Finnish (suomi) is a Uralic language belonging to the Finno-Ugric language family. It is spoken primarily in Finland, and by Finnish minorities in Sweden, Norway, and Russia.
Today, Finnish is spoken by approximately 5.5 million native speakers[1] and about 5.8 million total speakers worldwide. It is the official language of Finland alongside Swedish[2], with language standards maintained by the Kotimaisten kielten keskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland)[3].
The Finnish alphabet has 28 letters – 8 vowels including ä and ö, and 13 consonants. Finnish is known for its agglutinative nature, vowel harmony, and extensive case system. The language also features distinctive phonological characteristics.
Below is the breakdown of all letters and characters used in Finnish.
Finnish Vowel Letters
The Finnish alphabet has 8 vowel letters: a, e, i, o, u, y, ä, ö. Finnish vowels follow vowel harmony rules, where front vowels (ä, ö, y) and back vowels (a, o, u) typically do not appear together in the same word.
Finnish Vowels (Lowercase)
Finnish Vowels (Uppercase)
Finnish Consonant Letters
Finnish has 13 native consonant letters: b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v. Letters like w, x, z are used only in foreign loanwords.
Finnish consonants undergo gradation (consonant changes) in different grammatical forms.
Finnish Consonants (Lowercase)
Finnish Consonants (Uppercase)
Special Characters in Finnish
Finnish writing uses punctuation marks and symbols including period (.), comma (,), question mark (?), exclamation (!), apostrophe ('), and Finnish quotation marks (" "). The Euro symbol (€) is commonly used.
Finnish punctuation is generally similar to other European languages.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
References:
- [1] Ethnologue. "Finnish Language (FIN) - L1 & L2 Speakers, Status, Map". Retrieved from https://www.ethnologue.com/language/fin/
- [2] Finnish Language Act. "Article 1 - Official Language of Finland". Official law establishing Finnish as national language (URL no longer accessible)
- [3] Kotimaisten kielten keskus. "Institute for the Languages of Finland - Official Authority". Retrieved from https://www.kotus.fi/
Sambhu Raj Singh ·