Finnish

Finland is a small but culturally important country situated to the East of Sweden. The Finnish language is a member of the Finnic family of languages, a small branch of the Uralic family, which is itself a part of the Indo-European language group. It’s closest relatives are Hungarian and Estonian.
 
Obviously, it’s the major language in Finland – but where else is it spoken?
 
Languages tend to migrate with people – just look at the spread of English and Spanish. While the English and Spanish were major colonial powers, the people of Finland did not expand into the New World as aggressively. While individual groups moved into new areas, the country did not establish overseas colonies.
 
Nevertheless, there are small Finnish speaking communities all over the world.
 
The largest communities are in:

• Sweden
• Norway
• Russia
• Canada
• The US
• Brazil

 
All told, there are around five million speakers in the world today – too few to make it into the top 100 list of languages.
 

Written Finnish

Written Finnish uses the Latin alphabet, although it is not a romance language. Until the middle ages, the language was strictly verbal – as with many European languages. The spread of Catholicism and the use of Latin as a common language between nations brought writing to the people of Finland.
 
Academies and churches sprang up, and the noble and merchant classes learned to use written language as a tool in commerce and legislation.
 
Later, the printing revolution brought written language to the masses – and general literacy soon followed. During this period, the spelling of words was formalized.
 
Before print, there were extra (non-Latin) letters in the language – you may be surprised to know that English also had additional letters, which were lost in the age of print.
 
As a result, some of these sounds have disappeared entirely from words in the standard language – although they do remain in rural dialects. It is this diversity that adds a layer of intrigue to the study of the Finnish language.