Uralic · ISO 639-3 fin · fi
Finnish Language suomi
Finnish is an Uralic language spoken by about 5.4 million people in 4 countries. It is an official language of Finland. It is written in the Latin script.
Where Finnish is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
About the Finnish language
Finnish (suomi) is spoken by about 5.4 million people, which makes it the 174th most spoken language in the world — just behind Sukuma (5.4 million) and ahead of Bemba (Zambia) (5.4 million). It belongs to the Uralic language family and, more precisely, to the Nuclear Finnish group within the Coastal Finnic branch.
Where is Finnish spoken?
Finnish is used in 4 countries. The largest communities live in Finland (5.3 million), Estonia (250,695), Sweden (232,975) and Russia (14,082). More than half of the population speaks it in Finland — the places where travellers will hear it everywhere.
Share of the population that speaks Finnish: Finland 94% (5.3 million), Estonia 21% (250,695), Sweden 2.2% (232,975) and Russia <0.1% (14,082).
Finnish is an official language in 1 country: Finland. It also has regional official status in Sweden.
Writing system and status
Finnish is written in the Latin script. It is a safe, widely transmitted language: children still learn it at home as their first language.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Standard Estonian and Estonian.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 fi, ISO 639-3 fin.
Frequently asked questions about Finnish
How many people speak Finnish?
Where is Finnish spoken?
In which countries is Finnish an official language?
What language family does Finnish belong to?
What is Finnish called in Finnish?
Is Finnish an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.