Finnish language opportunities at the University of Turku:
- Finnish for Foreigners
- Finnish Language and Culture Programme
- Language Circles
- Finnish language courses for university personnel
- Master's Programme in Finnish and Other Finno-Ugric Languages
Learning Finnish
The Finnish language is different but not difficult
Finnish is part of the Uralic branch of languages whose speakers are mainly located in the Baltic area (Balto-Finnic speakers), parts of Russia and Siberia (Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic speakers) and Hungary (Ugric speakers).
Uralic Family of Languages
| Finno-Ugric | Samoyedic |
| Mordvinian (Erzä and Moksha), Mari, Komi, Udmurt Samic 10 different Sami languages Balto-Finnic Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, Votic, Veps, Livonian, Ingrian Ugric Hungarian, Khanty, Mansi |
Enents, Nenets, |
A unique vocabulary and logical grammar
The difficulty for students who come from the Indo-European language area is that the Finnish vocabulary does not have similarities with the Indo-European languages. Therefore, you have to learn a whole new vocabulary.
The Finno-Ugric languages are those languages whose grammar is mostly made up of case endings rather than, e.g. prepositions. The structure of the grammar may seem unfamiliar, even strange at first, but students find that it is logical and follows systematic rules. The endings are attached to the end of the word and they can join with other endings to form a complete expression in just one word.
Finnish also has no articles like most Indo-European languages (e.g. the, un, der, lo) and students usually heave a sigh of relief to not to have to learn 'masculine' and 'feminine' words!