Meänkieli
| Tornedal Finnish (meänkieli) | ||
|---|---|---|
|
Spoken in |
Sweden | |
| speaker | 30,000-70,000 | |
| Linguistic classification |
||
| Official status | ||
| Official language in | - | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639 -1 |
- |
|
| ISO 639 -2 |
fiu |
|
| ISO 639-3 |
fit |
|
Meänkieli (literally "our language") or Tornedalfinnish ( Swedish tornedalsfinska , Finnish tornionlaaksonsuomi ) is a Finnish dialect , which in the valley Tornedalen ( Finnish Tornionlaakso ) of the Swedish - Finnish border river Torne ( Finnish Tornionjoki ) in Lapland and Norrbotten is spoken and according to the European Charter of Regional or Minority Languages in Sweden is recognized as a national minority language.
distribution
Meänkieli is mainly spoken in the Torneälv valley in and around Pajala , Haparanda , Övertorneå and, to a lesser extent, in Kiruna and Gällivare . The language is also represented in cities that are increasingly popular with Tornedal fins, such as B. Luleå and Stockholm . The number of speakers in Tornedal Finnish fluctuates between 30,000 and 70,000 people, depending on how they are counted (active, passive command of the language, ...).
language
Due to the isolation of the Finnish-speaking population of Sweden from the rest of the Finnish-speaking area after Finland was lost to Russia in 1809, developments in the Finnish language in the 19th and 20th centuries hardly found their way into Tornedal Finnish. In contrast, Meänkieli was heavily influenced by the Swedish language , especially in the form of new terms used in modern everyday life. This development was also encouraged by efforts by the Swedish government (between 1888 and the early 1960s) to assimilate the Tornedal Finns . Finnish was neither used as a language of instruction in schools nor taught at all after 1888. Many Tornedal Finns now speak the language only passively.
From a linguistic point of view, Meänkieli is not very different from the Finnish language and is also understood in Finland as a subdialect of the Western Finnish dialect. From a language-political point of view and in view of the resulting effects, Meänkieli is now definitely referred to as language .
Meänkieli differs from standard Finnish in terms of phonology , morphology , syntax and vocabulary, among other things .
Examples of word borrowings from Swedish are: fryysi ( Swedish frys - freezer), biili ( bil - car), räkinki ( räkning - bill).
A characteristic peculiarity of Tornedal Finnish is the so-called h- metathesis , in which an h is shifted one or two places in the word. The original Finnish talohon (into the house, Finnish taloon ) becomes talhoon in Meänkieli .
Another difference to standard Finnish is the lack of two cases , the comitive and the instructive . In their grammar Meänkieli rätt och lätt - Grammatik i meänkieli (2003), however, Pohjanen and Muli state that both cases do occur in Meänkieli.
A distinction is made between four variants: the Torneälvdalsdialekt, the Vittangidialekt, the Jukkasjärvidialekt as well as the Gällivaredialekt, which differs more clearly from the other (mainly due to a very high proportion of Swedish and Sami loanwords ).
Meänkieli today
On December 2, 1999, the Swedish Parliament recognized the Finnish-speaking population of Tornedalen as a minority and Meänkieli as a minority language .
In the past few decades, Tornedal Finnish as a spoken language has declined significantly. Meänkieli, in particular, is rarely used by young people these days. Meänkieli finds support (this name was only coined in the 1980s) by z. B. the writer Bengt Pohjanen , through Matti Kenttä, Eeva Muli, Kirsti Johansson, Marita Matsson-Barsk and Harriet Kuoppa, who work on fixed rules for grammar and spelling in Tornedal Finnish . Before the 1970s, there was no separate written language, nor was Tornedal Finnish generally perceived by its speakers as anything other than a Finnish dialect. The interest group Svenska tornedalingars riksförbund - Tornionlaaksolaiset (STR-T) is committed to maintaining and developing the language . Meänkieli is taught at the universities in Luleå and Umeå , among others ; The first sections of the Bible have already been translated. There are also television programs in Tornedal Finnish today.
