ABSTRACT
The Finnish language is a member of the Finno-Ugric language family. This is quite different from the Indo-European family, to which languages such as Swedish, English, French, German, Russian, Persian and Hindi belong. Only four of the major Finno-Ugric languages are spoken outside Russia: Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian and the Sámi (‘Lappish’) languages in the north of Finland, Norway, Sweden and the far north-west of Russia. The term ‘Lappish’ is derogatory.
