Re: To What Extent is Standard Finnish a Conlang?

On Fri, 3 Feb 2006 00:58:55 +0200, John Vertical <johnvertical@...>
wrote:

>I can't think of any completely original ones off the top of my head, but
>much standardized vocabulary is definitely based on dialectally rare forms,
>shortenings, and stretched analogy. The same applies to /d ts/, which used
>to be /D T:/ and had dialectally decayed to a variety of forms, /r ht/ for
>instance. The current pronounciation is essentially imported from German,
>after the 17th century spellings <d tz>. (BTW ... I have [4] for /d/, which
>leads to all four of [4] [4r] [r:] [r] being distinct, a little like the
>Dutch [X]<>[XR]<>[R] contrast mentioned recently. Can't think of a minimal
>quartet right now.)
Ah, so /T/ was a phoneme in Old Finnish?

I imagine that [4r] = <dr>?  So it must only exist in loanwords.

>There's, however, so much complicated and unexpected derivation in the
>field of "civilization words" that Standard Finnish would definitely count
>as a mildly a posteriori conlang. Some examples:
>
>- "Lisko" (lizard), perceived as a root word in modern Finnish, was set in
>stone by biologists in the 1600s as a shortening of "sisilisko" (common
>lizard), which originates from the animal's old Finno-Ugric name "sisal"
>and the nowadays unproductive "-sko" affix (I think it used to be
>diminutive...) As a folk etymology, the beginning of the word had however
>often been re-analyzed as related to "sisar" (sister), so assigning a
>spesific meaning to the other half, too, was not really that much of a
>stretch.
>
>- "Luokka" (class) was originally used in parts of Ostrobothnia to refer to
>a bent twig used for measuring wood shavings to be burned for lighting.
>This meaning had somehow developed from "luokki", a part of a horse's
>harness.
>
>- "Sähkö" (electricity) is conracted from "sähistä säkenöiden" (to hiss
>sparkingly)
>
>- "Suure" (variable) is "suuri" + "-e" (big + nominalizer)
>
>This trend was in no way limited to the Swedish-speaking fennophiles of the
>1800s; words were coined and derived in similar irregular fashion ever
>since the birth of written Finnish, and public contests/polls to form
>native alternatives for foreign loanwords have been held for at least the
>latest hundred years.
That's very interesting!  It's always neat to see how written language
influences the evolution of words.

How about changes in grammar?  From what I've read, Old Finnish had the
ending -p(i) for verbs in the 3rd-person singular.  What happened to it,
and where did the modern ending (simply lengthening the stem vowel) come
from?  Also, I've read that the genitive plural ending -iden is wholly
artificial; some dialects had -jen and others -den, and the coiners of the
standardized language simply combined them together.  How true is this?

>>Also, does spoken Finnish (where it differs from the standard language)
>>more accurately reflect the true evolution of the language?
>>
>>Thanks in advance. :)
>>
>>- Rob
>
>What exatly do you mean by "the true evolution"? Standard spoken Finnish
>has naturally been influenced by the written language, while the dialects
>have evolved to a kajillion different directions...
>
>John Vertical
>=========================================================================
I meant that the standardized language may have some grammatical features
that do not have an etymology in any one dialect -- they're somehow
compromises (combinations, conflations, etc.) between forms in two or more
different dialects.

Thanks for your help so far. :)

- Rob

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