The Finnish language

Finnish

The Finnish language (suomi) is a language with about six million speakers. It is spoken by almost 95% of the Finnish population. There are also native Finnish speakers in Russia (in Karelia and Ingermanland), in Sweden (the Tornedal) and Norway (the Kvenen in Finnmark and Troms). Besides Finnish, Swedish is an official language of Finland. Sami or Saami, the language of the Sami (Lappish people), is an officially recognized minority language in Finland. It is spoken by a few hundred people in six congregations in the north.

Finnish: a difficult language

The Finnish language has the reputation of being a very difficult language, although this is largely due to the fact that the language is not related to the Indo-European languages. Another reason is that the Finnish language also has many dialects and dialectical conjugations, which are often used interchangeably in Finland. Finnish also consists of many irregular verb conjugations, many words that cannot be conjugated in Dutch are conjugated in Finnish. Think of the word “no/none”. Also, Finnish has a largely unknown vocabulary and many words are not translatable.

Some examples of the Finnish language

1 – yksi

2 – kaksi

3 – kolme

4 – neljä

5 – visi

6 – kuusi

7 – seitsemän

8 – kahdeksan

9 – yhdeksän

10 – kymmenen