| Finnish | |
|---|---|
| suomi | |
| Pronunciation | IPA: [ˈsuo̯mi] |
| Native to | Finland, Sweden, Norway (in small areas in Troms and Finnmark), Russia |
| Ethnicity | Finns |
Native speakers | 5.0 million Finland: 4.75 million (2023)[1] Sweden: 200,000-250,000 (2022)[2] Norway: 8,000 (Kven) Russia (Karelia): 8,500 US: 26,000 (2020)[3] |
| Dialects | |
| Latin (Finnish alphabet) Finnish Braille | |
| Signed Finnish | |
| Official status | |
Official language in |  Finland European Union Nordic Council |
Recognised minority language in | |
| 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 |
 Primary spoken language
Minority spoken language | |
Finnish (endonym: suomi [ˈsuo̯mi] or suomen kieli [ˈsuo̯meŋ ˈkie̯li]) is a Finnic language of the Uralic language family, 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, alongside Swedish. In Sweden, both Finnish and Meänkieli (which has significant mutual intelligibility with Finnish[5]) are official minority languages. Kven, which like Meänkieli is mutually intelligible with Finnish, is spoken in the Norwegian counties of Troms and Finnmark by a minority of Finnish descent.
Finnish is typologically agglutinative[6] 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.[7] Finnish orthography uses a Latin-script alphabet derived from the Swedish alphabet, and is phonemic 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.
- ^ StatFin -Väestörakenne - 11rm - Kieli sukupuolen mukaan kunnittain, 1990-2023
- ^ Finska språket i Sverige
- ^ 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.