| Also Known As: Karelian Proper,Karely,Severno-karel'skij,Sobstvenno-karel'skij-jazyk,Karel'skogo Jazyka,Karelian,Karel'skiy Jazyk
Description:
Karelian is a language closely related to Finnish, with which it is not necessarily mutually intelligible. Karelian is spoken mainly in Republic of Karelia, Russia. Dialects spoken in Finnish Karelia (North Karelia and South Karelia) are not considered Karelian but Savonian dialects or Southeastern dialects of Finnish.
Karelian belongs to the Finno-Ugric languages, and is distinguished from Finnish by some important extensions to the phonology and the lack of influence from modern 19th and 20th century Finnish. It cannot merely be classified as a Finnish dialect with Russian influences, because it has original innovations and it may differ considerably from Finnish.There is no standard Karelian language, although the Republic of Karelia's authorities have recently begun to attempt standardization. Each writer writes in Karelian according to his own dialectal form. The script is the Latin alphabet as used for Finnish with letters added.
In this article, Karelian denotes dialects from Russian Karelia. In Finnish usage, however, Karelian mostly denotes the dialects of the 420,000 refugees from the Karelian isthmus and other parts of Finnish Karelia that were re-settled in what remains..... full article at Wikipedia |
