Almost the whole coastline all the way from Vaasa, Ostrobothnia in Western Finland, to Pyhtää in Eastern Uusimaa, Southern Finland, is bilingual. Although there are native Finns also in these regions who don’t speak Finnish, the autonomous Åland Islands, archipelago which is situated between Finland and Sweden, is the only region in Finland where Swedish is the only official language.
But what is the difference between Finland Swedish and Sweden Swedish? First of all due to the sea in between Finland and Sweden the Finland Swedish has been able to evolve in a different direction. In practice this means that the major language in Finland, Finnish, has had an influence in the Swedish we Finns speak.
In blue, the strongest areas of Finland Swedish: 
Nowadays you can hear completely Finnish words like “kiva” (nice in Finnish) mixed into Swedish sentences. This is because of the integration of some Finnish words into Finland Swedish. Because of the different evolutions of the languages, the Finland Swedish has many words that have been “swedened” straight from the Finnish language, words that don’t exist in Sweden Swedish. Some examples of these words are thrash: roska-rosk-skräp and Christmas gnome: joulutonttu-jultomte-tomtenisse. (Order: Finnish – Finland Swedish – Sweden Swedish)
If you travel to Sweden and order “en semla” which means a bread roll in Finland Swedish/Fenno-Swedish, you get a sweet bun instead of the bread roll you thought you would get. The correct word for bread roll would have been “en småfranska” or “en fralla”.
You have to also remember that Finland Swedish is not spoken unanimously throughout Finland, as different regions have their own linguistic specialties that also evolve in their own communities.
Still, after all these years, the amount of Swedish speakers in Finland has not declined, but increased. So we can predict a bright future for this second official language of Finland.
Joonas Söderholm
A Finn, who speaks SwedishWhy Swedish and Finnish translation needs native linguists
Swedish and Finnish are routinely bundled together as Nordic languages, but they are not related at all. Swedish is Germanic and sits close to English in structure; Finnish is Finno-Ugric, with fifteen cases and no articles. A translator for one is not a translator for the other.
For technical documentation the practical consequence is length. Finnish compounds and case endings change how text fits into tables, interfaces and labels, which is why layout has to be checked after translation rather than before.
See the full list of languages we cover on our languages page.
