Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish
Dictionary of Finnish Dialects
Dictionary of Old Literary Finnish
Dictionary of Karelian
Dictionary of Swedish Dialects in Finland
Other dictionaries
The Institute for the Languages of Finland is the largest Nordic lexicographical research centre that compiles both normative and descriptive dictionaries. The Institute preserves and contributes to Finnish cultural history by compiling dictionaries of standard language and other variants. In addition to Finnish and Swedish dictionaries, we have compiled lexicons of selected languages related to Finnish, as well as Romany and Finnish Sign Language.
Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish
The Institute maintains Kielitoimiston sanakirja, with more than 100,000 entries describing the current common vocabulary of the Finnish language. The dictionary also includes information on meaning, spelling, inflection, style, use and context. The dictionary has been published both in print and online, and the latest online edition is available free of charge.
The revised versions of the dictionary rest on the Finnish Language Board’s latest decisions and contain a number of new entries, as well as new definitions and descriptions. The dictionary is based on the Institute’s comprehensive and constantly increasing word archive and database of modern Finnish.
Dictionary of Finnish Dialects
The Dictionary of Finnish Dialects (Suomen murteiden sanakirja) describes all Finnish dialects. Comprising eight printed volumes of 1,000 pages each, the dictionary is today published online. The printed volumes contain the entries from a to kurvottaa. With time, they will be incorporated into the online dictionary.The entries from kus onwards will only be published online. Based on the Word Archive of Finnish dialects, the dictionary is compiled out of an exceptionally rich corpus.
Dictionary of Old Literary Finnish
The Dictionary of Old Literary Finnish (Vanhan kirjasuomen sanakirja) defines meanings and describes uses of all words used in Finnish literature from the 1540s to 1810. Today, the dictionary is published online.
The corpus comprises 1,500 works of literature, including all of Mikael Agricola’s works, the first Finnish Bible (1642) and all translations into Finnish of legal codes from the 16th to 18th centuries. The dictionary illustrates the etymology of words and development of sentence structures in Finnish.
The entries (estimated at more than 80,000) comprise all words present in the literature written in Finnish during Swedish rule.
Dictionary of Karelian
The Dictionary of Karelian is a dialect dictionary of Karelian, which is a Finnic language. The commentaries are in Finnish. The dictionary describes the vocabulary of the two main dialects of Karelian: Karelian Proper and Olonets Karelian (Livvi-Karelian). The dictionary, comprising six volumes with a total of 3,800 pages and almost 83,000 entries, has been published both in print and online.
Dictionary of Swedish Dialects in Finland
Ordbok över Finlands svenska folkmål (Suomen ruotsalaismurteiden sanakirja, Dictionary of Swedish Dialects in Finland) describes the vocabulary of the Swedish dialects spoken in the regions of Ostrobothnia, Åboland, the Åland Islands and Nyland (Uusimaa). The dictionary has been compiled since 1959 and was originally published as booklets. Since the early 1990s, it has been published in 624-page books, each comprising 16,000–17,000 entries. The total number of entries is approximately 120,000. Since 2013, the dictionary has also been available online.
Other dictionaries
The Institute also compiles other linguistic and cultural dictionaries describing both the standard language and other linguistic variants. The Institute’s dictionaries describe, among other things, standard Finnish, Finnish word frequency, toponymy and the etymology of Finnish words.
Furthermore, there are dictionaries of Finnic languages and dialects, such as the Ingrian dialects, the Olonets Karelian dialect, the Ludic dialects, Votic, Livonian, Mordvinian, Mari and Mansi. There is an etymological database covering the Saami languages. The Institute has compiled comprehensive Finnish–Swedish and Finnish–Estonian dictionaries, and dictionaries of the Romani language. In addition, the Institute has participated in the creation of dictionaries of Finnish and Finland-Swedish sign languages. The current projects include dictionaries of immigrant languages, starting with Finnish–Somali and Finnish–Kurmanji.