autocrats in the early 2000s. Mauri Pekkarinen suggested higher food VAT to collect more taxes in January 2014. Reduction of the food VAT was an election theme in 2007 Finnish parliamentary election . Half of the promised food VAT reduction after the elections was implemented as a reduction of VAT on food served in restaurants. Pekkarinen's suggestion of 2014 did not include

11440-545: 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

11550-437: Was quick to claim that there is no fear that the leak might resume again. It was not immediately clear how company officials were able to predict the future with such confidence. Harri Natunen, Talvivaara's head of production, admitted that "...less than 400,000 cubic metres of waste water had escaped the pond" recently, which is considerably more than the 250,000 cubic meters that were suggested to have leaked on 8 April 2013. This

11660-430: Was released outside the leach residue pond of the metal recovery plant. The mining company had already before noticed the hazard, but the reasons for increased concentrations of hydrogen sulfide were not found out systematically. Shortage of defining responsibilities, flow of information, operations and working habits of the organisation were also discovered in the investigation by Tukes . High H 2 S concentration in air

11770-402: Was the reason of the death. Acci Map safety analyses developed by Tukes found the safety risk not included in the company risk analyses. While the immediate reason was the accidentally open valve, the reason was the consequences this caused in the plant process. The automatic pump mixed solutions that evolved large amounts of CO 2 gas. The releasing gas mixture including H 2 S burst out from

11880-543: 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

11990-413: Was to reduce costs according to information on their website. The appropriate permits to commence mining were obtained in 2007 and metals production started late in 2008. The construction of the mine cost 560 million euros in 2007–2008, and an additional 22 million from HEX in 2009 enabled investments that increased production by 45%. In 2010 the company announced the commencement of uranium production as

12100-558: 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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