The language of Finland.
Finnish is closely related to Estonian and is also related to Hungarian . Both Finnish and Hungarian place a stress on the first syllable of each word.
Finnish has a characteristic system of vowel harmony, in which front vowels ä, ö, and ü do not occur in the same word as the back vowels a, o, and u. Long and short vowels and consonants are used (that is, i and ii, p and pp), as well as a system in which the consonant of a word stem changes according to the stress of the previous vowel and the type of syllable that follows it. Finnish has a number of noun cases, negative verbs, and an extensive system of word suffixes.
| Name | Where spoken | Language Family | How many (000s) |
| Finnish | Finland, Sweden, CIS | Uralic (Finno-Ugric) | 4.5-5m |
Table source: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, David Ctystal, Cambridge University Press
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