Finglish
Finglish is a mixture of Finnish and English. The term was coined by professor 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. However, the word is now also used to describe English influences on Finnish in Finland itself.
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. Finglish is also found in any place in Finland where international contact and popular culture exists, including Finnish language learners. This more recent 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, also known as Fingliska or Fingelska, is a form of the Finnish language spoken in North America, and the historical meaning of the term "Finglish".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. 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 and something they were bound to learn.
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. Nominal morphology is particularly vulnerable in heritage languages with robust morphology. 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. 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. 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. The interviews had standard questions asked of everyone, including why they 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. 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. 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. 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.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. 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. These previous works focus primarily on Finnish speakers in Minnesota and Michigan, with Wisconsin underrepresented.
The most common characteristic of historical Finglish were :
| Phenomenon | Finglish | Finnish | English |
| Almost all voiced consonants in English are replaced by their voiceless counterparts in Finglish; is likewise replaced with. | lumperi | puutavara | lumber |
| Almost all voiced consonants in English are replaced by their voiceless counterparts in Finglish; is likewise replaced with. | piiri | olut, kalja | beer |
| Almost all voiced consonants in English are replaced by their voiceless counterparts in Finglish; is likewise replaced with. | rapoli | ongelma | trouble |
| Almost all voiced consonants in English are replaced by their voiceless counterparts in Finglish; is likewise replaced with. | karpetsi | roska | garbage |
| Almost all voiced consonants in English are replaced by their voiceless counterparts in Finglish; is likewise replaced with. | vörnitseri | huonekalu | furniture |
| Three contiguous vowels are not allowed. They are broken up by inserting either a back or front glide depending on the phonetic environment. | leijata | pelata, soittaa | to play |
| Three contiguous vowels are not allowed. They are broken up by inserting either a back or front glide depending on the phonetic environment. | sauveri | suihku | shower |
| Syllabic consonants are modified by inserting a vowel in front of them: | kaluna | gallona | gallon |
| Syllabic consonants are modified by inserting a vowel in front of them: | hanteli | kahva | handle |
| Words should end in a vowel | reimi | kehys | frame |
| Words should end in a vowel | kaara | auto, vaunu, kärry | car |
| Words should end in a vowel | heerkatti | hiustyyli | haircut |
| Words should end in a vowel | loijari | lakimies | 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. | raikki | isku, lakko | strike |
| 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. | touvi | hella, liesi | stove |
| 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. | rosseri | kauppa | grocery |
| Vowels are written phonetically, as in Finnish. | reitti | suora | straight |
| Vowels are written phonetically, as in Finnish. | raippi | raita, juova | stripe |
| Disappearance of possessive suffix, as in spoken Finnish. | meitin haussi | meidän talomme | 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: ruuma, piiri, leijata, reisi, and touvi. US Finglish compound words can produce combinations completely incomprehensible to native Finnish speakers, like piirikäki or the somewhat less incomprehensible ilmapiika.
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 kämppä 'log cabin' or ' accommodation', from English camp; and mainari 'miner'. These may, however, be direct borrowings from English in Finland.