Finnish

Finnish is both the language of the Finnish people and an adjective used to describe things related to Finland, including its culture, people, and institutions. The term can refer to the Finnic language spoken by the majority of Finland’s population and by Finnish-speaking communities in neighboring countries and around the world.

Finnish belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family, making it unrelated to most neighboring European languages. It uses the Latin alphabet with the letters ä and ö. Finnish is an agglutinative language, relying on extensive suffixation to indicate number, case, tense, mood, and possession. It features vowel harmony and consonant gradation and has a flexible word order driven by inflection rather than syntax.

In Finland, Finnish is an official language alongside Swedish. It is the majority language of the population, with extensive use in education, government, media, and everyday life. There are Finnish-speaking communities in Sweden, Norway, and Russia, as well as through diaspora communities in North America and elsewhere. Global estimates place the number of Finnish speakers at about five million.

Finnish culture encompasses literature, design, architecture, and technology. Notable cultural references include traditional Kalevala-based poetry and contemporary Finnish literature and media. The language has influenced loanwords in other languages and is characterized by a strong tradition of education and high literacy.