Finnish language
From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
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[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 |
