Talk:Finnish language

Second paragraph contains information not found in the reference 19 ^[1]. The referred article talks about New Age period 17th and 18th centuries not medieval period. Also the paragraph implies that area of modern Finland was only under Swedish control during the Middle Age when major parts of modern Finland were part of Sweden until 1808. I suggest removing this paragraph completely or major refactoring. 217.156.136.74 (talk) 13:16, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Both terms are used (so far as I can tell) interchangeably. If these terms are decided mean the same thing, both should be mentioned but probably just one should be subsequently used. If they mean different things, they should be defined in the article. Kdtbhl (talk) 20:07, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Germanic languages are influencing Finnish. While vocab from swedish and english can be seen other features too. Sveticism article refers to a future tense. AND the rising intonation for questioning is found in Finnish young people's speech.

I do not add these to the article as purists will just remove it. But these features are found in the language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.112.30.115 (talk) 19:41, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

In Consonants section, "The official alphabet includes "z" [z] and 'ž' [ʒ]" is a confusing, as it implies the Finnish alphabet includes 'ž', which is untrue. --Sw-f (talk) 21:09, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

I've removed it as you appear to be right, remember WP:BOLD. TylerBurden (talk) 00:29, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

The Finnish alphabet does not include <š> and <ž>, but the Finnish orthography does. Subtle difference. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 14:42, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

This article should (at least in my opinion) only be concentrating on traditional dialects + Kven and Meänkieli (both of which are Peräpohjola dialects, and thus not really separate from Finnish). The other "dialects", such as "Helsinki slang", "American Finnish", "Sweden Finnish", "Siberian Finnish" etc are not notable and should be placed in a separate section. They should also be removed from the infobox. The same story with the "Ingrian", "Kainuu", "Rauma", "Värmland" variants, they are all offshoots from traditional Western and Eastern Finnish dialects. Skäggdopping (talk) 19:18, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

"The usual analysis is that Finnish has long and short vowels and consonants as distinct phonemes." Do we have a source for this? I thought the normal analysis was that Finnish long vowels/consonants are sequences of two phonemes; at least this is the analysis Fred Karlsson gives in Suomen yleiskielen segmentaalifoneemien paradigma. Stockhausenfan (talk) 21:08, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I think it would be natural to mention that Finnish is related to the geographically close (in fact, overlapping) Sámi, but perhaps also pointing out that the relationship is quite remote with no mutual intelligibility.

The article says:

Finnish demonstrates an affiliation with other Uralic languages (such as Hungarian) in several respects including:

...

Possibly, this could be modified to

Finnish demonstrates an affiliation with other Uralic languages (such as Hungarian and Sámi) in several respects including:

...

However, I do not know if the traits mentioned are in fact shared by Sámi, so I do not know if this otherwise simple solution would be correct. Nø (talk) 09:36, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Actually I think mentioning Hungarian there is unnecessary since Finnish and Hungarian are not closely related (I think some of the examples given don't have Hungarian cognates but I'd have to search through my references to check). Stockhausenfan (talk) 12:14, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

If the traits mentioned are in fact shared with Hungarian (as stated), then I think mentioning Hungarian is very relevant - exactly because they are NOT very close. It demonstrates that despite being quite different, languages widely removed from each others in the Uralic family tree still have shared features. However, I also think that the relation to Sami should be mentioned in the article, one way or another. Nø (talk) 21:58, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

@MylowattsIAm, please find consensus on the talk page before making any more edits on the topic. You have been repeatedly changing the original language classification content in the article against the opinions of other editors, including breaking the 3-revert rule. State your case here and wait for consensus. Saltsjöbaden (talk) 20:12, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

@Saltsjöbaden An anonymous IP attempted to add the same information back. I'm not familiar with how to deal with edit wars; is there a way to alert the admins of this situation? FWIW I strongly oppose adding this information as no intermediate proto-languages have a consensus among experts. Stockhausenfan (talk) 12:01, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

I also want to remove "Finno-Ugric" which is now rejected by many (even most?) scholars, but I'll leave it for now due to the edit war. Stockhausenfan (talk) 12:45, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

That’s what I came here to suggest. Is it still a bad time?

I really don’t think the Finnic languages should be listed as coming from “Finno-Ugric” in the infobox. Why isn’t there even a question mark next to it? 2600:100A:B1E6:3EE:7C26:4497:517B:9845 (talk) 20:16, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

I removed it for now given that it's disputed and the infobox was the only presence it had on the article, see WP:INFOBOXPURPOSE. TylerBurden (talk) 20:48, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

I believe the correct way is to follow the families from closest to furthest away. Example from the Swedish language article:

Swedish (svenska [ˈsvɛ̂nːska] ⓘ) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family, spoken predominantly in Sweden and in parts of Finland.

The problem is that currently on this article (Finnish language), it says the following:

Finnish (endonym: suomi [ˈsuo̯mi] ⓘ or suomen kieli [ˈsuo̯meŋ ˈkie̯li]) is a Uralic language of the Finnic branch, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland

• Problem 1: It starts from the furthest grouping (Uralic), not the closest (Finnic)
• Problem 2: It uses the term "branch" instead of "language family", but "language family" seems to be the correct definition linguistically.

Suggested fix:

Finnish (endonym: suomi [ˈsuo̯mi] ⓘ or suomen kieli [ˈsuo̯meŋ ˈkie̯li]) is a Finnic language of the Uralic language family, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland.
Saltsjöbaden (talk) 20:46, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Sounds better than the current version. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 21:59, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Seems reasonable to me as well. TylerBurden (talk) 15:50, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Updated the lede to match the above suggestion Saltsjöbaden (talk) 19:11, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

This page gives an outdated view of the diversification of Proto-Finnic; the modern view is explicated here: https://www.academia.edu/10172149/The_Diversification_of_Proto_Finnic Stockhausenfan (talk) 20:34, 3 June 2025 (UTC)

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• Ei me mittä kaffelle men?.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 17:51, 22 December 2025 (UTC)