Finnish Kalo language

Finnish Kalo
kaalengo tšimb
Native toFinland, Sweden
Native speakers
10,000 in Finland (2001 census)[1]
1,700 in Sweden (2009)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3rmf
Glottologkalo1256

Finnish Kalo (Kalo Finnish Romani: kaalengo tšimb[2]) is a language of the Romani language family (a subgroup of Indo-European) spoken by Finnish Kale. The language is related to but not mutually intelligible with Scandoromani or Angloromani.

Finnish Kalo has 6,000–10,000 speakers and many young people do not know the language. The majority of speakers are from older generations and about two-thirds of the Romanis in Finland still speak the language. There have been some revival efforts. Dictionaries and grammar books have been produced and some universities offer Finnish Kalo as a course. It has some similarities to the Romani languages in Hungary, where stress is placed on the first syllable of the word. This may be related to the fact that both Finnish and Hungarian words have fixed word-initial stress, a feature that would have diffused to the Romani languages. Finnish Kalo has been taught in schools since the late 1980s, with some courses available as early as the 1970s.[3]

  1. ^ a b Finnish Kalo at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  2. ^ ”Vela pinsiba, at doola horttas dikkena tšiȟkeske, so me som” — Kaalengo kentengo tšiȟko aaȟȟiba ta horttibongo tšatšjiba
  3. ^ Granqvist (2001)