This article should specify the language of its non-English content, using {{lang}}, {{transliteration}} for transliterated languages, and {{IPA}} for phonetic transcriptions, with an appropriate ISO 639 code. Wikipedia's multilingual support templates may also be used. See why.(May 2022)
Finnish
suomi
Pronunciation
IPA:[ˈsuo̯mi]ⓘ
Native to
Finland, Sweden, Norway (in small areas in Troms and Finnmark), Russia
Ethnicity
Finns
Native speakers
5.8 million Finland: 5.4 million Sweden: 0.40 million Norway: 8,000 (Kven) Republic of Karelia: 8,500 US: 26,000 (2020)[1]
Language family
Uralic
Finno-Ugric
Finnic
Northern Finnic
Finnish
Dialects
American
Ostrobothnian
Eastern
South Ostrobothnian
Tavastian
Peräpohjola
Southwest
South Karelian
Ingrian
Savonian
Kainuu
Värmland
Helsinki
(Meänkieli)
(Gällivare)
(Kven)
Rauma
Sweden
Siberian
Writing system
Latin (Finnish alphabet) Finnish Braille
Signed forms
Signed Finnish
Official status
Official language in
Finland European Union Nordic Council
Recognised minority language in
Sweden (official minority language) Russia (Karelia)[2] Norway (Kven language) (Finnmark)
Regulated by
Language Planning Department of the Institute for the Languages of Finland
Language codes
ISO 639-1
fi
ISO 639-2
fin
ISO 639-3
fin
Glottolog
nucl1717
Linguasphere
41-AAA-a
[image reference needed]
Official language status
Spoken by a minority
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.
Finnish (endonym: suomi[ˈsuo̯mi]ⓘ or suomen kieli[ˈsuo̯meŋˈkie̯li]) is a Uralic language of the Finnic branch, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland (the other being Swedish). In Sweden, both Finnish and Meänkieli (which has significant mutual intelligibility with Finnish[3]) are official minority languages. The Kven language, which like Meänkieli is mutually intelligible with Finnish, is spoken in the Norwegian counties Troms and Finnmark by a minority group of Finnish descent.
Finnish is typologically agglutinative[4] and uses almost exclusively suffixal affixation. Nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals and verbs are inflected depending on their role in the sentence. Sentences are normally formed with subject–verb–object word order, although the extensive use of inflection allows them to be ordered differently. Word order variations are often reserved for differences in information structure.[5] Finnish orthography uses a Latin-script alphabet derived from the Swedish alphabet, and is phonetic to a great extent. Vowel length and consonant length are distinguished, and there are a range of diphthongs, although vowel harmony limits which diphthongs are possible.
^Finnish at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
^О государственной поддержке карельского, вепсского и финского языков в Республике Карелия (in Russian). Gov.karelia.ru. Archived from the original on 11 October 2017. Retrieved 6 December 2011.
^Öst, Heidi (2013). "Recent Legal Developments in Sweden: What Effect for Finnish and Meänkieli Speakers?". European Yearbook of Minority Issues Online. 10 (1): 563–582. doi:10.1163/22116117-01001026. ISSN 1570-7865.
^Haspelmath, Martin Dryer; Gil, Matthew S; Comrie, David; Bickel, Bernard; Balthasar Nichols, Johanna (2005). Fusion of selected inflectional formatives. Oxford University Press. OCLC 945596278.
^Vilkuna, Maria (1989). Free word order in Finnish : its syntax and discourse functions. Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura. ISBN 951-717-558-2. OCLC 997419906.
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Global Information
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Nordic Council