FINNISH LANGUAGE AND LITERA TURE. The Finnish language belongs to the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralo-Altaic family of languages. The tongues of the Finno-Ugric group are spoken in Finland, Lapland, and part of the Baltic provinces by a number of Finnic tribes scattered over a vast area in Northern and East ern Russia and Western Siberia, and by the Mag yars of Hungary. The richest and most highly cultivated languages of the group are the Suomi, the language of Finland, and the Magyar (Hun garian). The dialects are all distinctly agglu tinative forms of speech, with decided tendencies toward inflection, so much so that in many grammatical endings the essential difference be tween agglutination and inflection becomes obscured. As in other Uralo-Altaie tongues, progressive vowel-harmony forms a character istic feature of the Finnish group. It is maintained by some that the Finnish languages represent the oldest forms among the Uralo-Altaic groups. There is strong evidence that the Finns,
or a closely allied race, must have at one time, probably prehistoric, been spread over a con siderable area of central, if not of western Eu rope. The Finnish language is spoken by over 2,000,000 people, and in several different dialects, of which the roost important are the East Fin nish or Karelian. the South Finnish, and the \Vest Finnish. The first of these is the oldest and least developed; the second is the main vehicle of Finnish literature. It is emphatically vocalic. It has five fund.mtent :11 Ntmels—a, u, and u illId 1111 11103, S h‘ 0 diphthongs. The grainniatiea1 relations bet part, of SISSS'll I vl ly .
Nouns are used without any artit I•ave coo gentler, and are declined. in both singular and plural. through fifteen different ea e , 0 as to express the relat i m, W11101 III 1.110 111110