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{{Short description|Local dialect and a sociolect of the Finnish language}}

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Helsinki slang or ('Helsinki's slang', from Swedish , '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 loan words not found in the other Finnish dialects.WEB,weblink Finnish Slang Research, Nuolijärvi, P, December 9, 1998, 2009-09-30, Helsinki slang first evolved in the late 19th century as a sociolect of the multilingual Helsinki working-class communities, where Swedish- and Finnish-speaking youth lived together with Russian, German and various other language minorities.WEB,weblink Slangi.net: Slangin historia, Kauhanen, Erkki Johannes, 2002-06-01, Slangi.net, Finnish, 2009-09-30,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20100203160855weblink">weblink 2010-02-03, dead, 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. The loanwords replace some of even the most mundane Finnish-language words (closest kin words, food, die, etc.){{ref|1}} 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 () and the new or modern slang (). 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.{{Cn|date=June 2022}}The modern variety has evolved side-by-side with the growing influence of English-language youth subcultures 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.

Etymology

File:Hämeentie street renovation in Helsinki, Finland, 2019 September.jpg|thumb|(Hämeentie]], the second longest street in Helsinki, was under construction in 2019-2020. The yellow-blue sign, humorously written in Helsinki slang, says: "Cars are gone, soon we walk and cycle. A better Hämeentie is on the way.")Helsinkians themselves never refer to their slang as Helsinki slang(i) but instead as or simply . is a slang word itself, borrowed from the Swedish (wiktionary:stad#Swedish|stad), 'city'. Literally, the name would mean 'slang of the city', but always means just the city of Helsinki in the slang – all other cities are unconditionally referred to by the common Finnish word for 'city' ().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 .

History

(File:Helsingfors (Helsinki) Le Quai (1890-1900).jpg|thumb|300px|Helsinki in 1890s){{See also|History of Helsinki}}

Roots in the 1880s

Helsinki was founded in 1550 by Gustav I of Sweden in the coastal Swedish-speaking region of Finland.BOOK, Paunonen, Heikki, The Finnish Language in Helsinki, Bengt Nordberg, Walter de Gruyter, 1993, 233–245, 3-11-011184-5,weblink 1 October 2009, When in 1809 Sweden lost Finland to Imperial Russia, Helsinki became the capital of Finland by the decision of Alexander I of Russia. At this time, Helsinki was almost unilingually Swedish. In 1820, for example, the city was home to about 4,500 people, only 5% of whom were Finnish-speaking.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 began to evolve among the mixed-language working-class people of the 1880s.WEB,weblink Kirjastot.fi: Kysymys slangin varhaishistoriasta, 2003-07-25, kirjastot.fi, Finnish, 2009-09-30, In addition to Swedish and Finnish, influence came from Russian and German.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 native languages.File:Vallila, Suvannontie, July 2005.jpg|thumb|right|300px|VallilaVallilaThe 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 's roots as a pidgin language or the lingua franca of this multilingual population.

Youth's language

From early on Helsinki slang was especially the language of the youth. It could be thought as a social language code, by which the multicultural and multilingual working class youth, a speech community, formed their own sociolect. The initiative for this grew at first from their needs of basic everyday communication, but soon probably came to signify a certain social status as well. Johannes Kauhanen notes on his slang history page that the first speakers of Helsinki slang were probably not the countryside-born agriculturists who moved to work in Helsinki, but their children.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):

Modernization{| class"wikitable" style"clear:right;float:right;margin-left:1em" padding"20px"|+Helsinki slang vocabulary development

! Years! Finnish! Swedish! Russian! English! German! 1890–1920Heikki Paunonen>20}}75}}