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Finnish is a member of the Finnic group of the Uralic family of languages; as such, it is one of the few European languages that is not Indo-European. The Finnic group also includes Estonian and a few minority languages spoken around the Baltic Sea and in Russia's Republic of Karelia.
A simple answer to both questions is no. Both Swedish (one of the two official languages of Finland) and Russian belong to the Indo-European group of languages, while Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language.
The Finnic languages are a subgroup of the larger Uralic family of languages, which also includes Hungarian. These languages are markedly different from most other languages spoken in Europe, which belong to the Indo-European family of languages. Native Finns can also be divided according to dialect into subgroups sometimes called heimo (lit.
Feb 22, 2020 · The best examples of these are Hungarian, Estonian, Finnish and Sámi (from the Uralic family), Maltese (a Semitic language, related to Arabic and Hebrew), and Basque which, very unusually, is not related to any other living language. ‘Shesh’ Is The Word: Indo-European Vocabulary.
May 23, 2024 · Finnish language, member of the Finno-Ugric group of the Uralic language family, spoken in Finland. Finnish did not achieve official status until 1863, and it, as well as Swedish, were designated the national languages of Finland in 1919. Learn more about the history and phonology of Finnish.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jan 31, 2024 · The Finnish language is not considered Indo-European but Finns share Yamnaya (ancestors to Proto-Indo-Europeans) genetics with the rest of Northern Europe, so one could argue that they technically are among the most Indo-European of all the Europeans.
In total, 46% of the world's population (3.2 billion people) speaks an Indo-European language as a first language—by far the highest of any language family. There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to an estimate by Ethnologue, with over two-thirds (313) of them belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch.
