Appendix:Historical Finnish spelling

The written Finnish language is usually divided into multiple periods: Old Literary Finnish (, from the earliest writing in the 1540s until 1810 or 1820), Early Modern Finnish (, until the 1870s-1880s) and Modern Finnish (since then). The language norms, including spelling, have changed at times dramatically during these time periods.

This page describes examples of differences between Finnish spelling in these time periods and modern Finnish spelling. In general, any point that applies to later time periods also applies to earlier ones.

Old Literary Finnish

 * The spelling was not all as consistent as during the later periods. In particular, any spellings from before the 1642 Bible translation were often wildly inconsistent.
 * The vowels and  were not spelled consistently. It was quite common to spell an  with an  (or at times even ), and to a lesser extent also vice versa. In later syllables  could also simply become.
 * &rarr;        &rarr;         &rarr;         &rarr;
 * The vowel could be spelled  and was generally spelled  in diphthongs.
 * &rarr;        &rarr;
 * The vowel could be spelled  or in some cases.
 * &rarr;        &rarr;
 * The vowel could be spelled, , (the following three especially in later syllables) ,  or.
 * &rarr;        &rarr;
 * The vowel could be spelled  in later syllables or  in diphthongs. On the other hand, the now-diphthong  was often spelled  (or ).
 * &rarr;        &rarr;
 * The combination was not consistently separated from the above.
 * &rarr;        &rarr;
 * Vowel length was not marked consistently, if at all (for instance, it was rarely marked in later syllables). Long was spelled . Consonant length was sometimes marked, other times not.
 * &rarr;        &rarr;         &rarr;
 * The consonant was generally spelled  or even  or . The vowel  could be spelled  or.
 * &rarr;        &rarr;         &rarr;
 * The plosives, , was spelled as voiced (, ,  respectively) after a nasal or liquid.
 * &rarr;        &rarr;         &rarr;
 * The consonant (if not affected by the previous point) was often spelled  in certain environments. Specifically,  was used before back vowels and  before front vowels. Before 1642, it could even be spelled  prior to a . A geminated, if expressed, was.
 * &rarr;        &rarr;
 * The consonant was often spelled, but its inconsistent spelling meant it could also appear as e.g..
 * &rarr;        &rarr;
 * The consonant could be spelled, or (especially after a nasal or liquid).
 * &rarr;
 * The consonant was sometimes,  or  at the end of words, or  in the middle of words.
 * &rarr;
 * was almost invariably spelled.
 * &rarr;
 * The main literary norm was Southwestern Finnish.
 * The inessive ending (modern standard ) was often simply.
 * Vowels followed by a (morphological) in the same syllable might become nasalized, which would often be written with a tilde.
 * (< ), which in Southwestern Finnish was still a dental fricative, was generally spelled.
 * &rarr;
 * ( in Southwestern Finnish) could be spelled variously as, or rarely even according to other dialectal forms.  eventually became the early standard in the 1642 Bible translation.
 * &rarr;         &rarr;
 * The weak grade of ( in Southwestern Finnish) could appear as, , or sometimes  when followed by a front vowel or  when followed by a labial vowel.
 * &rarr;         &rarr;          &rarr;          &rarr;          &rarr;
 * The consonant, when , could be spelled or even.
 * &rarr;
 * Capitalization in Old Literary Finnish was used more liberally than today, probably after German influence.

After the 1642 Bible translation, many inconsistencies were addressed, yet others remained. was still generally spelled or  depending on the following vowel, the spelling of the  in e.g.  was inconsistent between  and, although the former began to gain ground in the early 18th century. Vowel length was still not often marked in later syllables, although illative forms specifically were often spelled with long vowels in the ending.

By the 1776 Bible translation, had fallen out of use. By the end of the period, also fell out of use and was replaced by modern,  was replaced by modern  and plosives began to be written as unvoiced after liquids and nasals. As the norm shifted increasingly to Tavastian and later to a more mixed-dialect form, and as the sound was lost from the southweatern dialects as well, / disappeared.

Sample

 * See also: Appendix:Historical Finnish spelling/Mark 1:1-8

From the front page of the first Finnish primer (and the first known Finnish-language book ever), (1543) by, comes this famous poem (two options are given for the last three columns, see notes):

Notes for the above:
 * There is debate on whether the in the first line should be interpreted as a third-person singular verb form  or an imperative form . Both options are listed. The third-person singular form is supported by the fact that short consonants were only rarely spelled as long, and the grammar in line 3 (genitive-accusative, as opposed to nominative-accusative, which would be expected from an imperative form). VVKS  and Häkkinen (2007) both support an imperative, however. This requires explaining the genitive-accusative as e.g. a way to force the rhyme (see below), as a possible feature (some attestations of the genitive-accusative with imperative forms may be found), or as a grammatical error.
 * In either case, is an obsolete dialectal form found in the southwestern dialects. In all modern Finnish dialects and Standard Finnish, the final vowel in the verb is different.
 * The spelling of as  in line 3, with  as the final vowel, is not readily explainable. It is not etymological, nor known from dialects. This appears to be only one of a few times Agricola spelled the word this way (all others have the expected  as the final vowel), which could suggest, along with some other notes below, that this was simply done by Agricola in order to force a rhyme.
 * Line 4 is in a slightly awkward spot to force a rhyme; it is referring to the "old and young" in line 1, i.e. that anyone who knows Finnish can learn "the commandments and the mind of God". The dialectal form for the third-person plural, identical to the second-person singular, is seen here. On the contrary, if the line 1 is in the imperative mood, it may instead be a second-person form after all, although it would have to be in the plural number to be grammatical. Apocope may be involved.
 * if lines 1-4 were expressed in a more natural order, it could look something like this: ""
 * Alternatively, the first word in line 4 could instead be, which would make it "so you know/learn the Finnish language", as put forward by Häkkinen (2007).
 * The in line 8 is ungrammatical, but may be, again, Agricola forcing a rhyme. A partitive form is expected, and the gap is bridged in the 'normalized' spelling by implying a dropped final.
 * Line 10 displays a 'dative' construction using the genitive ; this feature is found in old literary texts and is probably foreign influence.

The from  (1543):

Early Modern Finnish

 * Prior to the 20th century, the letter was usually spelled as, as Finnish was mostly written in blackletter fonts (particularly fraktur). It was not uncommon in 19th-century sources to distinguish Finnish text from text in other languages by typesetting the Finnish in fraktur or blackletter and the other language in Roman type or antiqua. For example, 19th-century Finnish-Swedish dictionaries typeset Finnish in blackletter and Swedish in Roman type. The first texts to make the transition to Roman type were academic texts in the mid-19th century (although Roman type was also used sporadically before then), but popular texts often took until the 20th century; the first Bible in Roman type was published in 1912, and some newspapers only made the transition in the 1940s. Long s also largely fell out of use concurrently with the transition from blackletter to Roman type.
 * wuori &rarr;       ſinun &rarr;
 * The modern norm regarding and  in verbs had not yet become standardized. It would take until the 1950s for these to finally become fully standardized.
 * &rarr;        &rarr;
 * was not consistently spelled when preceded by a (e.g. in  and many  nouns).
 * &rarr;        &rarr;
 * in diphthongs in later syllables was standardized only later, e.g. that is for adjectives and  for diminutives.
 * &rarr;        &rarr;
 * Many conjunctions with were still written as one word.
 * &rarr;        &rarr;