Languages
Native
Finnish
87%
Secondary languages
English
70%
Swedish
42%
Language Samples
Hei, mitä kuuluu?
Hello, how are you?
Minulla menee hyvin, kiitos.
I am doing well, thank you.
Yksi, kaksi, kolme, neljä, viisi, kuusi, seitsemän, kahdeksan, yhdeksän, kymmenen.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Linguistic History
Finnish is a Uralic language of the Finnic branch, completely unrelated to the Indo-European languages that surround it. It is thought to have arrived in the region of present-day Finland around 2,000–3,000 years ago through migrations from the east. Finland was part of the Swedish kingdom for over 600 years, and Finnish had no official status until 1863 when Tsar Alexander II issued a decree granting Finnish equal status with Swedish. The national epic Kalevala, compiled by Elias Lönnrot from oral folk poetry and published in 1835, played a pivotal role in Finnish national identity and the standardisation of the written language. Finnish has 15 grammatical cases and no future tense.
Similar Languages
Estonian
61%
Karelian
85%
Ingrian
75%
Veps
55%
Media
Helsinki Senate Square with Helsinki Cathedral — the symbolic heart of the Finnish capital.
Photo: Bahnfrend · CC BY-SA 4.0
Did You Know
01
Finnish has 15 grammatical cases, meaning a single noun like 'talo' (house) can appear in over 2,000 different inflected forms when combined with possessive suffixes.
02
The Finnish word 'sisu' — a concept of stoic determination and inner strength in the face of adversity — has no direct equivalent in any other language.
03
Finnish and Hungarian, despite being in the same Uralic language family, are no more mutually intelligible than English and Persian — they diverged thousands of years ago.