Swedish, Helsingfors

Facts

Language: Swedish, Helsingfors
Alternate names: Helsingforssvenska
Language code: dsweh
Language family: Indo-European, Classical Indo-European, Germanic, Northwest Germanic, North Germanic, North Scandinavian, East-Central Swedic, East Swedic
Dialect of: Swedish
Number of speakers: 35451
Script: Latin script

More information:

Introduction

All street names are both in Finnish and Swedish.

Helsingfors Swedish (Swedish helsingforssvenska) is a East-Swedish dialect spoken in Helsinki (Swedish Helsingfors) region in Finland. This dialect has many borrowings from the Finnish language.

The verb

Swedish, Helsingfors is spoken in the middle of the area marked in Green.

Compared with Standard Swedish, the verb shows few peculiarities in conjugation. The differences between Standard Swedish and the dialects are rather in vocabulary that's specific to the region.

Morphology

The foremost peculiarity in morphology is the replacing of '-t/-d' with 'i' in past participle in 2nd and 3rd conjugation verbs.
Examples:

höri instead of hört, from höra 'to hear'.
räcki instead of räckt, from räcka 'to last'.

There's also the tendency to omit the '-de' and '-t' suffixes in past tense and the supine. This is more common in Finland than in Sweden. Examples:

Inflection	Finland	Sweden
Past	kalla´ called	kallade
Supine	kalla´ called	kallat
Supine	äti´ eaten	ätit

One innovation is the infinitive måsta must. This verb has no infinitive in standard Swedish.

Vocabulary

Dialectal forms

jåma (Standard Swedish 'tjata') ''
skrinna (Standard Swedish 'åka skridsko') 'to skate'. "This verb is conjugated as a strong (irregular) verb in Southern Finland, and regularly in other Swedish speaking areas of Finland." (Source: Research Institute for the Languages of Finland)

Loans from Finnish verbs

doka from Finnish dokata (Standard Swedish 'supa') 'to get drunk'
dona from Finnish duunata (Standard Swedish 'arbeta') 'to do; to work'
hassa from Finnish hassata (Standard Swedish 'slösa') 'to waste'
lunta from Finnish luntata (Standard Swedish 'fuska') 'to cheat'

External Links

Dialekterna i den urbaniserade huvudstadsregionen; a Swedish article of the dialects of the capital area in Finland. Research Institute for the Languages of Finland.

References

Bergroth, Hugo. Finlandsvenska. Helsinki, 1928.