Finnish Dialects

Numerous Finnish dialects are spoken in Finland. Two main dialect groups are recognised: Eastern and Western. The Eastern group includes the Savonian and South-Eastern dialects. The Western group comprises the South-Western, Mid-Southwestern, Tavastian, Southern Ostrobothnian, Middle and North Ostrobothnian and Far-Northern dialects. (See dialect distribution map.)

This classification is historically based on the geographical distribution of certain phonemic features. The most obvious difference between Eastern and Western dialects is the pronunciation of the letter d. In Eastern dialects, d is either silent or substituted by a glide or semi-vowel (aijat, lauvat, veessä), whereas in Western dialects it is pronounced as r or l (airat, laurat, velessä). (See map.) Dialect classifications are also partly based on knowledge of settlement history.

On the one hand, Finnish dialects appear to be converging, yet on the other hand, they are gaining importance as a marker of local identity. One of our current research projects is devoted to studying the current evolution of dialects and spoken Finnish.

Prosody is an identifying feature of Finnish dialects. Individual speakers may freely alter their patterns of stress and intonation, yet still retain certain dialectal features, even when consciously striving to emulate standard Finnish.

The Research Institute has an extensive corpus of material on dialects. Our Lexical Archives of Finnish Dialects contain millions of word and phrase entries collected since the early 20^th century.

The Research Institute is the process of compiling a Dictionary of Finnish Dialects (Suomen murteiden sanakirja) on the basis of material in the Lexical Archive of Finnish Dialects. Eight out of twenty volumes have been published to date (a–kurvottaa).

The Audio Recordings Archive contains samples of Finnish dialects from nearly every parish in Finland recorded from 1959 onwards.