Finnish language

The Finnish language is spoken by about 6 million people where some also live in Sweden, Norway and Russia. Just as the samic languages, it belongs to the Baltic-Finnic subgroup" which is the nearest subgroup as seen in this Finno-Ugric language classification list. Estonian is the other largest representative in the Baltic-Finnic group.

There are three finnish languages, each with more dialects;

The standard Finnish language, spoken in Finland and Sweden.
The Meänkieli language, spoken in northern Sweden.
The Karelian language, spoken by about 118000 people in north-western Russia.

Another finnish language, by some considered as a finnish dialect, is the Kven language, spoken in Norway.

Speakers within each of these can understand eachother quite well.

In Finland the dialects are divided into two major dialect groups, western and eastern. Compared to this dual only division, there are a large number of dialects as seen on this Finnish dialect chart.
Finnish is spoken in Finland by about 92% of the population and in Sweden by ca 300.000 (ca 3.3% of the swedish population), being the largest official minority language in Sweden. Some finnish people has in the history moved to different locations in Sweden but the finnish language has only remained near the finnish border, in the north-east of Sweden.

In Norway, the Kven language, or dialect, is spoken by about 10000 people.
It has a legal minority language status by the Norwegian government.

In Finnish, some words that have been borrowed from ancient Swedish, have preserved its forms although changed in Swedish. The name of days are examples.
Lauantai - Saturday is called Lördag in Swedish, ancient swedish ~ Laugardag.

External links

Finnish language
Meänkieli language
Kven language
Karelian language
Spoken Finnish
English to Finnish - Finnish to English - Dictionary