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Independent
Study / Linguistics 19
Directed Language Study, Self Paced Course
finnish
Finnish
Finnish, also called Suomi, is a member of the Finnic group of the Ural-Altaic
family of languages. It is related to Estonian and Sami (formerly known as Lappish),
but quite unrelated to most other European languages which belong to the IndoEuropean
family. Nevertheless, over years of contact with IndoEuropean languages, its
vocabulary has been enriched by words borrowed from the Germanic, Slavic, and
Baltic languages. Finnish is spoken by about 5 million people in Finland, and
an additional 1 million in Sweden and neighboring areas of Russia. There are
several dialects. Like the other Uralic and Altaic languages, Finnish has vowel
harmony (matching of vowel characteristics within words) and agglutination (the
stacking up of inflectional suffixes). It is written using a modified Roman
alphabet which has been in use since the 16th century.
Sources:
Encyclopedia.com
Introduction
to Finnish
Information on writing system:
omniglot.com
Independent Study Courses Available at UCSD:
Other Courses Available at UCSD:
- New for Fall 2002: Elementary Finnish, Scand
130, M-Th, 12:00-12:50
enroll at UCLA, attend in a UCSD videoconferencing room
for more information, contact Julie Holt
(858) 534-3602
Other Local Resources:
UCSD International Center
Mingei museum of folk art
Balboa Park House
of Pacific Relations
International web radio
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