Home    Views    February Views

		Points of View Kathryn Remlinger February 25, 2002 Guest Column © 2002 Kathryn Remlinger Published with Permission Photos © 2002 Keweenaw Now

The Finnish "Brogue" of the Copper Country

Several years ago I was talking with some friends at their dining room table in Painesdale. We were talking about talk, specifically about talk in the Copper Country, the "ehs," " hehs," "you betchas," "chooks," "swampers" and "holy whahs." We were also talking the sounds that make this unique brogue what it is: the Os, Ds and Ts for THs, the accentuated Ts, Ks, and Ps at the ends of words.

The conversation with my friends was the seed that has grown into a long-term project studying this local dialect (see author's note, below).  My research project is based on interviews with residents of the Copper Country and has the goals of describing the dialect and explaining how and why it varies, as well as why it may be changing.

As part of her research on the Copper Country dialect, guest author Kate Remlinger, left, interviews Kathy (Anderson) Abbott, third from right; her mother, Shirley (Ojala) Anderson, far right; and three of Kathy Abbott's daughters -- from right, Marika, 4; Kate, 16; and Alina, 14. Originally from Hancock, the Abbotts and Shirley, who are of Finnish origin, live just outside of Houghton. Kathy Abbott is a student at Michigan Technological University, where her husband, Mike, is employed. Her oldest daughter, Kelly, is also an MTU student. The Abbotts' second daughter, Shannon (Abbott) Aho, lives in Ironwood and attends Gogebic Community College.

As many people from the area will tell you, the Copper Country dialect is strongly influenced by Finnish. This is in part due to the fact that a large proportion of the immigrants were Finnish. As Finnish immigrants to the area learned English, the sounds, vocabulary and grammar of Finnish merged with those elements of American English. An interesting fact is that these influences from Finnish have developed and spread over time so that speakers of the dialect who have no Finnish heritage or who have little or no knowledge of or exposure to Finnish continue to use these features.

It is also interesting that many other languages were spoken in the Copper Country during the mining boom. At one time there were newspapers printed here in 12 different languages. Yet Finnish is the language that has had the most significant and lasting effect on the dialect. But why is this when there were so many other languages in the area, from Slovenian to Canadian French?

The strong influence of Finnish is in part due to the large Finnish immigration to the Keweenaw Peninsula during the late 1800s and continuing into the early 1900s. It is also a result of the tendency of Finnish settlers to live in rural areas and to keep in contact with other Finnish speakers. Finnish Americans in this area have continued to speak, read and write Finnish for usually two generations, sometimes more.

Thus the Finnish language was maintained, and as it came into repeated contact with English it affected the sounds, vocabulary and phrases of the local dialect. In contrast, other immigrants to the Copper Country tended to live in towns where they had more opportunity to interact with a wider variety of speakers of other languages, including English, and often lost their first language after one generation. Therefore, the characteristics of these other languages leveled, or got ironed out; and the languages themselves had little effect on the variety of English spoken here. Nonetheless, a few influences from other languages remain, but these influences tend to be limited to words. For example, common words have been borrowed from Canadian French, including chook for a knit winter cap; eh and heh as in, "Have a nice day, eh?" and "That's a pretty dress, heh?"

The use of yah for yeah is most likely a borrowing from German and Swedish. The traditional Upper Peninsula pasty was brought over by speakers (and cooks) from Cornwall, England, who also most likely gave the area the words bush, meaning forest or woods, and pank, meaning to pack or make compact, as in "pank snow," "pank berries in a bucket," or "pank powder into a blasting hole in mine rock." This kind of word borrowing is typical of any variety of English; over two thirds of English words are borrowed. However, stronger indications of one language's influence on another are borrowed sounds and grammatical structures.

It is Finnish that has most obviously left its mark on the local dialect; not only have words been borrowed, but sounds and sentence structures have been adopted as well. For example, language contact between Finnish and English has created the use of a d sound for the "hard" th, which is exemplified in the well-known bumper sticker created by Jack Bowers of Marquette, "Say yah to da UP, eh," and Jeff Daniels' film title, Escanaba in da Moonlight. Likewise, the "soft" th in the words both and south is often pronounced as t. These two sound variations exist in the dialect because Finnish doesn't have either th sound. In fact, these are somewhat rare sounds: Few languages have them. Finnish sounds are also heard in some of the vowels: the "low" a (pronounced like "ah"), often heard in words like pasty and bath; the "raised" o as in boat; and the ou in house, typically pronounced like o. 

Similarly, other language features also reflect the contact between English and Finnish. A characteristic sentence structure feature is the "dropping" of the preposition to, when it indicates location: "Let's go mall, I'm going casino tonight, and I wasn't even going to go post office." The omission of to comes from the fact that Finnish doesn't use to as a preposition -- a separate word before a noun -- as English does. Instead, the meaning of to is included as a word ending, or suffix, on the noun -- an ending called a postposition.

Another feature is the "dropping" of the, again a result of the grammatical rules of Finnish, which doesn't include the use of articles -- words like a, an and the.

Notable vocabulary features include borrowed words from Finnish, especially nicknames -- Gussu for Gus or Mutti for Matt -- and food -- maito for milk, gorpu for cinnamon and sugar toast and pannukakku for an oven-baked pancake.

The dialect also includes colloquial terms such as "choppers," for long-armed mittens with a removable flap over the fingers, "make wood" for splitting wood, "bakery" for sweet baked goods and "camp," meaning a cabin or cottage.

As with any dialect, the sounds, words, phrases and sentence structures combine in unique ways to create the distinct Finnish brogue of the Copper Country. By examining the reasons for the features of the dialect, we can come to understand that its characteristics are based on grammatical structures and are, therefore, rule-governed. For example, the accentuated Ts, Ks, and Ps, occur in regular, predictable places in words; and the "dropping" of "to" is a direct result of Finnish grammar. The rules that make up regional dialects may vary from mainstream American English; but they are different, rather than "wrong," "incorrect" or "bad English."

Unfortunately, the prejudice that is often attached to accents is not grounded in linguistic fact, but instead in social prejudice about certain groups of speakers. By understanding the roots of language we can not only come to appreciate its beauty, but also understand the reasons for its structure and use.

Author's Note: It is important to note that this is not the only dialect of the Copper Country; however, it is the one most associated with the area and typically spoken by the majority of life-long residents. Dialects vary here, and everywhere, as a result of speakers' backgrounds and historical events that have brought speakers of different languages and dialects together.

Editor's Note: Author Kathryn Remlinger will also present a Humanities Colloquium, "Accent with an Attitude," from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 27, in Room 120 (the Choir Room, in the south-west corner of the building). The room is accessible from the first floor of Walker: Head east into the bridge connecting the two buildings; take two right turns, and then a left into the room. (Watch for the "Choir Room" signs inside the Rozsa.) Remlinger is Associate Professor Linguistics and English at Grand Valley State University. She received her Ph.D. from the Rhetoric and Technical Communications program at Michigan Technological University in 1995.

Learn more about the author of this guest column, Kathryn Remlinger.

Visit the Keweenaw Now discussion forums to comment on this article.

Note: Views expressed by our guest columnists are not necessarily the views of Keweenaw Now.