This post discusses vowel harmony and diphthongs/triphthongs found in Karelian
Vowel harmony is a phenomenon found in many different languages, both in the Uralic language family (e.g. Finnish and Hungarian) and outside of it (e.g. Turkish). If you already know about Finnish vowel harmony, congrats, Livvi Karelian vowels work (almost) the exact same way!
In languages with vowel harmony, vowels are separated into different classes which determine which vowels any given word can contain. If vowel harmony is a new concept to you, this video discusses a number of languages that have vowel harmony, as well as how it works in Finnish: https://youtu.be/fA_slID7tEY. If you still don’t get it, don’t stress! It’s such a common feature of the language, you’ll catch on in no time, probably without even noticing it.
In Karelian, vowels are split between front and back vowels. Front and back refers to the position of your tongue when producing the sound. However, you don’t have to be a linguist to master this. The front vowels in Karelian are “y, ö, and ä” while the back vowels are “u, o, and a”. With the exception of loan words and compound words, words in Karelian may only contain either front vowels or back vowels. If an ending is applied to a word (more on this in a later post), the vowels in that ending change to match the frontness or backness of the other vowels in the word.
“e and i“ can exist in any word. However, if they are the only vowels in a word, any endings applied to the word will take front vowels. Therefore, they are usually referred to by Karelian grammars as front vowels.
Let’s see a few examples:
Juomine (stem: juomise-) “drink” (noun) -- this word contains back vowels and the vowels “i and e”. This makes it a back vowel word. The partitive ending -tu/-ty will then take its back vowel form: juomistu.
Syömine (stem: syömise-) “food” -- this word contains front vowels and the vowels “i and e”. This makes it a front vowel word. The partitive ending -tu/ty will then take its front vowel form: syömisty
Using the “we” ending for verbs -mmo/mmö: astummo “we walk” vs näimmö “we see”
A word that only contains “i and e”: kiireh “hurry” (noun) vs kiirehty “hurry” (partitive case)
Using the essive case for nouns (to be discussed in a later post) -nnu/nny: Erähänny päivänny pienenny lapsennu “One day as a small child...”
In Livvi Karelian, clitics, or little particles that attach to the end of a word, do not change to match vowel harmony like they do in Finnish (as well as northern dialects of Karelian). These include:
-go, the interrogative particle:
Oletgo? “Are you?” vs. Näitgo? “Do you see?”
-häi, the emphasis particle:
Sehäi on hyvä “It [really] is good” vs. Opastujathäi ollah hyvät “The teachers [really] are good”
-päi, attached to certain locative cases to clarify their meaning (more on this later):
Lähten Petroskoilpäi “I’m leaving [from] Petrozavodsk” vs. Lähten kylyspäi “I’m leaving [from] the sauna”
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Diphthongs and triphthongs
Diphthongs are the combination of two vowels within the same syllable. Try saying the words “eye”, “how”, and “boy”. How many vowels do they have? (hint: two). How many syllables do they have? (hint: one) Karelian contains a boat load of diphthongs and a bunch of triphthongs (syllables which contain three vowels). In fact, it is impossible for a Karelian word to have two or more vowels next to each other without them belonging to the same syllable.
An example of vowels that are next to each other, but not part of the same syllable, can be found in the English word “aortic”. Phonologically speaking, this word contains three syllables and two diphthongs: [ei.our.tik].
Look at the following Livvi Karelian words and think about how many syllables they might have if they were part of your own native language. (a “.” is used to separate syllables):
oi.gie.du “right” (partitive case)
piäs.tiä “to pass, get to, get into”
ma.guau “he/she/it sleeps”
ru.bieu “he/she/it begins, starts”
har.mual “on/from the gray one”
In practice, knowing about diphthongs and triphthongs won’t be of much importance to you if your goal is only to use Karelian, rather than study it linguistically. The word “aortic” wouldn’t really be pronounced all that differently if it only had two syllables [eiour.tic]. However, it can come in handy when trying to understand the language as a whole, as well as to make the smoothness of your speech sound more natural.
If you speak Finnish, you’ll notice that for cognates which contain a long vowel in Finnish, the Karelian word contains a diphthong. There is a regular rule that can help you determine which Karelian diphthong will be in the Finnish long vowel’s place. This will be discussed in a future post. The only long vowels allowed in Livvi Karelian are “ii, uu, and yy”. Other dialects allow even fewer long vowels.
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