Meänkieli
meänkieli
Native to	Sweden Finland
Region	Torne Valley
Native speakers	(70,000 cited 1997–2020)[1]
Language family	Uralic Finnic Finnish Peräpohjola Meänkieli
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Sweden
Language codes
ISO 639-3	fit
Glottolog	torn1244
Map of the area where Meänkieli has an official status.

Meänkieli (literally 'our language') is a group of distinct Finnish dialects or a Finnic language spoken in the northernmost part of Sweden along the valley of the Torne River. Its status as an independent language is disputed, but in Sweden it is recognized as one of the country's five minority languages.

Linguistically, Meänkieli consists of two dialect subgroups, the Torne Valley dialects (also spoken on the Finnish side of the Torne River) and the Gällivare dialects, which both belong to the larger Peräpohjola dialect group.^[2] It has the status of a minority language in Sweden. In modern Swedish the language is normally referred to officially as meänkieli, although colloquially an older name, tornedalsfinska ("Torne Valley Finnish"), is still commonly used. Sveriges Radio tends to use tornedalsfinska for the culture generally and meänkieli specifically for the language.^[3]

Meänkieli is distinguished from Standard Finnish by the absence of 19th- and 20th-century developments in Finnish.^[4]

History

Before 1809, all of what is today Finland was an integral part of Sweden. The language border went west of the Torne Valley area, so the upper section of today's Sweden (about 10% by area), was historically Finnish speaking (just like most areas along the eastern coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, areas that were ceded to Russia and are part of modern Finland, were historically Swedish speaking, and to a large extent still are). The area where Meänkieli is spoken that is now Finnish territory (apart from the linguistically Sami and Swedish parts of this geographical area), formed a dialect continuum within the Realm of Sweden. Since the area east of Torne River was ceded to Russia in 1809, the language developed in partial isolation from standard Finnish. In 1826 the state Church of Sweden appointed the priest and amateur botanist Lars Levi Laestadius to be the Vicar over the Karesuando parish, which is situated along the Muonio River north of the Arctic Circle on the border of Finland in Swedish Lapland. The population of Karesuando was predominantly Finnish-speaking people of Sami, Finnish, and Swedish mixed descent.

In the 1880s, the Swedish state decided that all citizens of the country should speak Swedish. Part of the reason was military; people close to the border speaking the language of the neighbouring country rather than the major language in their own country might not be trusted in case of war. Another reason was that Finns (primarily eastern Finns) were sometimes regarded as being of another "race." An opinion of that period, as reflected in contemporary fiction, was that the Sami and the Finnish populations belonged "more closely to Russia than to Scandinavia".^[5] Beginning around this time, the schools in the area only taught in Swedish, and children were forbidden under penalty of physical punishment from speaking their own language at school even during class breaks. Native Finnish speakers were prevented by the authorities from learning Standard Finnish as a school subject for decades, which resulted in the survival of the language only in oral form.

Status as a language

People who claim that Meänkieli is a language usually point to its literary scene, and that it has its own separate literary language, whereas others would claim that it is a generally mutually intelligible dialect, albeit in several aspects more conservative than Standard Finnish. There are also sociological, political and historical reasons.^[6] Meänkieli is very similar to the northern dialects of Finnish, but due to not having been affected by the literary language of Finland it has kept many elements that have died out in Finnish. It has also adopted many Swedish loanwords. Currently the status of Meänkieli remains controversial.^[7]

Geographical distribution

Meänkieli has an official status in: Pajala, Övertorneå, Haparanda, Gällivare, Luleå, Kalix, Kiruna, and many speakers also live in Stockholm.^[8]

Alphabet

• A – aa – [ɑ]
• B – bee – [b]
• C – see – [k/s]
• D – dee – [d]
• E – ee – [e]
• F – äf – [f]
• G – gee – [ɡ]
• H – hoo – [h]
• I – ii – [i]
• J – jii – [j]
• K – koo – [k]
• L – äl – [l]
• M – äm – [m]
• N – än – [n]
• O – oo – [o]
• P – pee – [p]
• Q – kuu – [k]
• R – är – [r]
• S – äs – [s]
• T – tee – [t]
• U – uu – [u]
• V – vee – [ʋ]
• W – kaksois-vee/tupla-vee – [ʋ]
• X – äks – [ks]
• Y – yy – [y]
• Z – tset(a) – [s]
• Å – ruotti oo – [o/oː]
• Ä – ää – [æ]
• Ö – öö – [ø]

B, C, D, G, W, X, Z, and Å are only used in foreign words and names.^[9]

in 2016 a letter š /ʃ/ was added into Meänkieli, instead of the Swedish letters sj.^[10]

Orthography

• aa – [ɑː]
• ee – [eː]
• ii – [iː]
• kk – [kː]
• ll – [lː]
• mm – [mː]
• ng – [ŋ(ː)]
• nk – [ŋk]
• nn – [nː]
• oo – [oː]
• pp – [pː]
• qu – [kʋ]
• rr – [rː]
• (before 2016) sj – [ʃ]
• (after 2016) š – [ʃ]
• ss – [sː]
• tj – [t͡ʃ]
• tt – [tː]
• uu – [uː]
• yy – [yː]
• ää – [æː]
• öö – [øː]^[11]

Some Meänkieli words not used in standard Finnish

The Swedish language words are in parentheses in case of borrowed cognates. With Swedish being the dominant everyday language in the region, the language has impacted modern Meänkieli in some ways.

• äpyli 'apple' (äpple)
• son/s'oon 'it is'
• sole 'it is not'
• klaarata 'to get along' (klara)
• sturaani 'ugly'
• potati 'potato' (potatis)
• pruukata 'to have a habit of' (bruka)
• följy 'along with, company' (följe)
• ko 'when, as, since'
• fiskata 'to fish' (fiska)
• kläppi 'child'
• muuruutti 'carrot' (morot)
• porista 'to talk'
• praatata 'to speak' (prata)
• kahveli 'fork' (gaffel)
• pruuvata 'to try' (prova)
• kniivi 'knife' (kniv)
• knakata 'to knock' (knacka)
• öölata 'to drink beer' (öla)
• miilu 'game'
• knapsu 'feminine man'
• fruukosti 'breakfast' (frukost)
• fältti 'field' (fält)
• funteerata 'to think' (fundera)
• engelska 'English' (engelska)
• fryysbuksi 'freezer' (frysbox)
• flakku 'flag' (flagga)
• häätyy 'to have to'

Differences between standard Finnish and Meänkieli

Meänkieli lacks two of the grammatical cases used in standard Finnish, the comitative and the instructive (they are used mostly in literary, official language in Finland, and are rare in all Finnish dialects^[13]).

In many loanwords the sound f has been replaced with v in Finnish.

Many words have been loaned with the letter u into Finnish but with y into Meänkieli.

Many words have been loaned with the letter o into Finnish but with u into Meänkieli.

In loanwords, the sound d has been replaced with t. In native words, d is gone.

Double consonants^[14][15]

See also

• Demographics of Sweden
• Kven language
• Sweden Finns

References

External links

• Media related to Meänkieli at Wikimedia Commons

Meänkieli test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

• Torniolaaksolaiset
• Ridanpää, Juha (2018) Why save a minority language? Meänkieli and rationales of language revitalization. – Fennia : International Journal of Geography 169 (2), 187–203.