Colloquial Finnish - Important Regional Variations

Important Regional Variations

Linguists such as Mielikäinen argue that the dialects of Finnish have been considerably homogenized by 20th century developments of urbanization and other internal population movements to the point that "pure" dialects have disappeared. "Local spoken languages" have developed from standard Finnish to give variety with essentially standard Finnish structure but with some local features. Considerable stigma has been associated with dialects (accurately or not) perceived as rural in the 20th century. People who have moved to the city have adopted a variety resembling standard Finnish, which has been imposed upon dialect speakers by the school, the military and the employers.

• Breaking up some consonant clusters on syllable boundaries with an epenthetic vowel. This is a feature of several dialects, such as those of Ostrobothnia and Savonia: The neutral vowel is the same as the preceding vowel. For example, juhla → juhula "celebration", salmi → salami "strait", palvelu → palavelu "service", halpa → halapa "cheap", äffä → ähävä (via ähvä) "letter F". Pairs of dissimilar consonants with /l/ or /h/ (in Savo, also /n/) as the first consonant are subject to epenthesis; other clusters or geminates are not. However, a strong epenthetic vowel is seen as dialectal, and in Helsinki and urbanized areas, indicates origins "in the countryside" (since for Helsinki people, everything but Helsinki is rural).
• Tavastian dialects are diverse because other, surrounding dialects have influenced them. The following features are all found in Finnish spoken in Helsinki, and many of them occur also in some other Tavastian dialects.
  • Word sillai "in that way", which is usually something else like silleen elsewhere.
  • Partitive plurals ending -ja/-jä in generic Finnish become -i, and likewise the partitive plural -ia/-iä simplifies to -ii: märkiä takkeja → märkii takkei "wet jackets". (also in Nurmijärvi, Kotka)
  • The first infinitive, e.g. juosta "to run", is replaced by the third-person form juoksee "runs" by some speakers. For example, standard Voisitko sinä juosta hakemaan sen becomes Voisitsä juoksee hakeen sen "Could you run to get it". This form is probably historically speaking not the third-person form, but the colloquial, shortened form juokseen of the third infinitive form juoksemaan, which exhibites a tendency to oust the first infinitive even in the formal language, cf. the old dispute, whether alkaa juoksemaan ("to start running") should be allowed in the formal language or not (the current norm is still alkaa juosta with the first infinitive). (also in Tuusula and Nurmijärvi)
  • Abbreviations are common in Finnish spoken in the Southern coast of Finland. Final syllables in frequently used words may erode, like sitten → sit, mutta → mut. Case endings might be abbreviated, usually by the loss of the final vowel, e.g. siltä → silt. (If a geminate would be "left dangling" at the end of the word, it becomes a single consonant, e.g. talossa → *taloss → talos.)
  • Helsinki also has a local slang, containing foreign loanwords which may be unintelligible to people from other parts of Finland. Some slang words have spread to the spoken language of youngsters elsewhere in Finland.
• Tampere is also in the area of Tavastian dialects.
  • Occasional flapping or deletion of intervocalic "L"; the resulting sound is orthographically nil: kyllä siellä olisi → kyä siä ois. This is seen even in the accentless form oisko ← standard olisiko.
• Karelia: minä → mie, sinä → sie
• Southwestern dialects
  • Abbreviation occurs very often.
  • In Turku: minä → mää, sinä → sää
  • A unique characteristic of Turku dialect is the "S" imperfect tense, which has the ending -si instead of -i, e.g., sattusi for sattui.
• Savonia: some difference in pronouns, myö, työ for me, te. Notice that the Savo dialect has complicated differences in grammar, vowels and consonants compared to the standard language, e.g. öylen for eilen, mänj for meni, omaa rataansa → ommoo rattoosa. The Savo dialect is the largest single dialect, and as such, has variants that differ significantly.
• Ostrobothnia: Consonant clusters with -j- are not allowed, so that a -i- is pronounced instead, e.g. kirja → kiria. Minor vowel changes, for example, taloa → talua. Particularly, the half-long vowels (found in word-final codaless single-vowel syllables) are lengthened into full-blown long vowels, as in iso → isoo. The sound /d/ is completely replaced with a rhotic consonant r, either a trill /r/, or a flap /ɾ/, which produces problems such as that there is no or almost no contrast between veden (of water) and veren (of blood). For speakers with the flap, there remains a small difference, not generally audible for outsiders. Usually context can be relied on to distinguish the word.
• Vaasa, Ostrobothnia, to an extent generic Finnish, too: Many frequently used expressions become clitics - this is optional, though. E.g. pronouns become clitics for the negative verb ei and for the verb "to be". In this table, the apostrophe (') is something between a full J and no sound at all.

Additionally, the interrogative pronoun kuka ("who") is replaced by its partitive form, ketä ("at who"), e.g. Ketä siellä oli? ("Who was there?") Other differences in case for interrogative words are mihinä (std. missä, "where") and mihkä (std. mihin, "into where").