When traveling to any country, it is important to understand how you will communicate. Many territories are multilingual, and Finland is no exception: Swedish, Russian and more are spoken here. If you are going to go to work, live or rest, it is worth finding out what language is spoken in Finland.
The peculiarity of the Finnish language
Finnish belongs to the Finno-Ugric family and is considered one of the most difficult languages in Europe. But, if you dig deeper, it turns out to be much easier than many European ones. The thing is that in Finnish words are written as they are heard, the stress is always placed on the first syllable of any word, there are no articles and generic categories.
Finnish is the main language in Finland, but not the only official language. The second is Swedish. You can easily use English in speech. There are territories where they will understand you in Russian. Karelian, Kahlo, Sami languages are also used.
The following features of Finnish can be distinguished:
- division into literary and colloquial. The second option, in turn, has many dialects;
- the presence of 16 cases;
- lack of hissing consonants;
- very long words that are formed by adding endings and can appear as whole sentences.
Official languages of Finland
The answer, how many official languages there are in Finland, is due to the fact that at different stages of the formation of the state, the territory of Suomi was under the influence of the Russian Empire and Sweden. Labor migration, the presence of various ethnic groups with their own national traditions also influenced the language policy.
Swedish is the second official language of Finland, which is enshrined at the legislative level. All signs in public places should be duplicated in Swedish, although it is spoken by less than 6% of the country's population.
Swedish is compulsory in the school curriculum, but in reality it is becoming less popular. This is due to the fact that the younger generation wants to study the more widespread in the world English and Russian.
The Swedish language in Finland is also losing popularity due to the cancellation of the previously existing requirement to negotiate between Scandinavian countries in one of the Scandinavian languages. However, Swedish is the main language in some of Finland's monolingual municipalities.
In bilingual municipalities, Finnish is generally preferred, which is why it is accepted as the national language. More than 90% of the country's population speaks it.
The church was also involved in the popularization of Finnish, which did not allow people who were not able to confirm their literacy to participate in the sacrament and wedding. By the way, in some regions of Russia, Finnish can be studied at school and in some universities - as a foreign language. For example, in schools of Karelia, Moscow State University, MGIMO.
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How else can you communicate
Those who travel to Helsinki but do not know Finnish, the official language of Finland, need not worry. Here you can visit many interesting places, visit society, see life if you can speak other languages.
Prevalence of English
English in Scandinavian countries is quite popular due to the country's membership in the European Union. English is taught in universities, it is studied by children from the age of three, it is often used in the media (films are especially popular).
The article “Study in Finland for foreigners: features, duration, cost” will tell you about the education system in Finland and the possibility of studying in English.
If the purpose of the trip is tourism in the big cities of Suomi, you should not worry what language they speak in Finland: English will be enough for communication and mutual understanding with the locals.
Sami group
The North European Sami people in terms of number on the entire planet do not exceed 80 thousand people, but they managed to preserve their culture and even speech. In Finland, the Sami live mainly in Lapland.
In the Constitution, as well as in other regulations of Finland, the rights of this people are enshrined. An interesting fact is that since 1992 all legislative issues and documents concerning the Sami have to be published in Sami in parallel with Finnish.
What is so special about Finnish kahlo
Considering how many languages there are in Finland, we cannot forget about Para Gypsy, better known as “kalo”. It is spoken by Finnish gypsies, whose number in the state is about 7 thousand people. The right to preserve the kahlo, their culture, by the Roma, whose national minority is recognized in Finland, is enshrined in the Constitution.
Despite the fact that the Finns do not want to study Finnish Kahlo as a foreign language, it is considered a regional language, which is used in kindergartens and schools in the places where native speakers live.
Karelian language in Finland
Migrants from the lands lost by the Finnish state - North and South Karelia are considered Karelians. The number of Karelians is more than 300 thousand people. Karelian has been recognized as the language of national minorities since 2009. Despite the similarity between Finnish and Karelian, the latter is considered to be dying out due to its decreasing popularity.
Popularization of Russian
In terms of popularity among non-state languages, the Russian language in Finland ranks third. It is owned by about 20% of the population. Russian is offered to be taught to children in kindergartens, schools, universities, where he can be taught as a native or foreign. In the south and east of the country, you can often meet Russian-speaking local residents.
Conclusions
In the modern world, multilingualism is becoming not only a need, but also the norm for an educated person. In Finland, you can communicate not only in the official languages - Finnish or Swedish, but also in Russian or English.
