Dialects
Dialects are geographically distinct varieties of a language. They grew up at a time when most people lived and worked in their native village or parish all their lives. This resulted in distinct linguistic features characterising the local community.
The Institute has comprehensive collections of dialect corpora. The Word Archive of Finnish Dialects contains millions of words and sayings collected since the beginning of the 20th century. The Tape Archive of the Finnish Language (established in 1959) contains recordings of dialects from basically every parish in Finland.
The Dictionary of Finnish Dialects is based on the word archive of Finnish dialects. It comprises eight printed volumes. Today, it is published online.
The Institute’s Finnish and Swedish webpages contain a lot of information about Finnish and Finland-Swedish dialects. There are also text and audio samples.
