Ukko opastau lapsie aijan - Serious games as tools for teaching Viena Karelian to Finns?

The Karelian language is the closest linguistic relative to Finnish. It is spoken in Finland and Russia, in the Republic of Karelia. Karelian is classified as a minority and endangered language. There have been different revitalization projects in Finland during the last years. However, much more effort is needed, especially for developing new and easily accessible ways to learn and teach Karelian. In this paper, we propose gamification approach and serious games to be taken as tools for revitalizing Karelian language and culture. Karelian is divided into two main dialects; Karelian Proper and Olonets Karelian. Karelian Proper is divided into North Karelia (Viena), and South Karelian. Viena Karelian is the closest dialect to Finnish language and it is needed for the communication between Finns and Viena Karelians. This paper presents early phase gamification concepts (Karelian village, Vocabulary Creation) and game prototypes (Sanakoski, Hirsipuu, Learn Viena Karelian), which have been developed for teaching and learning Viena Karelian. We present findings from user experience evaluation with 16 participants whose age varied from 10 to 84 years. 63 % of users had more or less prior Viena Karelian skills.