Svenska lånord i den västra gruppen av estniska kustdialekter

In the focus of this article are Swedish loanwords in the western subgroup of the coastal dialect of the Estonian north-eastern coastal dialects. The article is based on the material collected for the dictionary of Estonian dialects. The material studied consists of 225 words, which occur in all three or only two of the parishes (Jõelähtme, Kuusalu, Haljala) of the dialectal area. Half of the words are loanwords from neighbouring languages around the Baltic Sea. Most of the loanwords are borrowed from Finnish, the second biggest group being Swedish loanwords. A part of the latter originate from the Swedish dialects in Finland and some from other varieties of Swedish. Some words with a Swedish origin have probably been borrowed via Finnish. There are also loanwords that may have been borrowed either via Finnish or straight from Swedish dialects in Finland. In the studied Estonian regional dialect there are local derivations of the Swedish loanwords, hybrid compound words consisting of a Swedish loanword and an Estonian word, accompanied by one possible loan translation. Some of the loanwords are adapted to the phonological system of the receiving dialect: as a result of language contacts there are word-initial consonant clusters – a feature not typical for Finnic languages. Initial-syllable secondary diphtongs are a typical feature which the Finnish contact has supported, and they occur also in Swedish loanwords (as well as in the dialect’s own words). Semantically the Swedish loanwords include almost exclusively maritime vocabulary. All of the Finland-Swedish source words are known in the dialects of Eastern Nyland in Finland and some even only there. The data supports the concept of close contacts between Estonians and Finns, but at the same time it shows that the Finns were not only Finnish-speaking but also Swedish-speaking. Twelve entirely new loan etymologies are given and three prior etymologies are rectified.Peer reviewe