Finnish Language Guide

Official language in
Finland
Also spoken in
Sweden, Norway, Russia, United States, Australia
Script
Latin

Where it's spoken

The Constitution of Finland states that the national languages of Finland are Finnish and Swedish, and the Language Act states the same. The Constitution also provides that the right of everyone to use his or her own language, either Finnish or Swedish, before courts of law and other authorities, and to receive official documents in that language, is to be guaranteed by an Act.

The Language Act makes the municipality the basic unit of the linguistic division of the country, and states that a municipality is either unilingual or bilingual. It also states that the texts of signs, traffic signs and other corresponding signposts directed at the public and posted by authorities in bilingual municipalities are to be in Finnish and Swedish, unless solely foreign languages are to be used in them in accordance with international practice.

The Institute for the Languages of Finland (Kotus) states that Finnish is also spoken in Sweden, Norway, Eastern Karelia and Ingria (in Russia), and even in the United States and Australia. In Sweden, the Language Act names Finnish, Yiddish, Meänkieli, Romani Chib, and Sami as the national minority languages.

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Script & pronunciation

Finnish is written with the Latin alphabet. The Language Office's guide (Kielitoimiston ohjepankki) states that Latin letters are used for writing Finnish and lists them in alphabetical order, ending with å, ä, and ö. For these three letters, the guide says, the name "ääkköset" (originally a jocular name) is used, or the word "skandimerkit", which refers to the area where the letters are used, that is, Scandinavia.

An article in Kielikello by Riitta Korhonen states that the main stress of a Finnish word is usually on the first syllable, regardless of the length of the word, and that a compound word has its main stress at the beginning of the whole.

The romanization line on this app's cards separates syllables with hyphens and writes the stressed syllable in capital letters, and it keeps the letter ä. The card "Missä on lähin metroasema?" (Where is the nearest metro station?) is romanized "MIS-sä on LÄ-hin MET-ro-a-se-ma," and the card "Onko teillä hissi?" (Do you have an elevator / lift?) is romanized "ON-ko TEIL-lä HIS-si."

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Grammar essentials

Finnish nouns and adjectives take case endings. Panu Mäkinen of the University of Jyväskylä states that Finnish has 15 cases, divided into five groups of three, and Peter Marten writes in thisisFINLAND that Finnish noun and adjective endings represent at least 15 different grammatical cases. This app's card "Onko tässä pullossa panttia?" (Does this bottle have a deposit on it?) has a note saying that in the existential question the location takes the inessive and the thing existing takes the partitive, and that the demonstrative "tämä" inflects to match its noun, giving the paired "tässä pullossa." The card "Onko tämä oikea bussi keskustaan?" (Is this the right bus to the city centre?) has a note saying that the illative ending -taan/-täan means "into" and that "keskustaan" is the illative of "keskusta" (city centre).

Marten states that Finnish has no grammatical genders, and that adjectives always take the same endings as their associated nouns.

The Language Office states that a typical Finnish word that is not a compound has either the vowels a, o, u (back vowels) or the vowels ä, ö, y (front vowels), not both, and that i and e are neutral with respect to vowel harmony. For foreign words, it states that the choice of the vowel in the inflectional ending is affected by whether the word has a, o, u or ä, ö before the ending, with e and i neutral in this respect. The card "Onko tässä pullossa panttia?" (romanized "ON-ko TÄS-sä PUL-los-sa PANT-ti-a") spells the ending -ssä on "tässä" and -ssa on "pullossa."

The science term bank Tieteen termipankki quotes the Iso suomen kielioppi (VISK) as saying that the negative verb "ei" is an incompletely inflected auxiliary verb that agrees with the basic subject, and that it has person forms in the active present indicative (en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät) and in the imperative (älä, älkää, älkäämme, älköön, älkööt). The term bank adds that the negative verb has person and number inflection but, for example, no tenses and no infinitive. This app's card "Emme valitettavasti ota käteistä." (Unfortunately we do not take cash.) has a note saying that Finnish negation inflects the negative verb ei for person while the main verb drops to a bare connegative stem: emme + ota = we do not take. In the card "En osaa suomea" (I can't speak Finnish), the word breakdown glosses "En" as "I don't / I can't."

Tieteen termipankki, quoting VISK, states that a question clause is marked either by an interrogative pronoun or by the question clitic particle -ko ~ -kö (in spoken language sometimes also -ks), as in "Onko ~ Onks nyt tiistai?", and that question clauses have their own word order, because the questioning element is placed at the beginning of the clause. This app's cards "Onko täällä ilmainen wifi?" (Is there free Wi-Fi here?) and "Onko tämä oikea bussi keskustaan?" both begin with "Onko," and the card "Missä on lähin metroasema?" begins with the question word "Missä."

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Politeness & etiquette

The Language Office's guide on teitittely, address with the pronoun "te," describes it as a courtesy form that shows appreciation and respect toward the person addressed because of that person's age, position, or another reason. It states that, even when only one person is addressed, the verb, the personal pronoun "te," and the possessive suffix -nne are in the second person plural. Its examples include "Otatteko lisää kahvia?" and "Mikä on (teidän) osoitteenne?" It adds that the pronoun is sometimes written with a capital T to show special respect, but that lowercase is just as acceptable, and that the whole pronoun "te" is often not needed, any more than "sinä" is when addressing with "sinä."

This app's cards show the pattern. The card "Puhutteko englantia?" (Do you speak English?) has a note calling it the polite plural form. The card "Onko teillä hissi?" has a note saying that "teillä" uses the adessive case of "te" (you plural), also used as a polite singular. The card "Voisitteko lämmittää tämän?" (Could you heat this up?) has a note saying that Finnish can use the plural "te" as a polite singular, and the card "Mikä on nimenne?" (What's your name?) has a note saying that it uses the possessive of formal "Te" ("nimenne") and that with friends one says "Mikä on nimesi?"

Marianne Laaksonen writes in Kielikello that in a few decades Finland has become a society that addresses with "sinä," but that teitittely has remained as a form of address in various institutional situations and, for example, when addressing older people. Terhi Ainiala writes in Kielikello that Finland too moved quickly from teitittely to sinuttelu, but that teitittely did not end up in as marginal a position as in Sweden. She writes that, as in Sweden, people in Finland have in recent years begun to address with "te" more often, and that in one and the same conversation a clerk or a customer may alternate between sinuttelu and teitittely.

This app's card "Hyvää päivää" (Good day) is marked formal and its usage note calls it a polite greeting used in formal situations and with strangers, while the card "Hei" (Hi / Hello) has a usage note calling it the most commonly used greeting, suitable for any time of day.

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