Finnish language

Finnish (endonym: suomi [ˈsuo̯mi] (listen) or suomen kieli [ˈsuo̯meŋ ˈkie̯li]) is a Uralic language of the Finnic branch, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland (the other being Swedish). In Sweden, both Finnish and Meänkieli (which has significant mutual intelligibility with Finnish[3]) are official minority languages. The Kven language, which like Meänkieli is mutually intelligible with Finnish, is spoken in the Norwegian county Troms og Finnmark by a minority group of Finnish descent.

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Finnish
suomi
Pronunciation	IPA: [ˈsuo̯mi] (listen)
Native to	Finland, Sweden, Norway (in small areas in Troms og Finnmark), Russia
Ethnicity	Finns
Native speakers	5.8 million Finland 5.4 million Sweden 0.40 million Norway 8,000 (Kven) Republic of Karelia 8,500 US 26,000 (2020)[1]
Language family	Uralic Finnic Northern Finnic Finnish
Dialects	American Ostrobothnian Eastern South Ostrobothnian Tavastian Peräpohjola Southwest South Karelian Ingrian Savonian Kainuu Värmland Helsinki Meänkieli Gällivare Kven Rauma Sweden Siberian
Writing system	Latin (Finnish alphabet) Finnish Braille
Signed forms	Signed Finnish
Official status
Official language in	Finland  European Union  Nordic Council
Recognised minority language in	Sweden (official minority language) Russia (Karelia)[2] Norway (Kven language) (Finnmark)
Regulated by	Language Planning Department of the Institute for the Languages of Finland
Language codes
ISO 639-1	fi
ISO 639-2	fin
ISO 639-3	fin
Glottolog	finn1318  excluding Kven and Meänkieli
Linguasphere	41-AAA-a
[image reference needed]   Majority language   Spoken by a minority
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Finnish is typologically agglutinative[4] and uses almost exclusively suffixal affixation. Nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals and verbs are inflected depending on their role in the sentence. Sentences are normally formed with subject–verb–object word order, although the extensive use of inflection allows them to be ordered differently. Word order variations are often reserved for differences in information structure.[5] Finnish orthography uses a Latin-script alphabet derived from the Swedish alphabet, and is phonetic to a great extent. Vowel length and consonant length are distinguished, and there are a range of diphthongs, although vowel harmony limits which diphthongs are possible.