Finnish language - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

# Finnish language

### From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This language has its own Wikipedia Project.
See the Finnish language edition

The Finnish language is a Finno-Ugric language, a group of languages belonging to the Uralic language family. It is one of the two official languages of Finland. It is also an official minority language in Sweden. Finnish is one of the only national languages of Europe that is not an Indo-European language.

## [edit] Related languages

Most Finnish words are very different from those in other European languages. The two other national languages that are in the same family as Finnish are Estonian and Hungarian. Even though Finnish and Hungarian are related languages, they do not look similar. The Finnish and Hungarian languages separated a long time ago, and each language developed its own vocabulary. People who can speak Finnish cannot understand Hungarian without extra study, and Hungarians cannot understand Finnish. However, there are some basic words that are very similar, for example: 'hand' (Finnish 'käsi' vs. Hungarian 'kez') and 'to go' (Finnish 'mennä' vs. Hungarian 'menni').

## [edit] Finnish grammar

Finnish is a synthetic and an agglutinative language. This means that words in Finnish have many parts inside them that make up meaning. In Finnish there are 15 cases. A case is an ending added to a word that helps describe its purpose in the sentence.

## [edit] Finnish spelling and pronunciation

Finnish is pronounced the way it is spelt. The pronunciation of most letters is similar to English. However:

- 'j' is like English 'y' in 'yes'
- 's' is like English 's' in 'sad' (never like 'z')
- 'h' is always pronounced, even at the end of a syllable e.g. 'ahdas' ('narrow')
- double vowels make the sound long
- 'ä' is similar to 'a' in English 'cat'
- 'ö' is pronounced with rounded lips, like 'eu' in French 'peur' or German 'ö'

## [edit] Examples of Finnish words

Yksi | One
Kaksi | Two
Kolme | Three
Kyllä | Yes
Ei | No
Minä | I
Sinä/Te | You
Hän | He/She
Me | We
He | They
Olen/Minä olen | I am
Suomi | Finland
Talo | House
Koti | Home
Tie | Way

## [edit] Basic Finnish Expressions

Hyvää päivää / hei | Hello
Mitä kuuluu? | How are you?
Kiitos hyvää | Very well, thankyou
Kiitos | Thank you
Kiitos paljon | Thank you very much
Hyvää huomenta | Good morning
Hyvää iltaa | Good evening
Hyvästi | Goodbye

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Category: Uralic languages

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