Finnish belongs to the Baltic-Finnic branch of the Finno-Ugric languages, being most closely related to Estonian, Livonian, Votic, Karelian, Veps, and Ingrian.
Many people assume that Finnish is closely related to either Swedish or Russian, as Sweden and Russia are both important neighbouring countries. However, that is not the case. Swedish and Russian are both Indo-European languages, whereas Finnish belongs to the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic family of languages.
But the relationship between Finnish and Hungarian is completely different. It only means that they belong to the same linguistical family, it is at the closest something like how the English language is related to the German language.
The fact still remains: Hungarian and Finnish languages are related - very distantly. The connection originated thousands of years ago and cannot be thoroughly explained. There are, and have always been, lots of theories from a common ancient home in the Egyptian deserts to aliens from outer-space.
N.A. Baskakov, in his research into Altaic languages categorised Finnish as belonging to the Uralic family of languages, and Korean as a member of the Altaic family.
The closest genetic relatives for Finns are Estonians (FST to Helsinki 40 and to Kuusamo 90) and Swedes (FST to Helsinki 50 and to Kuusamo 100). The FST values given here are actual values multiplied by 10,000.
The languages of Turkish and Finnish have many similar structures, such as vowel harmony and agglutination. Similarly, according to Janhunen, the common typology of the Altaic languages can be inferred as a result of mutual contacts in the past, perhaps from a few thousand years ago.
Hungarian is the major Uralic language spoken in Europe, but sadly Finns and Hungarians are not able to understand each-others. They only share approximately 200 common words. Estonians are luckier, they can usually understand a basic conversation in Finnish.
Related languages
The Finnish grammar and most Finnish words are very different from those in other European languages, because Finnish is not an Indo-European language. The two other national languages that are Uralic languages as Finnish are Estonian and Hungarian.
The Divergence of Finnish and Hungarian
These two major branches split approximately 4,500 years ago, compared with Germanic languages, whose divergence commenced an estimated 2,000 years ago.
While Sweden is the most similar country to Finland according to the Index, they do have one big difference. Most people in Finland natively speak Finnish, which is not even in the same language family as Swedish. Although Estonian is not mutually intelligible with Finnish, they are relatively similar languages.
Both Finnish and Estonian are close branches of the small, Indo-European Fenno-Ugric language family. Moreover, the difficult vowel-laden, ullatory Finnish and Estonian tongues are close enough that Finns and Estonians can readily understand each other.
Linguistically closest to Hungarians are geographically very distant West Siberian Mansi and Khanty (Fig. 1a), with whom they belong to the Ugric branch of the Uralic linguistic family2,3,4.
No, Finns are not Slavic. They are a Finno-Ugric people. Their language is related to Estonian and Hungarian.
“One theory is that Suomi comes from word 'suomaa' which means 'swampland' in Finnish.” She noted that the south-western part of the country is home to numerous lakes, which could have looked like swampland to outsiders.
Common physical characteristics of Finnish people include ashy blond hair, blue almond-shaped eyes, small round noses, and round faces. Finnish people are stereotyped as being reserved, honest, modest, humble, polite, and resilient. These are, of course, just stereotypes.
The combination of population bottlenecks and isolation, especially in eastern Finland, set the stage for what has come to be known as the Finnish Disease Heritage (FDH) — more than 35 recessive genetic disorders prevalent in Finland but rare elsewhere.
“Finland as a whole is easy to be thought of as introvert, and Finns are considered shy because our culture is one where we value private space very much,” Korhonen told Shanghai Daily on her recent book tour in Shanghai. “And we also give space to other people,” she added.
Finnish is a highly synthetic language. This means that a word can be made by juxtaposing inflected verbs, nouns, and adjectives, depending on each word's role in the sentence. Prepositions often appear as suffixes attached to nouns, and other particles can be added to express nuance.
Finnish, being completely different, belongs to the Finno-Ugric language family. Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are all very similar, and it is common for people from all three countries to be able to read the two other without too much difficulty.
There are only a little over twenty thousand native speakers of English in Finland, but due to being a competitive and educated nations, the majority of Finns speak it as their second language. 70% of the population can speak English fluently.
Finns aren't big on small talk, and quiet moments in conversations are not considered awkward. Silence merely means the person doesn't have something essential to say, as Finns feel there's no reason to fill gaps in conversation with idle chatter.
One of the most surprising connections might be that between Finnish and Japanese, who both belong to the Ural-Altaic language family. The theory of large, encompassing language families, or protolanguages, was theorised by an 18th century philologist, Sir William Jones.
Contrary to popular belief, Finnish is a language that is vastly diverse from any of the other Scandinavian languages. In fact, a Finnish-speaking person wouldn't understand a word – written or spoken – of Icelandic or Danish. That's how different they are.
The Finnish, Finland-Swedish and Swedish sign languages are closely related, as are Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic. The Greenlandic and Faroese sign languages are based on Danish, with some national variations. A range of immigrant languages are also spoken in the Nordic countries.