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Helsinki slang or stadin slangi ('Helsinki's slang', from Swedish language stad]], 'city'; see etymology) is a local dialect and a sociolect of the Finnish language mainly used in the capital city of Helsinki. It is characterized by its abundance of foreign 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 Finland Swedish- and Finnish-speaking youth lived together with Russian language, German language and various other language minorities. Helsinki slang is not a typical dialect of Finnish, because unlike many other parts of Finland, the Helsinki area was predominantly Swedish-speaking during the time when the city of Helsinki originally evolved, and thus Helsinki slang is characterised by an unusual, strikingly large number of obvious foreign loanwords. Nevertheless, Helsinki slang is counted as a dialect on its own right, among the purer dialects of other parts of Finland.
Grammatically Helsinki slang is based on colloquial Finnish. It is characterized by a large number of words originally borrowed from Swedish, German and Russian, but nowadays chiefly English language. The loanwords replace some of even the most mundane Finnish-language words (closest kin words, food, die, etc.) with foreign alternatives. However, when spoken by a native Finnish speaker, all words are inflected by the rules of spoken Finnish, and the language sounds distinctively Finnish.
The language's history can generally 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 would be capable in modern slang, because it incorporates a far greater number of Swedish, German and Russian loan-words than the modern variation. Old slang is mostly spoken by older Helsinkians, many of whom consider it the only true slang.
The modern variety has evolved side-by-side with the growing influence of English-language starting from the 1950s. It is thus characterized by a greater influence of the English language and proper Finnish language while the influence of Swedish, German and Russian has declined. The modern slang is healthy and continues to evolve. It is spoken to varying degrees by almost all native Helsinkians.
More importantly, Helsinki slang is not strictly speaking a slang in the word's modern definition, but rather a dialect and a sociolect. However, the term slang has stuck since long, especially as the language refers to itself as slangi.
With the new capital status, the city's centre was rebuilt and a continuous growth was sustained. By 1880 the population had grown almost ten-fold to 43,000,See the article History of Helsinki 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 the 1870 census 57% of Helsinkians spoke Swedish as their home language, 26% Finnish, 12% Russian and 2% German, while also increasing numbers of residents were capable in both Swedish and Finnish. Helsinki slang is believed to have first begun to evolve among the mixed-language working-class people of the 1880s. In addition to Swedish and Finnish, influence came from Russian language and German language.
Helsinki slang is thought to have formed naturally as a sort of a common language for the mixed-language population who due to industrialization moved into the same neighbourhoods for employment, and had no single common language initially. 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 .
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 neighbourhoods 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.
The first known 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):
italic=no labbiksesta, italic=no Aasiksen italic=no Supiksen, italic=no Espikselle, italic=no piikis. italic=no Studikselle italic=no Hudista italic=no Kaisaniemi.
| +Helsinki slang vocabulary development | |||||
| 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 refugees within their own country. Many of them settled in Helsinki while, in the society at large, the transition from the Agrarian 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 Spoken Finnish while still strongly borrowing from the old slang.
The following generations also grew up in a different kind of cultural environment, where more abundant amounts of foreign culture, especially entertainment such as and music, was, and continues to be, available. The cultural influence of the English-speaking world, especially the , grew, and increasing numbers 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.
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. A similar process happened with the slang word fiude, car, which retains no letters in common with the original word "auto."
Some distinctive aspects in Helsinki slang are:
| Hey, tramdriver, push the door shut, there's a cold wind in here, do you understand? |
| Think, Little Helper, how easy it would be to clean with this! |
| On my feet I have ton shoes. They don't weigh a ton, they cost that. Sometimes a song I sing to them, when I don't sing to others. |
| You should grasp the need to acquire one, so you don't need to pretend 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 , 'to do, to work' and , '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. The same sentence would be similarly erroneous in proper Finland Swedish as well.
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