Finnish is a
Uralic language, belonging to the
Finno-Ugric group. It is,
therefore, closely related to
Estonian, and also has commonalities with
Samoyed and the languages of the
Volga basin. The widest spoken of this
group of languages is
Hungarian, yet nowadays the similarities between the
two are few.
It is spoken by around 5,000,000 people in Finland, Sweden,
Norway, and Russian Karelia. It is not a Scandinavian language, however.
Nor, is it a Indo-European language. It does, however, have many loan words
from the Baltic, Slavic and Germanic languages, and many words are
dervied from English.
The Finns on Åland, as well as on the coast near
Helsinki, Turku, and Vaasa, generally speak Swedish, and most Finns learn
Swedish at school.
Finnish uses the special characters ä and ö. Its
orthography also includes the Swedish å.