Swedish Dialects in Finland
The Swedish dialects of Finland belong
to the East Swedish family of dialects. Their origins trace back to Old
Swedish, which spread to Finland
from Central Sweden with Swedish settlers from
the 12th century onwards. Swedish dialects are spoken in four regions of Finland: Ostrobothnia, the autonomous island province of Åland, Åboland and Nyland (Uusimaa).*)
Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnia extends down
the western coast from Karleby (Kokkola) to Sideby. Swedish dialects were
formerly also spoken in parts of North Satakunta.
Ostrobothnian dialects are divided into three groups: Northern, Central and
Southern. The province
of Åland comprises
mainland Åland and its island municipalities. Two distinct groups of Åland dialects
are recognised: Western and Eastern. The province
of Åboland, located south of Åbo (Turku) and comprising the
southwestern Åbo Archipelago, is divided into two regions: Western and Eastern Åboland. In the province of Nyland,
Swedish dialects are spoken along the southern coastal strip extending eastward
from Hangö (Hanko) to Pyttis (Pyhtää). Nyland is divided into three dialect
groups: Western, Central and Eastern. (See dialect distribution map).
Having evolved in the periphery of other
Swedish-speaking areas, Finland-Swedish dialects preserve numerous archaisms,
yet they also feature many linguistic innovations, coined either independently
or through contact with dialects spoken in Sweden. The dialects spoken in
Åland are related to the dialects of Uppland and Sörmland in Sweden.
Contacts also exist across the Gulf of Bothnia: the dialects spoken on the west
coast of Finland
are related to the Swedish dialects of Norrland. Neighbouring Swedish and
Finland-Swedish dialects have exerted a two-way influence through regular
contacts, especially in the form of loan words.
The Swedish dialects of Finland can be
considered conservative. They retain many features encountered only in
peripheral, mainly northern, Swedish dialects. For instance, they preserve many
Old Swedish diphthongs, such as in stein
(sten) ‘stone’, höi (hö) ‘hay’ and bröut (bröt) ‘broke’ (See map). In many
Finland-Swedish dialects, the consonants g,
k, sk are pronounced ‘hard’ when preceding a frontal vowel, such as in gära or göra (göra) ‘do/make’, kärrå
(kärra) ‘cart/barrow’ and skära
‘cut’, but in other dialects they may alternatively be pronounced djära, tjärrå, stjära or as affricates
or fricatives as in Standard Swedish (See map). Many Finland-Swedish dialects
preserve the segmental durations of Old Swedish, e.g. in the words fara ‘go’ and viku or viko (vecka)
‘week’, where the first vowel is pronounced short; in drööm (dröm) ‘dream’ and toom
(tom) ‘empty’, where the vowel is
long; and in blåått (blått) ‘blue’
and föödd (född) ‘born/fed’, where
both the vowel and the following consonant are pronounced long (See map).
Simplification of the Swedish pitch system
is the most striking linguistic innovation discernible in Finland-Swedish. Only
the Western Nyland dialects recognise a distinction between grave and acute
accents; all other Swedish dialects in Finland use only the acute accent.
Many Finland-Swedish innovations have equivalent forms in Sweden-Swedish
dialects, e.g. the palatalization of diitje
(diket) ‘the ditch’, bättjin (bäcken) ‘the brook’, väddjen (väggen) ‘the wall’ (see map).
Apocope is another distinguishing feature of Swedish dialects spoken in Finland,
e.g. int (inte) ‘not’, kast (kasta) ‘throw’, tåm tär stoor gåålan (de där stora
gårdarna) ‘those big houses/farms’), resulting in simplification of inflected
forms (See map).
*) Contrary to standard recommendations for English
usage, in this context we have used the Swedish names of Finnish regions and
municipalities.
