Variations of the Finnish Language: Assignments

Hey guys!

Today I'm going to continue my series of sharing my favorite assignments I wrote during my semester in Finland. Today's installment consists of my assignments from my Variations of the Finnish Language final, which details the development of the Finno-Ugric language family, and several specific languages therein.

Hope you enjoy!

1. Vocabulary and traceable relationships between different languages are a key tool for understanding culture. A language is a cornerstone of its culture’s expressive power and identity, and a microcosm of its history. By looking at when, where, and from where new terminology entered a language, it is possible to discern where its speakers came from, what people groups they interacted with, and in which capacities.
   A key example can be found in the Finnic word for “honey”, mesi, and that for “bee,” mehiläinen. These words have been identified as Indo-European borrowings, and have been cited as potential proof for the River Volga being a point of origin for Finno-Ugric speakers, as beekeeping has long been practiced there, and the terms could have been adopted from Indo-European Volgan beekeepers.
   Additionally, a set of words, mainly either personal pronouns (i.e. kuka, me) or body parts (silmä, suoni) have equivalent forms in the Balto-Finnic, Saami, Mordvin, Mari, Udmurt, Komi, Mansi, Khanty, and Hungarian branches of the Finno-Ugric family, indicating a relationship of common origin between them with 100% of etymological certainty.
2. Literary Finnish began with the work of Mikael Agricola as Protestant churches upped their efforts to conduct services in local languages across reformed European states. As mentioned in the preface of his 1548 New Testament translation, its linguistic foundations came from the southwestern dialects around Turku, as it was the capital at the time. A translation of the whole of the Bible was subsequently completed in 1642, with care taken this time to follow the standards of the southeastern dialects more consistently. The register found in this translation remained the literary default in Finland until the transfer of power between the Sweden and Russia in 1809.
   As nationalistic sentiment and the emerging Fennoman movement exerted greater influence on Finnish politics, the question of Finnish’s potential as an official language arose. Since most of the printed works from the Swedish era were highly influenced in structure by Swedish, German, and Latin as the literary languages of the time, and only offered vocabulary fit for religious concepts and contexts, the so-called “dialect struggle” took place.
   Great debate centered around which dialectal influences a new literary standard should feature (especially whether to include more typical elements of eastern dialects, largely ignored in all written standards up to that point). By the end of the nineteenth century, the debate largely subsided. Finnish gained official status equal with that of Swedish, validated through openings of Finnish-based schools, university departments, and the Finnish Literary Society, and widespread printing of a variety of literary materials in Finnish (including prose, fiction, journalistic, linguistic, and scientific works). Use of written language was aspired to as the most democratic option, to facilitate comprehension across dialects and not ostracize Swedish or German-speakers adopting Finnish as their primary language. The Eduskunta assembled this form in a comprehensive dictionary, the Nykysuomen Sanakirja.
3. The written lexicon and organized grammar for most Finno-Baltic languages originated in translations of religious material. Features of other prestigious literary lingua francas where Finno-Baltic languages were spoken were often applied in the written forms.
   Henrich Stahl produced a Latin-influenced German text on Estonian grammar in 1637, as German was the administrative language in Estonia at the time. German features that still survive today were added to the orthography, and certain aspects of syntax were somewhat dubiously described to be equivalent to German, such as the fusing of the singular forms of the genitive and ablative cases due to them both being rendered in German with the word “von.” Due to great dialectal variation between the south and the north, Johann Gutslaff published a grammar of South Estonian in 1648, which listed five cases, replacing ablative with a “rective” case inspired by Hebrew. Johann Hornung’s 1693 Grammatica Esthonica came closer to the contemporary register by referring to the vernacular rather than other literary languages, and organizing object markers.
   The first Finnish grammars date back to the early 17th century. The lost manuscript of Henricus Cragerus was cited in other works of the time, distinct from Latin influence in describing twelve Finnish cases. The need for civil servants to learn Finnish led to minor grammatical publications from the Academia Aboensis, such as Aeschilus Petraeus’s 1649 grammar that attempted to force Latin influence anew, basing itself on southwestern dialects like the 1642 Bible translation. Bartholdus Vhael was finally able to assemble a Finnish grammar relatively free of Latin influence in his 1733 Grammatica Fennica, using his own Ostrobothnian dialect as a point of reference, giving a more comprehensive overview of inflectional suffixes and their combinations. Finally, Reinhold van Becker’s 1824 Finsk grammatik solidified the regulations of contemporary Finnish syntax.