Finnish (Finnish: suomen kieli) is a Uralic language. It is one of the two official languages of Finland. It is also an official minority language in Sweden and Russia. Finnish is one of the four national languages of Europe that is not an Indo-European language. The other two are Estonian and Hungarian, which are also Uralic languages, and Basque.

Finnish grammar and most words are very different from those in other European languages because Finnish is not an Indo-European language. The two other national languages that are Uralic languages as Finnish are Estonian and Hungarian. Estonians and Finns usually may understand each other, but their languages are very different. Even though Finnish and Hungarian are related languages, they do not look or sound similar.

The Finnish and Hungarian languages separated a long time ago, and each language developed its own vocabulary. People who can speak Finnish cannot understand Hungarian without extra study, and Hungarians cannot understand Finnish. However, some basic words are very similar, for example: 'hand' (Finnish 'käsi' vs. Hungarian 'kéz') 'to go' (Finnish 'mennä' vs. Hungarian 'menni'), 'fish' (Finnish 'kala' vs. Hungarian 'hal').

Finnish is a synthetic and an agglutinative language. That means that words in Finnish have a stem called "body", and other parts inside them make up the meaning. Finnish is similar in that respect to the Japanese language and the Turkic languages. In Finnish, there are 17 cases/word types (sanatyypit). A "case" can be thought of as an ending added to a word that helps describe its purpose in the sentence. Verbs have five tempora (present tense, past tense, perfect, pluperfect and future tense). In addition, verbs have two participle (active and passive) cases. Finnish has many gerunds, which are nouns made from verbs (for example: reading - to read) also exist in Finnish (lukeminen - lukea).

Finnish is a complex, self-morphing language. It has been ranked as a highly difficult language for native speakers of English by the U.S. Department of State. The difficulty caused by the grammatical structure of the language but also its pronunciation and intonation being different from those of English.

Finnish is pronounced mostly the way it is spelled. The pronunciation of some letters is similar to English. However:

• 'j' is like English 'y' in 'yes'
• 's' is like English 's' in 'sad' (never like 'z')
• 'h' is always pronounced even at the end of a syllable: ahdas ('narrow')
• double vowels make the sound long
• 'ä' is similar to 'a' in English 'cat'
• 'ö' is almost like English article 'a'. It is pronounced with rounded lips, like 'eu' in French 'peur' or German 'ö'
• the letter 'c' is not used. It is replaced by 'k' or 's' to avoid confusion and make writing simple.
• the letter 'q' is not used. It is replaced by 'k' or 'kv' to make writing simple.
• the letter 'y' is pronounced like the 'u' in French language, or 'i' in 'in' but with rounded lips, very close to 'ö'.
• the letter 'z' is pronounced 'ts' as in German language. It is often written as "ts" to make writing simple.
• the letter 'x' is usually written out as 'ks' to make writing simple, for example in the word "taksi" instead of "taxi".

English-speakers often exhale when they say letters like "k", "p", and "t". Finnish-speakers avoid doing so and "swallow the sound"; as the old saying goes, that takes a lot of practice.

The proper pronunciation for the Finnish diphthongs (öy, yö, äy, eu, etc.) is difficult.

• English-Finnish-English and Swedish-Finnish-Swedish dictionary