Middle Ages

The oldest known document in Karelian, or in any Finnic language, is the Birch bark letter no. 292, found in 1957 and believed to be either an invocation against lightning, or an oath. Until the 19th century it is believed that Karelian was only written down by individuals; it was not taught in schools.

19th and early 20th centuries

In the 19th century a few books were published in Karelian using Cyrillic, the first known one was A Translation of some Prayers and a Shortened Catechism into North Karelian and Olonets (Aunus) dialects in 1804. Karelian literature in 19th century Russia remained limited to a few primers, songbooks and leaflets.^[1]

The letters used to transcribe Karelian sounds varied. For example, in the gospel of St. Matthew (Герранъ мія̈нъ. Шондю-руохтынанъ святой і᷍ованг̧ели матвѣйста, Карьяланъ кїӗлѣлля) in South Karelian Tver dialect, in 1820, they used vowels with breves, circumflexes, and г with a cedilla:

In the Карельско-Русскій Букварь (Karelian-Russian ABC-Book), 1887:

• Г̄ was used for the sound /ɡ/ (Modern Karelian/Finnish "g")
• Г without a macron represented /h/ (Modern Karelian/Finnish "h")
• Е was used for /e/
• both І and И were used for Modern Karelian/Finnish "i"
• ІЙ was used for Modern Karelian/Finnish "ii"
• Ы was used for the sound /y/ (Modern Karelian/Finnish "y")
• Ю̈ was used for the sound /jy/ (Modern Karelian/Finnish "jy")
• Ѣ was used for Modern Karelian/Finnish ä
• Ъ was used at the end of all words that did not end in a vowel or soft sign, as in the Russian language before the Revolution

Another example: in the Русско-Корельскій Словарь (Russian-Karelian Dictionary), 1908,

• А̄ was used for modern Karelian/Finnish ä (instead of Ѣ)
• Г҅ was used for /h/
• У҅ was used for /y/
• Ў was used for non-syllabic /u/
• Э was used for /e/ instead of Ѣ in the 1887 text

Tver State University Finno-Ugricist Lyudmila Georgievna Gromova points out in one great difficulty in these early Karelian Cyrillic alphabets, was the inconsistency in rendering the sounds a, ä, ja, jä, ö, jö, y, and jy. For example, in the 1820 translation of Matthew, "я" might represent the sound ä, ja, or jä.^[2]

Soviet period

In 1921, the first all-Karelian congress under the Soviet regime debated between whether Finnish or Karelian should be the official language (next to Russian of course) of the new "Karelian Labour Commune", which two years later would become the Karelian ASSR. In the end they chose Finnish over Karelian.

Nonetheless, some publishing continued in Cyrillic. The research into Karelian folklore of Maria Mikhailovskaya, a teacher from the Vozdvizhenskaya school of Bezhetsky District, was published in 1925. In August–December 1929, the newspaper Tverskaya Derevnya (Tver Village), printed in Cyrillic, became the first newspaper ever published in the Karelian language.^[3]

Latin alphabet for Tver Karelian (1930)

In 1930-31, a Karelian literary language using the Latin alphabet was standardized for the Tver Karelian community, south of the Karelian ASSR and north of Tver, with the following alphabet:^[4]

Note the additional letters borrowed from Cyrillic: з (/dž/) and ь (/ɯ/), as well as the unusual Latin ƶ (/ʒ/) and ȷ (j without dot, to denote palatalization).

Unified Cyrillic Karelian alphabet (1937–40)

In 1937 the government wished to replace the use of Finnish (in the Karelian ASSR) and Karelian written in Latin (in the Tver Region), with a single standard Karelian language written in Cyrillic. Two proposals were sourced.^[5]

• One proposal was published in October 1937 by the Karelian educational affairs people's commissariat, which included the following letters with diaereses: А, Е, О, У, Ю, Я
• Another proposal was published by Karjalaisen piirikunnan alphabetization project (Karjalaisen piirikunnan aakkosprojekti), and included the following letters with macrons (bars): А Е О У, and also included Ӡ (for the "dzh" sound) and І. Е̄ (Е with macron) replaced Russian Ё. Some of the equivalents to Latin letters were as follows:

However, in the end a proposal was adopted with fewer non-standard Cyrillic letters: it included the entire Russian alphabet plus the letters Ӓ, Ӧ, and Ӱ.

On September 8, 1937, at the proposal of its chairman, M.I. Kalinin, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee discussed the Cyrillization of the Karelian language. The final orthography was approved by the Karelian Regional Committee on February 10, 1938 and published in the newspaper "Karelʹskaya Pravda". On February 14, the RSFSR People's Commissariat issued decree no. 214, introducing the single Karelian language in the Cyrillic alphabet.^[3]

From 1937-39 the Soviet government used the new Karelian standard language written in Cyrillic in both the Karelian SSR and Tver Region.^[1]

During this period Sovetskoi Karelija was written in Karelian using Cyrillic, rather than in Finnish.

The effort was dropped in 1940 and Finnish (written as always in the Latin alphabet) once again became an official language of the Karelian SSR, while in the Tver region most Karelians were expelled in 1939 and Karelian was banned there.^[1] The reason for abandoning Cyrillic, and the Karelian language itself, as the national language of the republic may have two explanations:

• Difficulty of implementation:
  • insufficient variety of literature available in Karelian
  • difficulty of finding enough teachers qualified to teach in the language
  • unfamiliarity with the new standardized language to speakers of the existing dialects which were very different from one another
• Political reasons: On March 31, 1940 the Karelian ASSR became a full-fledged SSR, the Karelo-Finnish SSR, expanded with territory won from Finland in the Winter War. Some later historians explained this as a "convenient means for facilitating the possible incorporation of additional Finnish territory" (or, possibly, the whole of Finland) into the USSR.^[6][7][8] Under this theory, Finnish (with far more speakers and a far more established literary tradition) would logically become the national language of the expanded republic, so it made no sense to continue with Karelian.

Olonets Karelian alphabet (1989–2007)

Olonets Karelian alphabet was approved in 1989 and it was used to write Olonets Karelian (also known as Livvi Karelian). It was replaced by the unified Karelian alphabet in 2007.^[9] The alphabet consisted of twenty-nine characters, and it was very similar to the modern alphabet:^[10]

A B Č D Ǯ E F G H I J K L M N O P R S Š Z Ž T U V Ü Ä Ö ʼ

In the Olonets Karelian alphabet, the letter Ǯ was used instead of the digraph Dž to mark the voiced affricate. For example, the word mandžoi (strawberry) was written manǯoi. For the computers used in those days, the letter ǯ was problematic, and in many cases it had to be inserted manually afterwards.^[9] The letter Ü represented the same vowel sound as the letter Y used in the modern alphabet.

Letter names and IPA

The apostrophe is used to represent palatalization. In native words, it is found in lʼ nʼ sʼ tʼ in North Karelian, in dʼ lʼ nʼ rʼ sʼ tʼ in Livvi Karelian, and in dʼ lʼ nʼ rʼ sʼ zʼ tʼ in Ludic and Tver Karelian, but other palatalized consonants are also used in names and loanwords from Russian.

The letters Q, W, and X do not belong to the Karelian alphabet, they are only used in unassimilated loanwords and names. In assimilated loanwords, qu is replaced by kv, w by v, and x by ks.