4.2.5 The Finnish language
Description
This article is from the Nordic countries FAQ, by Antti Lahelma and Johan Olofsson, with numerous contributions by others.
4.2.5 The Finnish language
Whatever the roots of Finns are, a fact is that they speak a language
that isn't Indo-European like the other Nordic languages, but
Finno-Ugric; its closest major relative is Estonian (but even those
two languages aren't really mutually intelligible), and it is
distantly related to Hungarian, Sami, and several minor languages
spoken in European Russia and Siberia.
Eugene Holman writes:
Even though Finnish is not related to the Scandinavian languages,
like Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, it has its sister languages
which it is more or less mutually intelligible spoken by people of
essentially the same ethnic stock as the Finns. Many people know
that the difference between Finnish and Estonian is approximately
the same as the difference between Swedish and Danish. Fewer know
that the same holds for Finnish and the indigenous speech forms
behind the Russian border: Karelian (karjala), Olonetsian (aunus),
Lydian (lyydi) and Vepsian (Vepsä). These three speech forms are
essentially part of the eastern Finnish dialect continuum with an
increasingly strong Russian superstratum the further east one goes.
Twice in this century, specifically during the Finnish Civil War
1918-1920 and then again during the so-called Continuation War
(1941-1944), certain nationalist circles in Finland have aspired to
join these areas of Karelia to Finland.
Finnish military rule in White Sea Karelia during the Continuation
War meant the erection of concentration camps, and the internment
and eventual death of many Russians, communists, and other
"undesirables", a large number of them children. It also meant the
establishment of a school system teaching in local speech forms and
a serious effort to make the inhabitants literate in their local
"dialects" as a first step towards making them Finnish. The story,
although not without its positive aspects, is not one that official
Finland is particularly proud of.
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