Helsinki slang or stadin slangi ("Helsinki's slang", from Swedish stad, "city"see etymology) is a local dialect, a sociolect and a variation of the Finnish language mainly used in the capital Helsinki. It is characterized by its abundance of foreign loan words not found in the other Finnish dialects.
Helsinki slang first evolved in the late 19th century as a sociolect of the multilingual Helsinki working class communities, where Swedish and Finnish speaking youth lived together with Russian, German and various other language minorities.[1][2]
Grammatically Helsinki slang is based on colloquial Finnish. It is characterized by a large number of words borrowed from originally Swedish, German and Russian – and nowadays chiefly English – vocabularies, replacing common everyday nouns, verbs and adjectives with loanwords, that are inflected according to the grammatical rules of spoken Finnish.
The language's history can be divided into the old slang (vanha slangi) and the new or modern slang (uusi slangi). Old slang was common in Helsinki up to the mid-20th century and is thicker and harder to understand for an outsider of the group – even to one who is fluent in modern slang – because it incorporates a far greater amount of Swedish and Russian loanwords not found in any other Finnish dialect. It is mostly spoken by older Helsinkians, many of whom consider it the only true stadin slangi.
The modern variety evolved with the influence of the American youth subcultures starting from the 1950s and continues to evolve. Modern slang is characterized by a greater influence of the English language and proper Finnish language on the slang, while the influence of Swedish and Russian has declined.[1]
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Helsinkians themselves never refer to their slang as Helsinki slang(i) but instead as stadin slangi or simply slangi. Stadi is a slang word, borrowed from the Swedish stad, "city". Literally, the name would mean "slang of the city", but stadi always means specifically the city of Helsinki in the slang – all other cities are unconditionally referred to by the normal Finnish word for "city", kaupunki.
More importantly, Helsinki slang is not strictly speaking a slang in the word's modern definition, but rather a dialect and a sociolect, but the term slang has stuck since long, especially as the language refers to itself as a slang.
Helsinki was founded in 1550 by Gustav I of Sweden in the coastal Swedish-speaking region of Finland.[3] When in 1809 Sweden lost Finland to Imperial Russia, Helsinki became the capital of Finland by the decision of Alexander I of Russia. At this time Helsinki was almost unilingualy Swedish. For example in 1820 the city was home to about 4.500 people, only 5% of whom were Finnish-speaking.[2]
With the new capital status, the city's center was rebuilt and a continuous growth was sustained. By 1880 the population had grown almost ten-fold to 43.000[4], mostly due to industrialization. This brought ever-increasing numbers of new Finnish-speaking working class from around the country to the largely Swedish-speaking city. In 1870 census 57% of Helsinkians spoke Swedish as home language, 26% Finnish, 12% Russian and 2% German[3], while also increasing amounts of residents were capable in both Swedish and Finnish.[3] Helsinki slang is believed to have first began to evolve among the mixed-language working class people of the 1880s.[2][5] In addition to Swedish and Finnish, influences came from Russian and German.
Helsinki slang formed naturally as a sort of a common language for the mixed-language population who due to industrialization moved into the same neighborhoods for employment, and had initially no single common language. The slang came to be for practical purposes of everyday communication and mutual understanding as a common language of the various language groups. For example, at this time about one fifth of newly-wed couples had different mother languages.[2]
The working class population was at this time concentrated in Kallio, Vallila, Sörnäinen and Arabia. Helsinki slang was probably first born in these tightly populated neighborhoods in their factories, multilingual homes, markets and on their streets. Some have referred to slangi's roots as a pidgin language or the lingua franca of this multilingual population.
From early on Helsinki slang was especially the language of the youth. It was a form of social language code, by which the multicultural and multilingual working class youth, a speech community, formed their own sociolect. The initiative for this grew at first from their needs of basic everyday communication, but soon slangi probably came to signify a certain social status as well. Johannes Kauhanen notes on his slang history page that the first speakers of Helsinki slang were probably not the countryside-born old agriculturists who moved to work in Helsinki, but their children.[2]
The first written account in Helsinki slang is from the 1890 short story Hellaassa by young Santeri Ivalo (words that do not exist in, or deviate from, the standard spoken Finnish of its time are in italics):
Kun minä eilen illalla palasin labbiksesta, tapasin Aasiksen kohdalla Supiksen, ja niin me laskeusimme tänne Espikselle, jossa oli mahoton hyvä piikis. Mutta me mentiin Studikselle suoraan Hudista tapaamaan, ja jäimme sinne pariksi tunniksi, kunnes ajoimme Kaisikseen.[2]
| Years | Finnish | Swedish | Russian | English | German |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1890-1920[6] | >20 | 75 | <5 | <1 | <1 |
| 1900-1920[7] | 30 | 60 | 2 | ? | ? |
| 1910-1940[8] | 39 | 50 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| 1979[9] | 60 | 20 | ? | 10 | ? |
| 1985-1989[10] | 78 | 11 | — | 9 | — |
| Approximate proportions (%) of word origins by year. Source. | |||||
The old slang continued to develop up until the 1940s. In 1944 the Continuation War between the Soviet Union and Finland ended in the Moscow Armistice, and Finland had to cede large parts of Karelia to the Soviet Union. About 430.000 people became immigrants within their own country. Many of them settled in Helsinki while, in the society at large, the transition from the agricultural society continued ever stronger.
In practice the following years, especially the 1960s, meant the second major wave of immigration to Helsinki. This had an effect on the slang as well. 1940s mark the beginning of the gradual transition between the old slang (vanha slangi) and modern speech (uusi slangi).
The new population was, and continues to be, in greater numbers Finnish-speaking, and the Swedish and Russian influences on the language have declined ever since. The language started to move more towards common colloquial Finnish while still strongly borrowing from the old slang in Helsinki area.
The following generations also grew up in a different kind of environment, where more abundant amounts of foreign culture, especially entertainment such as films and music, was, and continues to be, available. The cultural influence of the English-speaking world, especially the North American youth subcultures, grew, and increasing amounts of English-language words started to find their way to the language of the urban Helsinki youth. With the popularity of television and the advent of the Internet, this trend continues ever stronger in the present day.
Although like any local dialect, Helsinki slang constantly evolves, most adult speakers of Helsinki slang still consider the pre-1960s version the real slang. Many of the now-adult speakers who grew up with the 1950s-style slang consider the modern chiefly English-derived slang terms neologisms. Nevertheless, even if words are borrowed to the slang, they are still in the present day modified to conform to the phonotactics of the slang. As noted below, the phonotactics are slightly different from the typical colloquial Finnish.
The borrowed words may violate phonological rules of the Finnish language, such as vowel harmony. They also include phonemes /b/, /d/ and /g/ and consonant clusters such as /sn/ rarely found in other Finnish dialects. Yet the words remain indisputably Finnish, incorporating Finnish grammar and mostly obeying Finnish phonotactics. Some rather arbitrary, but creative and distinctly Finnish expressive constructions are often used especially in the modern slang, e.g. päräyttää.
Furthermore, arbitrary modifications are found — these make the resulting slang words alien both to the speakers of regular Finnish and the borrowing language. For example, Finland Swedish (Sipoo dialect) burk "cranky" is modified into spurgu "drunkard", where the added 's' is arbitrary, as is the voicing change of 'k' to 'g'. Derivation of fillari, "a bicycle" from velociped is even more convoluted: velociped in the Swedish language game fikonspråk is filociped-vekon, which became filusari and further fillari — only the 'l' is etymologically original. In fact, the newer abbreviation of fillari to fiude loses even the 'l'.
Some distinctive aspects in Helsinki slang are:
The old slang's vocabulary and form of speech had some variation in between the different parts of the town. As noted above, the language was born north of the Pitkäsilta bridge, but it later spread to the southern neighborhoods as well, including Punavuori (Rööperi in slang). The variation was most prominent in between the slang spoken on the two sides of the bridge.[11]
Many literary works in Helsinki slang contain long sentences with a large density of slang words, making them especially hard to decipher for general Finnish-speaking population. Examples, where slang words are in italics and exactly in the same order in both original and translation, include:
(from the Viivi & Wagner comics)
- Hei sporakuski, stikkaa dörtsi posee, tääl on galsa blosis, bonjaatsä?
meaning
Hey, tramdriver, push the door closed [please], it's a cold wind in here, do you understand?
and
(from Sami Garam's slang version of Donald Duck)
- Kelaa, snadi jeesaaja, kui iisii täl ois stedaa!
meaning
Think, little helper, how easy it would to clean with this!
In 2009, an advertising campaign for Helsinki ice-hockey club HIFK advertised season tickets with the phrase
Kandee hiffaa skaffaa, et ei tartte bluffaa et ois kliffaa.
meaning
You should realize to acquire [one of these], so you don't need to pretend as to be having fun.
Slang words obey normal Finnish grammar, regardless of their etymology. However, Helsinki slang is always both spoken and written as colloquial Finnish, never as properly grammatical kirjakieli (see spoken Finnish). For example, "can you fix that in a working condition?" is "voitsä duunaa ton kondiksee?" in slang, where duunaa "to do, to work" and kondis "condition, working order" are slang words. Trying to write the above sentence in properly grammatical form like in kirjakieli, to "voitko (sinä) duunata tuon kondikseen?" would be erroneous both in kirjakieli and slang.
Helsinki slang is also used by the Swedish speaking Finnish minority in Helsinki. Modern Helsinkian Swedish-based slangi is still spoken in the same manner as in Finnish, mixing it into the Swedish language. The earlier example "can you put that in order?" would be "kan du duuna dendä' kondiksee?" when spoken by a Swedish-speaking Finn in Helsinki slang. This kind of mixing nowadays also extends to Finnish-Swedish bilingual speakers in the outer reaches of the metropolitan area, who do not speak the Helsinki slang proper. This variety is known as grani-speak, the name deriving from the municipality of Kauniainen (Grankulla in Swedish — known as Grani in the slang).[citation needed]
Several famous Helsinkians, especially musicians, are known for their skill in the slang, and have partially or entirely performed in it in public.
Several books and comics have been published written entirely in Helsinki slang, both as translations and as newly authored texts, or something in between. This is only a partial list, slanted towards the modern times.
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