Meänkieli (literally 'our language'), or Tornedalian is a Finnic language or a group of distinct Finnish dialects spoken in the northernmost part of Sweden, particularly along the Torne River Valley. It is officially recognized in Sweden as one of the country's five minority languages and is treated as a separate language from Finnish. According to the National Association of Swedish Tornedalians, 70,000 individuals understand Meänkieli, at least to some level.
Meänkieli is particularly similar to the Kven language and the Peräpohjola dialects of Finnish spoken in Finland, and it is strongly mutually intelligible with them. Its status as an independent language is sometimes disputed due to this high degree of mutual intelligibility. However, Meänkieli contains strong influences from Swedish, a number of loanwords from the Saamic languages, preserved some archaic features that even the Northern Finnish dialects have lost, and lacks the changes which standard Finnish experienced in the 19th to 20th centuries. As a result, while Meänkieli is often intelligible to speakers of Finnish, Standard Finnish is often very difficult for speakers of Meänkieli to understand. The Gällivare varieties of Meänkieli differ even more significantly from Standard Finnish and from other Finnish dialects, notably particularly their complete absence of vowel harmony.
