The Finno-Ugric language spoken by the majority of the people living in Finland, one of the two official languages of the country (the other is Swedish)
the official language of Finland; belongs to the Baltic Finnic family of languages of or relating to or characteristic of Finland or the people of Finland; "Finnish architecture
Finno-Ugric language of Finland, spoken by some six million people worldwide, including perhaps 200,000 speakers in North America. Finnish was an unwritten language until the 16th century, when Mikael Agricola (1509-57) produced an alphabet book (1543) and a translation of the New Testament (1548); he is regarded as the founder of the Finnish literary language. Finnish was accorded official status in 1809, when Finland entered the Russian Empire after six centuries of Swedish domination. The publication in 1835 of the national folk epic, the Kalevala, created from folk songs collected by Elias Lönnrot, gave increased impetus to the movement to forge a common national language encompassing all dialect areas. Finnish shares with other Baltic Finnic languages a stock of ancient loanwords from Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, and Sami
A generic name for a number of Finnish dialects spoken in the Northern parts of Finland, Sweden and Norway. Two of them, Meänkieli or Torne Valley Finnish in Sweden and Kven in Norway are officially recognized as minority languages in their respective countries, and are currently considered separate languages. Their structure and grammar are similar to Finnish but the vocabularies are considerably influenced by the majority language of their country
Meänkieli, a language spoken by some 40,000–70,000 people in Northern Sweden. It is a variant of Finnish with a structure and grammar similar to Finnish, but the vocabulary considerably influenced by Swedish
or Winter War (1939-40) War waged by the Soviet Union against Finland at the start of World War II, following the signing of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. When Finland refused to grant the Soviets a naval base and other concessions, Soviet troops attacked on several fronts in November 1939. The heavily outnumbered Finns under Carl Gustav Emil Mannerheim put up a skillful defense until February 1940, when heavy Russian bombardments breached the Finns' southern defenses. A peace treaty in March 1940 ceded western Karelia to Russia and allowed construction of a Soviet naval base on the Hanko peninsula