Languages - Finnish and Swedish Official Languages

Swedish-speaking Finns, of whom there are about 300,000, are mainly along the coast of the south and the south-west archipelago and along the shore of the Gulf of Bothnia to the west. Swedish is the official language on the Åland Islands.

Finnish is the mother tongue of only about five million people in the world, so being able to speak foreign languages is essential for Finns. This is an advantage for foreign visitors, because many Finns speak English, German or some other European language.

Unlike Swedish, Russian, English and almost all other European languages, Finnish does not belong to the Indo-European family. Together with its close relative Estonian and distantly related Hungarian, it is a member of the Finno-Ugrian group of languages, spoken by only about 20 million people.

Finnish has a reputation for being a difficult language, with many declensions and long words such as saippuakauppias and yliopistokirjakauppa. You don't have to learn how to pronounce these words, but to help you get started, here's the word for hello: "Hei". If you want to be cool, you can say "Moi." After a delicious dinner, it's always polite to say "kiitos", pronounced "keetos".

A few useful words to know