Finnish

Finnish (Suomi)
"Welcome!"

Introduction

The first written documents in Finnish were created by bishop Mikael Agricola who wrote an ABC book in 1542 Agrikola

and a catechism in 1544. Agricola's writing system was based on Swedish, then the official language of Finland, as well as on German, and Latin. The writing system he devised was revised Finland Map

over time.

Finnish is spoken by about 5 million people in Finland, where it is the official languag. It is officially recognized in Sweden and Norway. It is also spoken in Canada, Estonia, Russia, and USA. The total Finnish-speaking population of all countries is estimated to be around 6 million people (Ethnologue).

There are two main varieties of Finnish:

Yleiskieli is the formal variety used in church sermons, political speeches, and newscasts. Its written form, kirjakieli is used for most formal writing. Finnish children learn kirjakieli in school.
Puhekieli is the informal variety used in everyday life and in most informal situations.

The differences between the two varieties are quite significant, as can be seen from these examples:

English	Yleiskieli	Puhekieli
my book	minum kirjani	mun kirja
red	punainen	punanen

Structure

Sound System

Finnish has a relatively small inventory of sounds with 8 vowel and 13 consonant phonemes. All phonemes can be short or long, except for /v, d, j, h/, for example muta " mud", muuta "other", mutta "but".

Finnish always places stress on the first syllable of a word.

Click here to listen to the pronunciation of some common phrases in Finnish.

Grammar

Noun phrase
Finnish does not distinguish gender in nouns or in personal pronouns, so, for example han can be either "he" or "she". There are no definite or indefinite articles. Finnish does, however, have fifteen noun cases, six of them denoting location. Adjectives agree with the nouns they modify in number and case.

Finnish Cases

Click here for a detailed description of Finnish cases.

Postpositions are more common in Finnish than prepositions, for example "after Christmas" in Finnish is joulun jälkeen (literally "Christmas after").

Verb phrase
Finnish verbs are marked for tense, aspect, voice, and mood. Verbs are divided into six groups depending on the stem type. All six types have the same set of endings, but the stems undergo some changes when the verbs are conjugated. Click here for a detailed description of the Finnish verb conjugation.

Vocabulary

Over the course of many centuries, Finnish has borrowed a great number of words from a wide variety of languages, including Turkic, Baltic, Germanic, and Slavic languages. It is estimated that only around 300 Finnish roots are of Uralic origin, the rest are borrowed from other languages. . Click here for a more detailed description of Finnish vocabulary.

Below are some common phrases in Finnish. Do you see any resemblance to their Indo-European equivalents?

Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Finnish.

Do you recognize any words?
If ihminen means "person", what do you think the word ihmisoikeuksien means?
Can you find other instances of this word in the text?

Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Finnish

Article 1
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Writing

Hostell

Present day Finnish uses the Roman alphabet, with the addition of the letters ä, ö and y. The consonants b, c, z and x are only used in loan words.

Finnish Women

Finnish words in English

Did you know that the word sauna came from Finnish sauna literally "bath room"?

Resources

Finnish Language Learning Resources
Course Offerings for the Less Commonly Taught Languages
UCLA Language Materials Project
Yamada Language Center Guides
Finnish Grammar
Finnish Language Resources
Dictionaries

How difficult is it to learn Finnish?
Finnish is considered to be a Category II language in terms of difficulty for speakers of English.

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