Talk:Kven language

Template:RFMF Is the dialect mutually intelligble from Standard Finnish? The fact that not even SIL has given them their own language makes me skeptical to the classification as a separate language.

Peter ^Isotalo 01:56, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I now see that there is in fact a separate Ethnologue/ISO 639-3 entry, "fkv", (Ethnologuue, ISO 639-3). Adding this to the article. Lukas ^(T.|@) 08:08, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok, but what about mutual intelligibility? The article says nothing about it. There should also be more information about Kven itself.

Peter ^Isotalo 12:16, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

The Ethonologue entry has a bit on mutual intelligibility. I agree the article should be fleshed out with some real linguistic information. You should have seen the mess it was in before I did that makeshift tidy-up! Typical result of people writing language articles who are more interested in national ideology than in the language itself... Lukas ^(T.|@) 12:31, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

The idea that Kven and Finnish are two separate languages is a peculiar one. Today, Kven is mostly spoken in places like Bugøynes and Vadsø. The ancestors of the Kvens here only came in the 1860ies, during the great famine in Finland. Obviously, they mix in Norwegian words, like varmalinki (from Norwegian værmelding=weather forecast), but apart from that it is Finnish in structure and pronounciation. Dialects spoken further west, in Børselv, Alta and Nordreisa differ more, since the immigration took place around 1740 onwards. Still, people from Finland have no trouble understanding them. Languages like English, French and Spanish differ far more in the various countries where they are spoken than Finnish. It is rather strange that speakers of Finnish in Norway and Sweden are so eager to distance themselves from the language of Finland, that is after all at their doorstep.