Karelian language

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Karelian (; ; ; ) is a Finnic language spoken mainly by the Karelian people in the Russian Republic of Karelia. Linguistically, Karelian is closely related to the Finnish dialects spoken in eastern Finland, and some Finnish linguists have even classified Karelian as a dialect of Finnish, but nowadays it is widely considered a separate language. Karelian is not to be confused with the Southeastern dialects of Finnish, sometimes referred to as ("Karelian dialects") in Finland. There are around 11,000 speakers of Karelian in Finland, and around 30,000 people in Finland have at least some knowledge of Karelian.

The Karelian language is a group of two supradialects. The two supradialects are Karelian Proper (which comprises Northern Karelian and South Karelian (including the Tver enclave dialects)) and Olonets Karelian (Livvi Karelian). The Ludic language is sometimes considered one more dialect of Karelian, sometimes a separate language. There is no single standard Karelian language, so each writer writes in Karelian according to their own dialectal form. All variants are written with the Latin-based Karelian alphabet, though the Cyrillic script has been used in the past.

Based upon toponymic and historical evidence, a form of Karelian was also spoken among the extinct Bjarmians in the 15th century. from the Uralic language family, and is closely related to Finnish. Finnish and Karelian have common ancestry in the Proto-Karelian language spoken in the coast of Lake Ladoga in the Iron Age, and Karelian forms a dialect continuum with the Eastern dialects of Finnish. Earlier, some Finnish linguists classified Karelian as a dialect of Finnish, sometimes known in older Finnish literature as ('Border Karelian dialects'), but today Karelian is seen as a distinct language. Besides Karelian and Finnish, the Finnic subgroup also includes Estonian and some minority languages spoken around the Baltic Sea.

Usage

Karelian is a language in danger of extinction, with 45% of speakers being over 65 years old and with around 1% of speakers being under 15 years of age. The language is also not understood or spoken at all by a majority of the people in the Republic of Karelia, with around 43% of people using the language.

Geographic distribution

thumb|Current distribution of Karelian and Ludic

In Russia, Karelian is spoken by about 13,880 people (2020), but more recent estimates have put the number of people with even slight knowledge of the language at 30,000. Due to post-World War II mobility and internal migration, Karelians now live scattered throughout Finland, and Karelian is no longer spoken as a local community language.

Official status

In the Republic of Karelia, Karelian has official status as a minority language, Karelians in Tver Oblast have a national-cultural autonomy which guarantees the use of the Karelian language in schools and mass media. In Finland, Karelian has official status as a non-regional national minority language within the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

Supradialects and dialects

The Karelian language has two main varieties, which can be considered as supradialects or separate languages: Karelian Proper, which comprises Northern Karelian and South Karelian (including the Tver enclave dialects); and Olonets Karelian. These varieties constitute a continuum of dialects, the ends of which are no longer mutually intelligible.thumb|Scheme of the supradialects and dialects of the Karelian language, VepKar corpus, 2019.|223x223px

Karelian
Karelian Proper
North Karelian (spoken in the parishes of Jyskyjärvi, Kieretti, Kiestinki, Kontokki, Oulanka, Paanajärvi, Pistojärvi, Suomussalmi, Uhtua, Usmana, Vitsataipale and Vuokkiniemi)
South Karelian (spoken in the parishes of Ilomantsi, Impilahti, Korpiselkä, Mäntyselkä, Paatene, Porajärvi, Repola, Rukajärvi, Suikujärvi, Suistamo, Suojärvi and Tunkua; and additionally in the enclaves of Tver, Tikhvin and Valdai)
Tver Karelian
Dorža dialect
Maksuatiha dialect
Ruameška dialect
Tolmattšu dialect
Vesjegonsk (Vessi) dialect
Olonets Karelian or Livvi (spoken in the parishes of Kotkatjärvi, Munjärvi, Nekkula-Riipuškala, Salmi, Säämäjärvi, Tulemajärvi, Vieljärvi and Vitele)

The Ludic language, spoken along the easternmost edge of Karelian Republic, is in the Russian research tradition counted as a third main dialect of Karelian, though Ludic shows strong relationship also to Veps, and it is today also considered a separate language.

Phonology

Vowels

Monophthongs

Like Finnish, the Karelian language has 8 phonemic vowel qualities, totalling 11 vowel phonemes when vowel length is considered:

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"

! rowspan="2" |

! colspan="2" | Front

! rowspan="2" |Back

! <small>Unrounded</small>

! <small>Rounded</small>

! Close

! Mid

! Open

Only the close vowels , and may occur long. The original Proto-Finnic long mid and open vowels have been diphthongized: > (as also in Finnish); *aa, *ää > (as also in Savonian dialects of Finnish).

Diphthongs

North Karelian and Olonets Karelian have 21 diphthongs:

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"

! rowspan="2"|

! colspan="3"| Front-harmonic

! rowspan="2"| Neutral

! colspan="3"| Back-harmonic

! Front+neutral !! Front+front !! Neutral+front

! Neutral+back !! Back+neutral !! Back+back

! Open to close

| äi || äy || || || || ai || au

! Mid to close

| öi || öy || ey || ei || eu || oi || ou

! Close

| yi || || iy || || iu || ui ||

! Close to mid

| || yö || || ie || || || uo

! Close to open

| || yä || iä || || || || ua

Triphthongs

In addition to the diphthongs North Karelian has a variety of triphthongs:

Olonets, Ludic, and Tver Karelian have the voiced affricate //, represented in writing by the digraph .

Writing system

thumb|300px|Birch-bark letter No. 292, early 13th century

thumb|300px|Translation of the [[Gospel of Matthew into Karelian, 1820]]

Alphabet

Karelian is today written using a Latin alphabet consisting of 29 characters. It extends the ISO basic Latin alphabet with the additional letters Č, Š, Ž, Ä, Ö and ' and excludes the letters Q, W and X. This unified alphabet is used to write all Karelian varieties including Tver Karelian. The very few texts that were published in Karelian from medieval times through the 19th century used the Cyrillic alphabet. With the establishment of the Soviet Union, Finnish, written with the Latin alphabet, became official. However, from 1938 to 1940 Karelian written in Cyrillic replaced Finnish as an official language of the Karelian ASSR (see "History" below).

Example from Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Cyrillic Karelian script, transliteration and translation:

Cyrillic:

Каи рахвас роиттахeс вäллиннÿ да тазаарвозинну омас арвос да оигeвуксис. Ёгахизeлe хeис он аннeтту миeли да оматундо да хeил вäлтäмäттäх пидäÿ олла кeскeнäх, куи вeллил.

Latin:

Kai rahvas roittahes vällinny da taza-arvozinnu omas arvos da oigevuksis. Jogahizele heis on annettu mieli da omatundo da heil vältämättäh pidäy olla keskenäh, kui vellil.

Translation:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Orthography

Karelian is written with orthography similar to Finnish orthography. However, some features of the Karelian language and thus orthography are different from Finnish:

The Karelian system of sibilants is extensive; in Finnish, there is only one: .
Phonemic voicing occurs.
Karelian retains palatalization, usually denoted with an apostrophe (e.g. )
The letter 'ü' may replace 'y' in some texts.
The letter 'c' denotes , although 'ts' is used also. 'c' is more likely in Russian loan words.

{| class="wikitable" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"

! colspan=7 style="font-size: larger;" | Sibilants

! Letter

! Alt.

! IPA

! Olonets Karelian

! Tver Karelian

! North Karelian

! Finnish

| č

| ch

| čoma, seiče

| šoma, šeiččimen

| šoma, šeiččemen

| soma, seitsemän

| s

| se

| še

| se

| š

| sh

| nišku

| niška

| niska

| z

| tazavaldu

| tažavalda

| tašavalta

| tasavalta

| ž

| zh

| kiža, liedžu

| kiza, liedžu

| kisa

| kisa, lie(t)su

/c/ and /č/ have length levels, which is not found in standard Finnish. For example, in Kalevala, Lönnrot's orthography hides the fact that the pronunciation of the original material is actually , with palatalization of the affricate. The exact details depend on the dialect, though. See Yleiskielen ts:n murrevastineet.

Karelian actually uses as a voiced alveolar fricative. (In Finnish, z is a foreign spelling for .) The plosives , and may be voiced. (In most Finnish dialects, they are not differentiated from the unvoiced , , and . Furthermore, in Karelian except North Karelian, voiced consonants occur also in native words, not just in loans as in standard Finnish.)

The sounds represented by č, š and ž are native to Karelian, but not Finnish. Speakers of Finnish do not distinguish and from , nor from (medial) or (initial). For example, the native Karelian words and are and in standard Finnish.

History

thumb|Tver Karelian in 1930 Latin alphabet

[[File:Djadja Rimusan Suarnat.jpg|thumb|Дядя Римусан Суарнат (Djadja Rimusan Suarnat), Tales of Uncle Remus in Karelian Cyrillic alphabet, 1939]]

Prehistory

As all other Finnic languages, Karelian descends from Proto-Finnic, which in turn ultimately descends from Proto-Uralic. The most recent ancestor of the Karelian dialects is the language variety spoken in the 9th century at the western shores of Lake Ladoga, known as Old Karelian (Finnish: ).

Karelian is usually considered a part of the Eastern Finnic subgroup. It has been proposed that Late Proto-Finnic evolved into three dialects: Northern dialect, spoken in western Finland; Southern dialect, spoken in the area of modern-day Estonia and northern Latvia, and Eastern dialect, spoken in the regions east of the Southern dialect. In the 6th century, Eastern dialect arrived at the western shores of Lake Ladoga, and in the 9th century, Northern dialect reached the same region. These two dialects blended together and formed Old Karelian.

Medieval period

By the end of the 13th century, speakers of Old Karelian had reached the Savo region in eastern Finland, increasingly mixing with population from western Finland. In 1323, Karelia was divided between Sweden and Novgorod according to the Treaty of Nöteborg, which started to slowly separate descendants of the Proto-Karelian language from each other. In the areas occupied by Sweden, Old Karelian started to develop into dialects of Finnish: Savonian dialects and Southeastern dialects.

Birch bark letter no. 292 from the early 13th century is the first known document in any Finnic language. It was found in 1957 by a Soviet expedition, led by Artemiy Artsikhovskiy in the Nerev excavation on the left coast side of Novgorod. The language used in the document is thought to be an archaic form of the language spoken in Olonets Karelia, a dialect of the Karelian language. A later manuscript, no. 403 (second half of the 14th century), apparently belonging to a tax collector, includes a short glossary of Karelian words and their translations.

In the regions ruled by Novgorod, the protolanguage started to evolve into Karelian language. In 1617 Novgorod lost parts of Karelia to Sweden in the Treaty of Stolbovo, which led the Karelian-speaking population of the occupied areas to flee from their homes. This gave rise to the Karelian speaking population in the Tver and Valday regions.

Soviet period

In 1921, the first all-Karelian congress under the Soviet regime debated whether Finnish or Karelian should be the official language (next to Russian) of the new "Karelian Labour Commune" (, in Cyrillic Karelian), which two years later would become the Karelian ASSR. Finnish communists as well as ethnic Finns from North America, who came to live in Soviet Karelia, dominated the political discourse, as they were in general far better educated than local Karelians. They favored the use of Finnish, which had just been through an 80-year period of standardization based on a variety of dialects across Finland – and the Finns saw Karelian simply as additional Finnish dialects. In the end Finnish was established as the official "local" language.

An intense program of Finnicization, but called "Karelianization", began and Finnish-language schools were established across Soviet Karelia. Newspapers, literary journals were established and Russian literature was translated into Finnish, while much literature from Soviet Karelia in Finnish was published.

Croatian singer Jurica Popović collaborated with Tilna Tolvaneen on lyrics for his 1999 song "H.O.T. Hold On To Your Tradition", which are partly in Karelian.

Media in Karelian

is published in Olonets Karelian.
is published in North Karelian dialect.
is published in Tver Karelian dialect.
– A monthly Karelian-language journal published by Karjalan Kielen Seura in Finland.
– News articles and a weekly radio news program in Karelian are published by the Finnish Broadcasting Company.

Examples of Karelian supradialects

North Karelian (White Sea Karelian)

A sample from the book :

:(Translation: Old people used to say that the swan is born of man. Swans are always paired up. When one is shot, the other weeps for it for a long time. Yet the swan is a sacred bird. Nobody ever dared to shoot them, for that was a sin. Swans come to us in the spring and in the autumn they leave again for the south. They fly in large flocks. When they left, it was a sign that winter was near.)

Olonets Karelian

Sample 1

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

:(English version: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.)

Sample 2

A sample from the book . Note the older alphabet:

:{|

!|Olonets Karelian

!|Standard Finnish

!|English translation

||There is beautiful nature in Karelia. Tall birches,

||green spruces and Scots pines decorate the forests.

||Every place is full of berries and mushrooms.

|| If only one picked them! The lakes and rivers, too, are full of fish:

||there is pike, carp bream, ide, burbot, zander, whitefish.

||Take a fishing rod and run to the lake!

Tver Karelian

thumb|thumbtime=44|Irina Novak speaks about the Karelian language and [[Karelians. Irina talks in Tolmachevsky dialect (one of the three Tver Karelian dialects, it is one of the Karelian Proper dialects). KarRC RAS, 2018. See subtitles in Karelian language.]]