Finnish language
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The Finnish language is a Finno-Ugric language, which is a member of the Uralic language family. It is one of the two official languages of Finland. It is also an official minority language in Sweden. Finnish is one of the only national languages of Europe that is not an Indo-European language.
Finnish spelling is simple. However, most of its vocabulary is very different from other European languages. The two other national languages that are in the same family as Finnish are Estonian and Hungarian. Finnish is a synthetic and an agglutinative language. This means that words in Finnish have many parts inside them that make up meaning. In Finnish there are 15 cases. A case is an ending added to a word that helps describe its purpose in the sentence.
Even though Finnish and Hungarian are related languages, they do not look similar. The Finnish and Hungarian languages separated a long time ago, and each language developed its own vocabulary. People who can speak Finnish cannot understand Hungarian without extra study, and Hungarians cannot understand Finnish. However, there are some basic words that are very similar. Take, for example, 'hand' (Finnish 'kasi' vs. Hungarian 'kez') and 'to go' (Finnish 'mennen' vs. Hungarian 'menni').
[edit] Examples of Finnish words
Yksi | One |
Kaksi | Two |
Kolme | Three |
Kyllä | Yes |
Ei | No |
Minä | I |
Sinä/Te | You |
Hän | He/She |
Me | We |
He | They |
Olen/Minä olen | I am |
Suomi | Finland |
Talo | House |
Koti | Home |
Tie | Way |
[edit] Basic Finnish Expressions
Hyvää päivää / hei | Hello |
Mitä kuuluu? | How are you? |
Ole hyvä | There you are |
Kiitos | Thank you |
Hyvästi | Goodbye |
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