ABSTRACT
Finnish (native name suomi) is one of a group of closely related and to some extent mutually intelligible languages, known collectively as Finnic. They are spoken mainly in the Republic of Finland, Republic of Karelia (Russian Federation), Estonia, and adjacent areas of Russia and Latvia. The numbers of speakers of Finnic minority languages in Russia are in rapid decline. According to the 2010 census, the number of speakers of Karelian in Russia was 25,600, and the number of native speakers of Veps was 1,600. Ingrian is nearly extinct, with only an estimated 120 elderly speakers. Votic had some 68 speakers in the latest census. Livonian, spoken in Latvia, is extinct. Meänkieli, a dialect of Finnish that is considered a separate language for political (sociolinguistic) reasons, has official status as a minority language of Sweden and is estimated to have between 30,000 and 75,000 speakers. Kven, a Finnic language spoken in Norway, where it has been recognised since 2005, has been estimated to have around 1,500–2,500 speakers. All ten Sámi (formerly Lapp) languages, spoken in northern Finland, Sweden, Norway and Russia, are endangered. In Finland, Lule Sámi with some 2,000 speakers is the largest. Of the present-day 5.4 million population of Finland, the majority, 4.9 million, speak Finnish as their first language; there are 291,000 native speakers of Finland Swedish, the other official language of Finland.
