Dialects, Part I

Hi all, welcome back to Secrects of Spoken Finnish. Today we start tackling the dialects.

Let’s start by addressing the fact that the concept of spoken Finnish is rather vast. Like in any other languages, the way people speak depends a lot on the region. Spoken Finnish is divided roughly into eastern and western dialects, but as you would guess, it isn’t that simple. What I noticed while doing my research is that the north of the country is usually considered as part of the eastern dialects. Basically we have 8 main groups of dialects that have several subgroups. If I counted correctly, 34 groups in total. Don’t worry, they aren’t all very different from each other.

So, in this part we’ll have a look at the personal pronouns in the basic form. Like I have said before, textbooks mainly teach the standard Finnish, and it just sounds unnatural when it’s spoken. Of course it’s understood in all the regions but by using the pronouns typical for spoken language your speech will sound a lot more natural.

If your textbook didn’t totally overlook the spoken language, you probably know about the pronouns mä and sä. People will understand them everywhere, but people won’t naturally use them everywhere. It should be useful to at least recognize some of the most common pronouns. Here’s a little chart.

Usually with the third person you can use se/ne, even when you’re talking about people.

Feeling discouraged? No worries, most Finns will try to tone down their dialects when speaking with a non-native speaker.

I’ll probably get back to dialects later as there’s so much to talk about. If you have any comments or ideas for future posts, let me know. ^^

- Kaisa

Sources (in Finnish):

http://sokl.uef.fi/aineistot/aidinkieli/murteet/perspron.html

http://www.kotus.fi/kielitieto/murteet/suomen_murteet

https://kielikompassi.jyu.fi/opetus/s2/mps/tietoa_murteista.shtml