THE WONDERS OF THE FINNISH LANGUAGE

FINNO-UGRIAN ROOTS
Whilst the family of Uralic languages comprises up to 30 languages,Finno-Ugric accounts for the most important subfamily. Although still subject to some controversy, the Finno-Urgic group tends to break down into Finnish, Estonia and Hungarian. The discussion on the origins and time of birth is still ongoing. In addition to Finland, Finnish is spoken in Estonia, in the Swedish Torne valley, in Norwegian Finnmark and in Russian Carelia.

For a more profound explanation on the non- Indo-European origins of the Finnish language, refer to an article written by Ulla-Maija Kulonen in Virtual Finland. The sites of the Finno-Ugrian Society contain, moreover, a broad selection of publication and journals on Finno-Ugrian research in English, French and German.

The Finno-Ugric roots of Finnish appear to have been a great source of inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien and his high-elves language. According to research of National Geography, "Tolkien taught himself the ancient and newly codified Finnish to develop his elfin language, and so that he could read the Kalevala in its original Finnish." A letter to W.H. Auden from 1955 vividly describes Tolkien's excitement on discovering Finnish grammar.

"It was like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me; and I gave up the attempt to invent an 'unrecorded' Germanic language, and my 'own language'-or series of invented languages-became heavily Finnicized [sic] in phonetic pattern and structure." (source: National Geography)

SELECTED FINNISH WORDS
Finno-Ugrian roots apart, the Finnish word, SAUNA, is the uncontested, and at the same time the only Finnish contribution to the world of languages. According to scientific language research, the origins of the word sauna relate to the Finnish word smoke (savu). This seems highly plausible as the original saunas were so called smoked saunas (savusauna). For more information on sauna, savu and löyly (steam that comes from the water thrown on stones), please, refer to the Finnish Sauna Society sites. The article written by Pirkko Valtakari provides a few examples of sauna in the Finnish literature.

In addition to sauna, the Finnish world AUTO (car) should be comprehensible for most non-Finnish speaking readers. There is also a group of words with foreign origins, which the Finns have adopted and adapted to their needs. The adaptation process comprises an adding of an I-letter to the end of the word. In order to demonstrate the point, the Finnish version of a banana is banaani. Other similar words are

Using the words above, simple sentences can be formed,

It needs to be underlined, however,that the appliance of the method above is highly limited. Moreover, the whole thing works only as long as the noun stands in the nominative.

FINNISH GRAMMAR
The intoxicating marvels of Finnish grammar comprise following features:

1. As shown by, alavilla mailla hallan vaara, (night frost in low lands) Finnish is a language of vowels.
Due to the abundance of vowels, Finnish is claimed to be the third easiest language to sing. In addition to the standard six vowels, Finnish entails the vowels Ö and Ä. The usage of double vowels, or long vowels, is a distinct characteristic of Finnish. Double or single vowel change the meaning of the word completely.

Tapaan sinut puistossa.	I'll meet you in the park.
Tapan sinut puistossa.	I'll kill you in the park

2. Finnish is a language free of gender.
Pöytä (table) is simply pöytä. There is no need of der /die /das, or le / la - decisions. This could also explain, why Finns tend to make mistakes with the "unnecessary", foreign articles.

3. Finnish is a language free of prepositions.
Instead of a prepositional sentence structure,the Finnish prepositions are an integral part of the nouns. Again, this might explain why Finns some times have a hard time dealing with foreign prepositions.

4. As there are no prepositions, there are more cases.
The Finnish language boasts about 15 cases. Following the standard nominative, genitive and accusative, the Finns continue to declinate their nouns into adessive, ablative, allative, elative, inessive, illative, essive, tranlative, abessive, comitative and instructive.
Also, the adjectives have to agree with the case of the noun.

5. All in all, Finnish constitutes a classical example of agglutinative language.
In short, Finnish glues different suffixes with distinct meanings to the end of the words. In addition to the cases possessive pronouns are incorporated into Finnish nouns. This extends the length of Finnish words.

Pöydälläni

equals at my desk

Moreover, the Finnish language permits the inclusion of an interrogative suffix- KO.

Kirjakaappisaniko ?

equals is it in my book shelf ?

For a more in-depth account on Finnish word and sentence structure, details on nouns, verbs and awkward bits refer to a specialist article by Hannele Branch in Virtual Finland.
An article written by Richard Lewis, portrays the wonders of Finnish grammar from a foreigner's point of view. In addition to the tips on correct pronunciation, Lewis's method of tackling "the most formidable linguistic challenges" entails a hoarse whisper for the case endings and omission of verbs.