Helsinki slang first evolved in the late 19th century as a sociolect of the multilingual Helsinki working class communities, where Swedish and Finnish speaking youth lived together with Russian, German and various other language minorities. Helsinki slang is not a typical dialect of Finnish, because unlike many other parts of Finland, the Helsinki area was predominantly Swedish-speaking during the time when the city of Helsinki originally evolved, and thus Helsinki slang is characterised by an unusual, strikingly large number of obvious foreign loanwords. Nevertheless, Helsinki slang is counted as a dialect on its own right, among the "purer" dialects of other parts of Finland.