If I had to guess people used the Swedish equivalence of these words before someone came up with a Finnish translations. Many of the words in Finnish language have Swedish origins.
Not a full answer, but maybe a factor. Early 1900s Finland was quite agrarian and common people lived a simple lifes. Upper class and educated used Swedish even though national romantic movement had been influencing things since late 1800s. Finland properly industrialized after second world war and a slurry of new words were needed.
Why did so many new Finnish words seem to appear in that time period?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fennoman_movement
Many concepts simply didn't have Finnish words, a lot of it was all Swedish back then.
Not a linguist, but this should be fairly common knowledge.
Ah yes, I forgot about the fennoman movement. That would certainly explain the flurry of new words at that time.
Still, what you're saying is that native Finnish speakers before that time didn't have words for universal concepts like "muscle" and used the Swedish "muskel" - or some variation thereof. I have a hard time wrapping my head around that.
All languages typically have native words for such fundamental concepts. I understand that speakers onboard loadwords from other languages when they need to start talking about new concepts. But surely a muscle has been known and talked about since time immemorial.
The Finnish language is centuries old and originally came from hungary - to grossly oversimplify things. I'm sure ancient people in Hungary spoke of muscles without using the Swedish word, and whatever word they used must have found its way to Finland and got mixed up / adapted / shifted over time like all words, but essentially stayed more or less the same. Why would ancient Finns ditch their native word and use "muskel" instead?
The only times I've head this sort of thing happening in any language is when the powers-that-be decide to outlaw the use of a language and mandate the use of another by force, like Quechua in South America. But to my knowledge, Sweden never forcibly forbade the Finns from speaking their language. Or did they?
That's the mystery to me. Also, in case it wasn't obvious, I'm not a Finn. So I'm sorry if all this is obvious to you guys, or if I'm ignoring some well-known historical facts, or if I'm being a time waster 🙂
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