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Finnish and Swedish are the official languages of Finland. Finnish predominates nationwide while Swedish is spoken in some coastal areas in the west and south (with towns such as Ekenäs,[206] Pargas,[207] Närpes,[207] Kristinestad,[208] Jakobstad[209] and Nykarleby.[210]) and in the autonomous region of Åland, which is the only monolingual Swedish-speaking region in Finland.[211] The native language of 87.3% of the population is Finnish,[212][213] which is part of the Finnic subgroup of the Uralic language. The language is one of only four official EU languages not of Indo-European origin, and has no relation through descent to the other national languages of the Nordics. Conversely, Finnish is closely related to Estonian and Karelian, and more distantly to Hungarian and the Sami languages.
Swedish is the native language of 5.2% of the population (Swedish-speaking Finns).[214] Swedish is a compulsory school subject and general knowledge of the language is good among many non-native speakers.[215] Likewise, a majority of Swedish-speaking non-Ålanders can speak Finnish.[216] The Finnish side of the land border with Sweden is unilingually Finnish-speaking. The Swedish across the border is distinct from the Swedish spoken in Finland. There is a sizeable pronunciation difference between the varieties of Swedish spoken in the two countries, although their mutual intelligibility is nearly universal.[217]
Finnish Romani is spoken by some 5,000–6,000 people; Romani and Finnish Sign Language are also recognized in the constitution. There are two sign languages: Finnish Sign Language, spoken natively by 4,000–5,000 people,[218] and Finland-Swedish Sign Language, spoken natively by about 150 people. Tatar is spoken by a Finnish Tatar minority of about 800 people whose ancestors moved to Finland mainly during Russian rule from the 1870s to the 1920s.[219]
The Sámi languages have an official status in parts of Lapland, where the Sámi, numbering around 7,000,[220] are recognized as an indigenous people. About a quarter of them speak a Sami language as their mother tongue.[221] The Sami languages that are spoken in Finland are Northern Sami, Inari Sami, and Skolt Sami.[note 5] The rights of minority groups (in particular Sami, Swedish speakers, and Romani people) are protected by the constitution.[222] The Nordic languages and Karelian are also specially recognized in parts of Finland.
The largest immigrant languages are Russian (1.6%), Estonian (0.9%), Arabic (0.7%), English (0.5%) and Somali (0.4%).[223]
English is studied by most pupils as a compulsory subject from the first grade (at seven years of age), formerly from the third or fifth grade, in the comprehensive school (in some schools other languages can be chosen instead).[224][225][226][227] German, French, Spanish and Russian can be studied as second foreign languages from the fourth grade (at 10 years of age; some schools may offer other options).[228]