Proto-Karelian,[1][2][3] also known as Old Karelian[4][5] was a language once spoken on the western shore of Lake Ladoga in Karelia, from which the dialects of the Karelian language (White, Southern and Livvi), Ludic, the Ingrian language,[6] as well as the South Karelian and Savonian dialects of the Finnish language have developed.[7] It was spoken around the 12th and 13th centuries, and the language was likely quite uniform with little regional variance.[8] The Eastern Finnish dialects developed from Proto-Karelian when the language of the inhabitants who had moved to the area around present-day Mikkeli mixed with western, likely Tavastian, speakers of Finnish. The Livvi-Karelian dialect and Ludic developed from the mixture of the old Vepsian language spoken by the Vepsians of the Olonets Isthmus and Proto-Karelian.[9][10][11][12]
Innovations in Proto-Karelian include: the disappearance of *d and *g between vowels, the plural stem *-lOi-, the labialization of *e in post-syllables before labial consonants and the use of "männä" (with ä instead of e) for the word "mennä" (to go).[13][14] The Old-Karelian language had already been in contact with Old Russian speakers within its early stages.[15]
^Land, Isaac (2023-06-16). Lake Ladoga: The Coastal History of the Greatest Lake in Europe. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. ISBN978-951-858-630-5. Karelian language, the eastern dialects of Finnish, the Ludic language spoken on the western shore of Lake Onega, and the Ingrian language spoken in Ingermanland, presumably all derive from a language called proto-Karelian, which may
^Strazny, Philipp (2013-02-01). Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Taylor & Francis. ISBN978-1-135-45523-1. Proto-Karelian made up the basis for Ingrian, but Karelian itself has developed in close contact with Veps.