Finglish

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The term Finglish was coined by professor Martti Nisonen in the 1920s in Hancock, Michigan, United States, to describe a mixture of Finnish and English he encountered in America. The word is first recorded in English in 1943.^[1]

As the term describes, Finglish is a macaronic mixture of the English and Finnish languages. In Finglish, the English lexical items are nativized and inserted into the framework of Finnish morphology and syntax. Many consider the adoption of English loanwords into Finnish phonology, morphology, and syntax not to be proper Finnish, but rather a language in between. The term Finglish can imply that this adoption of loanwords and usage of language is incomplete and somehow less legitimate. However, this use of loanwords and code-switching amongst bilingual speakers is typical in communities experiencing language shift. The Finnish immigrants of the United States learned English out of necessity to succeed in their jobs; the results of this resulted in what is known as Finglish.^[2] Finglish is also found in any place in Finland where international contact and popular culture exists, including Finnish language learners. This more recent (post-1980s) incorporation of English loanwords into modern Finnish as a result of globalization and advances in technology is a separate phenomenon from the North American Finnish, which developed primarily in the late 1800s to mid-1900s, though there are some similarities in form and function.