Finnish

Finnish is a member of the Uralic family of languages, which has two main branches: the Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic languages. Finnish and its closest relatives are known as the Baltic-Finnic languages, which include Karelian, Ludian, Vepsian, Votian, Ingrian, Estonian, Livonian, Meänkieli and the Kven language. The Saami languages are distantly related to Finnish.

Finnish is the most widely spoken of the Baltic-Finnic languages, and it is the second-biggest language in its family; only Hungarian has more speakers than Finnish. About five million people residing in Finland speak Finnish as their native language. Finnish is also spoken by 50,000-100,000 in East Karelia and Ingria, and also by immigrants in countries including the U.S. and Australia, Finnish and Meänkieli are spoken by about 300,000 ethnic Finns in Sweden, and Finnish and the Kven language by roughly 12,000 in Northern Norway.

Like other Uralic languages, Finnish typically expresses grammatical relations by adding suffixes and affixes to the stem word. There are 15 cases in Finnish (the number may vary depending on the definitions employed): the nominative, partitive, genitive, accusative, translative, essive, inessive, elative, illative, adessive, ablative, allative, abessive, comitative and instructive cases. Other elements typically added to the stem word, i.e. morphemes, are the personal suffixes of verbs (tulen, tulemme), possessive suffixes (kirjasi, talomme), particles (tulethan, sinäkin, Timokaan, onpas) and derivatives. Derivatives are very common in Finnish, and derivation is a typical method of word formation (e.g.. kirja > kirjata, kirjoittaa, kirjoituttaa, kirjoitus, kirjoitella, kirjoittelu, kirje, kirjava, kirjo, kirjoa).

Numerous Finnish dialects are spoken in Finland. Two distinct dialect groups are recognised: Eastern and Western. The Eastern group includes the Savonian and South-Eastern dialects. The Western group comprises the South-Western, Mid-Southwestern, Tavastian, Southern Ostrobothnian, Middle and North Ostrobothnian and Far-Northern dialects.

Written Finnish dates back 500 years. The oldest surviving book published in Finnish is Mikael Agricola’s Abckiria (The ABC Book) dating from 1543. Earlier texts were written in Finnish to spread Christian teachings, but none of these early writings survive. The time of Agricola and his successors is known as the ‘Old Literary Finnish’ period. It was during this period that the basis for written Finnish and its orthography was established. This period ended in the early 19th century with the advent of the Early Modern Finnish period, lasting from 1820 to 1870. After that began the period described as Modern Finnish.

Early written conventions were based mainly on the Western and South-Western dialects, Turku having been Finland’s seat of culture and administration in the Old Literary Finnish period. In the 19th century, amid efforts to establish Finnish as a formal, national language, a wealth of expressions were borrowed from existing dialects, thus enriching written Finnish with the vocabulary and syntax of Eastern dialects.

It has been predicted that traditional dialects would gradually converge and die out, but quite the reverse has occurred. Dialects have in fact gained new prestige in recent years, resulting in what has been described as a ‘dialect boom’. New language variants linked to factors such as the speaker’s age, profession and the formality of the setting have emerged alongside existing regional dialects, and native speakers of Finnish are able to master several of these. Nowadays, the ability to modify one’s register in different speech settings is a vital part of mastering the language. Today, Finnish is richer and more varied than ever before.