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Juhla Mokka (coffee). Welcome Although the Savo dialects are spread over a large geographical area with significant variations, they are rather different from the standard language and are recognized as local dialects. There are large variations between different dialects, but a few of the most stereotypical features are the following.
Phonology Vowels • Where standard Finnish has a
diphthong, Savo may have a narrower diphthong or long vowel. Conversely, where standard Finnish has a long vowel, Savo may have a diphthong. • as the second element of a diphthong lowers to , e.g.
laeta for
laita "side",
söe for
söi "ate". • lower similarly to , or they may assimilate completely to produce a long vowel, e.g. or for standard Finnish "store", or for "full". • When standard occur in an initial syllable (and thus have primary stress), they become opening diphthongs. In some varieties these are pronounced as , but in most varieties these diphthongs are wider: . Thus many Savo speakers have
mua for Standard Finnish
maa "land, country, ground", and have
piä for
pää "head". • Word-final of standard Finnish correspond to Savonian respectively. Thus Savonians say , , and for standard , , and . • When both would be unstressed, the otherwise bisyllabic combinations of
o/ö/e followed by
a/ä are produced as monosyllabic long vowels when no consonant intervenes. For instance, Savo dialects have for "brown", and have for "plowing (partitive)". (This change is not specific to Savo dialects and is found in most forms of spoken Finnish today.) • An
epenthetic vowel is inserted after a medial syllable coda of , or, in certain cases, , e.g. (standard "old"). • The epenthetic vowel is often identical in
quality to the preceding vowel. However, if the first of the non-epenthetic vowels is
high and the second is low, the epenthetic vowel may be mid (but preserves the
roundness specification of the preceding vowel). Thus and are different Savonian forms for standard Finnish "eye", and and are Savonian version of "cold".
Consonants • Savo dialects have re-developed
palatalized consonants (which were lost in
Proto-Finnic). The consonants that can be palatalized are those that are
coronal:
l, n, t, r, s. Palatalization of these consonants occurs word-finally, in contexts where a consonant is followed by in standard Finnish.
Orthographically, palatalization is often denoted by , where C is the palatalized consonant. Examples include and (standard Finnish , ). • Singleton consonants are
geminated when they occur after a (primarily or secondarily) stressed short syllable and before a long vowel. Thus replace standard . This gemination is
fed by the process described point 3 of the preceding section: Native Savonians do not say that they speak ; they say that they speak ( ). • In the eastern Savo dialects, this gemination is more general; it applies to non-singleton consonants (, cf. standard ), to consonants that don't ordinarily participate in the consonant gradation process, and after unstressed short vowels (, cf. standard }). • The word-final of standard Finnish corresponds to a variety of consonants in Savo, depending on the environment in which it occurs. • When the next word begins with a vowel, /n/ is replaced with a
glottal stop . For example, the genitive case, marked by in the standard language, is marked with a glottal stop in the Savonian phrase (standard "father's voice"). • Word-final
assimilates to consonants that follow it, yielding a geminate consonant; contrasts with standard . Unlike standard Finnish, Savo Finnish permits gemination of and , which gives examples like (standard ) in addition. • All syllable-initial consonants except the last one (which contacts the nucleic vowel) are systematically and completely removed in loanwords, e.g. (standard ). • The
weak grade of , in contrast to standard Finnish, is never . In Savo the weak grade of this consonant may be , , , , or may simply be null. • occurs between a long back vowel/diphthong and a short back vowel: for standard . • occurs between a long
front vowel/diphthong and a short front vowel: for standard . • weakens to or is null following another instance of : or for standard . • If none of the above apply, the weak form may remain as : for standard . • The consonant sequences found in standard Finnish (whose
weak grade is likewise in the standard language) are not found in Savo dialects. Depending on the specific dialect they use, a Savo speaker may have: • (weak grade ), thus instead of standard "forest, forest's". • (weak grade ), thus . • (weak grade ), thus .
Morphology and syntax • The use of the
-loi plural suffix is more general than in other dialects, including standard Finnish. For instance
risti "cross" has the plural partitive form
ristilöitä (standard Finnish:
ristejä). • Although standard and known elsewhere, the usage of verb compounds is particularly prevalent in Savo Finnish and a prolific source of creative expressions. The first verb is in the infinitive and indicates the action, and the second verb is inflected and indicates the manner. For example,
seistä toljotat "you stand there gawking" consists of words meaning "to-stand you-gawk". == Media ==