Åland

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Map of the Swedish-speaking Åland Islands

Åland ( Swedish : åländska ) is a Swedish dialect spoken in the autonomous Finnish province of Åland . Although Åland is geographically understood as a variant of the East Swedish language (Östsvenska mål) , the dialect is actually closer to the Upland dialect of the nearby Swedish mainland than to Finnish Swedish . The Ålanders themselves usually do not count their dialect as Finland-Swedish.

On the autonomous archipelago, Swedish is the only official language in otherwise bilingual Finland. Language and culture are regulated in the Self-Administration Act.

Influences

The geographical location between Finland and Sweden is reflected in Åland. Some Åland dialects are similar to Finland-Swedish, while others are almost identical to the standard Swedish language , Imperial Swedish (rikssvenska) . Since Åland's history has been shaped by contacts with Sweden and Finland- Sweden , Åland has been heavily influenced by Swedish. There are also features of the Finnish and Russian languages as well as British and American English , which is related to Åland's seafaring history.

Features and examples

As in Finland-Swedish, there is only one pitch gradient; in contrast to the usual two tonal accents in the Scandinavian languages , the contrast of which creates the typical Swedish "singsong".

Åland still has many archaic words and expressions that are understood in Imperial Swedish but no longer used. Other words have a completely different meaning than in Swedish. A recent example is the word batting (Swedish: träbalk ), which originally comes from the English batten (“bar”, “latte”), which in Åland means “wooden beam”. Another example is the word semla , which in Swedish means semla , a “fasting pastry”, while in Åland it refers to a bread roll. A typical Åland question is: Vemses flicka / pojke är du då? In Swedish it would be called Vems flicka / pojke är du då and means: “Whose boy / girl are you?” This means that in a small society there is a high probability that you will know the parents of the other person. The Ålanders replace the Swedish word inte for “not” with inga (example: Jag har inga varit där for “I wasn't there”). In standard Swedish, however , inga is called none .

The following words and expressions are characteristic of Åland:

Åland Standard Swedish translation Remarks
battery (warm) element radiator batteri in standard Swedish means "battery"
butka finka "Jail" From Russian to Finnish putka
byka tvätta (kläder) (To make the laundry from byk ("laundry"); Byk is considered ancient in Sweden
bykmaskin tvättmaskin Washing machine see above
egnahemshus villa (detached) house
jo Yes Yes, but Variant from Sweden as a positive answer to a negative question
julgubbe jultomte Santa Claus
yes tramsa, prata strunt chat
nojsa bråka, tjata, föra oväsen noisy, scold, nag from the English noise . Is considered ancient in Sweden.
Nåssådå! - - comforting expression when something doesn't go as expected
si se see Åland pronunciation from Swedish se
Siddu barra! Ser du bara / Ser man på Look at it!
småkusin syssling Second cousin or cousin possibly derived from the Finnish pikkuserkku
plug stickpropp Plug, plug contact originally from the German stopper , similar to the Russian штепсель (schtepsel) ,
tövla vara lumpy, fuzzy be awkward, clumsy
vilely riktigt bra very good, "great!"
shameful limp bucket is considered ancient in Sweden; Loanword from Low German , which is composed of the Greek ἀμφορεύς (amphoreus) derives

Western and Eastern Åland

Western Åland ties in with the dialects in Uppland in eastern Sweden ( Roslagen region ), which is particularly true of the Åland island of Eckerö . There are several similarities in the dialects of Eckerö and Roslagen, including the omission of the first letter  h . The genuine East Åland dialects, on the other hand, share common features with the Swedish dialects in Åboland , a region in the archipelago of the south-west Finnish archipelago , and in southern Ostrobothnia on the Finnish west coast. The vocabulary also differs in western and eastern Åland. In the West Åland and Upland language, for example, the verb krypa can be found for "crawl, crawl, tingle" and the adjective kullig for "hilly", while the corresponding words in East Åland are kräka and snuvig .

See also

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Mariehamns Stadsbibliotek: Uttal, form, ordlista, lyssna, källor ( Memento from July 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Nationalencyklopedin, Volume 20, Article: Åländska dialekter