Karelian (/kəˈriːliən,kəˈriːljən/;Karelian Proper andLivvi-Karelian:karjala, karjalan kieli;Ludian:kard'al, kard'alan kiel';Tver Karelian:kariela, karielan kieli) is aFinnic language spoken mainly by theKarelian people in theRussianRepublic of Karelia. Linguistically, Karelian is closely related to theFinnish dialects spoken in easternFinland, 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 theSoutheastern dialects of Finnish, sometimes referred to askarjalaismurteet ("Karelian dialects") in Finland.[11] In the Russian 2020–2021 census, around 9,000 people spoke Karelian natively, but around 14,000 said they were able to speak the language.[12] There are around 11,000 speakers of Karelian in Finland,[13] and around 30,000 people in Finland have at least some knowledge of Karelian.[3]
Karelian is aFinnic language[14] from theUralic language family, and is closely related toFinnish.[15] Finnish and Karelian have common ancestry in the Proto-Karelian language spoken in the coast ofLake Ladoga in theIron Age, and Karelian forms adialect continuum with the Eastern dialects of Finnish.[16] Earlier, some Finnish linguists classified Karelian as a dialect of Finnish, sometimes known in older Finnish literature asRaja-Karjalan murteet ('Border Karelian dialects'), but today Karelian is seen as a distinct language. Besides Karelian and Finnish, the Finnic subgroup also includesEstonian and some minority languages spoken around theBaltic Sea.
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.[17]
InRussia, Karelian is spoken by about 13,880 people (2020),[1] mainly in theRepublic of Karelia, although notable Karelian-speaking communities can also be found in theTver region (Tver Oblast) northwest ofMoscow. Previously, it was estimated that there were 5,000 speakers inFinland, mainly belonging to the older generations,[11] but more recent estimates have put the number of people with even slight knowledge of the language at 30,000.[18] 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.[19]
In theRepublic of Karelia, Karelian has official status as a minority language,[7] and since the late 1990s there have been moves to pass special language legislation, which would give Karelian an official status on par withRussian.[20]Karelians inTver Oblast have a national-cultural autonomy which guarantees the use of the Karelian language in schools and mass media.[21] InFinland, Karelian has official status as a non-regional national minority language within the framework of theEuropean Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.[22]
The Karelian language has two main varieties, which can be considered assupradialects or separate languages:Karelian Proper, which comprisesNorthern Karelian and South Karelian (including the Tver enclave dialects); andOlonets Karelian. These varieties constitute a continuum of dialects, the ends of which are no longer mutually intelligible.[19] Varieties can be further divided into individual dialects:[23]
Scheme of the supradialects and dialects of the Karelian language, VepKar corpus, 2019.[24]
South Karelian (spoken in the parishes ofIlomantsi,Impilahti, Korpiselkä, Mäntyselkä, Paatene,Porajärvi, Repola, Rukajärvi, Suikujärvi, Suistamo,Suojärvi and Tunkua; and additionally in the enclaves of Tver, Tikhvin and Valdai)
Olonets Karelian or Livvi (spoken in the parishes of Kotkatjärvi, Munjärvi, Nekkula-Riipuškala,Salmi, Säämäjärvi, Tulemajärvi,Vieljärvi and Vitele)
TheLudic 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 toVeps, and it is today also considered a separate language.
Only the close vowels/i/,/y/ and/u/ may occur long.[26] The originalProto-Finnic long mid and open vowels have been diphthongized:*ee, *öö, *oo >/ie/,/yö/,/uo/ (as also inFinnish); *aa, *ää >/oa/,/eä/or/ua/,/iä/ (as also inSavonian dialects of Finnish).
^abThe consonants/f/ and/ts/ are found in loanwords (except Ludic Karelian, which has/ts/ in native words). The consonants/b,d,ɡ,z,ʒ/ are found only in loanwords in Karelian Proper (North), but occur in native words in other varieties of Karelian.
Some palatalized consonants exist: /lʲ nʲ sʲ tʲ/ inKarelian Proper (North), /dʲ lʲ nʲ rʲ sʲ tʲ/ (/zʲ/ also exists, but only in loanwords) in Olonets Karelian, /dʲ lʲ nʲ rʲ sʲ tʲ zʲ/ in Ludic and Tver Karelian. Palatalized labials are also present in some loanwords: North Karelianb'urokratti 'bureaucrat', Livvib'urokruattu 'bureaucrat',kip'atku 'boiling water',sv'oklu 'beet', Tver Kareliankip'atka 'boiling water',s'v'okla 'beet' (from Russian бюрократ, кипяток, свёкла).
Voiced velar nasal /ŋ/ (eng) is present before /g/, /k/ and /kk/, and the combination is represented with multigraphs⟨ng⟩,⟨nk⟩ or⟨nkk⟩. Karelian Proper does notgeminate /ŋ/ in consonant gradation unlike Finnish:kengät 'shoes' pronounces as[ˈkeŋɡæt] instead of Finnish[ˈkeŋŋæt].[29]
Olonets, Ludic, and Tver Karelian have the voiced affricate /dʒ/, represented in writing by the digraph⟨dž⟩.
Karelian is today written using aLatin alphabet consisting of 29 characters. It extends theISO basic Latin alphabet with the additional letters Č, Š, Ž, Ä, Ö and ' and excludes the letters Q, W and X.[30] 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 theCyrillic alphabet. With the establishment of the Soviet Union, Finnish, written with the Latin alphabet, became official. However, from 1938 to 1940Karelian written in Cyrillic replaced Finnish as an official language of theKarelian ASSR (see "History" below).
Example from Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Cyrillic Karelian script, transliteration and translation:[31]
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.
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 ofsibilants is extensive; in Finnish, there is only one:/s/.
Phonemic voicing occurs.
Karelian retainspalatalization, usually denoted with an apostrophe (e.g.d'uuri)
The letter 'ü' may replace 'y' in some texts.
The letter 'c' denotes/ts/, although 'ts' is used also. 'c' is more likely in Russian loan words.
/c/ and /č/ have length levels, which is not found in standard Finnish. For example, in Kalevala,Lönnrot's orthographymetsä : metsän hides the fact that the pronunciation of the original material is actually/mettšä:metšän/, with palatalization of theaffricate. The exact details depend on the dialect, though. SeeYleiskielen ts:n murrevastineet.
Karelian actually uses/z/ as avoiced alveolar fricative. (In Finnish,z is a foreign spelling for/ts/.) The plosives/b/,/d/ and/ɡ/ may be voiced. (In most Finnish dialects, they are not differentiated from the unvoiced/p/,/t/, and/k/. Furthermore, in Karelian except North Karelian, voiced consonants occur also in native words, not just in loans as in standard Finnish.)
The sounds represented byč, š andž are native to Karelian, but not Finnish. Speakers of Finnish do not distinguish/ʃ/ and/ʒ/ from/s/, nor/tʃ/ from/ts/ (medial) or/s/ (initial). For example, the native Karelian wordskiza, šoma, liedžu andseičemen arekisa, soma, lietsu andseitsemän in standard Finnish.
As all other Finnic languages, Karelian descends fromProto-Finnic, which in turn ultimately descends fromProto-Uralic. The most recent ancestor of the Karelian dialects is the language variety spoken in the 9th century at the western shores ofLake Ladoga, known as Old Karelian (Finnish:muinaiskarjala).
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 westernFinland; Southern dialect, spoken in the area of modern-dayEstonia and northernLatvia, 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.[32]
By the end of the 13th century, speakers of Old Karelian had reached theSavo region in easternFinland, increasingly mixing with population from western Finland. In 1323,Karelia was divided betweenSweden andNovgorod according to theTreaty 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 andSoutheastern dialects.
Birch bark letter no. 292 from the early 13th century is the first known document in anyFinnic language.[33] It was found in 1957 by aSoviet expedition, led byArtemiy Artsikhovskiy in the Nerev excavation on the left coast side ofNovgorod.[34] The language used in the document is thought to be an archaic form of the language spoken inOlonets Karelia, a dialect of the Karelian language.[35] 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.[36]
In the regions ruled by Novgorod, the protolanguage started to evolve into Karelian language. In 1617 Novgorod lost parts of Karelia to Sweden in theTreaty 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 theTver andValday regions.[32]
In the 19th century, a few books were published in Karelian using theCyrillic script, notablyA Translation of some Prayers and a Shortened Catechism into North Karelian and Olonets (Aunus) dialects in 1804, and the gospel of St. Matthew in South Karelian Tver dialect, in 1820. Karelian literature in 19th century Russia remained limited to a few primers, songbooks and leaflets.[37]
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" (Karjalan Työkommuuni,Карялан тыöкоммууни[citation needed] in Cyrillic Karelian), which two years later would become theKarelian 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.[38]
An intense program ofFinnicization, 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.[38]
While this was happening in Soviet Karelia, in 1931–33, a Karelian literary language using the Latin alphabet was standardized for the Tver Karelian community of about 127,000 people, hundreds of kilometers to the south.[38]
Between 1935 and 1938 the Finnish-dominated leadership of Soviet Karelia including leaderEdvard Gylling, was removed from power, killed or sent toconcentration camps. The Finnish language was branded a language of the bourgeois Finnish society in Finland proper, and was later regarded as a "fascist" language of the Finnish enemy.[38]
From early 1938 to April 1940, the Soviet authorities ceased publication in Finnish, all Finnish-language schools were closed and the children were prohibited from speaking Finnish even during recess. The Soviet government replaced Finnish in the Karelian ASSR with Karelian written in the Cyrillic alphabet.[37]
A new form of standardized Karelian was hurriedly introduced in 1938, written in Cyrillic, with only nine grammatical cases, and with a very large and increasing number of words taken directly from Russian but with Karelian grammatical endings. During this period about 200 titles were published, including educational materials, children's books, readers, Party and public affairs documents, the literary journalKarelia. The newspaperKarjalan Sanomat was written in this new Karelian Cyrillic, rather than in Finnish. Karelians who did not speak Russian could not understand this new official language due to the amount of Russian words, for example, the phrase "Which party led the revolution" in this form of Karelian was given as"Миттўйне партиуя руководи революциюа?" (Mittujne partiuja rukovodi revoljutsijua?) where the word for party, led, and revolution are all Russian words with Karelian grammatical endings, whereas the Finnish equivalent words have completely different roots:"Mikä puolue johti vallankumousta?"[38]
After theWinter War, in April 1940, political considerations changed again. The USSR established theKarelo-Finnish SSR with the idea that Finland proper would eventually be annexed to the USSR as part of that Republic. Finnish, written in the Latin alphabet, was once again made the official "local" language of Soviet Karelia, alongside Russian.[37][38]
In the 1980s, publishing began again in various adaptations of the Latin alphabet for Olonets Karelian and the White Sea and Tver dialects of Karelian Proper.
Since the 1990s theUnion of Karelian people started to organize various projects to popularize the Karelian language in Karelia and Finland.
In 2007 a standard alphabet was adopted to write all dialects (Tver Karelian adopted it in 2017).
In 2008,Joensuu University launched Finland's first Karelian language professorship, in order to save the language. A year later, Finland's first Karelianlanguage nest (pre-school immersion group) was established in the town ofNurmes.[39]
Croatiansinger 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.[40]
Vanhat ihmiset šanottih, jotta joučen on ihmiseštä tullun. Jouččenet aina ollah parittain. Kun yksi ammuttanneh, ni toini pitälti itköy toistah. Vain joučen oli pyhä lintu. Šitä ei nikonša ruohittu ampuo, šiitä tulou riähkä. Jouččenet tullah meilä kevyällä ta šykšyllä tuaš lähetäh jälelläh šuvipuoleh. Hyö lennetäh šuurissa parviloissa. Šilloin kun hyö lähettih, ni še oli merkki, jotta talvi on läššä.[41]
(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.)
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.[42]
(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.[43])
Irina Novak speaks about the Karelian language andKarelians. 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.
A sample from the bookArmaš šana:
Puasinkoi on pieni karielan külä Tverin mualla. Šielä on nel'l'äkümmendä taluo. Šeizov külä joven rannalla. Jogi virduav hil'l'ah, žentän händä šanotah Tihvinča. Ümbäri on ülen šoma mua. – Tuatto šaneli: ammuin, monda šadua vuotta ennen, šinne tuldih Pohjois-Karielašta karielan rahvaš. Hüö leikkattih mečän i šeizatettih tämän külän. I nüt vielä küläššä šeizotah kojit, kumbazet on luaittu vanhašta mečäštä.[45]
(Translation: Puasinkoi is a small Karelian village in the Tver region. There are forty houses. The village lies by a river. The river flows slowly—that's why it's called Tihvinitša. The surrounding region is very beautiful.—(My) father told (me): once, many hundreds of years ago, Karelians from North-Karelia came there. They cut down the forest and founded this village. And even now, there are houses in the village, which have been built from the trees of the old forest.)
^Jeskanen, Matti; Jahn, Eila (2022)."Karjalan grammari kaikella rahvahalla 1" [Karelian Grammar to Commoners 1](PDF) (in Karelian and Finnish). Karjalan Kielet ry. University of Eastern Finland. pp. 13, 19.Archived(PDF) from the original on 22 December 2022. Retrieved19 October 2024.
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