Finnish Tornedalen

Facts

  • Language: Finnish Tornedalen
  • Alternate names: Tornedalen, Meänkieli, Torne Valley Finnish, Tornedalsfinska, North Finnish
  • Language code: fit
  • Language family: Uralic, Finnic, Coastal Finnic, Neva, North Finnic, Nuclear Finnish
  • Number of speakers: 109579
  • Vulnerability: Endangered [Read more...]
  • Script: Latin script

More information:

    Introduction

    Meänkieli (lit. "our language") is spoken in the most northern parts of Sweden, around the valley of the Torne River. From a linguistic point of view Meänkieli is a mutually intelligible dialect of Finnish, but for political and historical reasons it has the status of a minority language in Sweden.

    In Swedish nowadays the language is usually referred to as Meänkieli by the authorities; a common, and older, name is tornedalsfinska which literally means "Torne Valley Finnish".

    The Verb

    Sample verb: olla 'to be'

    INDICATIVE
    Present Past
    Sg.1 olen olin
    Sg.2 olet olit
    Sg.3 on / oon oli
    Pl.1 olema olima
    Pl.2 oletta olitta
    Pl.3 on / oon olit

    forms in italics differ from standard written Finnish.

    Verblist