FINNISH LANGUAGE FACTS:

NATIVE: suomen kieli

NATIVE SPEAKERS: 5.4 million

OFFICIAL LANGUAGE IN: Finland and the European Union

WRITING SYSTEMS: Latin (Finnish alphabet)

REGULATED BY: Kotimaisten kielten keskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland)

Helpful Resources:

Dictionaries:

Karlsson, Fred, and Andrew Chesterman. Finnish: an essential grammar. London: Routledge, 2008.

Rekiaro, Ilkka, and Douglas Robinson. Gummeruksen soumi englanti soumi sanakirja. Jyväskylä: Gummerus Kirjapaino, 2002.

Research and Academic:

Institute for the Languages of Finland, English Version

Language

Finnish is generally considered to be an unusually difficult language to learn for foreigners.The eponymous member of the Finnic language family, Finnish is typologically between fusional and agglutinative languages. It is very different from Indo-European languages. It modifies and inflects nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals and verbs, depending on their roles in the sentence. This language also lacks articles and grammatical gender. We enthusiastically recommend you read The Unbearable Beauty of Finnish Grammar, by Peter Marten. It is a beautifully written and entertaining article about the grammatical properties of Finnish.

Economic Significance

Finnish, English and Swedish are commonly spoken in Finland. In fact, English is used as the primary language at many Finnish businesses.

History

There are several theories about the origin of the Finnish and Uralic languages.

Dialects

Western and Eastern