Script guide › Latin
How to recognize Finnish
Finnish is one of 35 languages in Grafle's Latin group. Here's what it looks like, where you'll see it on signs, and how to tell it apart from its lookalikes.
Spot it fast
- Long words full of doubled letters (kk, pp, ää) and lots of ä.
- Almost never uses b, c, f or x — and no õ (that's Estonian).
What Finnish looks like
Kaikki ihmiset syntyvät vapaina ja tasavertaisina.
Hyvää huomenta, kuinka voit?
Ei kukaan ole seppä syntyessään.
Latin scripts: The alphabet you're reading now. Each language gives itself away by its own special letters and accent marks.
Where you'll see it on signs
- Finland
Easy to confuse with
- Estonian — Estonian's õ (tilde-o) is the tell — Finnish never uses it. Finnish words run longer with more doubled letters.
- Swedish — Both write ä and ö — but Finnish runs long and vowel-heavy with doubled vowels (aa, ää) and barely uses b, c or x; Swedish keeps words short, with å and tell-words like och.
- Hungarian — Both love dotted vowels and long words, but Hungarian's double-acute ő/ű and gy/sz clusters give it away; Finnish doubles its vowels instead (aa, ää).