KARELIAN LANGUAGE

'Karelian' is a variety closely related to Finnish, with which it is not necessarily mutually intelligible. However, some Karelian dialects such as North Karelian are closer to Finnish than to some other Karelian dialects. Karelian belongs to the Finno-Ugric languages, and is distinguished from standard Finnish by some important extensions to the phonology and the lack of influence from modern 19th and 20th century Finnish. It cannot merely be classified as a Finnish dialect with Russian influences, because it has original innovations and it may differ considerably from Finnish. There is no standard Karelian language, although the Republic of Karelia's authorities have recently begun to attempt standardization. [1] Each writer writes in Karelian according to his own dialectal form. The script is the Latin alphabet as used for Finnish with letters added.
In this article, ''Karelian'' denotes dialects from Russian Karelia. In Finnish usage, however, ''Karelian'' mostly denotes the dialects of the 420,000 refugees from the Karelian isthmus and other parts of Finnish Karelia that were re-settled in what remains of Finland after World War II. These dialects were influenced by massive immigration, chiefly from Savonia, following the 17th century expansion of the Lutheran Swedish realm extending as far as to Ingria. Thus the linguistic border between (Orthodox) Russian Karelia and (Lutheran) Finnish Karelia was probably more pronounced than that between Finnish Karelia and Savonia. [2] Today, these dialects are concentrated to the towns of the South Karelian region of Finland, where many refugees ended up.
Karelian is spoken in the Russian Republic of Karelia, and also by some 5,000 speakers in Finland.
The Karelian variety has three main branches:

★ Karelian Proper

★
★ North Karelian

★
★ South Karelian

★ Olonets Karelian (or Livvi)

★ Lude
The Ludic language or dialect ''(Luudi, Lyydi, ''or'' lüüdi'' in their own tongue) is sometimes classified as a dialect of Veps.
Finnish and Karelian were suppressed and outlawed during Stalin's Great Purges. Karelian was considered a dialect of Finnish and thus wasn't written as is before the Soviet times. The Soviets created several Cyrillic standardizations, which all failed, in the end due to Stalin's persecution of Karelians as "undesirables".
Today the Karelian republic (of the Russian federation) considers Karelian a dialect of Finnish. Finnish, and not Karelian, was the second official language of Karelia from the Winter War 1940 up until the 1980s[3], when perestroika began. Since the late 1990s there have been moves to pass special language legislation, which would give ''Karelian'' an official status. ''Finnish'' has also again been proposed as a second official language for the republic, but the proposal has never been implemented.

Contents

Language or dialect?

Script

See also

External links

Language or dialect?

Earlier, by some Finnish linguists, Karelian may be classified as a dialect of Finnish. Today, however, the variety spoken in East Karelia is usually seen as a proper language. The phonological and lexical differences often disallow mutual intelligibility in exact terms. [4]
The dialects spoken in the South Karelian Region of Finland, where many World War II refugees were re-settled, are considered to be part of the South Eastern dialects of the Finnish language. The dialect spoken in the Karelian Isthmus before World War II and the Ingrian language are also seen as part of this dialect group, in Finland sometimes denoted as ''Karelian dialect''. [5]
As it could also be argued Karelian should be considered separate from Finnish because of its geopolitical location within the boundaries of another state, a conclusion might be that Karelian has a similar relation to Finnish as has English to the Scots language.

Script

The modern script is based on the Finnish alphabet and is written with Finnish orthography. However, some features of the Karelian language and thus orthography are different from Finnish:

★ The Karelian system of fricatives and affricates is extensive — in Finnish, there is only one 's'.

★ Phonemic voicing occurs.

★ Karelian retains palatalization, usually denoted with an apostrophe (e.g. ''d'uuri'')

★ The letter 'ü' may replace 'y' in some texts.

★ The letter 'c' denotes /ts/, although 'ts' is used also. 'c' is more likely in Russian loan words.
These differences are not merely a Russian influence, since they are found in native words.
Notice that 'c' and 'č' have length levels, which is not found in standard Finnish. For example, in Kalevala, Lönnrot's orthography ''metsä : metsän'' hides the fact that the pronunciation of the original material is actually /mettšä : metšän/, with palatalization of the affricate. The exact details depend on the dialect, though. See ''Yleiskielen ts:n murrevastineet''.

Fricatives
Letter	Alt.	IPA	Karelian	Finnish
c	c		kuču	kutsu
č	ch		šoma, seiččemän	soma, seitsemän
s	s		se	se
š	sh		niškoi	niskoihin
z	z		tazavalda	tasavalta
ž	zh		kiža, liedžu	kisa, lietsu

Karelian actually uses as a voiced alveolar fricative. (In Finnish, ''z'' is a foreign spelling for .) The plosives , and may be voiced. (Most Finnish speakers don't differentiate these from , , and .)
The letters ''č'', ''š'' and ''ž'' are postalveolars. They are replaceable with the digraphs ''ch'', ''sh'' and ''zh'' — even so that ''ruočči'' becomes ''ruochchi''. The sounds represented by ''č, š'' and ''ž'' are native to Karelian, but not Finland Finnish. Finnish speakers do not distinguish and from , nor from (medial) or (initial). For example, the native Karelian words ''kiža'', ''kuču'', ''šoma'', ''liedžu'' and ''seiččemän'' are ''kisa'', ''kutsu'', ''soma'', ''lietsu'' and ''seitsemän'' in standard Finnish.

See also

★ Birch bark letter no. 292

★ Olonets Karelian

External links

★ The Peoples of the Red Book: THE KARELIANS

★ Karjalaine lehüt - Karelian page

★ Karjalan kirjakielestä (in Finnish)

★ Ethnologue on Karelian