Dialect is a large part of a person's identity. A person's own dialect is like a landscape from childhood; even though one moves away from it, it still stays at the back of the mind. And like landscapes, dialects also change and often the same changes influence both.

There are at least two large changes in the history of the Jämsä dialect. About four hundred years ago, the people on the Häme side of Jämsä began speaking the Savo dialect instead of their own. Why this happened, no-one knows. Some traces of Häme remained, however.

We are living in the middle of a large language change right now. When waterways served as roads, the waters defined the borders of a dialect. Modern traffic, people moving and the media all even out differences between dialects. Merging of the Jämsä and Kuorevsi municipalities has also added to this change: eastern and western dialects are now spoken within the same municipality.

The meeting of east and west is discernible even in brief utterances. The samples recorded in Jämsä, Jämsänkoski, Koskenpää and Kuorevesi all have their own nuances, even though the speakers born at different times have been influenced by the general language and by each other. The dialect samples are from the Finnish language recordings archive of the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland.

Words and selection of samples: Hanna-Leena Autio
The Finnish language recordings archive of the Research Institute for the Language of Finland