Finnish: The language with infinite grammar

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.

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3 interesting facts about the Finnish language

01
Finnish is an agglutinative language and relies nearly entirely on suffixal pronunciation.
02
During the period of Swedish control, the Finnish language had no official status in Finland until 1809.
03
The Finnish alphabet has 29 letters with two additional letters that are not found in the English alphabet, "å" and "ö".

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Origin of the language

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.

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History of the language

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.

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Learning the language

It takes about 1100 hours to learn Finnish as an English speaker.

How to say 10 popular words and phrases in the Finnish language

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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Fun facts about the Finnish language

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Minimal concept of formal and informal

There is little emphasis on formal and informal speech in the Finnish language. Also, there are very few formal expressions in Finnish.

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Alphabet evolution

The Finnish alphabet acquired the letters "a" and "o" from the Swedish alphabet which pronounces "a" as "ahh." Moreover, it uses Latin letters.

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Heavy metal music scene

The Finnish language is considered the official language of metalheads.

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Word Of Wisdom!

The opposite of creativity is cynicism.

Esa Saarinen

Author, educator and philosopher

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Word Of Wisdom!

A strong desire derives a person straight through the hardest rock.

Aleksis Kivi

Novelist and author

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Word Of Wisdom!

Youth is a time of joy and poetry. Poetry produces joy, joy poetry.

Minna Canth

Author and social critic

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