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Meänkieli (lit. "our language") is a group of distinct Finnish dialects spoken in the northernmost part of Sweden along the valley of the Torne River. Linguistically, Meänkieli consists of two dialect sub-groups (Tornio and Jällivaara dialects) of the Peräpohjola dialects, which belong to the Western dialects of Finnish.〔http://www.internetix.ofw.fi/opinnot/opintojaksot/8kieletkirjallisuus/aidinkieli/murteet/perapohj.html〕 For political and historical reasons it has the status of a minority language in Sweden. In Swedish nowadays, the language is usually referred to as Meänkieli also by the authorities; a common, and older, name is ''tornedalsfinska'' which literally means "Torne Valley Finnish". Meänkieli refers to Torne Valley Finnish (also spoken on the Finnish side of the Torne River) and the Gällivare dialects which belong to the larger Peräpohjola dialect group (''see Dialect chart''). Meänkieli is distinguished from standard Finnish by the absence of modern 19th and 20th Century developments in Finnish. Meänkieli also contains many loanwords from Swedish pertaining to daily life. However, the frequency of loanwords is not exceptionally high when compared to some other Finnish dialects: for example the dialect of Rauma has roughly as many loanwords as Meänkieli. Meänkieli lacks two of the grammatical cases used in standard Finnish - the comitative and the instructive (they are used mostly in literary, official language in Finland). In Finland, Meänkieli is generally seen as a dialect of Northern Finnish. There is also a dialect of Meänkieli spoken around Gällivare which differs even more from standard Finnish. == History == Before 1809, all of what is today Finland was an integral part of Sweden. The language border went west of the Torne Valley area, so a small part of today's Sweden, along the modern border, was historically Finnish speaking (just like most areas along the eastern coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, areas that were ceded to Russia and are part of modern Finland, were historically Swedish speaking, and to a large extent still are). The area where Meänkieli is spoken that is now Finnish territory (apart from the linguistically Sami and Swedish parts of this geographical area), formed a dialect continuum within the Realm of Sweden. Since the area east of Torne River was ceded to Russia in 1809, the language developed in partial isolation from standard Finnish. In the 1880s, the Swedish state decided that all citizens of the country should speak Swedish. Part of the reason was military; people close to the border speaking the language of the neighbouring country rather than the major language in their own country might not be trusted in case of war. Another reason was that Finns were regarded as being of another "race." The official Swedish opinion was that "the Sami and the Finnish tribes belong() more closely to Russia than to Scandinavia".〔L.W.A Douglas, ''Hur vi förlorade Norrland'' – How We Lost Norrland, Stockholm 1889, p.17〕 Beginning around this time, the schools in the area only taught in Swedish, and children were forbidden under penalty of physical punishment from speaking their own language at school even during class breaks. Native Meänkieli speakers were prevented by the authorities from learning Standard Finnish as a school subject for decades, which resulted in the survival of the language only in oral form. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Meänkieli dialects」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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