Finnish suomi
Pronunciation:	/ˈsuo.mi/
Spoken in:	Finland  Estonia  Ingria  Karelia  Norway  Sweden  Torne Valley
Region:	Northern Europe
Total speakers:	about 6 million
Language family:	Uralic  Finno-Ugric   Finno-Permic    Finno-Volgaic     Finno-Lappic      Baltic-Finnic       Finnish
Writing system:	Latin alphabet (Finnish variant)
Official status
Official language in:	Finland  European Union recognised as minority language in: parts of Sweden[1] Republic of Karelia[2]
Regulated by:	Language Planning Department of the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	fi
ISO 639-2:	fin
ISO 639-3:	fin
Blue: Official language Dark green: Spoken by a minority Image File history File links Flag_of_Finland. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Estonia. ... Image File history File links Ingrian_people. ... Ingria may be seen represented in the easternmost part of the Carta Marina (1539) Ingria (Finnish: , Russian: , Swedish: , Estonian: ) is a historical region, now situated mostly in Russia, comprising the area along the basin of the river Neva, between the Gulf of Finland, the Narva River, Lake Peipsi in the... Image File history File links Flag_of_Karelia. ... The Republic of Karelia (Russian: ) is a federal subject of the Russian Federation (a republic). ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Norway. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Sweden. ... The Torne Valley or Torne River Valley, is a valley on the border of Sweden and Finland. ... Northern Europe Northern Europe is the northern part of the European continent. ... A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common proto-language. ... Geographical distribution of Samoyedic, Finnic, Ugric and Yukaghir languages  Yukaghir  Samoyedic  Ugric  Finnic The Uralic languages (pronounced: ) form a language family of about 30 languages spoken by approximately 20 million people. ... Finno-Ugric group with dark green on map of language families Finno-Ugric (IPA:[ËŒfɪnoʊˈjuːgɹɪk]) is a grouping of languages in the Uralic language family, comprising Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian, and related languages. ... The Finno-Permic languages are a large branch of the Finno-Ugric languages. ... The Finno-Volgaic languages, also known as the Finno-Mari, Finno-Cheremisic, or Volga-Finnic languages, are a language group within the Uralic language family. ... Geographical distribution of Finno-Ugric (Finno-Permic in blue, Ugric in green). ... Baltic-Finnic languages, also known as Finnic languages, are a subgroup of the Finno-Ugric languages, and are spoken around the Baltic Sea by about 7 million people. ... Writing systems of the world today. ... Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz redirects here. ... The Finnish alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, and especially its Swedish extension. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Finland. ... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Sweden. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Karelia. ... The Republic of Karelia (Russian: ) is a federal subject of the Russian Federation (a republic). ... The Research Institute for the Languages of Finland (Finnish: , Swedish: , Northern Sami: , Romani: ) is a governmental linguistic research institute of Finland geared at studies of Finnish, Swedish, the Sami languages, Romany language, and the Finnish Sign Language. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is an international standard for language codes. ...
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Finnish (suomi (help· info), or suomen kieli) is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland (92% as of 2006^[3]) and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. It is one of the official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a Finnish dialect, are spoken. The Kven language, which is closely related to Finnish, is an official minority language in Norway. The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... Image File history File links Fi-suomi. ... 2006 is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Language(s) Finnish, Swedish Languages related to Finnish include Estonian, Karelian, Vepsian, Võro and to a lesser extent, all Finno-Ugric Languages. ... An official language is a language that is given a unique status in the constitutions of countries, states, and other territories. ... Meänkieli (lit. ... This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

Finnish is a member of the Finno-Ugric language family and is typologically between inflected and agglutinative languages. It modifies and inflects the forms of nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals and verbs, depending on their roles in the sentence. Finno-Ugric group with dark green on map of language families Finno-Ugric (IPA:[ˌfɪnoʊˈjuːgɹɪk]) is a grouping of languages in the Uralic language family, comprising Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian, and related languages. ... Morphological typology was developed by brothers Friedrich and August von Schlegel. ... This article is in need of attention. ... It has been suggested that Agglutination be merged into this article or section. ... Inflection of the Spanish lexeme for cat, with blue representing the masculine gender, pink representing the feminine gender, grey representing the form used for mixed-gender, and green representing the plural number. ... In linguistics, a noun or noun substantive is a lexical category which is defined in terms of how its members combine with other grammatical kinds of expressions. ... In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun (called the adjectives subject), giving more information about what the noun or pronoun refers to. ... In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun or noun phrase with or without a determiner, such as you and they in English. ... A numeral is a symbol or group of symbols that represents a number. ... It has been suggested that Verbal agreement be merged into this article or section. ... In linguistics, a sentence is a unit of language, characterized in most languages by the presence of a finite verb. ...

Classification

Finnish is a member of the Baltic-Finnic subgroup of the Finno-Ugric group of languages which in turn is a member of the Uralic family of languages. The Baltic-Finnic subgroup also includes Estonian and other minority languages spoken around the Baltic Sea. Baltic-Finnic languages, also known as Finnic languages, are a subgroup of the Finno-Ugric languages, and are spoken around the Baltic Sea by about 7 million people. ... Finno-Ugric group with dark green on map of language families Finno-Ugric (IPA:[ËŒfɪnoʊˈjuːgɹɪk]) is a grouping of languages in the Uralic language family, comprising Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian, and related languages. ... Geographical distribution of Samoyedic, Finnic, Ugric and Yukaghir languages  Yukaghir  Samoyedic  Ugric  Finnic The Uralic languages (pronounced: ) form a language family of about 30 languages spoken by approximately 20 million people. ... For other uses, see Baltic (disambiguation). ...

Finnish demonstrates an affiliation with the Finno-Ugric languages in several respects including: Finno-Ugric group with dark green on map of language families Finno-Ugric (IPA:[ˌfɪnoʊˈjuːgɹɪk]) is a grouping of languages in the Uralic language family, comprising Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian, and related languages. ...

• Shared morphology:

• case suffixes such as genitive -n, partitive -(t)a / -(t)ä (< Finno-Ugric *-ta), essive -na / -nä
• plural markers -t and -i-
• possessive suffixes such as 1st person singular -ni (< Finno-Ugric *-mi), 2nd person singular -si (< Finno-Ugric *-ti).
• various derivational suffixes

• Shared basic vocabulary displaying regular sound correspondences with the other Finno-Ugric languages

Several theories exist as to the geographic origin of Finnish and the other Uralic languages, but the most widely held view is that they originated as a Proto-Uralic language somewhere around the northern Ural Mountains region. Supporters of this theory point to the fact that the Uralic languages have many similarities in structure and grammar. The basic meaning of the Partitive case is partialness, without result or without specifying identity. In the Finnish language, its used to express unknown identities and irresultative actions. ... The essive or similaris case carries the meaning of a temporary state of being, often equivalent to the English as a. ... The Ural Mountains (Russian: , Uralskiye gory) (also known as the Urals, the Riphean Mountains in Greco-Roman antiquity, and known as the Stone Belt) are a mountain range that runs roughly north and south through western Russia. ...

It has been posited that speakers of a Finno-Ugric language have been living in the region of current Finland since at least 3000 BC. The Finns are more genetically similar to their Indo-European speaking neighbors than to the speakers of the geographically close Finno-Ugric language, Sami. Therefore it has been argued that a native Finnic population absorbed northward migrating Indo-Europeans who adopted the Finnic language, giving rise to the modern Finns.^[4] Sami is a general name for a group of Finno-Ugric languages spoken in parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, in Northern Europe. ...

Geographic distribution

Areas in Southern Sweden with a Finnish-speaking population (2005)

Finnish is spoken by about six million people that reside mainly in Finland. There are also notable Finnish-speaking minorities in Sweden, Norway, Russia, Estonia, Canada, and the United States. The majority of the population of Finland, 91.51% as of 2006, speak Finnish as their first language. The remainder speak Swedish (5.5%), Sami (Northern, Inari, Skolt) and other languages. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... 2006 is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... “Native Language” redirects here. ... Sami is a general name for a group of Uralic languages spoken in parts of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and extreme northwestern Russia, in Northern Europe. ... Northern or North Sami (also written Sámi or Saami; formerly Lappish or Lapp) is the most widely spoken of all Sami languages. ... Inari Sami (anarâškielâ) is a Finno-Ugric, Sami language spoken in Finland by some 300-400 people, the majority of which are middle-aged or older and live in the town of Inari. ... Skolt Sami (Sää´mǩiõll) is a Finno-Ugric, Sami language spoken in Finland and nearby parts of Russia. ...

Official status

Finnish is one of two official languages of Finland (the other being Swedish, spoken by 5.49% of the population as of 2006^[5]) and an official language of the European Union. It enjoys the status of an official minority language in Sweden. It is also one of the working languages of the Nordic Council. Under the Nordic Language Convention, citizens of the Nordic countries speaking Finnish have the opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable to any interpretation or translation costs.^[6][7] An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in the countries, states, and other territories. ... 2006 is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... In 1999, Sweden legally recognized five minority languages of Sweden due to its adoption of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. ... Political map of the Nordic countries and associated islands. ... The Nordic Language Convention (Nordiska språkkonventionen) is an convention of linguistic rights which came into force in March 1, 1987, under the auspices of the Nordic Council. ... Political map of the Nordic countries and associated territories. ... Interpretation, or interpreting, is an activity that consists of establishing, either simultaneously or consecutively, oral or gestural communications between two or more speakers who are not speaking (or signing) the same language. ... Look up translate in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

History

Pre-Christian era

It is believed that the Balto-Finnic languages evolved from a proto-Finnic language, from which Sami was separated around 1500-1000 BC. Current research indicates there were three or more proto-Finnic dialects.^[8] The Baltic Finnic languages separated around the 1st century, but continued to influence each other. Therefore, the Eastern Finnish dialects are genetically Eastern proto-Finnic, with many Eastern features, and the Southwestern Finnish dialects have many genuine Estonian influences. Baltic-Finnic languages, also known as Finnic languages, are a subgroup of the Finno-Ugric languages, and are spoken around the Baltic Sea by about 7 million people. ... Sami is a general name for a group of Uralic languages spoken in parts of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and extreme northwestern Russia, in Northern Europe. ... (Redirected from 1500 BC) Centuries: 17th century BC - 16th century BC - 15th century BC Decades: 1550s BC 1540s BC 1530s BC 1520s BC 1510s BC - 1500s BC - 1490s BC 1480s BC 1470s BC 1460s BC 1450s BC Events and Trends Stonehenge built in Wiltshire, England The element Mercury has been... (Redirected from 1000 BC) Centuries: 12th century BC - 11th century BC - 10th century BC Decades: 1050s BC 1040s BC 1030s BC 1020s BC 1010s BC - 1000s BC - 990s BC 980s BC 970s BC 960s BC 950s BC Events and Trends 1006 BC - David becomes king of the ancient Israelites (traditional... The 1st century was that century that lasted from 1 to 100 according the Gregorian calendar. ... East Finnish culture and language are chiefly vested in the Savonians and the Karelians. ...

Medieval period

Since Finland was annexed to Catholic Sweden in the Middle Ages, the status of Finnish was for long that of an oral language. The language of business was Middle Low German, the language of administration Swedish, and religious activities were held in Latin, leaving few possibilities for Finns to use their mother tongue in situations other than daily chores. The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... Carta marina of the Baltic Sea region (1539). ... The Middle Low German language is an ancestor of the modern Low German language, and was spoken from about 1100 to 1500. ... For other uses, see Latins and Latin (disambiguation). ...

The first known written example of Finnish comes from this era and was found in a German travel journal dating back to c.1450: Mynna tachton gernast spuho somen gelen Emyna dayda (Modern Finnish: "Minä tahdon kernaasti puhua suomen kieltä, [mutta] en minä taida"; English: "I willingly want to speak Finnish, [but] I cannot").^[9] According to the travel journal, a Finnish bishop, whose name is unknown, was behind the above quotation. // March - French troops under Guy de Richemont besiege the English commander in France, Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, in Caen. ...

Writing system

Mikael Agricola, a 19th century drawing by Albert Edelfelt

The first comprehensive writing system for Finnish was created by Mikael Agricola, a Finnish bishop, in the 16th century. He based his orthography on Swedish, German, and Latin. His ultimate plan was to translate the Bible, but first he had to define rules on which the Finnish standard language still relies, particularly with respect to spelling. He also invented single-handedly many words such as armo meaning both "mercy" and "grace" (as in "from grace alone, not out of good works...") and vanhurskas "righteous". More than fifty percent of these words are still in use. Image File history File links Size of this preview: 457 × 599 pixelsFull resolution (546 × 716 pixel, file size: 78 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Mikael Agricola, by Albert Edelfelt (1854–1905). ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 457 × 599 pixelsFull resolution (546 × 716 pixel, file size: 78 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Mikael Agricola, by Albert Edelfelt (1854–1905). ... Mikael Agricola Mikael Agricola ( ) (c. ... Albert Gustaf Aristides Edelfelt (21 July 1854 - 18 August 1905) was a Finland-Swedish painter. ... Mikael Agricola Mikael Agricola ( ) (c. ... Topics in Christianity Movements · Denominations · Other religions Ecumenism · Preaching · Prayer Music · Liturgy · Calendar Symbols · Art · Criticism Important figures Apostle Paul · Church Fathers Constantine · Athanasius · Augustine Anselm · Aquinas · Palamas · Luther Calvin · Wesley Arius · Marcion of Sinope Archbishop of Canterbury · Catholic Pope Coptic Pope · Ecumenical Patriarch Christianity Portal This box:      This article... The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. ... For other uses, see Latins and Latin (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Bible (disambiguation). ... A standard language (also standard dialect or standardized dialect) is a particular variety of a language that has been given either legal or quasi-legal status. ...

Agricola's written language was based on western dialects of Finnish, and his intention was that each phoneme should correspond with one letter. Yet, Agricola was confronted with many problems in this endeavour, failing to achieve uniformness. This is why he might use different signs for the same phonemes depending on the situation. For example he used dh or d to represent the voiced dental fricative /ð/ (English th in this) and tz or z to represent the geminate unvoiced dental fricative /θ/ (the th in thin). Additionally, Agricola might use gh or g to represent the voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ and either ch, c or h for /h/. For example he wrote techtin against modern spelling tehtiin. In human language, a phoneme is the theoretical representation of a sound. ... The voiced dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... Ð (capital Ð, lower-case ð) (or eth, eð or edh, Faroese: edd) is a letter used in Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and present-day Icelandic and Faroese. ... In phonetics, gemination is when a spoken consonant is doubled, so that it is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a single consonant. ... The voiceless dental fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... Note: A theta probe is a device for measuring soil moisture. ... The voiced velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The voiced velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ...

Later others revised Agricola's work, striving for a more phonetical system. In the process, Finnish ended up losing some of its phonemes. The sounds /ð/ and /θ/ disappeared from the standard language, surviving only in a small rural region in Western Finland.^[10] Elsewhere traces of these phonemes persist as their disappearance gave Finnish dialects their distinct qualities. For example, it has been deduced that the /θ/ sound became ht or tt (e.g. meþþä → mehtä, mettä) in the eastern dialects and in some western dialects. In the standard language, however, the effect of the lost phonemes is thus: Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... In spoken language, a phoneme is a basic, theoretical unit of sound that can distinguish words (i. ...

• /ð/ became d
• /θ/ became ts
• /ɣ/ became v but only if the voiced velar fricative appeared originally between high labial vowels, otherwise lost entirely.

Modern Finnish punctuation, along with that of Swedish, uses the colon character (:) to separate the stem of the word and its grammatical ending in some cases (such as after abbreviations), where some other alphabetic writing systems would use an apostrophe. Suffixes are required for correct grammar, so this is often applied, e.g. EU:ssa "in the EU". This article is about colons in punctuation. ... For the prime symbol (′) used for feet and inches, see Prime (symbol). ...

Modernization

Elias Lönnrot as depicted in a 19th century caricature — Lönnrot made several journeys to Karelia and Eastern Finland to collect folklore, from which he compiled the Kalevala.

In the 19th century Johan Vilhelm Snellman and others began to stress the need to improve the status of Finnish. Ever since the days of Mikael Agricola written Finnish had been used almost exclusively in religious contexts, but now Snellman's Hegelian nationalistic ideas of Finnish as a full-fledged national language gained considerable support. Concerted efforts were made to improve the status of the language and to modernize it, and by the end of the century Finnish had become a language of administration, journalism, literature, and science in Finland, along with Swedish. Image File history File links Size of this preview: 440 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (600 × 818 pixel, file size: 39 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Carricature of Elias Lönnrot Author: A. W. Linsen Year: 1847 Inscription: Unus homo nobis currendo restituit rem (Latin for One man saved a kingdom for... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 440 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (600 × 818 pixel, file size: 39 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Carricature of Elias Lönnrot Author: A. W. Linsen Year: 1847 Inscription: Unus homo nobis currendo restituit rem (Latin for One man saved a kingdom for... The Kalevala is an epic poem which the Finn Elias Lönnrot compiled from Finnish and Karelian folklore in the 19th century. ... Johan Vilhelm Snellman Statue of Johan Vilhelm Snellman in front of the Bank of Finland, Helsinki. ... Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 - November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher born in Stuttgart, Württemberg, in present-day southwest Germany. ... Eugène Delacroixs Liberty Leading the People, symbolizing French nationalism during the July Revolution 1830. ...

The most important contributions to improving the status of Finnish were made by Elias Lönnrot. His impact on the development of modern vocabulary in Finnish was particularly crucial. In addition to compiling the Kalevala, he acted as an arbitrator in disputes about the development of standard Finnish between the proponents of western and eastern dialects, ensuring that the western dialects Agricola had preferred preserved their preeminent role, while many originally dialectical words from Eastern Finland were introduced to the standard language enriching it considerably.^[11] The first novel written in Finnish (and by a Finnish-speaker) was Seven Brothers, published by Aleksis Kivi in 1870. Elias Lönnrot ( ) (April 9, 1802 – March 19, 1884) was a Finnish philologist and collector of traditional Finnish oral poetry. ... The Kalevala is an epic poem which the Finn Elias Lönnrot compiled from Finnish and Karelian folklore in the 19th century. ... Seven Brothers (originally Seitsemän veljestä) is the only novel of the Finnish author Aleksis Kivi and the first significant novel in the Finnish language. ... Aleksis Kivi (October 10, 1834 - December 31, 1872), born Alexis Stenvall, was a Finnish author who wrote the first significant novel in the Finnish language, Seven Brothers (Finnish title: Seitsemän veljestä). Aleksis Kivi was born at Nurmijärvi, Finland, in a tailors family. ...

Dialects

Map of Finnish dialects

The dialects of Finnish are divided into two distinct groups, the Western dialects and the Eastern dialects.^[12] The dialects are entirely mutually intelligible and distinguished from each other by only minor changes in vowels, diphthongs and rhythm. For the most part, the dialects operate on the same phonology, grammar and vocabulary. There are only marginal examples of sounds or grammatical constructions specific to some dialect and not found in standard Finnish. Two examples are the voiced dental fricative found in Rauma dialect and the Eastern exessive case. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... The voiced dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... Rauma language (rauman giäl) is a dialect of Finnish spoken in the town of Rauma, western Finland. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...

The classification of closely related dialects spoken outside of Finland is a politically sensitive issue that has been controversial since Finland's independence in 1917. This concerns specifically the Karelian language in Russia and Meänkieli in Sweden, the speakers of which are often considered oppressed minorities. Karelian is different enough from standard Finnish to have its own orthography. Meänkieli is a northern dialect entirely intelligible to speakers of any other Finnish dialect, which achieved its status as an official minority language in Sweden for historical and political reasons regardless of the fact that Finnish is an official minority language in Sweden, too. The Karelian language is a variety closely related to Finnish, with which it is not necessarily mutually intelligible. ... Meänkieli (lit. ...

Western dialects

The South-West dialects (lounaismurteet) are spoken in Finland Proper and Satakunta. Their typical feature is abbreviation of word-final vowels, and in many respects they resemble Estonian. The Tavastian dialects (hämäläismurteet) are spoken in Tavastia. They are closest to the standard language, but feature some slight vowel changes, such as the opening of diphthong-final vowels (tie → tiä, miekka → miakka, kuolisi → kualis). The Southern Ostrobothnian dialects (eteläpohjalaiset murteet) are spoken in Southern Ostrobothnia. Their most notable feature is the pronunciation of 'd' as a tapped or even fully trilled /r/. The Middle and North Ostrobothnia dialects (keski- ja pohjoispohjalaiset murteet) are spoken in Central and Northern Ostrobothnia. The Far-Northern dialects (peräpohjalaiset murteet) are spoken in Lapland. The dialects spoken in the western parts of Lapland are recognizable by retention of extraneous 'h' sounds in positions where they are not found in other dialects. Finland Proper (Varsinais-Suomi in Finnish, Egentliga Finland in Swedish) is a region in south-western Finland. ... Satakunta is a region (maakunta / landskap) of Finland. ... Tavastia, Tavastland or Häme, is a historical province in the south of Finland. ... Southern Ostrobothnia is one of the 20 regions (fi: maakunta / sv: landskap) of Finland. ... Central Ostrobothnia is a region (maakunta / landskap) in Western Finland. ... Northern Ostrobothnia is a region (maakunta / landskap) of Finland. ... The Province of Lapland is one of the Provinces of Finland, and a part of the larger geographical area of Lapland, which spans over four countries. ...

One of the Far-Northern dialects, Meänkieli, which is spoken on the Swedish side of the border, is taught in some Swedish schools as a distinct standardized language. The speakers of Meänkieli became politically separated from the other Finns when Finland was annexed to Russia in 1809. The categorization of Meänkieli as a separate language is controversial among the Finns, who see no linguistic criteria, only political reasons, for treating Meänkieli differently than other dialects of Finnish.^{[citation needed]} Meänkieli (lit. ... A standard language (also standard dialect or standardized dialect) is a particular variety of a language that has been given either legal or quasi-legal status. ... Combatants Russia Sweden Commanders Fyodor Buxhoeveden Boris Knorring Barclay de Tolly Wilhelm Mauritz Klingspor Carl Johan Adlercreutz Georg Carl von Döbeln The Finnish War was fought between Sweden and Russia from February 1808 to September 1809. ...

The Kven language is spoken in Finnmark and Troms, in Norway. Its speakers are descendants of Finnish emigrants to the region in the 18th and 19th centuries. Kven is an official minority language in Norway This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... County NO-20 Region Nord-Norge Administrative centre Vadsø County mayor   Area  - Total  - Percentage Ranked 1 48,618 km² 15. ... County NO-19 Region Nord-Norge Administrative centre Tromsø County mayor   Area  - Total  - Percentage Ranked 4 25,877 km² 8. ... (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

Eastern dialects

Main article: East Finnish

The Eastern dialects consist of the widespread Savonian dialects (savolaismurteet) spoken in Savo and nearby areas, and the South-Eastern dialects spoken now only in Finnish South Karelia. The South-Eastern dialects (kaakkoismurteet) were previously spoken also on the Karelian Isthmus and in Ingria. Karelian Isthmus was evacuated during World War II and refugees were resettled all over Finland. Most of Ingrian Finns were deported to various parts of Russia and Estonia. East Finnish culture and language are chiefly vested in the Savonians and the Karelians. ... Savo (Savonia/Savolax) is the name of a geographical region in Finland which can refer to: Savo - a historical province of Finland (Provinces of Sweden) Pohjois-Savon maakunta - a current Region of Finland Etelä-Savon maakunta - a current Region of Finland Eastern Finland - a current Province of Finland, which also... The Region of South Karelia is a region (maakunta / landskap) of Finland. ... The Karelian Isthmus is the narrow stretch of land between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga in northwestern Russia. ... Ingria may be seen represented in the easternmost part of the Carta Marina (1539) Ingria (Finnish: , Russian: , Swedish: , Estonian: ) is a historical region, now situated mostly in Russia, comprising the area along the basin of the river Neva, between the Gulf of Finland, the Narva River, Lake Peipsi in the... The Karelian Isthmus is the narrow stretch of land between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga in northwestern Russia. ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... The Ingrian Finns (inkeriläinen or inkerinsuomalainen) are an ethnic group who speak a dialect of Finnish language and have traditionally inhabited the area called Ingria (or Ingermanland, in Finnish: Inkeri) situated between what is now Saint Petersburg and the northeastern border of Estonia. ...

Palatalization, a common feature of Uralic languages, had been lost in Baltic-Finnic languages, but it has been reacquired by most of these languages, including Eastern Finnish, but not Western Finnish. In Finnish orthography, this is denoted with a 'j', e.g. vesj, cf. standard vesi. Palatalization means pronouncing a sound nearer to the hard palate, making it more like a palatal consonant; this is towards the front of the mouth for a velar or uvular consonant, but towards the back of the mouth for a front (e. ...

The language spoken in the parts of Karelia that have not historically been under Swedish or Finnish rule is usually called the Karelian language, and it is considered to be more distant from standard Finnish than the Eastern dialects. Whether this language of Russian Karelia is a dialect of Finnish or a separate language is a matter of interpretation. However, the term Karelian dialects is often used colloqually to the Finnish South-Eastern dialects. The Karelian language is a variety closely related to Finnish, with which it is not necessarily mutually intelligible. ... East Karelia and West Karelia with borders of 1939 and 1940/1947. ...

Linguistic varieties

Main article: Spoken Finnish

There are two main varieties of Finnish used throughout the country. One is the "standard language" (yleiskieli), and the other is the "spoken language" (puhekieli). The standard language is used in formal situations like political speeches and newscasts. Its written form, the "book language" (kirjakieli), is used in nearly all written texts, not always excluding even the dialogue of common people in popular prose. The spoken language, on the other hand, is the main variety of Finnish used in popular TV and radio shows and at workplaces, and may be preferred to a dialect in personal communication. This article deals with features of the spoken Finnish language, specifically how it is spoken in Greater Helsinki capital region and the cities in the Central Finnish dialectal area, such as Jyväskylä, Lahti, Hyvinkää, and Hämeenlinna. ... A variety of a language is a form that differs from other forms of the language systematically and coherently. ... This article deals with features of the spoken Finnish language, specifically how it is spoken in Greater Helsinki capital region and the cities in the Central Finnish dialectal area, such as Jyväskylä, Lahti, Hyvinkää, and Hämeenlinna. ...

Standardization

Standard Finnish is prescribed by the Language Office of the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland and is the language used in official communication. The Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish (Nykysuomen sanakirja 1951–61), with 201,000 entries, was a prescriptive dictionary that defined official language. An additional volume for words of foreign origin (Nykysuomen sivistyssanakirja, 30,000 entries) was published in 1991. An updated dictionary, the Language Office Dictionary (Kielitoimiston sanakirja) was published in an electronic form in 2004 and in print in 2006. A descriptive grammar (Iso suomen kielioppi^[13], 1,600 pages) was published in 2004. There is also an etymological dictionary, Suomen sanojen alkuperä, published in 1992–2000, and a handbook of contemporary language (Nykysuomen käsikirja), and a periodic publication, Kielikello. Standard Finnish is used in official texts and is the form of language taught in schools. Its spoken form is used in political speech, newscasts, in courts, and in other formal situations. Nearly all publishing and printed works are in standard Finnish. The Research Institute for the Languages of Finland (Finnish: , Swedish: , Northern Sami: , Romani: ) is a governmental linguistic research institute of Finland geared at studies of Finnish, Swedish, the Sami languages, Romany language, and the Finnish Sign Language. ... In linguistics, prescription is the laying down or prescribing of normative rules of the language. ... In linguistics, prescription is the laying down or prescribing of normative rules for a language. ...

Spoken Finnish

The spoken language has mostly developed naturally from earlier forms of Finnish, and spread from main cultural and political centres. The standard language, however, has always been a consciously constructed medium for literature. It preserves grammatical patterns that have mostly vanished from the colloquial varieties and, as its main application is writing, it features complex syntactic patterns that are not easy to handle when used in speech. The spoken language develops significantly faster, and the grammatical and phonological simplifications include also the most common pronouns and suffixes, which sum up to frequent but modest differences. Some sound changes have been left out of the formal language, such as the irregularization of some common verbs by assimilation, e.g. tule- → tuu- (although tule can be used in spoken language as well).

Written language certainly still exerts a considerable influence upon the spoken word, due to the fact that illiteracy is nonexistent and many Finns are avid readers. In fact, it is still not entirely uncommon to meet people who "talk like a book" (puhuvat kirjakieltä), although this is seen as pedantic. More common is the intrusion of typically book-like constructions into a colloquial discourse, as a kind of quote from written Finnish. It should also be noted that it is quite common to hear book-like and polished speech on radio or TV, and the constant exposure to such language tends to lead to the adoption of such constructions even in everyday language.

A prominent example of the effect of the standard language is the development of the consonant gradation form /ts : ts/ as in metsä : metsän, as this pattern was originally (1940) found natively only in the dialects of southern Karelian isthmus and Ingria. In fact, it has arisen from the spelling 'ts' for the dental fricative [θː], which has disappeared. In spoken language, a fusion of Western /tt : tt/ (mettä : mettän) and Eastern /ht : t/ (mehtä : metän) has been created: /tt : t/ (mettä : metän).^[14] It is notable that neither of these are forms are identifiable as or originate from a specific dialect. Ingria may be seen represented in the easternmost part of the Carta Marina (1539) Ingria (Finnish: , Russian: , Swedish: , Estonian: ) is a historical region, now situated mostly in Russia, comprising the area along the basin of the river Neva, between the Gulf of Finland, the Narva River, Lake Peipsi in the...

The orthography of the informal language follows that of the formal language. However, sometimes sandhi may be transcribed, especially the internal ones, e.g. menenpä → menempä. This never takes place in formal language. Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. ...

Examples

formal language — colloquial language

he menevät — ne menee "they go" (loss of distinction of animacy and the difference between the plural and the singular)

onko(s) teillä — onks teil(lä) "do you have?" (vowel deletion)

me emme sano — me ei sanota "we don't say" or "we won't say" (notice: fusion of me ei transcribed, also the first person plural is replaced with the indefinite voice)

(minun) kirjani — mun kirja "my book" (notice: sandhi n+k → ŋk transcribed)

kuusikymmentäviisi — kuuskytviis "sixty-five"

tulen — tuun "I'm coming" (irregular verb)

punainen — punane(n) "red" (unstressed diphthong becomes a very short vowel)

korjannee — kai korjaa "probably will fix"

Note that there are noticeable differences between dialects. These examples are mostly from the language as spoken in the Capital area (Helsinki dialect or even Stadin slangi). Animacy is a grammatical category, usually of nouns, which influences the form a verb takes when it is associated with that noun. ... This article deals with the grammar of the Finnish language. ... Helsinki slang or slangi is a local variation of the Finnish language mainly used in the capital Helsinki. ...

Phonology

Main article: Finnish phonology

Characteristic features of Finnish (common to other Finno-Ugric languages) are vowel harmony and an agglutinative morphology; due to the extensive use of the latter, words can be quite long. Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Vowel harmony (also metaphony) is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels. ...

The main stress is always on the first syllable, and it is articulated by adding approximately 100 ms more length to the stressed vowel. Stress does not cause any measurable modifications in vowel quality (very much unlike English). However, stress is not strong and words appear evenly stressed. In some cases, stress is so weak that the highest points of volume, pitch and other indicators of "articulation intensity" are not on the first syllable, although native speakers recognize the first syllable as a stressed syllable.

There are eight vowels, whose lexical and grammatical role is highly important, and which are unusually strictly controlled, so that there is almost no allophony. Vowels shown in the table below, followed by the IPA symbol when not identical. These are always different phonemes in the initial syllable; for noninitial syllable, see morphophonology below. In Quebec, an allophone (French or English. ... Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ...

¹ Although conventionally and conveniently written with the close-mid symbols [e], [ø] and [o], they are more acurately described as mid vowels ([e̞], [ø̞] and [o̞]).

The usual analysis is that Finnish has long and short vowels and consonants as distinct phonemes. However, long vowels may be analyzed as a vowel followed by a chroneme, or also, that sequences of identical vowels are pronounced as "diphthongs". The quality of long vowels mostly overlaps with the quality of short vowels, with the exception of u, which is centralized with respect to uu; long vowels do not morph into diphthongs. There are eighteen phonemic diphthongs; like vowels, diphthongs do not have allophony. A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... In spoken language, a chroneme is a basic, theoretical unit of sound that can distinguish words by duration only of a vowel or consonant. ... In phonetics, a diphthong (also gliding vowel) (Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally with two sounds, or with two tones) is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ...

Finnish has a consonant inventory of small to moderate size, where voicing is not distinctive, and there are only glottal and unvoiced alveolar fricatives. Finnish has very few non-alveolar coronal consonants. Consonants are as follows, where consonants in parenthesis are found only in a few recent loans. Coronal consonants are articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. ...

1. /d/ is the equivalent of /t/ under weakening consonant gradation, and thus occurs only medially, or in non-native words; it is actually more of an alveolar tap rather than a true voiced stop, and the dialectal realization varies wildly; see main article.
2. The glottal stop can only appear at word boundaries as a result of certain sandhi phenomena, and it is not indicated in spelling: e.g. /annaʔolla/ 'let it be', orthographically anna olla. Moreover, this sound is not used in all dialects.
3. The short velar nasal is an allophone of /n/ in /nk/, and the long velar nasal /ŋŋ/, written ng, is the equivalent of /nk/ under weakening consonant gradation (type of lenition) and thus occurs only medially.

Almost all consonant have phonemic geminated forms. These are independent, but occur only medially when phonemic. In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. ... In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lips and the upper teeth, or viceversa. ... Dentals are consonants such as t, d, n, and l articulated with either the lower or the upper teeth, or both, rather than with the gum ridge as in English. ... Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the superior teeth. ... Postalveolar (or palato-alveolar) consonants are consonants articulated with the tip of the tongue between the alveolar ridge (the place of articulation for alveolar consonants) and the palate (the place of articulation for palatal consonants). ... Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. ... A stop or plosive or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. ... Fricatives (or spirants) are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. ... Laterals are L-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue. ... Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. ... Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation, in which consonants alternate between various grades. It is found in some Finno-Lappic languages such as Finnish, Estonian and Sámi; moreover, the Votic language is known for its extensive set of gradation patterns. ... The alveolar tap or flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator (such as the tongue) is thrown against another. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... The velar nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation, in which consonants alternate between various grades. It is found in some Finno-Lappic languages such as Finnish, Estonian and Sámi; moreover, the Votic language is known for its extensive set of gradation patterns. ... Lenition is a kind of consonant mutation that appears in many languages. ... In phonetics, gemination is when a spoken consonant is doubled, so that it is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a single consonant. ...

Independent consonant clusters are not allowed in native words, except for a small set of two-consonant syllable codas, e.g. 'rs' in karsta. However, due to a number of recently adopted loanwords using them, e.g. strutsi "ostrich", Finnish speakers can pronounce them, even if it is somewhat awkward. Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ...

As a Finno-Ugric language, it is somewhat special in two respects: loss of fricatives and loss of palatalization. Palatalization means pronouncing a sound nearer to the hard palate, making it more like a palatal consonant; this is towards the front of the mouth for a velar or uvular consonant, but towards the back of the mouth for a front (e. ...

An interesting feature of Fennic phonology is the development of labial vowels in non-initial syllables. Proto-Uralic had only 'a' and 'i' and their vowel harmonic allophones in non-initial syllables; modern Finnish allows other vowels in non-initial syllables (they are uncommon, however, compared to 'a', 'ä' and 'i'). Proto-Uralic is the ancestor language of the Uralic languages, including the hypothetical families of the Samoyedic languages and the Finno-Ugric languages. ...

Palatalization is characteristic of Finno-Ugric languages, but Finnish has lost it. However, the Eastern dialects and the Karelian language have redeveloped a system of palatalization. For example, the Karelian word d'uuri [dʲu:ri], with a palatalized /dʲ/, is reflected by juuri in Finnish and Savo dialect vesj [vesʲ] is vesi in standard Finnish. Palatalization means pronouncing a sound nearer to the hard palate, making it more like a palatal consonant; this is towards the front of the mouth for a velar or uvular consonant, but towards the back of the mouth for a front (e. ... The Karelian language is a variety closely related to Finnish, with which it is not necessarily mutually intelligible. ... This article is about Karelia, the land of the Karelians, in its broadest meaning. ... Finnish (  suomi?) is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland (92%) and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. ...

Finnish has only two fricatives, namely /s/ and /h/. All other fricatives are recognized as foreign, of which Finnish speakers can usually reliably distinguish /f/ and /ʃ/.

Morphophonology

A Venn diagram of the Finnish vowel harmony system. The front vowels are in blue, neutral in green and back in yellow.

Finnish has a thick layer of morphophonology between grammar ("logic") and phonology ("sounds"). The most important processes are vowel harmony and consonant gradation. Image File history File links Finnish_vowel_harmony_Venn_diagram. ... Image File history File links Finnish_vowel_harmony_Venn_diagram. ... A Venn diagram of sets A, B, and C Venn diagrams (or set diagrams) are illustrations used in the branch of mathematics known as set theory. ... Vowel harmony (also metaphony) is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels. ... Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation, in which consonants alternate between various grades. It is found in some Finno-Lappic languages such as Finnish, Estonian and Sámi; moreover, the Votic language is known for its extensive set of gradation patterns. ...

Vowel harmony is a redundancy feature, which means that the feature [±back] is uniform within a word, and so it is necessary to interpret it only once for a given word. It is meaning-distinguishing in the initial syllable, and suffixes follow; so, if the listener hears [±back] in any part of the word, they can derive [±back] for the initial syllable. For example, tuote ("product") agglutinates to tuotteeseensa ("into his product"), where the final vowel becomes the back vowel 'a' (rather than the front vowel 'ä') because the initial syllable contains the back vowels 'uo'. This is especially notable because vowels 'a' and 'ä' are different, meaning-distinguishing phonemes, not interchangeable or allophonic. Finnish front vowels are not umlauts. In human language, a phoneme is the theoretical representation of a sound. ... In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme. ... In linguistics, umlaut (from German um- around/the other way + Laut sound) is a process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a vowel or semivowel in a following syllable. ...

Consonant gradation is a lenition process for P, T and K, with the oblique stem "weakened" from the nominative stem, or vice versa. For example, tarkka "precise" has the oblique root tarka-, as in tarkan "of the precise". There is also another gradation pattern, which is older, and causes simple elision of T and K. However, it is very common since it is found in the partitive case marker: if V is a single vowel, V+ta → Va, e.g. *vanha+ta → vanhaa. Another instance is the imperative, which changes into a glottal stop in the singular but is shown as an overt 'ka' in plural, e.g. mene vs. menkää. Lenition is a kind of consonant mutation that appears in many languages. ...

Grammar

Main article: Finnish grammar

The morphosyntactic alignment is nominative-accusative; but there are two object cases: accusative and partitive. The contrast between the two is telicity, where accusative denotes actions completed as intended (Ammuin hirven "I shot (=killed) the elk"), and partitive denotes incomplete actions (Ammuin hirveä "I shot (at) the elk"). Often this is confused with perfectivity, but the only element of perfectivity that exists in Finnish is that there are some perfective verbs. Transitivity is distinguished by different verbs for transitive and intransitive, e.g. ratkaista "to solve something" vs. ratketa "to solve by itself". There are several frequentative and momentane verb categories. This article deals with the grammar of the Finnish language. ... In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the system used to distinguish between the arguments of transitive verbs and those of intransitive verbs. ... Telicity or telic aspect is a verb aspect, indicating a reached goal or action completed as intended. ... In grammar, the perfective aspect is an aspect that exists in many languages. ... In grammar, a frequentative form of a word is one which indicates repeated action. ... The momentane is a verb type, which indicates short-lived, sudden, intransitive action. ...

Verbs gain personal suffixes for each person; these suffixes are grammatically more important than pronouns, which are often not used at all in standard Finnish. The infinitive is not the uninflected form but has a suffix -ta or -da; the closest one to an uninflected form is the third person singular indicative. There are four persons, first ("I, we"), second ("you, you"), third ("s/he, they") and indefinite (often called impersonal or "passive", similar to e.g. English "people say/do/…"). There are four tenses, namely present, past, perfect and pluperfect; the system mirrors the Germanic system. The future tense is not needed due to context and the telic contrast. For example, luen kirjan "I read a book (completely)" indicates a future, when luen kirjaa "I read a book (not yet complete)" indicates present.

Nouns may be suffixed with the markers for the aforementioned accusative case and partitive case, the genitive case, eight different locatives, and a few other cases. The case marker must be added not only to the main noun, but also to its modifiers; e.g. suure+ssa talo+ssa, literally "big-in house-in". Possession is marked with a possessive suffix; separate possessive pronouns are unknown. Pronouns gain suffixes just as nouns do. The accusative case (abbreviated ACC) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. ... The basic meaning of the Partitive case is partialness, without result or without specifying identity. In the Finnish language, its used to express unknown identities and irresultative actions. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... The possessive suffix is an feature unique to Finno-Ugric languages. ... A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that attributes ownership to someone or something. ...

Lexicon

Suomalaisen Sana-Lugun Coetus (1745) by Daniel Juslenius was the first comprehensive dictionary of the Finnish language with 16,000 entries.

See the lists of Finnish words and words of Finnish origin at Wiktionary, the free dictionary and Wikipedia's sibling project.

Finnish extensively employs regular agglutination. It has a smaller core vocabulary than, for example, English, and uses derivative suffixes to a greater extent. As an example, take the word kirja "a book", from which one can form derivatives kirjain "a letter" (of the alphabet), kirje "a piece of correspondence, a letter", kirjasto "a library", kirjailija "an author", kirjallisuus "literature", kirjoittaa "to write", kirjoittaja "a writer", kirjuri "a scribe, a clerk", kirjallinen "something in written form", kirjata "to write down, register, record", kirjasin "a font", and others. Wiktionary (a portmanteau of wiki and dictionary) is a multilingual, Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 151 languages. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... ABCs redirects here. ...

Here are some of the more common such suffixes. Which of each pair is used depends on the word being suffixed in accordance with the rules of vowel harmony. Vowel harmony (also metaphony) is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels. ...

• -ja/jä : agent (one who does) (e.g. lukea "to read" → lukija "reader")
• -lainen/läinen: inhabitant of (either noun or adjective). Englanti "England" → englantilainen "English person or thing"; Venäjä → venäläinen "person from Russia".
• -sto/stö: collection of. For example: kirja "a book" → kirjasto "a library"; laiva "a ship" → laivasto "navy, fleet".
• -in: instrument or tool. For example: kirjata "to book, to file" → kirjain "a letter" (of the alphabet); vatkata "to whisk" → vatkain "a whisk, mixer".
• -uri/yri: an agent or instrument (kaivaa "to dig" → kaivuri "a digging machine"; laiva "a ship" → laivuri "shipper, shipmaster").
• -os/ös: result of some action (tulla "to come" → tulos "result, outcome"; tehdä "to do" → teos "a piece of work").
• -ton/tön: lack of something, "un-", "-less" (onni "happiness" → onneton "unhappy"; koti "home" → koditon "homeless").
• -llinen: having (the quality of) something (lapsi "a child" → lapsellinen "childish"; kauppa "a shop, commerce" → kaupallinen "commercial").
• -kas/käs: similar to -llinen (itse "self" → itsekäs "selfish"; neuvo "advice" → neuvokas "resourceful").
• -va/vä: doing or having something (taitaa "to be able" → taitava "skillful"; johtaa "to lead" → johtava "leading").
• -la/lä: a place related to the main word (kana "a hen" → kanala "a henhouse"; pappi "a priest" → pappila "a parsonage").

Verbal suffixes are extremely diverse; several frequentatives and momentanes differentiating causative, volitional-unpredictable and anticausative are found, often combined with each other, often denoting indirection. For example, hypätä "to jump", hyppiä "to be jumping", hypeksiä "to be jumping wantonly", hypäyttää "to make someone jump once", hyppyyttää "to make someone jump repeatedly" (or "to boss someone around"), hyppyytyttää "to make someone to cause a third person to jump repeatedly", hyppyytellä "to, without aim, make someone jump repeatedly", hypähtää "to jump suddenly" (in anticausative meaning), hypellä "to jump around repeatedly", hypiskellä "to be jumping repeatedly and wantonly", hyppimättä "without jumping", hyppelemättä "without jumping around". Often the diversity and compactness of this agglutination is illustrated with juoksentelisinkohan "I wonder if I should run around aimlessly". In grammar, a frequentative form of a word is one which indicates repeated action. ... The momentane is a verb type, which indicates short-lived, sudden, intransitive action. ... In computer programming, indirection is the ability to reference something using a name, reference, or container instead of the value itself. ...

Borrowing

Over the course of many centuries, the Finnish language has borrowed a great many words from a wide variety of languages, most from neighboring Indo-European languages. Indeed, some estimates put the core Finno-Ugric vocabulary surviving in Finnish at only around 300 word roots.^{[citation needed]} Due to the different grammatical, phonological and phonotactic structure of the Finnish language, loanwords from Indo-European have been assimilated. For other uses, see Indo-European. ...

In general, the first loan words into Finno-Ugric languages seem to come from very early Indo-European languages, and later mainly from Iranian, Turkic, Baltic, Germanic, and Slavic languages. Furthermore, a certain group of very basic and neutral words exists in Finnish and other Finnic languages that are absent from other Finno-Ugric languages, but without a recognizable etymology from any known language. These words are usually regarded as the last remnant of the Nordic language spoken in Fennoscandia before the arrival of the proto-Finnic language. Words included in this group are e.g. jänis (hare), musta (black), mäki (hill), saari (island), suo (swamp) and niemi (cape). Also some place names, like Päijänne and Imatra, are probably before the proto-Finnic era.^[15] For other uses, see Indo-European. ... The Turkic languages constitute a language family of some thirty languages, spoken across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are traditionally considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family. ... The Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. ...  Countries where a West Slavic language is the national language  Countries where an East Slavic language is the national language  Countries where a South Slavic language is the national language The Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages), a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup... Lake Päijänne is the third biggest lake in Finland (1038 km2 water area). ... Imatra is a town and municipality in eastern Finland, founded in 1948 around three industrial settlements near the Finnish-Russian border. ...

Often quoted loan examples are kuningas "king" and ruhtinas "prince, high ranking nobleman" from Germanic *kuningaz and *druhtinaz, but another example is äiti "mother", from Gothic eiþai, which is interesting because borrowing of close-kinship vocabulary is a rare phenomenon. The original Finnish emo has become a cranberry morpheme. There are other close-kinship words that are loaned from Baltic and Germanic languages (morsian "bride", armas "dear"). Examples of the ancient Iranian loans are vasara "hammer" from Avestan vadžra, vajra and orja "slave" from arya, airya "man" (the latter probably via similar circumstances as slave from Slav in many European languages). Gothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. ... In linguistic morphology, a cranberry morpheme (or fossilized term) is a type of bound morpheme that cannot be assigned a meaning nor a grammatical function, but nonetheless serves to distinguish one word from the other. ... Yasna 28. ... Aryan (/eÉ™rjÉ™n/ or /ɑːrjÉ™n/, Sanskrit: ) is a Sanskrit and Avestan word meaning noble/spiritual one. ... Distribution of Slavic people by language The Slavic peoples are a linguistic and ethnic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly in Europe, where they constitute roughly a third of the population. ...

More recently, Swedish has been a prolific source of borrowings, and also, the Swedish language acted as a proxy for European words, especially those relating to government. Present-day Finland belonged to the kingdom of Sweden from the 12th century and was ceded to Russia in 1809, becoming an autonomous Grand Duchy. Swedish was retained as the official language and language of the upper class even after this. When Finnish was accepted as an official language, it gained only legal "equal status" with Swedish, which persists even today. It is still the case today, though only about 5.5% of Finnish nationals, the Swedish-speaking Finns, have Swedish as their mother tongue. During the period of autonomy, Russian did not gain much ground as a language of the people or the government. Nevertheless, quite a few words were subsequently acquired from Russian (especially in older Helsinki slang) but not to the same extent as with Swedish. In all these cases, borrowing has been partly a result of geographical proximity. (11th century - 12th century - 13th century - other centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 12th century was that century which lasted from 1101 to 1200. ... Year 1809 (MDCCCIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar). ...  Officially monolingual Finnish-speaking municipalities (Sami bilingual municipalities not shown)  Bilingual municipalities with Finnish as the majority language  Bilingual municipalities with Swedish as the majority language  Monolingual Swedish-speaking municipalities (including Ã…land) More than 17,000 Swedish Finns live in officially monolingual Finnish municipalities, and are thus not represented on... First language (native language, mother tongue, or vernacular) is the language a person learns first. ... Helsinki slang or slangi is a local variation of the Finnish language mainly used in the capital Helsinki. ...

Especially words dealing with administrative or modern culture came to Finnish from Swedish, sometimes reflecting the oldest Swedish form of the word (lag - laki, 'law'; län - lääni, 'county'; bisp - piispa, 'bishop'; jordpäron - peruna, 'potato'), and many more survive as informal synonyms in spoken or dialectal Finnish (e.g. likka, from Swedish flicka, 'girl', usually tyttö in Finnish).

Typical Russian loanwords are old or very old, thus hard to recognize as such, and concern everyday concepts, e.g. papu "bean", sini "(n.) blue" and pappi "priest". Notably, a few religious words such as Raamattu ("Bible") are loaned from Russian, which indicates language contact preceding the Swedish era. This is mainly believed to be result of trade with Novgorod 9th century and so on and the Orthodox converting in 13th century. In linguistics, a noun or noun substantive is a lexical category which is defined in terms of how its members combine with other grammatical kinds of expressions. ...

Most recently, and with increasing impact, English has been the source of new loanwords in Finnish. Unlike previous "geographical" borrowing, the influence of English is largely "cultural" and reaches Finland by many routes including: international business; music; film and TV (except for the very young, foreign films and programmes are shown subtitled); literature; and, of course, the Web — this is now probably the most important source of all non-face-to-face exposure to English. A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. ... The World Wide Web and WWW redirect here. ...

The importance of English as the language of global commerce has led many non-English companies, including Finland's Nokia, to adopt English as their official operating language. Recently, it has been observed that English borrowings are also ousting previous borrowings, for example the switch from treffailla "to date" (from Swedish, träffa) to deittailla from English "to go for a date". Calques from English are also found, e.g kovalevy (hard disk). Grammatical calques are also found, for example, the replacement of the impersonal (passiivi) with the English-style generic you, e. g. sä et voi "you cannot", instead of ei voi "one cannot". This article is about the telecommunications corporation. ... // In linguistics, a calque (pronounced ) or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word (Latin: verbum pro verbo) or root-for-root translation. ... In English grammar, generic you or indefinite you is the use of the pronoun you to refer to an unspecified person. ...

However, this does not mean that Finnish is threatened by English. Borrowing is normal language evolution, and neologisms are coined actively not only by the government, but also by the media. Moreover, Finnish and English have a considerably different grammar, phonology and phonotactics, discouraging direct borrowing. English loan words in Finnish slang include for example pleikkari "PlayStation", hodari "hot dog", and hedari "headache". Often these loanwords are distinctly identified as slang or jargon, rarely being used in a negative mood or in formal language. Since English and Finnish grammar, pronunciation and phonetics differ considerably, most loan words are inevitably sooner or later calqued — translated into native Finnish — retaining the semantic meaning. This article deals with the grammar of the Finnish language. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... The phonotactics of the Finnish language natively permit syllables of form CVCC and CVVC at maximum, e. ... For other uses, see Slang (disambiguation). ... For the glossary of hacker slang, see Jargon File. ... // In linguistics, a calque (pronounced ) or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word (Latin: verbum pro verbo) or root-for-root translation. ...

Neologisms

Some modern terms have been synthesised rather than borrowed, for example:

puhelin "telephone" (literally: "chatter" + instrument suffix "-in" to make "an instrument for chattering")

tietokone "computer" (literally: "knowledge machine")

levyke "diskette" (from levy "disc" + a diminutive -ke)

sähköposti "email" (literally: "electrical mail")

linja-auto "bus" (literally: route-car)

Neologisms are actively generated by the Language Planning Office and the media. They are widely adopted. One would actually give an old-fashioned or rustic impression using forms such as telefooni or kompuutteri when the neologism is widely adopted.

Loans to other languages

Main article: List of English words of Finnish origin

For a list of words with Finnish language origins, see the Finnish derivations category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Rather few words of Finnish origin have entered other languages, the language being a net importer of words. ...

Orthography

Main article: Finnish alphabet

The first page of Abckiria (1543), the first book written in the Finnish language. The spelling of Finnish in the book had many inconsistencies: for example, the k sound could be represented by either c, k or even g; the long u and the long i were represented by w and ij respectively, and ä was represented by e.

Finnish is written with the Swedish variant of the Latin alphabet that includes the distinct characters Ä and Ö, and also several characters not used in Finnish (including for example C, Q, Å). The Finnish orthography built upon the phonetic principle: each phoneme (distinct sound) of the language is represented by exactly one grapheme (independent letter), and each grapheme represents exactly one phoneme. This makes the language easy for its speakers to spell, and facilitates learning to read and write. The rule of thumb for Finnish orthography is: write as you read, read as you write. However, morphemes retain their spelling despite sandhi. The Finnish alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, and especially its Swedish extension. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 433 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (650 × 900 pixel, file size: 194 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Abckiria, first Finnish ABC-book by Mikael Agricola, 1543. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 433 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (650 × 900 pixel, file size: 194 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Abckiria, first Finnish ABC-book by Mikael Agricola, 1543. ... The first page of Abckiria. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning sound or voice) is the study of the sounds of human speech. ... Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. ...

Some orthographical notes:

• Long vowels and consonants are represented by double occurrences of the relevant graphemes. This causes no confusion, and permits these sounds to be written without having to nearly double the size of the alphabet to accommodate separate graphemes for long sounds.
• The n in nk is a velar nasal, as in English. As an exception to the phonetic principle, there is no g in ng, which is a long velar nasal as in English singalong.
• The grapheme h occurring before a consonant sounds slightly harder (initially breathy voiced, then voiceless) than when occurring before a vowel.
• Sandhi is not transcribed; the spelling of morphemes is immutable, e.g. tulen+pa /tuleɱpa/.
• Some consonants (v, j, d) and all consonants occurring in (always medial) clusters do not have distinctive length, and consequently, their allophonic variation is not indicated in spelling, e.g. rajaan /rajaan/ (I limit) vs. raijaan /raijjaan/ (I haul).
• Pre-1900's texts and personal names use w for v. Both correspond to the same phoneme, the labiodental approximant /ʋ/, a v without the fricative ("hissing") quality of the English v.

The letters ä [æ] and ö [ø], although written as umlauted a and o, do not represent phonological umlauts, and they are considered independent graphemes; the letter shapes have been copied from Swedish. An appropriate parallel from the Latin alphabet are the characters C and G (uppercase), which historically have a closer kinship than many other characters (G is a derivation of C) but are considered distinct letters, and changing one for the other will change meanings. The velar nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... Breathy voice or murmured voice is a phonation in which the vocal folds are vibrating as in normal voicing, but the glottal closure is incomplete, so that the voicing is somewhat inefficient and air continues to leak between the vocal folds throughout the vibration cycle with audible friction noise. ... Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. ... The labiodental approximant is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... Ä, or ä, is a character which represents either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter A with umlaut or diaeresis. ... Ö, or ö, is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut or diaeresis. ... The umlaut mark (or simply umlaut) and the trema or diaeresis mark (or simply diaeresis) are two diacritics consisting of a pair of dots placed over a letter. ... I-mutation is what umlaut is called when it applies to English. ...

If the graphemes ä and ö are not accessible due to technical limitations, they must be replaced with a and o, respectively. As they are not umlauts, it is wrong to write them as umlaut digraphs ae, oe, as in German. Sequences ae and oe are distinct phonemes from ä and ö, e.g. haen "I seek" vs. hän "he"/"she". Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

The sounds š and ž are not a part of Finnish language itself and have been introduced somewhat artificially by a government regulation. Although they occur in some rare loanwords, their principal use is in the transcription of foreign names. For technical reasons or convenience, the graphemes sh and zh are often used in quickly or less carefully written texts instead of š and ž. This is a deviation from the phonetic principle, and as such is liable to cause confusion, but the damage is minimal as the transcribed words are foreign in any case. Finnish does not use the sounds z, š or ž, but for the sake of exactitude, they can be included in spelling. (The recommendation cites the Russian play Hovanshtshina as an example.) Many speakers pronounce all of them s, or distinguish only between s and š, because Finnish has no voiced sibilants.^[16] Khovanshchina (Russian: , Hovánščina, sometimes rendered The Khovansky Affair) is an opera (subtitled a national music drama) in five acts by Modest Mussorgsky. ...

The language may be identified by its distinctive lack of the letters b, c, f, q, w, x, z and å.

Language example

— Väinö Linna: The Unknown Soldier; these words were also inscribed in the 20 mk note. Väinö Linna (December 20, 1920 - April 21, 1992) was one of the most influential Finnish authors of the 20th century. ... This article is about a Finnish novel and film. ... The markka or mark was the currency used in Finland from 1861 until January 1, 1999, when it was replaced by the euro (€). The currency code used for the markka was FIM, and the usual familiar notation was a postfix mk. ...

(Translation: "The benevolent sun watched them. By no means was it angry at them. Perhaps it even felt a kind of compassion towards them. Jolly good brothers.")

Basic greetings

• (Hyvää) huomenta – Good morning

• (Hyvää) päivää – Good afternoon (literally "Good day")

• (Hyvää) iltapäivää – Good afternoon

• (Hyvää) iltaa – Good evening

• Hyvää yötä / Öitä – Good night / Good night

• Terve! / Moro! – Hello!

• Hei! / Moi! – Hi!

• Heippa! / Moikka! / Hei hei! / Moi moi! – Bye!

• Nähdään – See you later (literally "will be seen")

• Näkemiin / Hyvästi – Goodbye

• Hauska tutustua! – Nice to meet you
• Kiitos – Thank you

• Kiitos, samoin – Likewise

• Mitä kuuluu? – How are you / How you doing? (Not used among strangers.) (literally "what is heard?")

• Kiitos hyvää – I'm fine, thank you

• Tervetuloa! – Welcome!

Important words and phrases

Tietosanakirja, 11 volumes, 1909-1922, Finnish encyclopedia.

• kyllä – yes
• joo - yeah (informal)
• ei – no, not
• minä, sinä, hän – I, you, he/she
• me, te, he – we, you, they
• minä olen – I am
• sinä olet - you are
• yksi, kaksi, kolme – one, two, three
• neljä, viisi, kuusi – four, five, six
• seitsemän, kahdeksan – seven, eight
• yhdeksän, kymmenen – nine, ten
• sata, tuhat, miljoona – hundred, thousand, million
• minä rakastan sinua – I love you
• anteeksi – forgive me, excuse me
• olen pahoillani – I'm sorry (apology)
• otan osaa – I'm sorry (sympathy)
• totta kai – of course
• pieni hetki, pikku hetki, hetkinen – one moment please!
• Suomi – Finland
• suomi – Finnish language
• suomalainen – (noun) Finn; (adjective) Finnish
• Mitä kuuluu? – How are you? (note: not used among strangers)
• En ymmärrä – I don't understand
• Ymmärrän – I understand
• ¹Ymmärrät(te)kö suomea? – Do you understand Finnish?
• ¹Puhut(te)ko englantia? – Do you speak English?
• Olen englantilainen / amerikkalainen / kanadalainen / australialainen / uusiseelantilainen / irlantilainen / skotlantilainen – I am English / American / Canadian / Australian / New Zealander / Irish / Scottish
• ¹Olet(te)ko englantilainen? – Are you English?
• Missä (sinä) asut/¹Missä (te) asutte? – Where do you live?

¹ -te is added to make the sentence formal. Otherwise, without the added "-te", it is informal. It is also added when talking to more than one person. The transition from second-person singular to second-person plural (teitittely) is a politeness pattern, advised by many "good manners guides". Elderly people, especially, expect it from strangers, whereas the younger might feel it to be too formal to the point of coldness. However, a learner of the language should not be excessively concerned about it. Omitting it is never offensive, but one should keep in mind that on formal occasions this custom may make a good impression. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1775x1058, 329 KB) Book covers. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1775x1058, 329 KB) Book covers. ...

Trivia

The linguist and author J.R.R. Tolkien considered Finnish to be a particularly beautiful language, and described his youthful discovery of Finnish as inspiring him to pursue a linguistic career ("Finding a Finnish grammar book was like entering a complete wine-cellar, filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before"^[17]. Several of Tolkien's invented languages, notably Quenya, are stylistically related to Finnish. J. R. R. Tolkien in 1916. ... Quenya is one of the fictional languages spoken by the Elves (the Quendi) the ones who speak. The first-found children of Ilúvatar, in the fantasy works of J. R. R. Tolkien. ...

References

In 1999 the Minority Language Committee of Sweden formally declared five minority languages of Sweden: Sami language, Romani, Finnish, Yiddish, and Meänkieli (Tornedal). ... is the 115th day of the year (116th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... is the 53rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... is the 115th day of the year (116th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... is the 265th day of the year (266th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... is the 192nd day of the year (193rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... The Finnish Literature Society (Suomen Historiallinen Seura) was founded in 1875 to promote literature written in Finnish. ... 2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Anno Domini (or common era), in accordance to the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 3rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Anno Domini (or common era), in accordance to the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 26th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (ISBN 0-618-05699-8) is a selection of J. R. R. Tolkiens letters published in 1981, edited by Tolkiens biographer Humphrey Carpenter assisted by Christopher Tolkien. ...

See also

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of

Finnish

• Finnish alphabet
• Finnish grammar
• Spoken Finnish
• Finland's language strife
• Karelian language
• Estonian language
• Finnish name

Image File history File links Wikibooks-logo-en. ... Wikibooks logo Wikibooks, previously called Wikimedia Free Textbook Project and Wikimedia-Textbooks, is a wiki for the creation of books. ... The Finnish alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, and especially its Swedish extension. ... This article deals with the grammar of the Finnish language. ... This article deals with features of the spoken Finnish language, specifically how it is spoken in Greater Helsinki capital region and the cities in the Central Finnish dialectal area, such as Jyväskylä, Lahti, Hyvinkää, and Hämeenlinna. ... The language strife was one of the major conflicts of Finlands national history and domestic politics. ... The Karelian language is a variety closely related to Finnish, with which it is not necessarily mutually intelligible. ... Estonian ( ; IPA: ) is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1. ...

External links

Finnish language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Finnish language edition of Wiktionary, the free dictionary/thesaurus

• Finnish language on Ethnologue
• The Finnish language --- a great list of resources
• Early Indo-European Loanwords in Finnish

Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1058x1058, 477 KB) aa Wikipedia logo, version 1058px square, no text Wikipedia logo by Nohat (concept by Paullusmagnus); compare Wikipedia File links The following pages link to this file: Arabic language Talk:Anarcho-capitalism Talk:Algorithm Talk:Anno Domini Talk:The... Wikipedia (IPA: , or ( ) is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Wiktionary (a portmanteau of wiki and dictionary) is a multilingual, Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 151 languages. ...

Dictionaries

• English-Finnish-English Dictionary
• Collection of Finnish bilingual dictionaries
• Finnish Etymological Dictionary by Andras Rajki
• English-Finnish and Russian-Finnish Dictionary

Tutorials

• English-Finnish vocabulary quizzes
• The 2 253 possible forms of the Finnish noun kauppa 'shop'