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Ilkka Savijärvi
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The
history, language and culture of the Ingrian Finns has been the focus of much
research in the Faculty of Humanities at the The
texts in this volume are transcriptions of recordings made in western Ingria
in the summer of 1993. The team of researchers who visited the area included
Ilkka and Muusa Savijärvi, Ari Hepoaho, Mila Korpisammal and Esa Anttikoski.
Our travels took us around the western coast of Dozens
of people were interviewed comprising approximately 40 hours of recordings.
The aim was to provide as wide a view as possible of the linguistic situation
in western Ingria today. A central issue was who still speaks Ingrian Finnish
and in what situations? The extent to which a language or a dialect is
maintained varies considerably among different individuals. Some of the
informants in the present volume have retained their old Ingrian Finnish
dialect, some have acquired features from standard Finnish and some reflect
the influence of Estonian or Russian, which has been present for decades.
Thus the texts in the volume are not linguistically uniform, but rather they
represent a multitude of different languages and dialects of western Ingria.
The informants are all over 60 years of age, since the younger generation has
a command of Ingrian Finnish which at best consists of a few individual
phrases. The Finnic languages and dialects of western Ingria survive only in
the older generations, but they are still used to convey feelings, thoughts
and human destinies. During
the past few centuries both the population and the linguistic map of western
Ingria have been diverse. On this relatively small area of land Ingrians,
Finns, Votes and Estonians have lived side by side and sometimes even
intertwined, alongside an increasing amount of Russians and even a few Swedes
and Germans. During this century the ethnic composition of the region has
become more uniform and the linguistic diversity has decreased dramatically.
There are only a few remnants of the Finnic tribes and the overwhelming
majority language of the area is now Russian. In the small villages of
western Ingria one can still find those who have retained their mother
tongue, Ingrian Finnish, Ingrian or even Votian, and who can relate the
destinies of their people, their eventful and often gloomy recent past.
Click on the map for higher
resolution Votes
and Ingrians: the native peoples of western Ingria
The
southern shore of the One
of the administrative districts of ancient The
Ingrian tribe was not very large either. In the middle of the 19th century
there were less than 18 000 Ingrians, and in 1970 only 800. Today there are
approximately 200 Ingrians left. At first Ingrians were acknowledged as a
separate nationality in the
Sorry, this map by Yuriy Koryakov exists
in Russian only. However, the green area stands for the Finns, blue for
Ingrians (Izhora/Isurlased), orange, pink and purple for Votes (Ed.) The
status of Ingrians and their language has also been problematic from the
point of view of research. There is still doubt as to whether we should speak
of a distinct Ingrian language or merely an Ingrian dialect. Finnish
linguists have usually classified Ingrian as a dialect, which is closely
related to Karelian languages. Researchers have discussed "Ingrian
dialects" without specifying precisely which language they are dialects
of. Estonian researchers, on the other hand, have for a long time spoken of
an independent Ingrian language (Est. isuri keel). Recently, however,
some Finnish researchers have also begun to refer to an independent Ingrian
language. The
Votes have never had a Votian literature nor have they had education in their
mother tongue. The Ingrian tribe has been somewhat stronger, which can also
be seen in the fact that the last Votian generations have generally
considered themselves Izoras, i.e. Ingrians, and have usually also
spoken Ingrian. Izora became the general name for the native Finnic
peoples in Ingria. In the 1930s Ingrian schoolbooks were published and it began
to be used as the medium of education. This experiment was cut short and the
Ingrians themselves didn't seem to be very excited by it. Many parents were
opposed to the idea of teaching in Ingrian because they were afraid that
their children would thus be in a worse position than the Russian children. The
Votes and the Ingrians were converted to the Greek Orthodox religion, which
enhanced the status of Russian, since it was the language of the religion.
Being tied to the church brought these tribes closer to the Russian culture
and lifestyle. There were no obstacles to marriage with Russians, but
intermarriage between the Lutherans and the Orthodox was not accepted. Both
these native peoples, the Votes and the Ingrians, are very small, even among
the Baltic-Finnic peoples. Nevertheless, in the fairly limited region of
western Ingria, where their villages mostly lie, their station and their
share of the total population has been considerable up to the beginning of
the 20th century. Ingria
is Fennicised
At
the beginning of the 17th century Ingria was still mainly inhabited by
Orthodox Votes and Ingrians, and some Russians. The wars between Two
main groups of people and two main dialects developed. Some of the original
peoples, the Votes and the Ingrians, turned to Lutheranism and were thus
incorporated into the Finnish population. The Lutheran population of Ingria
grew and during the 17th century it comprised 70% of the total population. In
western Ingria, however, the change was much slower than in Eastern and The
villages and inhabitants of Kurkolanniemi
On
the western border of Ingria lies the The
surnames of the Finnish villagers have been recorded since the end of the
last century. In those days there were names such as Yllö, Kiiranen, Styf,
Jalonen, Karhu, Koivunen, Seppänen, Sippo, Merinen, Mäkinen, Pilli, Luukka,
Tupina, Vontti, Seppänen and Sykkä. These names can still be found
in the villages of Kurkolanniemi either among the villagers or among the
summer residents of the area. Most of the original families still reside in
the villages of Konnu and Kiiskala, but many families in other villages have
either had to move or have disappeared entirely and Russian families have
replaced these exiled inhabitants. An increasing amount of summer residents
from Matti
Kuusi (1982) has compared the surnames of Narvusi with the comparable Finnish
ones, establishing the probable origin of many families. Luukka and Sippo
seem to have come from the western shore of the Karelian Isthmus and Sykkä
from north of the city of The
Lutheran inhabitants of western Ingria do not belong to either of the two
large dialectal groups of Ingrian Finns, the savakko and the äyrämöinen
dialects. Volmari Porkka, a well-known expert on the linguistic situation of
Ingria, published a book in 1885 in which he related the story of Swedish
robbers who, according to tradition, settled in the Narvusi region. This
story has become popular and has been repeated in many other research
publications. It is still remembered even in the villages of Kurkolanniemi.
The bulk of the Finnish population in the Narvusi region, however, seems to
have come from the coastal parishes west of the Karelian Isthmus and some
even from further away in south-eastern The
villages on the western coast of Fishing
has also been a main source of livelihood for the inhabitants of
Kurkolanniemi. The fish was taken by boat to Today
the villages of Kurkolanniemi are inhabited by Russians and Ingrian Finns,
very few of whom live there year round. Only a few Ingrian Finnish families
have settled permanently in their old home district. Most of the old Ingrian
Finnish families of the area spend their winters in Many
old villages such as Kaipaala and Kurkola have completely disappeared in the
turmoils of this century. The Finnish population was forcibly transferred,
deported, sent to prison camps and executed, particularly during the 1930s
and 40s. Villages were thus left deserted. When Stalin died in 1953,
conditions began to stabilise and some of the old inhabitants of the area
were able to return, but hardly ever to their old homes since they had either
been destroyed or taken over by immigrants from the East, who were not
obliged to give them up. The
Finnish dialect of Kurkolanniemi
The
language spoken in the Ingrian Finnish villages of Kurkolanniemi and its
surroundings constitutes the Narvusi dialect, which together with the Rosona
dialects belongs to the The
Narvusi dialect differs in many ways from the two main Finnish dialects of
Ingria. It resembles mostly the dialect spoken on the northern shore of the The
dialects of south-eastern There
is some evidence of dialectal features spreading from other Ingrian Finnish
dialects to western Ingria. In the Narvusi area forms such as maa and pää
have long been common. However, diphthongization is beginning to affect these
and forms such as moata, voa, loajittu, soant, luaittiin, peällä, jiät
and piäl can now be heard. Another feature which is spreading, partly
due to the influence of Russian, is consonant palatalization, e.g. paikal'l'iset,
tul'imme, kuol'i, ol'i. The Narvusi dialect has long shown consonant
gradation in nk:ng, e.g. henki - hengen. Today, however, one
can also hear forms in which gradation has not occurred, e.g. vankille,
kuninkasta, kaupunkis. This is a feature of other Ingrian Finnish
dialects, but the Kurkolanniemi dialect may also have been influenced by
Estonian, in which gradation does not occur with nk. The
western Ingrian Finns have been in contact with both Ingrians and Votes for
hundreds of years. At the same time many Estonians have also lived in the
area and contacts with A
good example of such a mixing of dialects can be seen in the pronunciation of
long vowels in non-initial syllables in Kurkolanniemi. Sometimes they are
pronounced as in Finnish, e.g. puheltii, korjaat, Suomeen. At other
times they have been shortened, as in Estonian, e.g. osannet, lehmäkä.
Very often, however, their length is neither short nor long, but somewhere in
between, e.g. pantì, lähettì, ommà tallò. Variation in the length of
vowels is quite common among the informants in this volume. It does not seem
as if this feature has changed much over the last decades, at least not among
those speakers who have not been influenced by standard Finnish. The length
of these vowels is also affected by Estonian, which many of the Ingrian Finns
in the Narva region speak rather well. In Estonian long vowels in non-initial
syllables are always shortened, e.g. tuppa, kätte and not tupaan,
käteen. Another
phonological feature which has been affected by Ingrian, Votian and Estonian
is vowel quality in final syllables. Many of the vowels sound voiceless and
their quality is in general indefinite. For example, the opposition between e/ä
and e/a is blurred and the result is some kind of medial vowel in both
cases. This means that the endings of the adessive and the allative case can
hardly be distinguished, e.g. keväälle could have the meanings 'keväällä'
or 'keväälle'. The merging of case endings and inflections will
obviously lead to the gradual simplification of the whole inflectional
system. The
Kurkolanniemi dialect has a terminative case, as do Votian and Ingrian, e.g. metsää(s)saa
('up to the forest') and kyllää(s)saa ('up to the village'). The
terminative ending has arisen out of the postposition saakka, which
has been assimilated into the headword. In some cases the adessive case is
replaced by the -ka ending of the comitative case, e.g. venneenkä,
haaminkaa instead of veneellä, haamilla ('haavilla'). This
case ending has arisen out of the postposition kanssa. A similar case
ending can be found in Estonian, Ingrian and Votian, but it also exists in
the dialects of the northern coast of the The
Kurkola dialect does not make use of possessive suffixes, e.g. talo-ni,
talo-si, talo-nsa. Thus forms such as minun talo and hänen talo
are used, which is consistent with Estonian and Ingrian. As in Ingrian also,
the adessive case is used instead of the essive case in dates, e.g. kuuvenneltoist
elokuuta, kuuvelkymmenel toisel vuotta. Following Russian, on the other
hand, the genitive is often replaced by the adessive case in sentences of the
type Minun isäni oli Matti, which becomes Isä oli miulla Matti.
This construction is also found in Votian and Ingrian. The postpositional
construction so typical in Finnish (e.g. sodan jälkeen) is often
replaced by a preposition, e.g. jälkee soan, perrää soan. The dialects
of the Narvusi region have a considerable amount of lexical items from
Ingrian, Votian and Estonian, which are not found in the other Finnish
dialects of Ingria. The texts in this volume contain many references to these
lexical items. Most
of the Ingrian Finns in Kurkolanniemi have learned Russian in their childhood
or youth and all can read and write Russian. If they did not speak Russian,
the Ingrian Finns had to learn it when they were banished from their homes.
After World War II, most of the informants in this volume moved to
north-eastern Until
the 1930s Ingrian Finns learned standard Finnish in school, in church and
through their own publications. The effects of this standard are easily
visible. For example, the so-called general gemination, so common in
dialects, has often been supplanted by standard Finnish forms and in
consonant gradation the dialectal loss of the consonant is often replaced by
a weak d-type sound, e.g. sottaan and soan become sotaan
and soDan. In addition, the old -sse ending of the illative
case is often replaced by the -seen ending of standard Finnish. In these
texts one can also note that the plural partitive case is often without an
ending, as is common in these dialects, but there are some forms with the -ta/-tä
ending of standard Finnish. The
Finnish dialect of Kurkolanniemi shows irregularity in the phonology and
morphology and rich variation in idiolects, which is often the result of the
speaker not remembering the correct form. Therefore, the texts in the present
volume sometimes contain mixed forms which are not consistent with the old
dialect or standard Finnish, nor do they find their counterparts in the
closely related languages of the area, e.g. ompelukonne, olesivat,
pellotöissä, vanhemmat ja lapsemmat instead of ompelukone, olisivat,
peltotöissä, vanhemmat ja lapset. Until
the last few decades the old dialect has nevertheless survived in the
villages of Kurkolanniemi better than in the other parts of the Narvusi
region, which may be due to the geographical location of these villages. The
only road leading to them has been a "tank road" built in the 1930s
for army purposes. The closest neighbours have been Ingrians and Votes and it
is only on the other side of these neighbours that one finds the next Finnish
villages. In the 1960s the old dialect was still used as a means of daily
communication among the middle-aged and the elderly. Differences between
villages, however, had already levelled out since most Ingrian Finns were not
able to return to their old homesteads, or even villages, after World War II. Today,
as we are approaching the new millennium, the linguistic situation in
Kurkolanniemi is somewhat different. The dialect is still spoken, but the
youngest speakers are almost invariably over 50. However, the speakers with
the best command of the dialect are not necessarily the oldest ones. This is
due to the fact that the oldest generation has attended Finnish-speaking
schools and learned standard Finnish. The schools of Ingria became Russian in
1937 and at the same time Lutheran churches were abolished and publications
in Finnish banned. Connections
with The
freer conditions during glasnost and perestroika, the slackening of the
so-called command economy and the dissolution of the
http://www.netcity.ru/~inkpulp/
http://www.peaceportal.com/unponetwork/Inkeri/ http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/3818/INKERI.HTM
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