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Introduction, after "In Finglish, the English lexical items are nativized and inserted into the framework of Finnish morphology and syntax”). In Finglish, the English lexical items are nativized and inserted into the framework of Finnish morphology and syntax”). Many consider the adoption of English loanwords into Finnish phonology, morphology, and syntax not to be proper Finnish, but rather a language in between, or “Finglish.” This term can imply that this adoption of loanwords and usage of language is incomplete and somehow less legitimate. However, this use of loanwords and code-switching amongst bilingual speakers is typical in communities experiencing language shift. Another term for the Finnish spoken by immigrant communities in North America is “North American Finnish”. The more recent (post 1980’s) incorporation of English loanwords into modern Finnish as a result of globalization and advances in technology is a separate phenomenon from North American Finnish (which developed primary in the late 1800’s- mid 1900’s), though there are some similarities in form and function.

History
When immigrating to the United States, immigrants brought not only their traditions and material goods with them, but also their language. It took some time for many Finns to learn English after immigrating to America. Part of this delay is because Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language, structurally unrelated to English and other Indo-European languages. Another reason for the delay is that many leaving Finland were farmers and laborers, often migrating to areas of high Finnish settlement. Living and working with other Finnish speakers meant they had less need to learn English to get by in their day to day lives. Second and third generation Finnish Americans often learned to speak both Finnish and English, though the Finnish they learned differed from that in Finland. This was due to a variety of reasons, including competing inputs between Finnish and English and the fact that their Finnish input may have been different from that considered standard in Finland. As has been documented for several immigrant languages, one would expect that over time North American Finnish would reduce its inflectional system in favor of prepositions and analytic constructions. . Nominal morphology is particularly vulnerable in heritage languages with robust morphology. As heritage speakers tend to become fluent in the majority language while never achieving native fluency in the heritage language, second and third generation speakers who learn the minority language from the first generation may not acquire the full inflectional system of the language spoken in the country of origin. The majority language may also influence the syntax and other features of the heritage language. Thus, North American Finnish differed not only in the lexical items used, but in aspects of morphology and syntax as well.

The majority of immigrants to America came from Ostrobothnia and the Northern Ostrobothnia areas in western Finland; over sixty percent of all emigrants who left the country between 1893 and 1920 came from the provinces of Vaasa and Oulu.

History of Research
Much work has been done in the last fifty years to document the speech of Finnish Americans in the United States and Canada, though little new data has been brought forward in the last 25 years. Pertti Virtaranta did extensive research on the Finnish spoken in North America, particularly in the Upper Midwest and Canada, taking three trips from 1965-1980 to interview speakers. The interviews had standard questions asked of everyone including: why they (or their families) left Finland, what was the trip like, and how was it finding a job once in America. Otherwise, the interviews consisted of free conversation on whatever subject the participants found most interesting. Maisa Martin wrote a dissertation on the phonology and morphology of American Finnish where she discusses the borrowings and changes between Finland Finnish and American Finnish (1989). Donald Larmouth did extensive research on the Finnish used by four generations in rural Finnish communities in northern Minnesota, interviewing a total of 62 respondents. In his interviews he elicits personal narratives, has participants complete picture identification tasks with simple cartoons, and give translations of sentences. He documents what changes the language seems to have undergone, notably the levelling of several cases including the Accusative and partitive. This previous work on American Finnish reveals a lower frequency of Accusative Case and partitive case in heritage bilingual speakers with more pronounced changes the farther removed the generation was from the immigrant generation. In his interviews he elicits personal narratives, has participants complete picture identification tasks with simple cartoons, and give translations of sentences. He documents what changes the language seems to have undergone, notably the levelling of several cases including the Accusative and partitive. While the partitive and Accusative were vulnerable, other cases including the illative and ablative  remained robust in the speech of these speakers, though adjective case endings were especially prone to deletion. These previous works focus primarily on Finnish speakers in Minnesota and Michigan with Wisconsin notably underrepresented.