Karelian (Karjalan kieli)

Karelian is a Finno-Ugaric language spoken by about 118,000 people mainly in the Russian Republic of Karelia, and also in Finland. Karelian is official considered a dialect of Finnish in Karelia, though there are moves to have it recognised as a second language. East Karelian dialects have little mutual intelligibility with Finnish.

The earliest known example of written Karelian, and of writing in any Finnic language, is a birch bark letter found at Novgorod in 1957 which dates from the early 13th century. It was written in the Cyrillic alphabet and the language is thought to be an archaic form of Olonets Karelian, which is also known as East Karelian or Liwi and is spoken along the Olonka River in the Republic of Karelia.

A number of Cyrillic-based spelling systems were developed during the Soviet period, though none of them took off due to Stalin's suppression and outlawing of Karelian. Today Karelian is written with a version of the Finnish alphabet.

Karelian alphabet

Karelian pronunciation

Notes

c=[k] before a, o or u, and [s] before e, i, y, ä and ö
Letters in blue are only used in names and loanwords

Information about Karelian pronunciation compiled by Wolfram Siegel

Sample text in Karelian

Tuatto miän, kumbane olet taivahašša, ana hüvättiečöv nimi šivn. Ana tulov kuningaš šivn, ana lienöv vällä šivn, kuin taivahašša, niin i muailmalla. Anna meilä leibiä jogopäivällistä nütten i jätä meilä miän vellat, kuin i müö jättälemmä miän velganiekoila. I elä meidä viä muanitukšeh, a piäššä meidä pahašta.

Source: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4280/tuatto.html

Links

Information about the Karelian language and people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karelian_language
http://www.eki.ee/books/redbook/karelians.shtml
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4280/eng_index.html

Oldest Karelian text
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_bark_letter_no._292

Online Karelian dictionary (Vepsian-Karelian-Finnish-Voro)
http://www.veps.de/Sanasto/

Related languages

Erzya, Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Karelian, Khanty, Komi, Livonian, Mansi, Mari, Moksha, Saami, Udmurt, Võro, Votic

Other languages written with the Latin alphabet