Karelian language

Karelian
karjala, karjalan kieli kard'al, kard'alan kiel' kariela, karielan kieli
Native to	Russia, Finland
Region	Republic of Karelia, Tver Oblast (Tver Karelia)
Ethnicity	Karelians
Native speakers	9000 native speakers, 14,000 total (Russia) (2020)[1] 11,000 fluent speakers, 30,000 with some knowledge (Finland)[2][3]
Language family	Uralic Finnic Northern Finnic Proto-Karelian Karelian
Dialects	Livvi Northern Southern Bjarmian †[4]
Writing system	Latin (Karelian alphabet) Cyrillic (in the past, 1820–1940, before the Latin script was officially adopted in 1989)[5]
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Finland[6]  Russia  Republic of Karelia[7]
Language codes
ISO 639-2	krl
ISO 639-3	krl
Glottolog	kare1335
ELP	Karelian
Distribution of Karelian and Ludic at the beginning of the 20th century[8][9]
Karelian is classified as "definitely endangered" by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger[10]
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Karelian (/kəˈriːlɪən, kəˈriːljən/; Karelian Proper and Livvi-Karelian: karjala, karjalan kieli; Ludian: kard'al, kard'alan kiel'; Tver Karelian: kariela, karielan kieli) is a Finnic language spoken mainly in the Russian Republic of Karelia. Linguistically, Karelian is closely related to the Finnish dialects spoken in eastern Finland, and some Finnish linguists have even classified Karelian as a dialect of Finnish, but nowadays it is widely considered a separate language. Karelian is not to be confused with the Southeastern dialects of Finnish, sometimes referred to as karjalaismurteet ("Karelian dialects") in Finland.^[11] In the Russian 2020–2021 census, around 9,000 people spoke Karelian natively, but around 14,000 said they were able to speak the language.^[12] There are around 11,000 speakers of Karelian in Finland.^[13] And around 30,000 people in Finland have at least some knowledge of Karelian.^[14]

There is no single standard Karelian language, so the Karelian language is a group of two supradialects. The two supradialects are Karelian Proper (which comprises Northern Karelian and South Karelian (including the Tver enclave dialects)) and Olonets Karelian (Livvi Karelian). Ludic Karelian also appears in writing. All variants are written with the Latin-based Karelian alphabet, though the Cyrillic script has been used in the past. Each writer writes in Karelian according to their own dialectal form.

Based upon toponymic and historical evidence, a form of Karelian was also spoken among the extinct Bjarmians in the 15th century.^[4]