Finnish language - Wikipedia

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Finnic language
Finnish
suomi
suomen kieli
Pronunciation
IPA:
[ˈsuo̯mi]
[ˈsuo̯meŋ
ˈkie̯li]
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)
Sweden
200
000
250
000
(2022)
Norway
: 8,000 (Kven)
Russia (
Karelia
): 8,500
US: 26,000 (2020)
Language family
Uralic
Finnic
Northern Finnic
Finnish
Dialects
Southwest
Tavastian
South Ostrobothnian
Central and Northern Ostrobothnian
Peräpohjola
Savonian
South Karelian
Writing system
Latin
Finnish alphabet
Finnish Braille
Official status
Official language in
Finland
European Union
Nordic Council
Recognised minority
language in
Sweden
(official minority language)
Russia
Karelia
Norway
Finnmark
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
This article contains
IPA
phonetic symbols.
Without proper
rendering support
, you may see
question marks, boxes, or other symbols
instead of
Unicode
characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see
Help:IPA
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
) 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
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
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.
Classification
edit
Finnish belongs to the
Finnic
branch of the
Uralic language family
; as such, it is one of the few European languages that is not
Indo-European
. The Finnic branch also includes
Estonian
and a few minority languages spoken around the
Baltic Sea
and in Russia's
Republic of Karelia
. The closest relative of Finnish is either
Ingrian
, or depending on the definition,
Karelian
. Finnic languages form a dialect continuum, where for instance Finnish and Estonian are not separated by any single
isogloss
that would separate dialects considered "Finnish" from those considered "Estonian", despite the two standard languages being not mutually intelligible.
Finnish demonstrates an affiliation with other
Uralic languages
(such as
Hungarian
and
Sami languages
) in several respects including:
Shared morphology:
case suffixes such as
genitive
-n
partitive
-(t)a
-(t)ä
( <
Proto-Uralic
-ta
, originally
ablative
),
essive
-na
-nä
( <
-na
, originally
locative
plural markers
-t
and
-i-
( < Proto-Uralic
-t
and
-j
, respectively)
possessive suffixes such as 1st person singular
-ni
( < Proto-Uralic
-n-mi
), 2nd person singular
-si
( < Proto-Uralic
-ti
).
various derivational suffixes (e.g.
causative
-tta/-ttä
< Proto-Uralic
-kta
Shared basic vocabulary displaying regular sound correspondences with the other Uralic languages (e.g.
kala
'fish' ~
North Saami
guolli
Hungarian
hal
; and
kadota
'disappear' ~ North Saami
guođđit
~ Hungarian
hagy
'leave (behind)'.
Several theories exist as to the geographic origin of the most recent common ancestor of Finnish and the other Uralic languages (
Proto-Uralic
). The most widely held view is that it originated somewhere in the
boreal forest
belt around the
Ural Mountains
region and/or the bend of the middle
Volga
. The strong case for Proto-Uralic is supported by common vocabulary with regularities in sound correspondences, as well as by the fact that the Uralic languages have many similarities in structure and grammar.
Despite having overlapping geographical distributions, Finnic languages and
Sami languages
are not closely related, and the hypothesis of a separate taxonomic "
Finno-Samic
" node is controversial.
The
Defense Language Institute
in
Monterey, California
, United States, classifies Finnish as a level III language (of four levels) in terms of learning difficulty for native English speakers.
10
Geographic distribution
edit
Share of Finnish speakers in the population of
municipalities of Finland
in 2020.
11
Areas in Central and Southern Sweden with a Finnish-speaking population (2005)
Finnish is spoken by about five million people, most of whom reside in Finland. There are also notable Finnish-speaking minorities in Sweden, Norway, Russia, Estonia, Brazil, Canada, and the United States. The majority of the population of Finland (90.37% as of 2010
[update]
12
) speak Finnish as their
first language
. The remainder speak
Swedish
(5.42%),
12
one of the
Sámi
languages (for example
Northern
Inari
, or
Skolt
), or another language as their first language. Finnish is spoken as a second language in Estonia by about 167,000 people.
13
The Finnic varieties found in Norway's
Finnmark
(namely
Kven
) and in northern Sweden (namely
Meänkieli
) have the status of official minority languages, and thus can be considered distinct languages from Finnish. However, since these languages are
mutually intelligible
, one may alternatively view them as
dialects of the same language
No language census exists for Norway, neither for Kven, standard Finnish, or combined. As of 2023, 7,454 first- or second-generation immigrants from Finland were registered as having Norwegian residency,
14
while as of 2021, 235 Finns were registered as foreigners studying at Norwegian higher education.
15
Great Norwegian Encyclopedia
estimates Kven speakers at 2,000-8,000.
16
Altogether, this results in a total amount of Finnish-speakers roughly between 7,200 and 15,600.
In the
latest census
, around 1000 people in Russia claimed to speak Finnish natively; however, a larger amount of 14,000 claimed to be able to speak Finnish in total.
17
There are also forms of Finnish spoken by diasporas outside Europe, such as
American Finnish
, spoken by
Finnish Americans
18
and
Siberian Finnish
, spoken by
Siberian Finns
19
Official status
edit
Today, Finnish is one of two
official languages
of Finland (the other being Swedish), and has been an official language of the
European Union
since 1995. However, the Finnish language did not have an official status in the country during the
period of Swedish rule
, which ended in 1809. After the establishment of the
Grand Duchy of Finland
, and against the backdrop of the
Fennoman movement
, the language obtained its official status in the
Finnish Diet
of 1863.
20
Finnish also enjoys the status of an official
minority language in Sweden
. 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.
21
22
However, concerns have been expressed about the future status of Finnish in Sweden, for example, where reports produced for the Swedish government during 2017 show that minority language policies are not being respected, particularly for the 7% of Finns settled in the country.
23
History
edit
Main article:
History of the Finnish language
Prehistory
edit
The
Uralic family
of languages, of which Finnish is a member, are hypothesized to derive from a single ancestor language termed
Proto-Uralic
, spoken sometime between 8,000 and 2,000 BCE (estimates vary) in the vicinity of the
Ural Mountains
24
Over time, Proto-Uralic split into various
daughter languages
, which themselves continued to change and diverge, yielding yet more descendants. One of these descendants is the
reconstructed
Proto-Finnic
, from which the
Finnic languages
developed.
25
Current models assume that three or more Proto-Finnic dialects evolved during the first millennium BCE.
26
25
These dialects were defined geographically, and were distinguished from one another along a north–south split as well as an east–west split. The northern dialects of Proto-Finnic, from which Finnish developed, lacked the mid vowel
. This vowel was found only in the southern dialects, which developed into
Estonian
Livonian
, and
Votian
dubious
discuss
The northern variants used third person singular pronoun
hän
instead of southern
tämä
(Est.
tema
). While the eastern dialects of Proto-Finnic (which developed in the modern-day eastern Finnish dialects, Veps, Karelian, and Ingrian) formed genitive plural nouns via plural stems (e.g., eastern Finnish
kalojen
kaloi
-ten
), the western dialects of Proto-Finnic (today's Estonian, Livonian and western Finnish varieties) used the non-plural stems (e.g., Est.
kalade
kala
-ten
). Another defining characteristic of the east–west split was the use of the
reflexive
suffix
-(t)te
, used only in the eastern dialects.
25
Medieval period
edit
Birch bark letter no. 292
is the oldest known document in any Finnic language.
The
Birch bark letter no. 292
from the early 13th century is the first known document in any
Finnic language
; it is written in a variety that is closest to modern
Karelian
or
Veps
27
The first known written example of Finnish itself is found in a German travel journal dating back to
c.
1450
Mÿnna tachton gernast spuho sommen gelen Emÿna daÿda
(Modern Finnish: "
Minä tahdon kernaasti puhua suomen kielen, [mutta] en minä taida;
" English: "I want to speak Finnish, [but] I am not able to").
28
According to the travel journal, the words are those of a Finnish bishop whose name is unknown. The erroneous use of
gelen
(Modern Finnish
kielen
) in the accusative case, rather than
kieltä
in the partitive, and the lack of the
conjunction
mutta
are typical of foreign speakers of Finnish even today.
29
At the time, most priests in Finland
spoke Swedish
30
During the Middle Ages, when
Finland was under Swedish rule
, Finnish was only
spoken
. At the time, the language of
international commerce
was
Middle Low German
, the language of administration
Swedish
, and religious ceremonies were held in
Latin
. This meant that Finnish speakers could use their mother tongue only in everyday life. Finnish was considered inferior to Swedish, and Finnish speakers were second-class members of society because they could not use their language in any official situations. There were even efforts to reduce the use of Finnish through parish clerk schools, the use of Swedish in church, and by having Swedish-speaking servants and maids move to Finnish-speaking areas.
31
Writing system
edit
Mikael Agricola
, a 19th-century drawing by
Albert Edelfelt
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
The first comprehensive writing system for Finnish was created by
Mikael Agricola
, a Finnish bishop, in the 16th century. He based his writing system on the
western dialects
. Agricola's ultimate plan was to
translate the Bible
32
but first he had to develop an
orthography
for the language, which he based on Swedish, German, and Latin. The Finnish
standard language
still relies on his innovations with regard to spelling, though Agricola used less systematic spelling than is used today.
33
Though Agricola's intention was that each
phoneme
(and
allophone
under
qualitative consonant gradation
) should correspond to one letter, he failed to achieve this goal in various respects. For example,
, and
were all used for the phoneme
. Likewise, he alternated between
dh
and
to represent the allophonic
(like
th
in English
this
), between
dh
and
to represent
θː
(like
th
in
thin
, but longer in duration), and between
gh
and
to represent the allophonic
. Agricola did not consistently represent
vowel length
in his orthography.
33
Others revised Agricola's work later, striving for a more systematic writing system. Along the way, Finnish lost several
fricative consonants
in a process of
sound change
. The sounds
[ð]
and
[θ(ː)]
disappeared from the language, surviving only in a small rural region in Western Finland.
34
In the standard language, however, the effect of the lost sounds is thus:
[ð]
became
[d]
. The sound
[ð]
was written ⟨d⟩ or ⟨dh⟩ by Agricola. This sound was lost from most varieties of Finnish, either losing all phonetic realization or being pronounced as
[r]
[ɾ]
[l]
, or
[h]
instead (depending on dialect and the position in the word). However, Agricola's spelling ⟨d⟩ prevailed, and the pronunciation in Standard Finnish became
[d]
through
spelling pronunciation
33
[θː,
θ]
became
[ts]
. These interdental fricatives were written as ⟨tz⟩ (for both
grades
: geminate and short) in some of the earliest written records. Though these developed into a variety of other sounds depending on dialect (
[tː,
t]
[ht,
h]
[ht,
t]
[sː,
s]
[tː,
tː]
, or
[ht,
ht]
), the standard language has arrived at
spelling pronunciation
[ts]
(which is treated as a
consonant cluster
and hence not subject to consonant gradation).
[ɣ]
became:
[ʋ]
if it appeared originally between
high
round
vowels
[u]
and
[y]
(cf.
suku
'kin, family' :
suvun
[genitive form] from earlier
suku : *suɣun
, and
kyky
kyvyn
'ability, skill' [nominative and genitive, respectively] from
kükü : *küɣün
, contrasting with
sika
sian
'pig, pork' [nominative and genitive] from
sika : *siɣan
. A similar process explains the
/f/
pronunciation for some English words with "gh", such as "tough"),
[j]
between a liquid consonant
[l]
or
[r]
and a vowel
[e]
(like in
kuljen
'I go', a form of the verb
kulkea
'to go' that was originally
kulɣen
),
and otherwise it was lost entirely.
Modern Finnish punctuation, along with that of Swedish, uses the
colon
(:) to separate the
stem
of a word and its grammatical ending in some cases, for example after
acronyms
, as in
EU:ssa
'in the EU'. (This contrasts with some other alphabetic writing systems, which would use other symbols, such as e.g. apostrophe, hyphen.) Since suffixes play a prominent role in the language, this use of the colon is quite common.
Modernization
edit
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 fully-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.
In 1853
Daniel Europaeus
published the first Swedish-Finnish dictionary,
35
and between 1866 and 1880
Elias Lönnrot
compiled the first Finnish-Swedish dictionary.
36
In the same period,
Antero Warelius
conducted ethnographic research and, among other topics, he documented the geographic distribution of the Finnish dialects.
37
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 significant. In addition to compiling the
Kalevala
, he acted as an arbiter in disputes about the development of standard Finnish between the proponents of western and eastern dialects, ensuring that the western dialects preferred by Agricola retained their preeminent role, while many originally dialect words from Eastern Finland were introduced to the standard language, thus enriching it considerably.
38
The first novel written in Finnish (and by a Finnish speaker) was
Seven Brothers
Seitsemän veljestä
), published by
Aleksis Kivi
in 1870.
Dialects
edit
Map of Finnish dialects and forms of speech
The dialects of Finnish are divided into two distinct groups, Western and Eastern.
39
The dialects are largely mutually intelligible and are distinguished from each other by changes in vowels, diphthongs and rhythm, as well as in preferred grammatical constructions. For the most part, the dialects operate on the same phonology and grammar. 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 the
Rauma dialect
, and the Eastern
exessive case
Western dialects
edit
The
Southwest Finnish dialects
lounaissuomalaismurteet
) are spoken in
Southwest Finland
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 change of d to l (mostly obsolete) or trilled r (widespread, nowadays disappearance of d is popular) and the personal pronouns (
me: meitin
('we: our'),
te: teitin
('you: your') and
he: heitin
('they: their')).
The South Ostrobothnian dialects
eteläpohjalaismurteet
) are spoken in
Southern Ostrobothnia
. Their most notable feature is the pronunciation of "d" as a tapped or even fully trilled
/r/
. The Central and North Ostrobothnian dialects (
keski- ja pohjoispohjalaismurteet
) are spoken in
Central
and
Northern Ostrobothnia
. The Lapland dialects (
lappilaismurteet
) are spoken in
Lapland
. The dialects spoken in the western parts of Lapland are recognizable by retention of old "h" sounds in positions where they have disappeared from other dialects.
One form of speech related to Northern dialects,
Meänkieli
, which is spoken on the Swedish side of the border is recognized in Sweden as its own distinct language, having its own standardized language separate from Finnish.
40
41
This form of speech developed from the border created between Sweden and Finland in 1809 when the Russian Empire annexed Finland. This caused the speakers of Meänkieli to be isolated from the developments of standard Finnish and instead be influenced by the Swedish language. However, it is still mutually intelligible with Finnish, and is thus sometimes considered a dialect of the Finnish language.
42
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.
Eastern dialects
edit
Main article:
Eastern Finnish dialects
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does not
cite
any
sources
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by
adding citations to reliable sources
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removed
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A sign in Savonian dialect: "You don't get cognac here, but fresh wheat buns and good strong
Juhla Mokka
-brand coffee you will have. Welcome."
The Eastern dialects consist of the widespread Savonian dialects (
savolaismurteet
) spoken in
Savo
and nearby areas, and the South-Eastern dialects now spoken only in Finnish
South Karelia
. The South Karelian dialects (
eteläkarjalaismurteet
) were previously also spoken on the
Karelian Isthmus
and in
Ingria
. The Karelian Isthmus was evacuated during
World War II
and refugees were resettled all over Finland. Most
Ingrian Finns
were
deported
to various interior areas of the Soviet Union.
Palatalization
, a common feature of Uralic languages, had been lost in the Finnic branch, 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
[vesʲ]
"water", cf. standard
vesi
[vesi]
Helsinki slang (
Stadin slangi
edit
The first known written account in
Helsinki slang
is from the 1890 short story
Hellaassa
by young Santeri Ivalo (words that do not exist in, or deviate from, the standard spoken Finnish of its time are in bold):
Kun minä eilen illalla palasin
labbiksesta
, tapasin
Aasiksen
kohdalla
Supiksen
, ja niin me laskeusimme tänne
Espikselle
, jossa oli mahoton hyvä
piikis
. Mutta me mentiin
Studikselle
suoraan
Hudista
tapaamaan, ja jäimme sinne pariksi tunniksi, kunnes ajoimme
Kaisikseen
43
Dialect chart of Finnish
edit
Traditional Finnish dialect areas before World War I
44
45
Finnish dialects
Western dialects
Southwest Finnish dialects
Proper Finnish dialects
Northern dialect group
Southern dialect group
Southwest Finnish middle dialects
Pori region dialects
Ala-Satakunta dialects
dialects of Turku highlands
Somero region dialects
Western Uusimaa dialects
Helsinki slang
Tavastian Dialects
Ylä-Satakunta dialects
Heart Tavastian dialects
Southern Tavastian dialects
Southern-Eastern Tavastian dialects
Hollola dialect group
Porvoo dialect group
Iitti dialect group
South Ostrobothnian dialects
Central and North Ostrobothnian dialects
Central Ostrobothnian dialects
North Ostrobothnian dialects
Peräpohjola dialects
Torne dialects (
Meänkieli
in Sweden)
Kemi dialects
Kemijärvi dialects
Gällivare dialects
"Meänkieli"
in Sweden)
Finnmark dialects (
Kven language
in Northern Norway)
Eastern dialects
Savonian dialects
North Savonian dialects
South Savonian dialects
Middle dialects of Savonlinna region
East Savonian dialects or North Karelian dialects
Kainuu dialects
Central Finland dialects
Päijänne Tavastia dialects
Keuruu-Evijärvi dialects
Savonian dialects of Värmland
Värmland
Sweden
and
Innlandet
Norway
; extinct)
South Karelian dialects
Proper South Karelian dialects
Middle dialects of Lemi region
Dialects of Ingria
(in Russia)
46
Linguistic registers
edit
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needs additional citations for
verification
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improve this article
by
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in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
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Example of a participle construction; the sign says: "Parking for reserved spaces only."
There are two main
registers
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.
47
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.
Standardization
edit
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 New Dictionary of Modern Finnish
Kielitoimiston sanakirja
) was published in an electronic form in 2004 and in print in 2006. A
descriptive
grammar (the
Large grammar of Finnish
Iso suomen kielioppi
48
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
). 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.
Colloquial Finnish
edit
Main article:
Colloquial Finnish
As is common among languages with a long-standing standardized form, general Finnish show signs of certain commonplace supradialectal colloquial forms. For example, irregular verbs have developed in the spoken language as a result of the
elision
of
sonorants
in some verbs of the
Type III
class (with subsequent vowel
assimilation
), but only when the second syllable of the word is short. The result is that some forms in the spoken language are shortened, e.g.
tule-n
tuu-n
('I come'), while others remain identical to the standard language
hän tulee
"he comes", never *
hän tuu
). However, the longer forms such as
tule
can be used in spoken language in other forms as well.
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 the southern Karelian isthmus and
Ingria
. It has been reinforced by the spelling "ts" for the dental fricative
[θː]
, used earlier in some western dialects. The spelling and the pronunciation this encourages however approximate the original pronunciation, still reflected in e.g.
Karelian
/čč
č/
meččä : mečän
). In the spoken language, a fusion of Western
/tt
tt/
mettä : mettän
) and Eastern
/ht
t/
mehtä : metän
) has resulted in
/tt
t/
mettä : metän
).
49
Neither of these forms are identifiable as, or originate from, a specific dialect.
The orthography of informal language follows that of the formal. However, in signalling the former in writing,
syncope
and
sandhi
– especially internal – may occasionally amongst other characteristics be transcribed, e.g.
menenpä → me(n)empä
Examples
edit
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does not
cite
any
sources
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formal language
colloquial language
meaning
notes
hän
menee
he
mene
vät
se
menee
ne
mene
"he/she goes"
"they go"
loss of an
animacy
contrast in pronouns (
ne
and
se
are inanimate in the formal language), and
loss of a
number
contrast on verbs in the 3rd person (
menee
is 3rd person singular in the formal language)
minä, minun, ...
mä(ä)/mie, mun/miun, ...
"I, my, ..."
various alternative, usually shorter, forms of 1st and 2nd person pronouns
minä)
tu
le
minä)
le
mä
tu
mä
"I'm coming" or "I will come"
"I am" or "I will be"
elision
of
sonorants
before short vowels in certain
Type III verbs
along with vowel
assimilation
and no
pro-drop
(i.e., personal pronouns are usually mandatory in the colloquial language)
on
ko
teillä
ei
kö
teillä ole
o(n)
ks
teil(lä)
e(i)
ks
teil(lä) oo
"do you (pl.) have?"
"don't you (pl.) have (it)?"
vowel
apocope
and common use of the clitic
-s
in
interrogatives
(compare
eiks
to standard Estonian confirmatory interrogative
eks
(me) emme sano
me ei sanota
"we don't say" or "we won't say"
the
passive voice
is used in place of the first person plural
(minun) kirja
ni
mun kirja
"my book"
lack of possessive clitics on nouns
(minä) en tiedä
syödä
en ti
(i)ä
syyä
"I don't know"
"to eat"
elision
of
[d]
between vowels, and subsequent vowel
assimilation
(compare
mä en ti(i)ä
to standard Estonian
ma ei tea
or dialectal forms
ma ei tia
or
ma ei tie
kuusikymmentäviisi
kuuskyt(ä)viis
"sixty-five"
abbreviated forms of numerals
puna
nen
ajo
ttaa
punane(n)
ajottaa
"red"
"to time"
unstressed diphthongs ending in
/i/
become short vowels, and
apocope
of phrase-final
-n
korjan
ne
kai
korjaa
"probably will fix"
absence of the
potential mood
, use of
kai
'probably' instead
Phonology
edit
Main article:
Finnish phonology
Segmental phonology
edit
The phoneme inventory of Finnish is moderately small,
50
with a great number of vocalic segments and a restricted set of consonant types, both of which can be long or short.
Vocalic segments
edit
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does not
cite
any
sources
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Finnish monophthongs show eight vowel qualities that contrast in duration. Vowel
allophony
is quite restricted. All vowels are possible in both initial and non-initial syllables, whether long or short. Long and short vowels are shown below.
Front
Back
Unrounded
Rounded
Close
iː
yː
uː
Mid
eː
øː
oː
Open
æː
ɑː
The quality of long vowels mostly overlaps with the quality of short vowels, with the exception of
, which is centralized with respect to
uu
; long vowels do not morph into
diphthongs
. There are eighteen diphthongs; like vowels, diphthongs do not have significant allophony.
Consonants
edit
Finnish has a small consonant inventory, in which voicing is mostly not distinctive and fricatives are scarce. In the table below, consonants in parentheses are either found only in a few recent loans or are allophones of other phonemes.
Labial
Dental
Alveolar
Postalv.
Palatal
Velar
Glottal
Nasal
note 1
Plosive
voiceless
t̪
voiced
note 2
Fricative
Approximant
Trill
The short
velar nasal
only occurs in the sequence
/ŋk/
in native vocabulary (where it could alternatively be analysed as an allophone of /n/), and the long velar nasal
/ŋŋ/
, written
⟨ng⟩
, is the equivalent of
/ŋk/
under weakening
consonant gradation
(type of
lenition
) and thus occurs only medially, e.g.
Helsinki
Helsingin kaupunki
(city
of Helsinki
) /helsiŋki – helsiŋŋin/.
is the equivalent of
under weakening
consonant gradation
, and thus in inherited vocabulary only occurs medially. Especially when spoken by older people, it is often more of an
alveolar
tap
than a true voiced stop, and the dialectal realization varies widely; see the main article on
Finnish phonology
Almost all consonants have phonemic short and long (
geminated
) forms, although length is only contrastive in medial positions.
Homosyllabic consonant clusters are mostly absent from native Finnish words, except for a small set of two-consonant sequences in
syllable codas
, e.g.
⟨rs⟩
in
karsta
. However, as many recently adopted loanwords contain clusters, e.g.
strutsi
from Swedish
struts
, ('ostrich'), they have been integrated to the modern language in varying degrees.
Finnish is somewhat divergent from other Uralic languages in two respects: it has lost most of its fricatives and lost the distinction between
palatalized
and non-palatalized consonants. Finnish has only two fricatives in native words,
/s/
and
/h/
. All other fricatives are recognized as foreign, of which Finnish speakers can usually reliably distinguish
/f/
and
/ʃ/
. The alphabet includes
⟨z⟩
, usually realized as the
affricate
[ts]
, as in German.
While standard Finnish has lost
palatalization
, characteristic of Uralic languages, the eastern dialects and the Karelian language have redeveloped it. For example, the
Karelian
word
d'uuri
[dʲuːri]
, with a palatalized
/dʲ/
, is reflected by
juuri
in Finnish and
Savo dialect
vesj
[vesʲ]
is
vesi
in standard Finnish.
The phoneme
/h/
can vary allophonically between
[ç~x~h~ɦ]
i.e.
vihko
['ʋiçko̞]
kahvi
['kɑxʋi]
raha
['rɑɦɑ]
A feature of Finnic phonology is the development of labial and rounded vowels in non-initial syllables, as in the word
tyttö
Proto-Uralic
had only "a", "ä" and "i" in non-initial syllables; modern Finnish allows other vowels in non-initial syllables, although they are less common.
Prosody
edit
Characteristic features of Finnish (common to some other Uralic languages) are
vowel harmony
and an
agglutinative
morphology; owing to the extensive use of the latter, words can be quite long.
The main stress is always on the first syllable, and is in average speech articulated by adding approximately 100 ms more length to the stressed vowel.
51
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 being stressed.
Morphophonology
edit
Further information:
Finnish consonant gradation
Finnish has several morphophonological processes that require modification of the forms of words for daily speech. The most important processes are
vowel harmony
and
consonant gradation
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, from the stem
tuote
('product') one derives
uo
tteeseens
('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
, though the
graphemes
⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ö⟩ feature
dieresis
Consonant gradation is a partly nonproductive
52
lenition
process for P, T and K in inherited vocabulary, with the oblique stem "weakened" from the nominative stem, or vice versa. For example,
tar
kk
'precise' has the oblique stem
tar
a-
, as in
tarkan
'of the precise'. There is also another gradation pattern, which is older, and causes simple elision of T and K in suffixes. 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. *
tarkka+ta
tarkkaa
Orthography
edit
Main article:
Finnish orthography
This section
relies largely or entirely on a
single source
Relevant discussion may be found on the
talk page
. Please help
improve this article
by
introducing citations to additional sources
Find sources:
"Finnish language"
news
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scholar
JSTOR
October 2023
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
⟨c⟩
⟨k⟩
or even
⟨g⟩
uː
and
iː
were represented by
⟨w⟩
and
⟨ij⟩
respectively, and
was represented by
⟨e⟩
Parking meter
keyboard with the Finnish alphabet
Finnish is written with the
Latin alphabet
including the distinct characters
⟨ä⟩
and
⟨ö⟩
, and also several characters (
⟨b, c, f, q, w, x, z, å, š⟩
and
⟨ž⟩
) reserved for words of non-Finnish origin. The Finnish orthography follows the phonemic principle: each phoneme (meaningful sound) of the language corresponds to exactly one grapheme (independent letter), and each grapheme represents almost exactly one phoneme. This enables an easy spelling and facilitates reading and writing acquisition. The rule of thumb for Finnish orthography is
write as you read, read as you write
. However, morphemes retain their spelling despite
sandhi
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. If a sequence of two identical vowels in different syllables occurs, it is written with an apostrophe, e.g.
rei'itin
"hole punch".
The grapheme
⟨h⟩
covers all the allophones of
/h/
. In some positions, it has a fricative quality, which can be
voiced glottal
or voiceless
velar
or
palatal
. This occurs after or between vowels, as in e.g.
lahti
, which is pronounced
[lɑxti]
with a
voiceless velar fricative
Sandhi
is not transcribed; the spelling of morphemes is immutable, such as
tulen+pa
[tulempa]
Some consonants (
⟨v, j, d⟩
) do not have distinctive length (and consonant length generally is only contrastive in certain positions), and consequently their allophonic variation is typically not specified in spelling; e.g.
rajaan
[rajaan]
('I limit') vs.
raijaan
[raijjaan]
('I haul').
Pre-1900s 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
[æ]
and
[ø]
, although written with
two dots
, do not represent
phonological umlauts
(as in German, for example), 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.
Although Finnish orthography is mostly
shallow
, there are a few differences:
The
⟨n⟩
in the sequence
⟨nk⟩
is pronounced as a
velar nasal
/ŋ/
, as in English. When not followed by
⟨k⟩
/ŋː/
is written
⟨ng⟩
. The fact that two spellings correspond to this one sound (putting aside the difference in
length
) can be seen as an exception to the general one-to-one correspondence between sounds and letters.
Sandhi
phenomena at word or clitic boundaries involving gemination (e.g.,
tule tänne
is pronounced
[tu.le
æn.ne]
, not
[tu.le.tæn.ne]
) or the
place assimilation
of
nasals
sen pupu
would usually be pronounced as
[se
.pu.pu]
, and
onpa
as
[o
.pɑ]
The
/j/
after the letter
⟨i⟩
is very weak or there is no
/j/
at all, but in writing it is used; for example:
urheilija
. Indeed, the
⟨j⟩
is not used in writing words with consonant gradation such as
aion
and
läksiäiset
When the appropriate characters are not available, the graphemes
⟨ä⟩
and
⟨ö⟩
are usually converted to
⟨a⟩
and
⟨o⟩
, respectively. This is common in e-mail addresses and other electronic media where there may be no support for characters outside the basic
ASCII
character set. Writing them as
⟨ae⟩
and
⟨oe⟩
, following German usage, is rarer and usually considered incorrect, but formally used in passports and equivalent situations. Both conversion rules have minimal pairs which would no longer be distinguished from each other.
The sounds
⟨š⟩
and
⟨ž⟩
are not a part of the Finnish language itself and have been introduced by the Finnish national languages body for more phonologically accurate transcription of loanwords (such as
Tšekki
, '
Czech Republic
') and 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 opera
Hovanštšina
as an example.) Many speakers pronounce all of them
⟨s⟩
, or distinguish only between
⟨s⟩
and
⟨š⟩
, because Finnish has no voiced sibilants.
53
The language may be identified by its distinctive lack of the letters
⟨b, c, f, q, w, x, z⟩
and
⟨å⟩
Grammar
edit
Main article:
Finnish grammar
An example of the versatility of Finnish inflection. The label of this beer bottle reads
Palaisiko eksän luokse vai helvetissä - en vittu tiiä
, meaning "Should I return to my ex or burn in Hell - I don't fucking know". The same word
palaisiko
can mean either "should I return" or "should I burn" depending on whether it is inflected from
palata
("to return") or from
palaa
("to burn").
Finnish is a
synthetic language
that employs extensive
agglutination
of affixes to verbs, nouns, adjectives and numerals. However, Finnish is not generally considered
polysynthetic
, its morpheme-to-word ratio being somewhat lower than a prototypical polysynthetic language (e.g.,
Yup'ik
).
54
The
morphosyntactic alignment
of Finnish is nominative–accusative, but there are two object
cases
: accusative and partitive. The contrast between accusative and partitive
object
cases is one of
telicity
, where the accusative case denotes actions completed as intended (
Ammuin hirven
'I shot the/an elk (dead)'), and the partitive case denotes incomplete actions (
Ammuin hirveä
'I shot (at) the/an elk').
55
Often telicity is confused with
perfectivity
, but these are distinct notions. Finnish in fact has a
periphrastic
perfective aspect, which in addition to the two inflectional tenses (past and present), yield a
Germanic
-like system consisting of four tense-aspect combinations: simple present, simple past,
perfect
(present + perfective aspect) and
pluperfect
(past + perfective aspect). No morphological future tense is needed; context and the telicity contrast in object grammatical case serve to disambiguate present events from future events. For example,
syön kalan
'I eat a fish (completely)' must denote a future event, since there is no way to completely eat a fish at the current moment (the moment the eating is complete, the simple past tense or the perfect must be used). By contrast,
syön kalaa
'I eat a fish (not yet complete)' denotes a present event by indicating ongoing action.
Finnish has three grammatical
persons
finite
verbs
agree
with subject nouns in person and number by way of suffixes. The (dictionary form) infinitive bears the suffix
-ta/-tä
(often
lenited
to
-(d)a/-(d)ä
due to
consonant gradation
).
56
There is a so-called "passive voice" (sometimes called impersonal or indefinite) which differs from a true passive in various respects.
57
Transitivity is distinguished in the
derivational
morphology of verbs, e.g.
ratkaista
'to solve something' vs.
ratketa
'to solve by itself'. There are also several
frequentative
and
momentane
affixes which form new verbs derivationally.
Lexicon
edit
Suomalaisen Sana-Lugun Coetus
(1745) by
Daniel Juslenius
was the first comprehensive dictionary of the Finnish language with 16,000 entries.
Finnish has a smaller core vocabulary than, for example, English, and uses
derivational
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
'in written form',
kirjata
'to write down, register, record',
kirjasin
'a font', and many others.
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
Examples of Finnish derivational suffixes on nouns
Suffix
Used to create...
Example(s)
Notes
ja / -jä
agents
from verbs
lukea
'to read' →
lukija
'reader'
-sto / -stö
collective nouns
kirja
'a book' →
kirjasto
'a library'
laiva
'a ship' →
laivasto
'navy, fleet'
-in
instruments or tools
kirjata
'to book, to file' →
kirjain
'a letter' (of the alphabet)
vatkata
'to whisk' →
vatkain
'a whisk, mixer'
-uri / -yri
agents
or instruments
kaivaa
'to dig' →
kaivuri
'an excavator'
laiva
'a ship' →
laivuri
'shipper, shipmaster'
-os / -ös
result
nouns from verbs
tulla
'to come' →
tulos
'result, outcome'
tehdä
'to do' →
teos
'a piece of work'
-ton / -tön
adjectives
indicating the lack of something
onni
'happiness' →
onneton
'unhappy'
koti
'home' →
koditon
'homeless'
-kas / -käs
adjectives from nouns
itse
'self' →
itsekäs
'selfish'
neuvo
'advice' →
neuvokas
'resourceful'
-va / -vä
adjectives from verbs
taitaa
'to be able' →
taitava
'skillful'
johtaa
'to lead' →
johtava
'leading'
-llinen
adjectives from nouns
lapsi
'child' →
lapsellinen
'childish'
kauppa
'a shop, commerce' →
kaupallinen
'commercial'
-la / -lä
locations (places related to the stem)
kana
'a hen' →
kanala
'a henhouse'
pappi
'a priest' →
pappila
'a parsonage'
-lainen / -läinen
inhabitants (of places), among others
Englanti
'England' →
englantilainen
'English person/thing'
Venäjä
'Russia' →
venäläinen
'Russian person or thing'.
formed from
-la / -lä
plus
-inen
Verbal derivational 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'.
Caritives
are also used in such examples as
hyppimättä
'without jumping' and
hyppelemättä
'without jumping around'. The diversity and compactness of both derivation and inflectional agglutination can be illustrated with
istahtaisinkohankaan
'I wonder if I should sit down for a while after all' (from
istua
, 'to sit, to be seated'):
istua
'to sit down' (
istun
'I sit down')
istahtaa
'to sit down for a while'
istahdan
'I'll sit down for a while'
istahtaisin
'I would sit down for a while'
istahtaisinko
'should I sit down for a while?'
istahtaisinkohan
'I wonder if I should sit down for a while'
istahtaisinkohankaan
'I wonder if I should sit down for a while after all'
Borrowing
edit
Over the course of many centuries, the Finnish language has borrowed many words from a wide variety of languages, most from neighbouring
Indo-European languages
. Owing to the different grammatical, phonological and phonotactic structure of the Finnish language, loanwords from Indo-European have been assimilated.
While early borrowings, possibly even into
Proto-Uralic
, from very early
Indo-European languages
can be found, Finnic languages, including Finnish, have borrowed in particular from Baltic and Germanic languages, and to a lesser extent from Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages (all of which are subgroupings of Indo-European). Furthermore,
a certain group
of very basic and neutral words exists in Finnish and other Finnic languages that are absent from other Uralic languages, but without a recognizable etymology from any known language. These words are usually regarded
who?
as the last remnant of the
Paleo-European
language spoken in Fennoscandia before the arrival of the proto-Finnic language.
citation needed
Words included in this group are e.g.
jänis
(hare),
musta
(black),
saari
(island),
suo
(swamp) and
niemi
(cape (geography)).
Also some place names, like
Päijänne
and
Imatra
, are probably from before the proto-Finnic era.
58
Often quoted loan examples are
kuningas
'king' and
ruhtinas
sovereign prince
, high ranking nobleman' from Germanic
kuningaz
and
druhtinaz
—they display a remarkable tendency towards phonological conservation within the language. Another example is
äiti
'mother' (from Germanic
aiþį̄
), which is interesting because borrowing of close-kinship vocabulary is a rare phenomenon. The original Finnish
emo
and
emä
occurs only in restricted contexts. There are other close-kinship words that are loaned from Baltic and Germanic languages (
morsian
'bride',
armas
'dear',
huora
'whore'). 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
59
).
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 was a part 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 legal equal status with Swedish. 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.
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
, 'province';
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).
Some Slavic loanwords are old or very old, thus hard to recognize as such, and concern everyday concepts, e.g.
papu
'bean',
raja
'border' and
pappi
'priest'. Notably, a few religious words such as
Raamattu
('Bible') are borrowed from
Old East Slavic
, which indicates language contact preceding the Swedish era. This is mainly believed to be result of trade with Novgorod from the 9th century on and
Russian Orthodox
missions
in the east in the 13th century.
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 (foreign films and programmes, excluding ones intended for a very young audience, are shown subtitled), literature, and the
Web
– the latter is now probably the most important source of all non-face-to-face exposure to English.
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), and so are grammatical calques, for example, the replacement of the impersonal (
passiivi
) with the English-style
generic you
, e. g.
sä et voi
'you cannot', instead of the proper impersonal
ei voida
'one cannot' or impersonal third-person singular
ei voi
'one cannot'. This construct, however, is limited to colloquial language, as it is against the standard grammar.
English loan words in Finnish slang include for example
pleikkari
'PlayStation',
hodari
'hot dog', and
hedari
'headache', 'headshot' or 'headbutt'. Often these loanwords are distinctly identified as
slang
or
jargon
, rarely being used in a negative mood or in formal language. Most loan words are inevitably sooner or later
calqued
– translated into native Finnish – retaining the semantic meaning.
citation needed
Moreover, neologisms are coined actively not only by the government, but also by the media.
Neologisms
edit
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does not
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any
sources
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Some modern terms have been synthesised rather than borrowed, for example:
puhelin
'telephone' (from the stem
puhel-
'talk' + instrument suffix
-in
to make 'an instrument for talking')
tietokone
'computer' (literally: 'knowledge machine' or 'data machine')
levyke
'diskette' (from
levy
'disc' + a diminutive
-ke
sähköposti
'email' (literally: 'electricity mail')
linja-auto
'bus, coach' (literally: line-car)
muovi
'plastic' (from
muovata
'to mould, form or model, e.g. from clay'; compare
plastic
from Ancient Greek
πλᾰστῐκός
plastikós
) 'mouldable, fit for moulding')
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
kompuutteri
(computer) or
kalkulaattori
(calculator) when the neologism is widely adopted.
Loans to other languages
edit
Main article:
List of English words of Finnish origin
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sources
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The most commonly used Finnish word in English is
sauna
, which has also been loaned to many other languages.
Sample texts
edit
Article 1 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Kaikki ihmiset syntyvät vapaina ja tasavertaisina arvoltaan ja oikeuksiltaan. Heille on annettu järki ja omatunto, ja heidän on toimittava toisiaan kohtaan veljeyden hengessä.
"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."
60
Excerpt from
Väinö Linna
's
Tuntematon sotilas
(The Unknown Soldier); these words were also inscribed in the 20
mark
note.
Hyväntahtoinen aurinko katseli heitä. Se ei missään tapauksessa ollut heille vihainen. Kenties tunsi jonkinlaista myötätuntoakin heitä kohtaan. Aika velikultia.
"The sun smiled down on them. It wasn't angry – no, not by any means. Maybe it even felt some sort of sympathy for them. Rather dear, those boys."
Sample of spoken Finnish
Taken from Wikipedia article on the Finnish language in Finnish
Problems playing this file? See
media help
(translation from Liesl Yamaguchi's 2015 "Unknown Soldiers")
Basic greetings and phrases
edit
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Sample sound of
Hyvää huomenta
Finnish
Translation
Notes
Greetings
(Hyvää) huomenta!
(Good) morning!
(Hyvää) päivää!
(Good) day!
used on greeting and also when taking farewell
(Hyvää) iltaa!
(Good) evening!
used on greeting and also when taking farewell
Hyvää yötä!
Öitä!
Good night!
Night!
Terve
lit. 'Healthy!'
Used on greeting, modified as
Terve vaan!
('health continue!')
Moro
Hei(ppa)
Moi(kka)
Hi! / Bye!
Used on greeting and also when taking farewell
Moi moi!
Hei hei!
Bye!
Used when taking farewell
Nähdään
See you later!
Lit. the passive form of
nähdä
'to see'
Näkemiin
Goodbye!
Lit. 'Until seeing', illative of the third infinitive
Hyvästi
Goodbye/Farewell
Hauska tutustua!
Hauska tavata!
Nice to meet you!
Hauska tutustua
is literally 'nice to get acquainted', and
hauska tavata
is literally 'nice to meet'
Mitä kuuluu?
Miten menee?
How are you?
How's it going?
Mitä (sinulle/teille) kuuluu
is literally 'what (to you) is heard?' or 'what concerns you?'
Kiitos hyvää
Kiitos hyvin
Fine, thank you.
Well, thank you.
Kiitos hyvää
is an appropriate response to
Mitä kuuluu?
, whereas
Kiitos hyvin
is an appropriate response to
Miten menee?
Tervetuloa!
Welcome!
Tervetuloa
is used in a broader range of contexts in Finnish than in English;
for example to mean 'looking forward to seeing you' after arranging a visit
Important words and phrases
Anteeksi
Excuse me
Kiitos
Kiitoksia
Thanks/Please
Kiitos
kiitoksia
are literally 'thanks', but are also used when requesting something,
like 'please' in English
Kiitos, samoin
Thank you, likewise
Lit. 'thank you, the same way' (used as a response to well-wishing)
Ole hyvä
You're welcome
Lit. 'be good', also used when giving someone something to mean 'here you are'
Kyllä
Certainly/yes
Joo
Yeah
More informal than
kyllä
Ei
No/it is not
Voitko auttaa?
Can you help?
Apua!
Help!
Totta kai!
Tietysti!
Toki!
Certainly!
(Paljon) onnea
Good luck/congratulations
Olen pahoillani
I'm sorry
Odota
Wait
Pieni hetki
Pikku hetki
Hetkinen
One moment
Otan osaa
My condolences
(Minä) ymmärrän.
I understand.
En ymmärrä.
I don't understand.
Suomi
Finland
Suomi
Suomen kieli
Finnish (language)
Suomalainen
(noun) Finn; (adjective) Finnish
See also
edit
Language portal
Finland portal
Finland's language strife
Finnish cultural and academic institutes
Finnish influences on Tolkien
Finnish name
Finnish numerals
Finnish profanity
Sisu
Swedish-speaking Finns
References
edit
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Finska språket i Sverige
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2017
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2012
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[National identity in Sweden and Finland in the 17th–18th centuries, an overview].
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Archived
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2018
Heininen, Simo.
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2020
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2007
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Archived
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2019
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Finnish Literature Society
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3 January
2008
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24 September
2024
Se virallinen kieli, jonka he koulussa oppivat, on ruotsi. Tästä johtuu, että useille meänkielisille suomenkielisen tekstin lukeminen ja varsinkin viranomaisten kieli on vaikeata, ylivoimaistakin.
[The official language they learn in school is Swedish. As a result, for many Meänkieli speakers, reading texts in Finnish, and especially the formal language, is difficult, even overwhelming.]
Sveriges officiella minoritetsspråk: finska, meänkieli, samiska, romani, jiddisch och teckenspråk: en kort presentation
The official minority languages of Sweden: Finnish, Meänkieli, Sámi, Romani, Yiddish, and sign language: a short presentation
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ISBN
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2019
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www.kielikello.fi
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26 January
2020
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30 September
2009
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Kotimaisten kielten keskus
Archived
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Maddieson, Ian (2013). Dryer, Matthew S.; Haspelmath, Martin (eds.).
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Archived
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{{
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Further reading
edit
Karlsson, Fred (2008).
Finnish: An Essential Grammar
. Routledge Essential Grammars (2nd ed.). United Kingdom: Routledge.
ISBN
978-0-415-43914-5
Karlsson, Fred (2018).
Finnish – A Comprehensive Grammar
. London and New York: Routledge.
ISBN
978-1-138-82104-0
Whitney, Arthur H (1973).
Finnish
. Teach Yourself Books. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
ISBN
978-0-340-05782-7
External links
edit
Collection of Finnish bilingual dictionaries
FSI Finnish Language Course (Public Domain)
Finnish phrases for beginners (Public Domain)
Finnish language
at Wikipedia's
sister projects
Definitions
from Wiktionary
Media
from Commons
Textbooks
from Wikibooks
Phrasebook
from Wikivoyage
Finnish edition
of Wikipedia
Uralic languages
List of Uralic languages
Finnic
Estonian
Laiuse Romani
Northeastern coastal
South Estonian
Seto
Võro
Mulgi
Tartu
Ludza
Kraasna
Leivu
Finnish
Fingelska
Kven
Meänkieli
Torne Valley
Siberian Finnish
Karelian
Karelian Proper
Northern
Southern
Livvi
Ludic
Others
Bjarmian Finnic
Ingrian
Siberian Ingrian Finnish
Livonian
Salaca
Veps
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Krevinian
Kukkuzi
Sámi
Eastern Sámi
Akkala
Inari
Kainuu
Kemi
Kildin
Skolt
Ter
Western Sámi
Lule
Northern
Pite
Southern
Ume
Unclassified
Bjarmian Sámi
Mordvinic
Erzya
Shoksha dialect
de
ru
Moksha
Mari
Hill Mari
Meadow Mari
Northwestern Mari
Permic
Komi
Permyak
Yazva
Zyryan
Udmurt
Udmurt
Ugric
Eastern Ugric
Khanty
Northern Khanty
Southern Khanty
Eastern Khanty
Mansi
Northern Mansi
Western Mansi
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Southern Mansi
Western Ugric
Hungarian
Samoyedic
Enets
Forest Enets
ru
Tundra Enets
ru
Mator
Taygi
ru
Karagas
ru
Nenets
Forest Nenets
Tundra Nenets
Selkup
Northern
Southern
Other
Kamas
Koibal
Nganasan
Yurats
Unclassified
Merya
Meshcherian
Muromian
Proto-Uralic
Homeland
Proto-Finnic
Proto-Karelian
Proto-Sámi
Proto-Samoyedic
Italics
indicate
extinct languages
Languages between parentheses are
varieties
of the language on their left.
Links to related articles
Languages of Finland
Official languages
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Swedish
Minority languages
Recognized
Romani
Finnish Kalo
Sámi
Northern
Inari
Skolt
Tatar
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Finland-Swedish Sign Language
Related
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Languages of Sweden
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Finnish
Meänkieli
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Ume
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