Written and Published by Linden Alexander Pentecost on the 20th of July 2025, and only onto this www.clwaideac-na-cuinne.co.uk website. No AI was used in the creation of this article nor in any of my publications. This article has never been published previously and is unrelated to any of my other publications (including others that were published recently too in relation to Finnish and Finns, and other topics). This article contains in total 1942 words. I learned the information for this article from my own research and learning. The URL of this web-page is given at the end for reference. The photo in this article has not been published before and was taken by myself the author. This article contains the following sub-sections (not including this paragraph):

I. Introduction to the Kuusamo dialect, its situation and background (followed by photo and description)

II. Kuusamo dialect words, etymological discussions, and features of the dialect

III. Finnish example sentences pertaining to the Kuusamo region, and explanations (has notes at the end)

I. Introduction to the Kuusamo dialect, its situation and background

The Finnish language contains a large number of dialects, which are in many ways even less discussed than the minority Germanic languages spoken in countries dominated by a standard Germanic language, for example the traditional pre-Swedish Nordic languages in most of Sweden except Svealand, the traditional Norwegian dialects or Nordic languages in Norway, etc. 
Finnish dialects are I think discussed even less. Essentially, Finnish dialects or traditional Finnic languages of Finland can be classified in a number of ways. The northern dialects known as Peräpohjolaiset murteet form a part of a larger language with the Kven language in Norway and the Meänkieli language in Sweden. The speakers of these two languages sometimes refer to their larger language as Kainun Kieli or the Kainu language, in which the Peräpohjolaiset murteet of Finland can likewise be included. Finnish academia as a whole however tends to refer to the Peräpohjolaiset murteet and to Kven and Meänkieli as being Finnish dialects, which contrasts with the indigenous perspective on these languages as given by the indigenous Kvens and Meänmaalaiset in Norway and Sweden respectively. 
Confusingly perhaps, the dialect I discuss in this article, the Kuusamo dialect, is a Kainuu dialect of Finnish, but the “Kainuu dialects” as a group of dialects in the northeast of central Finland refer to the Northern Savonian dialects in the region known as Kainuu in Finnish, and this is distinct from the way in which the Kvens and Meänmaalaiset sometimes use the term Kainu to refer to themselves and their language. Essentially, whilst the Kven, Meänkieli and Peräpohjolaiset languages of Northern Finland are referred to by some of their speakers as the Kainu language, Kainunkieli; the Kainuu dialects of Finland, or in Finnish, Kainuun Murteet, refer to a separate group of traditional Finnic languages that are not from the same group as the Peräpohjolaiset, Kven and Meänkieli languages. Note that the word Kainuu in reference to the Kainuu Finnish dialects is spelled with two u’s in the nominative form, the partitive form being Kainuuta, whereas the form Kainu with one “u” as used by some in northern Finland, the Kvens and Meänmaalaiset is their nominative form, with the partitive form, at least sometimes, being Kainua.

Kuusamo is located around 37 miles south of the Arctic Circle, and is located within the region of Northern Ostrobothnia region of Finland, in Finnish: Pohjois Pohjanmaa. But as I mentioned, the dialect of Kuusamo is a Kainuu dialect, the Kainuu dialects being forms of Northern Savonian Finnish. These dialect of Kuusamo, being a Northern Savonian dialect of the Kainuu branch, lacks several features, like palatalisation, that are associated with Savonian dialects as a whole. The Finnish of Kuusamo can also be called a form of the Koillismaa Dialect, Koillismaa being the sub-region of Northern Ostrobothnia in which Kuusamo is located.

I have elsewhere including recently published books and articles that pertain to the Kven and Meänkieli languages, and have also written a small article just for archive.org on some different dialects of Finnish in Northern Finland (not the Kuusamo dialect), the article is titled: Dialects of Finnish in Northern Finland, the link to which is: https://archive.org/details/dialectsoffinnishinnorthernfinland 

Below is a photo, which I hope helps to give a view of the golden evening sunlight of this part of Finland in July, with a small description in Kuusamo Finnish and English below the photo.

Photo above: Typillinen mehtä Kuusamon alueella, jossa oli paljon hyttysiä - a typical forest in the Kuusamo region, in which there were a lot of mosquitoes. 

II. Kuusamo dialect words, etymological discussions, and features of the dialect

There are many words in the Kuusamo dialect of Finnish and in the dialects of the surrounding area, which are not found in standard varieites of Finnish. For example rämpiä – to walk through marshland (not recommended) or to wade, kiili – cat, normally: kissa; nokka – nose, normally: nenä, räntätä – to write, normally: kirjoittaa, holotna – ”cold”, standard Finnish: kylmä. The word holotna is an example of a loanword from Russian, specifically coming from the Russian word холодно, kholotno – “coldly”. The word nokka can be compared to Quechua sinqa – ”nose”, where the n and k of nokka may be equivalent to the n and q of sinqa. The word nokka is found throughout Finland, but commonly means "beak", whereas in Kuusamo it is the general traditional word for "nose". Despite that this word has cognates in some other Finnic languages, the word is of unknown origin, and so its relationship to the Quechua word makes even more sense to me. This example of a Finnish - Quechua similarity is only given in this article, and not in any of my other publications which discuss other links between these languages in a much more extensive way, with some of my books having been dedicated to this subject, and other examples found throughout other books and articles I have written (including in several of both published recently, including in another article on this Clwàideac-na-Cuinne website, the article being titled: 1-etym. New interesting etymologies, noticed July 2025). I have also discussed elsewhere how I met a Quechua speaker near Kuusamo, which was an interesting synchronicity, or would come to be. Whilst the Koillismaa region did have Sámi languages in the past to some degree (Kemi Sámi, which I have written about elsewhere), the word nokka and others may I think have come from a different ancestral people; something I have gone into elsewhere. I hope to write more on Kemi Sámi in the near future, possibly on this Clwàideac na Cuinne website (the website you are currently on). 

One of my favourite words in the Kuusamo dialect is huoku, in the Kuusamo dialect this means something like “breath” or “breathing” or perhaps even, terms which are usually described in Finnish using the word henki – breath, spirit. The word huoku is found in other Finnish dialects, where it can mean something more like “air current” or “air”. I am unsure on the etymology, although the word is likely linked to Finnish huoata – to sigh or take a breath, but perhaps there is also a relationship to Finnish hehku – “glow”, Estonian õhk – “air”.

Another interesting word in the Kuusamo dialect is ullivesi which refers to floodwaters, in standard Finnish this is: tulvavesi, literally meaning “flood water”. I do not know where the ulli- part of ullivesi comes from, but I suspect that this fossilised root ulli could be related to the name Oulu of the city, and to the river-name Oulujoki, oulu appears also to mean something like “flood water”, and according to Wiktionary may be from a Sámi or other substrate language. Perhaps both oulu and ulli are words from a pre-Uralic substrate language associated with this part of Finland, from Oulu on the Bothnian Coast to Kuusamo. A Northern Sámi word possibly cognate to Oulu and ulli is oalli, meaning the deep, mid-part of a water channel.

Some more general features of the Kuusamo dialect, include representing standard Finnish -ts- as -ht-, for example kahtoa – “to watch, look at”, standard Finnish: katsoa; and Kuusamo Finnish mehtä – ”forest”, standard Finnish: metsä. There are also differences in vowels, for example, the long vowel aa in standard Finnish is often oa in the Kuusamo dialect, for example oamu – ”morning”, standard Finnish: aamu.

III. Finnish example sentences pertaining to the Kuusamo region, and explanations.