The Finnish language

Finnish is known not to be an "easy language", what is reasoned primarily by the deterring number of cases - exactly fifteen. In addition, the Finnish language differs significanty from the other European languages due to the fact that the Finnish language does not belong to family of indo-german languages. Finnish belongs to the small group of the finnougry languages, which are spoken only by 23 million people, for example the Estni and the Hungarian languages.

Actually, Finnish is a very young language. The writing tradition of the Finnish language goes back on the translation of the bible by the Finnish bishop Mikael Agricola in the 16th Century. He used a west Finnish dialect. In the year 1835, the Finnish national epos was published: the Kalevala of Elias Loennrot. This book encouraged the nationalistic movement to introduce the Finnish language instead of Swedish as official language of the government. At that time, the Finnish literature took its "first steps". In 1841, Finnish became instruction language at schools of higher education beside Swedish. (To compare: Scientist found a German-Latin dictionary dated the late 8th Century.)

Due to its very young age the language shows some further interesting points - besides the many cases and the vowel harmony. How a native Finn insured me, there are only a few terms or words used in the language. That means to the joy of all language pupils that there is no extensive vocabulary as usual as in other languages to learn. Thus there are e.g. hardly independent nouns, but rather "things to do something" - meaning the noun was originally derived from the associated verb.

Here is a tiny example that I've faced during my language course:
     puhua (to speak) - puhelin (telephone)

Beside the Finnish also Swedish is an official language used in Finland. Swedish came to the country due to two reasons. On the one hand it was later the language of the conquerers and missionaries, later it became the office language of the Swedish principality. On the other hand the Swedish kings settled villages of farmers and fishermen on the east bank of the Bottni sea bosom and on the south bank of the Finnish sea bosom. In the Finnish condition of 1919, Swedish got the privileged position being a second national language, which is still the situation today. The Aland islands, whose Finnish speaking population isless than five per cent, have a great autonomy statute.