The Finnish language is believed to be extremely old although it had an unofficial status during many periods of modern Finnish history. It belongs to the Uralic language family and is closely related to Estonian. It shares some similarities with Hungarian in grammar and punctuation. The language has around 5 million native speakers and continues to evolve.
As a Uralic language, experts believe Finnish originated near the Ural Mountains around 1500 BCE. However, Proto-Finnic dialects evolved after migration periods, and the Finnish language developed from Eastern and Northern Finnish dialects.
The first mention of the Finnic language was in the early 13th century when a German travel journal presented an example of a Finnish sentence. In modern-day Finland, the official language from the Middle Ages to the 1800s was Swedish. Latin was used in religious texts.
The Finnish bishop, Mikael Agricola, initiated the standardization of orthography in the 1500s. Modern standardization began in the 19th century when Elias Lönnrot compiled Kalevala, a work of epic poetry, in 1835 and the first Swedish- Finnish dictionary was published in 1853. However, Finnish has Western and Eastern dialects as well as many sub-dialects, so the standardization of Finnish is an ongoing process.
It takes about 1100 hours to learn Finnish as an English speaker.
Learning the Finnish language is challenging for English speakers as it is classified as a Category III language. The category contains some of the hardest languages to learn. “Yes” in the Finnish language is “joo,” pronounced [yoo]. As an introduction, some common phrases like “Merry Christmas” and “thank you” in the Finnish language can be learned quickly. However, if you need content writing in Finnish, you might need a professional to help you out!
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There is little emphasis on formal and informal speech in the Finnish language. Also, there are very few formal expressions in Finnish.
The Finnish alphabet acquired the letters "a" and "o" from the Swedish alphabet which pronounces "a" as "ahh." Moreover, it uses Latin letters.
The Finnish language is considered the official language of metalheads.
Karelian is the language most similar to Finnish. It is spoken on the Karelian isthmus in parts of Finland and Russia, and it is distinguishable from the Karelian dialect of the Finnish language. Furthermore, Finnish is very closely related to Estonian as they both belong to the same Finnic language family.
According to official classification, Finnish is considered one of the most challenging languages to learn. Its complex verb conjugation, case system, consonant gradation, and clitics may make learning the language difficult for non-native speakers. It is estimated that English speakers would need 40+ weeks in class.
Finnish belongs to the Uralic language group alongside Estonian and Hungarian, so it has a unique grammar and vocabulary. These languages differ greatly from the Indo-European languages spoken in many other European countries.
The requisite learning time depends on your native language. For example, speakers of Estonian may have an easier time learning Finnish. However, for native English speakers, Finnish is among the hardest languages to learn. The classification suggests you will need around 1,100 hours to reach a level of general proficiency in Finnish.
Finnish is an agglutinative language, which means that words are formed by adding suffixes to the stem of a word. This allows for very long words, with multiple parts of speech represented in a single word. For example, "epäjärjestelmällisyyksissäkäänköhän" is a single word in Finnish meaning "I wonder if even in my lack of organization."