Karelian Language - Classification

Classification

The Karelian language belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic languages and it is closely related to Finnish. Finnish and Karelian have common ancestry in the Proto-Karelian language spoken in the coast of Lake Ladoga in the Iron Age and Karelian forms a dialect continuum with the Eastern dialects of Finnish. Earlier some Finnish linguists classified Karelian as a dialect of Finnish, sometimes known in older Finnish literature as Raja-Karjalan murteet ('Border Karelian dialects'), but today, however, Karelian is seen as a proper language. Besides Karelian and Finnish, the Finnic subgroup also includes Estonian and other minority languages spoken around the Baltic Sea.