American Finnish

American Finnish
Native to	United States, Canada
Native speakers	26,000 (in their homes) United States (2013) 15,295 Canada (2016)
Language family	Uralic Finnic Finnish American Finnish
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Location of Finnish people in America, however only a few can speak American Finnish.

American Finnish, Fingliska or Fingelska is a form of the Finnish language spoken in North America.^[1][2][3] It has been influenced by the English language heavily. American Finnish was used actively until the 1950s and after that it has been declining, and Finns switching to English. Even some basic phrases like "tätsrait" 'that's right' were borrowed from English.^[4] The form of speech was studied by Pertti Virtaranta in 1960, and the first American Finnish dictionary was made in 1992.^[5] It has influence from English both in Syntax and Vocabulary.^[1] In 2013 Finnish was spoken by 26,000 people in their homes.^[6] In the town of Oulu, Wisconsin, American Finnish has even third generation fluent speakers.^[7] And in Stanton Township, Michigan there are even children who can speak American Finnish.^[8] American Finnish also retained loanwords from Swedish, which Modern Finnish lost.^[9]

Second and third generation immigrants who speak American Finnish are usually bilingual and English has taken the first place. There have been some negative attitudes to "impurities" in American Finnish, however American Finns usually consider it a language of their own and dislike linguistic purism.^[9]

American Finns sometimes have problems understanding modern Finnish. There is not much areal variation in American Finnish, however first, second and third generation speakers have more variation in their speech, especially the amount of English influence differs in generations.^[5]

Features[]

There are also grammatical differences from Finnish, such as consonant gradation. In American Finnish the letter k remains unchanged, unlike in Finnish: laki 'law', lakit 'laws' (Finnish: laki, lait). And in American Finnish the third person singular ending has often been dropped: me ei saa 'we can't' (Finnish: me emme saa). Another difference in American Finnish is that the sound /i/ doesn't change into an /e/ when conjugated: kieli 'language', kielit 'languages' (Finnish: kieli, kielet). ^[10]

Vocabulary[]

American Finnish has many loanwords from English, but also retained older Swedish loanwords that Finnish lost.

^[9]

Grammar[]

Cases[]

^[9]

In American Finnish the possessive suffixes are not used, unlike in Finnish.

Examples of American Finnish[]

On heitä enemmän, mutta he ovat nyt muusia hunttaamassa.

There are more of them, but they are moose hunting.

fiksata

to fix

Nyt pitää äkkiä koolata Albertille

Now I have to call to Albert fast.^[1]

See also[]

• Finnish Americans
• Finnish Canadians
• Oulu, Wisconsin
• Finglish

References[]

External links[]

• American-Finnish recordings (in Finnish)
• Amerikansuomalaisten kieli (about Fingelska, in Finnish)
• American Finnish examples at Wikisource
• American Finnish incubator plus