20260923-0 Tornedalsfinska Tornedalen Finnish 2010-01-01 2025-08-11 1950-05-09 FIT 2012-06-27 2011-10-06 Meänkieli Meänkieli Tornedalen Finnish is a group of distinct Finnish dialects spoken in the northernmost part of Sweden, particularly along the Torne River Valley. It is officially recognized as one of Sweden's five minority languages and is treated as a separate language from Finnish. Its status as an independent language is sometimes disputed due to this high degree of mutual intelligibility. However, Meänkieli contains strong influences from Swedish and has preserved some archaic features that even the Northern Finnish dialects have lost. Together with Finnish, it belongs to the Finnic languages of the Uralic language family. fit fit FIT false FIT 1950-05-09 FIT