Languages of Finland Languages of Finland The two main official languages of Finland are Finnish and Swedish. There are also several official minority languages: three variants of Sami, Romani, Finnish Sign Language and Karelian. Finnish is the language of the majority, 89% of the population. It is a Finnic language closely related to Estonian and less closely to the Sami languages. The Finnic languages belong to the Uralic language family, so Finnish is distantly related to languages as diverse as Hungarian (a Ugric language) and Nenets (a Samoyedic language) in Siberia. Swedish is the main language of 5.3% of the population (92.4% in
Uralic–Yukaghir languages that the Uralic/Yukaghir negative verb goes back to a period of primitive Uralic–Yukaghir unity, from which Indo-European was separate. It could nevertheless be imagined that Indo-European once had this negative verb, but had lost it by Proto-Indo-European times, so this evidence is not conclusive, though strongly suggestive. Chief sources for table: Greenberg 2000, Szemerényi 1996. When Yukaghir alone is cited, it indicates the Tundra and Kolyma dialects have the same form. An asterisk indicates reconstructed forms. "Notes to table" Uralic–Yukaghir languages Uralic–Yukaghir is a proposed language family composed of Uralic and Yukaghir. It is also known as Uralo-Yukaghir. Uralic is