Talk:Karelian language

Old talk
Karelian is a variety closely related to Finnish.

Does this mean Karelian is a variety of Finnish or a language closely related to Finnish? Efghij

It means (at the moment) that the writer(s) of this paragraph don't participate in the dispute whether Karelian is a language or a "dialect". The issue is elaborated in the (currently) last paragraph.

Is Finland-Swedish a language or a dialect? Is Meän kieli?


 * Finland-Swedish is clearly a dialect. Except for the pronunciation, the differences are very small.

-- Ruhrjung 05:00 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Attempts to standardize Karelian with a Cyrillic alphabet were unsuccessful, and today the Karelian republic (of the Russian federation) consider Karelian a dialect of Finnish, why Finnish is one of its official languages.

Is that suppose to read Why Finnish is one............... or perhaps it should be where Finnish ?

Smith03

Thank you for pointing this out! -- Ruhrjung 14:46 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * Wrong. Karelia does not consider Karelian a dialect of Finnish and Finnish is not an official language of Karelia (only Russian is). There are moves in the republic to standardise a literary Karelian language, as well as a literary Veps language. Whilst the role of Finnish as a "minority language" is recognised under local legislation, that one receives minimal attention by virtue of having millions of speakers just across the border and needing neither standardisation nor protection. Russoswiss (talk) 12:04, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Karelian is its own language, and so is Finnish. The trick here is that the languages "bleed" into one-another on a dialect continuum. Thus, there are Karelian dialects of Finnish which are clearly dialects, and things that can generally be understood by all Finns. If presented with a sample of Southern Karelian, however, they would most likely have trouble understanding, but it would still be somewhat intelligable.

I guess this situation would be comparible to Spanish as spoken in Spain "bleeding" into Portuguese. It would be very important to mention this in the article. If you would like more info on Karelian, I'd be happy to provide it. It's one of my favourite languages (though primarily, I'm interested in Tver' Karelian) ;).

Some dialects in this continuum that are farther apart are just too phonetically (and phonologically) different for me to want to say that Karelian is a dialect of Finnish. For instance, in some dialects of Karelian, vowel harmony has an affect on consonant quality and palatization, whereas in other dialects (and Finnish) this doesn't happen. Either way, I think that calling Karelian a dialect of Finnish would be too Finno-centrist, to coin a word. Though, certainly "variety" is a good way to get around this.

I guess I would argue that it isn't the geopolitics of it all that conditions whether or not you consider Karelian a dialect or a language. There is some language in Russian Karelia that is spoken that seems more Finnish to me than the Karelian that is spoken in Tver'/Kalinin.

I just hope that providing my comments gives you more ideas as to how to describe Karelian. :)

-- Alcarilinque 16:30 14 Nov 2004 UTC

Salvaged text
The following piece was commented out in the article. Please see what to do with it. Mikkalai 02:38, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

<!- Don't think this is necessary here. Particularly by Finnish linguists, Karelian may be classified as a dialect of Finnish, although the variety spoken in East Karelia is usually seen as a proper language. 

Others, for instance many foreign linguists and some people in Estonia and Russia, consider the Karelian variety a language of its own (although almost extinct), similarly to how the dialects of Ingria by Finns often are considered dialects of Finnish proper, but in Estonia often are considered languages of their own; and also similarly to Meänkieli.

The dialects spoken in the South Karelian Region of Finland, where many 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 denoted as ''Karelian dialect'. '' ->

We should underline the fact that only few Finnish linguists think that Karelian language is a dialect of Finnish and that it is old way of thinking. The new is that Karelian is own language just as seen in the map on Finnish Kielitoimisto page:. Same is with Ingria and Meänkieli.

'Karelian dialect' is wrong term. The right is 'South Eastern dialects of Finnish language'.

So, my version:


 * '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 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 wrongly denoted as Karelian dialect. '

Kahkonen 09:34, 2005 Jan 25 (UTC)

I have no expertise in this topic. Please update the article, if you feel necessary. (Anyway, it seems that it already says something along these lines, although not so clearly.) Mikkalai 18:34, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

http://www.karelia.ru/Karelia/smi_e.html Lists newspapers in Karelia published in Karelian, and in Finnish. So they consider there to be a distinction. Secretlondon 12:13, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Orthographic issues
Why must the IPA be used for the examples on Karelian affricates. What I mean is that I perfectly understand the use as a pronunciation guide, but in the words in Karelian the letter 'c' is used to represent [ts]. I am not aware of 'c' being used in any of the Karelian orthographies I've come across, rather 'ts' would be used, as in Finnish. --Alcarilinque 14:34, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * That section says that because of the existence of affricates in Karelian, unlike standard Finnish, the Finnish orthography is extended to cover them. This explains the existence of č and other letters. However, it also seems (e.g. this webpage) that c is used in place of Finnish ts. It seems that in Finnish this is not a true phoneme, where in Karelian it is. — Gareth Hughes 15:11, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Though I realize the point is comparison here, it might be important in this case to use a different word, like socializma, where we know that that affricate is written in that particular way. One thing to note however, is that that may be from older orthography, since Karelian orthography hasn't ever remained standard over the course of the last century.  If you look at this other source for instance, ts is used, even in a loan word: Konstitutsie.   Other cases show that c is used in loan words, but in a Karelian word?  Most places you'd find an equivalent of ts in Finnish show a č in Karelian, i.e. eččie pro fi. etsiä, ičče pro itse, and kaččuo pro. katsoa.  I guess you could argue dialectical variation, and I'm only basing my comments off of more Southern dialects, but... What source does the word kucu come from?  I know it in Karelian as coming from the word kuččuo, in which a different affricate completely is used, and this equates to the Finnish kutsua.  --Alcarilinque 12:42, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * The letter c is often used to transliterate the Cyrillic Ц, as č is often used for Ч, so it may be that this is an older orthography. Under Finnish influence, I'm sure replacing the older c with ts is happening. Therefore, it might be best to edit the article to say that both orthographies are used. — Gareth Hughes 13:06, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I've added a change then, but you don't mind if 'kucu' is adjusted to 'kutsu'? I've never seen that before, but then as I said I'm thinking more about modern orthographies as featured in the newspaper Karielan Šanat, which is in Tver' Karelian.  --Ryan 11:25, 18 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Notice how Tver place name Tihvinä would be Tyvenelä (location by the calm body of water) in standardised Finnish, basically y has been replaced by ih where i was probably double originally(tiihven-tyven) and vocal harmony & grimm's law do the rest of the changes. So even Tver Karelian hasn't diverged all that far from Basic (old form)Finnish but enough to warrant it's status as it's own language. Honestly Saame, Eesti & Veps are far more unintelligible to a Finn than any of the Karelian languages. At least on paper. —— Amateur linguist88.195.13.47 (talk) 17:47, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Karelian Language
It might be called Eastern Finnish dialect of Proto Finnish language. It must be remembered that the old Church Slavonic had a strong influence in Karelian dialect, thus change from original vovels to consonants. We can also take Savo dialect as a different language than Finnish language based by Mikael Agricola principles if someone wants to create Savon kieli using the same methods that is going on with the Karelian language. For example original Karelian dialect word pakista (talk) differs a lot of Agricola created puhua. But the old Church Slavonic infuence had created after adoption of Orthodox Christianity in Karelia the current version which is pagista replacing hard k with soft g. Other examples: Minä (I) = Mie, He (They) = Hyö, Sinä (You) = Sie. Also many Russian words had been adopted during the last 900 years.

It was not long ago, in 1970s, I had to spent long times in Kuopio because of my work and I remember well two classic examples of the dialect advertisements shown when travelling from Rissala Airport to Kuopio centre. One in one gasoline station where they advertised "Tiällä tankoot ihtes ja aatos." (Here you fullfil yourselves and your car.) Which should be in proper Finnish language "Täällä tankkaat itsesi ja autosi." Or "Määkkönä torille? Mään. Kääkkönä kuappahallissa? Kään." ( Do you go to market square? Yes I do. Do you go to square hall? Yes, I go visit there.) In proper Finnish "Menetkö torille? Menen. Käytkö kauppahallissa? Käyn.

Everyone Finn understand these Savo versions, but no one has ever thought that with such a criteria a Savo language should be created. In Karelia the question is mainly political attempt made by the Russians to separate the Karelians from Finnish people to be a separate liguistically people of origin than the Finns.

I am myself half Karelian and "a pagisehan mie Karjalan kielt", but use Finnish language and I am sure there would be no problems in (Russian) Karelia do the same. The richness in Finnish language is its dialects and the number of its words. One word in dialects can simply mean different "Siellä se joki huilaa" (There the river flows) in Northern Finnish dialect means in Southern Finland that the river stand still. Tuima ruoka in Western Finland means strong salted food, in Karelian dialect food is not salty enough.

JN —Preceding unsigned comment added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)


 * It is customary to make a distinction between Finnish and Karelian and to refer to them as separate languages (mainly due to historical and political reasons), even though in reality they form a dialect continuum. This isn't unusual at all, the same is the case with e.g. Swedish and Norwegian. We can't invent any new terms here on the Wikipedia because that would be original research. As for the idea that Karelian could be called the "Eastern Finnish dialect of Proto Finnish language" (if I understand you correctly), this makes no sense at all; there is no term such as "Proto-Finnish". There is Proto-Finnic, of course, but that is something entirely different. --AAikio 07:21, 17 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Take the Proto Finnish as General Finnish language of course differing from kanta suomalais ugrilainen yleiskieli which was spoked about 4.000 years ago which can be said to be somekind of tikapuu language which all understood despite being Komi, Udmurt, Moksha, Mari, Ersa, Karelian, Estonian, or Finnish in origin. This Proto Finnic as you call it, is a louzy attempt to make use of English word which is not suited as equal term to yhteinen yleinen kantakieli (common general base language). Proto as a word is not known at all in Finnish language, only somekind of loan word of English language. In Finnish should be alkuperäinen or koe or testi. The same than attemts to infiltre into Finnish language awful American one word version "holocaust" to replace word kansanjoukkomurha or kansanrotumurha which both are much better than this recently created holocaust to English language. Or "Jatkangs mä viel snakkaa hetulaa täst samast storist"? (Shall I continue to talk of this same subject?) Cheers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.115.115.5 (talk) 18:01, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Tihveri (Tver) Karelians And Their Language
In 1650´s, during so called "Ruptuuri" war and little afterward nearly all Greek Othodox Karelans from Rautu, Tiurala, and Salmi Pogostas escaped to Russia with Russian assistance, after been stronly agitated by Orthodox priests as ordered by Nikon of the horribles of Lutherians against the One and Only Real Belivers Faith such as being burned alive or to be baptized by force to Ruotshi´s antikristus Lutherian Faith.

They were resettled mainly to Tihvinä, Novgorod (Uuslinna) and Tver (Tihveri) areas, but some as far as to Penza area to provide new population to replace the diminished earlier Karelian population which had lived there. These new settlers or emigrants spoked the Karelian dialect of old Karelian language which was spoked in Karelian Isthmus and in Laatokka´s Karjala in 1650´s. Due historical events they become totally isolated from main Finnish dialects, but despite living some 150 - 200 kilometres north west of Moskava / Moskova managed to keep their own language alive. Of course there were strong Russian influence in their language but language was generally spoken in the area up to this day among the "Korielan hormilla Kessassa" (Karelian people on Bear River). Their total number is still about 250.000 people of which about 89.000 continues to speak Karelian language in daily bases as their language at home and villages. It has developed during the last 300 years to different dialect than that Karelian dialect which is speaked today in Karelian Republic.

Here is an short example of today´s Karelian "language" as created in Finnish language using Latin letter transliteration: "Kuibo elät karjalaine? - Kazakoijen kulakal, Izändäkse, näit, en päinnyh, Izändöiceh tulokas". Kuinka elät karjalainen? Kasakoiden kulakkien, Isännäksi, näin, en pitänyt, Isännöi tulokas. (How you live Karelian? - Cossacks, kulak´s, Masters, so would not have happened, I did not like it, Mastered by new comer). If someone claims that this, even in poem form, is a SEPARATE language of common Finnish language, then he / she do not even understand the Finnish separate dialects. Because: Eikhän sithä Tornioassakhaan jokhaisen sanhaan khootakaan panha. (Eihän sitä Torniossakaan jokaiseen sanaan hootakaan panna). Best transliterated to English what I can provede is as; At Tornio is not in every word h included.

I am pretty sure that had Finland being remained united with Russia, they in Moskova would have loved us so much by creating six different Finnish languages and then slpitted one Finland to six separate Finlands. Divide et impera. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.115.115.5 (talk) 19:46, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * LOL at this whole comment. Farkas János (talk) 08:12, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I just want to reiterate how funny this comment is. I will treasure the memory of it for some time.
 * "How you live Karelian? - Cossacks, kulak´s, Masters, so would not have happened, I did not like it, Mastered by new comer"
 * "Best transliterated to English what I can provede is as; At Tornio is not in every word h included."
 * Yeltsin and clinton laughing.jpg Farkas János (talk) 21:09, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

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