The two main official languages of Finland are Finnish and Swedish. There are also several official minority languages: three Sámi languages, as well as Romani, Finnish Sign Language, Finland-Swedish Sign Language and Karelian.
Finnish is a Finnic language which is part of the broader Uralic language family. It is one of the two national languages along Swedish; its official status is granted by Section 17 of the Constitution of Finland. It is the main language of education, media, and administration. , it is spoken as a first language by 84.1% of the population.
Excluding transcontinental countries, Finland is one of the four European countries whose majority language is not Indo-European. As a Finnic language, Finnish is closely related to the Estonian and Karelian languages. As a Uralic language, it is also more distantly related to the Sámi languages and Hungarian. It has been influenced the most by Swedish, historical stages of other Germanic languages, andâÂÂto a lesser extentâÂÂby Baltic languages and Russian. The language displays systematic vowel harmony, with a set of front and back vowels. It is an agglutinative language, and its unmarked sentences most typically follow the subectâÂÂverbâÂÂobject word order. As is typical in Uralic languages, grammatical gender is absent.
Finnish has a high degree of linguistic variation. It has regional dialects and informal spoken varieties () that are distinct from the standard register, known as âÂÂor, when written, as , .
Swedish is a North Germanic language which is part of the Indo-European language family. It holds co-official status with Finnish, as stated in Section 17 of the Constitution.
Swedish, along with Finnish, is a compulsory subject in all schools, and all students must start studying Swedish in sixth grade at the latest.
The national Finnish broadcaster Yle has a dedicated Swedish-language department called . There are nine Swedish-language newspapers in FinlandâÂÂof which is the only national daily, and some of them are part of the Minority Dailies Association. Public authorities, especially in bilingual municipalities, are required to provide services and information in both languages, and Swedish-speakers may use Swedish with all state bodies, including courts and emergency services. Public TV broadcasting in àland is handled by àlands Radio and TV. àland has two newspapers, and .
, 5.1% of the population of Finland speaks Swedish as its first language,down from 13% at the beginning of the 20th century. In 2012, 44% of Finnish citizens with another registered primary language other than Swedish could hold a conversation in this language. First-language Swedish speakers are mostly concentrated in the Ostrobothnia and Uusimaa regions, as well as ÃÂ land and the area around Turku (ÃÂ boland). The region with the highest percentage of first-language Swedish speakers is ÃÂ land (), where Finnish (spoken by ) is not official. The four largest Swedish-speaking municipalities in mainland Finland, in absolute numbers, are those of Helsinki, Espoo, Porvoo and Vaasa. In Helsinki, currently 5.5% of the population are native Swedish speakers and 18.3% are native speakers of languages other than Finnish and Swedish.
The Swedish varieties of mainland Finland (known as Finland Swedish, ) have been influenced by Finnish in phonology and some vocabulary. Standard Swedish in Finland closely follows the written standard in Sweden, although it has phonetic differences due to Finnish influence. Most notably, Finland Swedish lacks tone, voiceless plosive aspiration, retroflex consonants, and the sj- and tj-sounds are pronounced and respectively. These differences are not present in most ÃÂ land dialects, which are closer to Central Swedish.
There is a rich Finland-Swedish literature, including authors such as Tove Jansson, Johan Ludvig Runeberg, Edith Södergran and Zacharias Topelius. Runeberg is considered Finland's national poet and wrote the national anthem "VÃÂ¥rt land" in Swedish; it was only later translated to Finnish.
Historically, Swedish was the sole language of the administration under both Swedish and Russian rule, until Tsar Alexander II's language decrees of 1863 and 1902 made Finnish official in the Grand Duchy of Finland. Russian served as a third co-official language with Finnish and Swedish between 1900 and 1917, although practical use was limited.
The Sámi languages are a group of Uralic languages spoken by the indigenous Sámi people in an area that traditionally covers northern Fennoscandia; this area is known as Sápmi. Three Sámi languages are spoken in Finland: Northern Sámi, Inari Sámi and Skolt Sámi. The Sámi languages are recognized as indigenous by Section 17 of the Constitution of Finland, which grants them the right to "maintain and develop their own language and culture."
The Basic Education Act of 1998 grants the right to have Sámi languages as media of instruction in grades 1âÂÂ9 within the Sámi homeland. Total-immersion programmes for ages 1âÂÂ6, known as language nests (), are active for all three Sámi languages in Finland; there are twelve nests in total. They have been particularly successful for revitalization of Inari Sámi.
Finland has fewer Sámi-language print media outlets than Norway or Sweden, and most Northern Sámi-language media is published or broadcast within Norway. , the national broadcasting company in Finland, handles most online news, television and radio and in the Sámi languages, and its Sámi-language projects are often in collaboration with national broadcasting companies in Norway and Sweden. The first Sámi-language publication in Finland was the Northern Sámi magazine (1936âÂÂ2011). The regional newspaper has included Sámi-language news in its print and online editions since 2012. Other currently active Sámi-language publications in Finland include the Inari Sámi periodical , and the academic journal .
The use of the Sámi languages in administration is regulated by the constitution and the Sámi Language Act of 2003, whereby Sámi speakers have the right to use their language before authorities in the Sámi homeland, as well as nationwide bodies like Kela, the Finnish Tax Administration and . They also have the right to official documents in their Sámi language when dealing with a government office. Additionally, authorities in the homeland must ensure customer service and interpretation in Sámi. However, due to insufficient funding, outdated legislation and lack of awareness among staff, these rights are not always guaranteed.
, the total number of Sámi speakers in Finland is 2,077, or of the population, out of an estimated total of 8,000âÂÂ10,000 Sámi people living in Finland. The municipalities where Sámi is recognized as 'native' are Enontekiö, Inari, Utsjoki and Sodankylä. Northern Sámi is spoken in all Sámi municipalities of Finland, and it is the most widely spoken Sámi language, both in Finland and worldwide. Inari Sámi is the only Sámi language spoken exclusively within the borders of Finland, around Lake Inari. Skolt Sámi is also spoken in the Inari municipality. Inari and Skolt Sámi are estimated to be spoken by roughly 400 and 300 people, respectively.
Northern Sámi is classified as a Western Sámi language, while Inari and Skolt Sámi are Eastern. As Uralic languages, they are distantly related to Finnish. All three have had extensive contact with Proto-Germanic, Proto-Norse and Scandinavian languages, as well as Finnic languages; they have also had some influence from Baltic and Slavic languages. Sámi and Finnish have borrowed words from one another throughout their history. The Sámi languages are typologically similar to Finnish, although they tend to have richer consonant gradation and vowel alternation, and fewer noun cases (nine at most).
The Government of Finland has a history of assimilating the indigenous Sámi people into the Finnish-speaking majority. Systematic language assimilation began in the 17th century, and teaching and speaking Sámi in schools was forbidden until the 1970s.
The Romani language in Finland is called Kalo or Kàlo. It has been spoken in Finland for roughly 450âÂÂ500 years. It has been significantly influenced by other languages in Finland, such as Finnish and Swedish. Finnish Romani is spoken by about 3,000âÂÂ4,000 people, and the number of its speakers has dropped by almost 40% over the past fifty years. The number of speakers diminished drastically after World War II. Most Finnish Roma speak Finnish or Swedish in their day-to-day life.
Finnish municipalities may organize education in Finnish Kalo, if there is a sufficient number of Romani children to form a group. A significant challenge to this is the lack of Finnish Kalo teachers. According to the Finnish constitution, Finnish Romani have the right to practise their language and culture.
Until the Winter War, Karelian was spoken in the historical Border-Karelia region (Raja-Karjala) on the northeastern shore of Lake Ladoga; after the war, evacuated Karelian speakers were settled all over Finland. In 2001, the Karelian Language Society estimated that the language was understood by 11,000âÂÂ12,000 people in Finland, most of whom were elderly. In 2011, Karelian speakers in Finland amounted to roughly 5,000 speakers, with another 20,000 claiming some knowledge or comprehension skills in the language. Unofficial estimates place the total size of the language community at roughly 30,000 people.
Karelian was recognized in a regulation by the then president Tarja Halonen in November 2009, in accordance with the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
In Finland, two sign languages are recognized: Finnish Sign Language and Finland-Swedish Sign Language. Both belong to the Swedish Sign Language family.
Finnish Sign Language is the most commonly used sign language in Finland. The Finnish Association of the Deaf () estimates that 5,500 people use Finnish Sign Language as their mother tongue, 3,000 of whom are deaf. Finland-Swedish Sign Language has around 300 signers, and is severely endangered.
, 93% of Finns aged 18âÂÂ64 can speak a foreign language, and 78% can speak two or more. 2,184,000 or 66% can speak both Swedish and English, while 1,003,000 (30%) can speak German and English and 882,000 (27%) Swedish and German.
Most Finns are able to have a conversation in English. English is the first language of 0.7% of the Finnish population.
The Russian language is the most spoken immigrant language in Finland (1.8%). Finland applies Part II of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages to Russian, though this does not grant protected status in Finland.
As of 2024, there were 49,563 people in Finland who spoke Estonian as their native language, making up approximately 0.9% of the total population.
As of 2024, 43,534 people speak Arabic in Finland, representing approximately 0.8% of the total population.
Except for ÃÂ land, a municipality is considered bilingual when either 8% or 3,000 of its residents speak both Finnish and Swedish. Swedish meets these criteria in 33 out of 308 municipalities, mostly located in the coastal areas of the Ostrobothnia region, Southwest Finland (especially in ÃÂ boland outside Turku) and Uusimaa. Finnish reaches the criteria everywhere but in ÃÂ land.
The Sámi languages have an official status in the northernmost Finland, in Utsjoki, Inari, Enontekiö and part of Sodankylä, regardless of proportion of speakers.
In the bilingual municipalities signs are in both languages, important documents are translated and authorities have to be able to serve in both languages. National-level administration has to serve the public in both official languages, regardless of location, and in Sámi in certain circumstances.
Places often have official names in Finnish and Swedish, or Finnish and Sámi, both names being equally official as name of the town. For a list, see Names of places in Finland in Finnish and in Swedish.