Finnish
Suomi
Finnish is not Indo-European: it belongs to the Uralic family, which came from the east. It has no grammatical gender, no articles and no future tense, but some fifteen cases that replace our prepositions by attaching to the end of words. Vowel harmony requires the vowels of a word to belong to the same series, which explains the runs of ä and ö. Double consonants and double vowels are everywhere.
- Family
- Finno-Ugric
- Script
- Latin
- Speakers
- ≈ 5 million
- Where
- Finland
- In the game
- Common language
How to spot it
Double vowels and double consonants everywhere (kaupunki), ä and ö, and no prepositions at all — everything is done with suffixes.
A few sentences
-
Kesällä käymme usein saunassa.
In summer we often go to the sauna.
-
Siskoni soittaa viulua orkesterissa.
My sister plays the violin in an orchestra.
-
Unohdin sateenvarjon bussiin.
I left my umbrella on the bus.
-
Isäni korjaa venettä.
My father is mending a boat.
-
Mökki on järven toisella puolella.
The cabin is on the other side of the lake.