Finglish

Finglish is a mixture of Finnish and English. The term was coined by professor Template:Ill in the 1920s in Hancock, Michigan, United States to describe the language he encountered in America. The word is first recorded in English in 1943.<ref>Lambert, James. 2018. A multitude of 'lishes': The nomenclature of hybridity. English World-wide, 39(1): 24. DOI: 10.1075/eww.38.3.04lam</ref> However, the word is now also used to describe English influences on Finnish in Finland itself.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

As the term describes, Finglish is a macaronic mixture of the English and Finnish languages. In Finglish, the English lexical items are nativized and inserted into the framework of Finnish morphology and syntax. Many consider the adoption of English loanwords into Finnish phonology, morphology, and syntax not to be proper Finnish, but rather a language in between. The term Finglish can imply that this adoption of loanwords and usage of language is incomplete and somehow less legitimate. However, this use of loanwords and code-switching amongst bilingual speakers is typical in communities experiencing language shift. The Finnish immigrants of the United States learned English out of necessity to succeed in their jobs; this resulted in what is known as Finglish.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Finglish is also found in any place in Finland where international contact and popular culture exists, including Finnish language learners. This more recent (post-1980s) incorporation of English loanwords into modern Finnish as a result of globalization and advances in technology is a separate phenomenon from the North American Finnish, which developed primarily in the late 1800s to mid-1900s, though there are some similarities in form and function.

Finglish in North America

American Finnish (Template:Lang), also known as Template:Lang or Template:Lang, is a form of the Finnish language spoken in North America, and the historical meaning of the term "Finglish".<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

While almost all Finnish immigrants were able to read and write, it still took some time for many Finns to learn English because Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language, structurally unrelated to English and other Indo-European languages.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Another reason for the delay is that many leaving Finland were farmers and laborers, and often migrated to areas of high Finnish settlement. Living and working with other Finnish speakers meant they had less need to learn English to get by in their day-to-day lives. Many other Finnish immigrants ended up in menial and industrial jobs, where they learned English through practice in order to get by in the workplace. Second- and third-generation Finnish Americans often learned to speak both Finnish and English, though the Finnish they learned differed from that spoken in Finland. This was due to a variety of reasons, including competing language inputs between Finnish and English and the fact that their Finnish input may have been different from that considered standard in Finland. Finglish originated amongst these first- and second-generation Finnish immigrants in US and Canada. The English language skills of the first-generation American Finns tended to be limited; second- and third-generation American Finns usually were more or less bilingual. Finglish emerged as a pidgin with something they already knew (Finnish) and something they were bound to learn (English).

As has been documented for several immigrant languages, one would expect that over time North American Finnish would reduce its inflectional system in favor of prepositions and analytic constructions.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Nominal morphology is particularly vulnerable in heritage languages with robust morphology.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> As heritage speakers tend to become fluent in the majority language while never achieving native fluency in the heritage language, second- and third-generation speakers who learn the minority language from the first generation may not acquire the full inflectional system of the language spoken in the country of origin. The majority language may also influence the syntax and other features of the heritage language. Thus, North American Finnish differed not only in the lexical items used, but in aspects of morphology and syntax as well.

The majority of immigrants to America came from Ostrobothnia and the Northern Ostrobothnia areas in western Finland; over sixty percent of all emigrants who left the country between 1893 and 1920 came from Vaasa and Oulu.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Many other Finnish immigrants were from the provinces of Savonia and Tavastia, and the Finnish spoken in North America also reflects those dialects.

History of research

Much work has been done in the last fifty years to document the speech of Finnish Americans in the United States and Canada, though little new data has been brought forward in the last 25 years.Template:As of? Pertti Virtaranta did extensive research on the Finnish spoken in North America, particularly in the Upper Midwest and Canada, taking three trips from 1965 to 1980 to interview speakers.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The interviews had standard questions asked of everyone, including why they (or their families) left Finland, what the trip was like, and what it was like to find a job once in America. Otherwise, the interviews consisted of free conversation on whatever subject the participants found most interesting.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Maisa Martin wrote a dissertation on the phonology and morphology of American Finnish where she discusses the borrowings and changes between Finland Finnish and American Finnish.<ref>Martin, Maisa. On the Morphology and Phonology of American Finnish. University of Jyväskylä, 1989. Print.</ref> Donald Larmouth did extensive research on the Finnish used by four generations in rural Finnish communities in northern Minnesota, interviewing a total of 62 respondents.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> In his interviews he elicits personal narratives, has participants complete picture identification tasks with simple cartoons, and give translations of sentences. He documents what changes the language seems to have undergone, notably the leveling of several cases including the accusative and partitive.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> This previous work on American Finnish reveals a lower frequency of accusative case and partitive case in heritage bilingual speakers, with more pronounced changes the farther removed the generation was from the immigrant generation.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> In his interviews he elicits personal narratives, has participants complete picture identification tasks with simple cartoons, and give translations of sentences. While the partitive and accusative were vulnerable, other cases, including the illative and ablative, remained robust in the speech of these speakers, though adjective case endings were especially prone to deletion.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> These previous works focus primarily on Finnish speakers in Minnesota and Michigan, with Wisconsin underrepresented.

The most common characteristic of historical Finglish were (in descending order of frequency):Template:Citation needed

Phenomenon	Finglish	Finnish	English
Almost all voiced consonants in English are replaced by their voiceless counterparts in Finglish; Template:Ipa is likewise replaced with Template:Ipa.	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	lumber
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang, Template:Lang	beer
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	trouble
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	garbage
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	furniture
Three contiguous vowels are not allowed. They are broken up by inserting either a back or front glide depending on the phonetic environment.	Template:Lang	Template:Lang, Template:Lang	to play
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	shower
Syllabic consonants are modified by inserting a vowel in front of them:	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	gallon
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	handle
Words should end in a vowel (the preferred word-final vowel is Template:Ipa but Template:Ipa is also encountered)	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	frame
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang, Template:Lang, Template:Lang	car
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	haircut
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	lawyer
When the word in English begins with two or three consonants, all but the last consonant are dropped before the word is acceptable for Finglish.	Template:Lang	Template:Lang, Template:Lang	strike
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang, Template:Lang	stove
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	grocery
Vowels are written phonetically, as in Finnish.	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	straight
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang, Template:Lang	stripe
Disappearance of possessive suffix, as in spoken Finnish.	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	our house

Words used in US Finglish often have completely different meanings in Finnish, especially when the Finglish terms are borrowings from English; they have become expressive loans: Template:Lang (from and meaning 'room'; in Finnish meaning 'cargo hold'), Template:Lang ('beer'; 'district'), Template:Lang ('to play'; 'to hover'), Template:Lang ('crazy'; 'thigh'), and Template:Lang ('stove'; 'halyard'). US Finglish compound words can produce combinations completely incomprehensible to native Finnish speakers, like Template:Lang ('beer keg'; 'district cuckoo') or the somewhat less incomprehensible Template:Lang ('flight attendant'; 'air maid').

These older Finglish usages may not be bound to survive, and their original users are now in their 80s and 90s. The descendants of most American Finns are today either completely monolingual, or, if they have kept their ties to their grandparents' and great-grandparents' speech, use ordinary Finnish beside English.

Example of old-style Finglish:

which translates as

For comparison, standard Finnish without anglicisms:

Relatively few words from Finglish have become standard Finnish, but note Template:Lang 'log cabin' or '(temporary) accommodation', from English camp; and Template:Lang 'miner'. These may, however, be direct borrowings from English in Finland.

Later Finglish

A new wave of Finglish has originated in Finland. Its sources are technology, popular culture, various sub-cultures, and fandom. It differs from slang in the sense that it also uses some English linguistic structures. Examples of some popular-culture Finglish expressions include Template:Lang ('to work'), Template:Lang ('beach'), Template:Lang ('to spray'), Template:Lang ('to hang out'), Template:Lang ('to cruise in an automobile') and Template:Lang ('heavy user'). While the earlier, North American Finglish was distinctively a working-class adult immigrants' language, the newer sort of Finglish is used by native Finnish youth in contact with the English language through mass and social media. Finglish terms of today are a transitional phase of absorption of new terms and ideas from English into mainstream Finnish before the full nativization of the words, especially in situations where English (a very productive yet compounding language) expresses a concept with one word, while Finnish would require several of them, or has no native term. This Finglish is not to be confused with Helsinki slang, though the latter has absorbed some English loan words, too, in recent times.

The characteristics of current Finglish, in descending order of frequency, are:Template:Citation needed

Phenomenon	Finglish	Finnish	English
Preservation of voiced consonants Template:Ipa, Template:Ipa and Template:Ipa as well as the unvoiced consonant Template:Ipa	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	beach
	Template:Lang		bug, as programming error
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	to delete
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	to die
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	to dig, in sense of 'to feel affection'
	Template:Lang		geek
	Template:Lang		an Internet flame, a nasty Internet reply
	Template:Lang		to write/send a nasty Internet reply or to burn
Preservation of consonant clusters in the beginning of the words as in Southwestern Finnish dialects	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	crazy
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	printer
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	to skip, to pass something
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	trouble
Word ending in a vowel as in Old Finglish, almost exclusively in Template:Ipa. Duplication of the English final consonant before the final Template:Ipa	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	case
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	diskette
	Template:Lang		flop, failure
Vowels written out phonetically as in Old Finglish, umlaut denoting frontal vowel	Template:Lang	Template:Lang, Template:Lang	stylish, style
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	band, orchestra
	Template:Lang		nerd
	Template:Lang		rap music
	Template:Lang		never heard
Replacement of English c with k or s ch with ts th with d x with ks j with ds w with v	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	to click
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	to check
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	to fix
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	beef jerky
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	to patch, as in updating software
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	to work, to function
Conceptual replacement of Finnish instructive Template:Lang 'go with' with Template:Lang 'take'	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	take the train
	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	take the east route
You-impersonal (Template:Lang); using Template:Lang 'you' as the formal subject of an impersonal sentence. This may actually be an older phenomenon than English influence, as it also has appeared in certain Karelian dialects.	Template:Lang	Template:Lang	If you don't eat, you don't live.

An example of today's Finglish might be:

which translates as

For comparison, without anglicisms, but still colloquial:

And, in more literary Finnish:

Technical speech

Finglish is today used most commonly in technology-related speech, where the majority of the loanwords originate in English. Since the English and Finnish language morphologies are vastly different and English pronunciation seldom fits in the Finnish speech immediately, the loan's orthography and pronunciation are nativized. Direct Finglish Template:Lang ('techspeak') expressions include Template:Lang ('printer' – it is currently being ousted by the native word Template:Lang), Template:Lang 'modem', and Template:Lang or Template:Lang ('processor' – there is even a puristic word, Template:Lang, which is heard often enough, but is still less common than the borrowings). Reified initialisms in Finglish include Template:Lang from English CPU, and Template:Lang from DIMM. Finglish is usually considered a transitional phase from literal loans into translationary loans (calques). Examples of Finglish calques are Template:Lang 'motherboard', Template:Lang 'display', Template:Lang 'to outsource', and Template:Lang ('electronic mail' – the Finglish words Template:Lang [which, capitalized, is also a male name, the Finnish version of Emil]; Template:Lang or Template:Lang are still quite common). An example of a word where the transition is partial, is Template:Lang 'Web browser', where the word web has not yet been translated into Finnish Template:Lang (Template:Lang is however now the standard term and is widely used).

An example of Finnish techspeak:

which would translate in English to:

and a less anglicised, but still colloquial Finnish:

An approximation in literary Finnish:

Neologisms

Sometimes English words are used as the basis of Finnish conceptual neologisms, like Template:Lang 'computer enthusiast', from English nerd; or Template:Lang, Template:Lang, or Template:Lang 'newbie', i.e. 'beginner' (the first two variants influenced by the native Finnish Template:Lang, meaning a 'freak' or 'eccentric person').

Since most current Finglish users are fluent in Finnish and to some extent English, direct translations are sometimes used in humorous or oxymoronic concepts, such as Template:Lang (literally 'public house') for Template:Lang (borrowed long ago from English), or Template:Lang (lit. 'practical joke') for native Finnish Template:Lang ('prank', 'shenanigan').

English loanwords that originate in Latin are usually amalgamated in Finnish by using the Latin and not English orthography and grammar.

See also

• Tankero
• American Finnish

External links

• "Finglish" by Kent Randell Template:Webarchive
• "The Gluffer’s Guide to Finglish" Six Degrees (No. 6, 2008)