Karelian or East 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, which are also referred to as ("Karelian dialects") in Finland. 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. 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.
Classification Karelian is a Finnic language 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
In Russia, Karelian is spoken by about 13,880 people (2020), mainly in the Republic of Karelia, although notable Karelian-speaking communities can also be found in the Tver region (Tver Oblast) northwest of Moscow. Previously, it was estimated that there were 5,000 speakers in Finland, mainly belonging to the older generations, 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, and since the late 1990s there have been moves to pass special language legislation, which would give Karelian an official status on par with Russian. 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. Varieties can be further divided into individual dialects:
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: FrontBack Unrounded Rounded 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 KarelianП.М. Зайков. Грамматика карельского языка. Петрозаводск: Периодика, 1999 and Olonets Karelian have 21 diphthongs:
Front-harmonic Neutral 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: Front-harmonic Neutral Back-harmonic Front+neutral Front Neutral+front Neutral+back Back+neutral Back Close-mid-close Close-open-close
Olonets Karelian has only the triphthongs .
Consonants There are 20 non-palatalized consonants in Karelian with their own single grapheme, and 2 are represented with multigraphs:
LabialDental/AlveolarPostalv./PalatalVelarGlottalNasal PlosivevoicelessvoicedAffricatevoiceless( ) voiced Fricativevoiceless() voiced TrillApproximant
Some palatalized consonants exist: /lʲ nʲ sʲ tʲ/ in Karelian 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 Karelian b'urokratti 'bureaucrat', Livvi b'urokruattu 'bureaucrat', kip'atku 'boiling water', sv'oklu 'beet', Tver Karelian kip'atka 'boiling water', s'v'okla 'beet' (from Russian бюрократ, кипяток, свёкла).
Voiced velar nasal // (eng) is present before /g/, /k/ and /kk/, and the combination is represented with multigraphs , or . Karelian Proper does not geminate /ŋ/ in consonant gradation unlike Finnish: kengät 'shoes' pronounces as instead of Finnish .
Olonets, Ludic, and Tver Karelian have the voiced affricate //, represented in writing by the digraph .
Writing system
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. Sibilants Letter Alt. IPA Olonets Karelian Tver Karelian North Karelian Finnish č ch čoma, seiče šoma, šeiččimen šoma, šeiččemen soma, seitsemän s s se še še se š sh nišku niška niska niska z 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
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.