Finnish, a member of the Uralic language family, is known for its unique phonology, vocabulary, and grammar. It’s often seen as an isolate within Europe, surrounded by Indo-European languages. According to the eLinguistics.net analysis using specific software modules to assess linguistic relationships, the five languages most similar to Finnish are Estonian, Hungarian, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, and Turkmen.
- Estonian (83.3)
By far the closest relative to Finnish is Estonian. Both languages belong to the Finnic branch of the Uralic family and share a significant amount of vocabulary and grammatical structures. Many words in Estonian are similar or identical to Finnish words, albeit with some differences in pronunciation. - Hungarian (50.3)
Hungarian is a Uralic language like Finnish, though it belongs to the Ugric branch. Despite significant differences, there are still notable similarities. Both languages are agglutinative, meaning they form words and express grammatical relations through the addition of prefixes and suffixes. - Kyrgyz (35.1)
Outside of languages commonly spoken in Europe, Kyrgyz may be the most similar to Finnish. It is a member of the Turkic language family. While not related to Finnish by origin, some typological features present interesting parallels. The ancient Uralic peoples and the early Turkic tribes may have had contact, influencing their languages. - Kazakh (32.4)
Kazakh is another Turkic language that is commonly spoken in Central Asia on this list. It shares a few features with Finnish. Both Uralic and Turkic languages have evolved in similar geographic and socio-cultural environments, leading to parallel developments in linguistic features, such as syntactic structure and shared vocabulary. - Turkmen (29.9)
Another member of the Turkic family, Turkmen, offers a few linguistic features akin to Finnish. Turkmen’s use of agglutination and vowel harmony mirrors Finnish language patterns. Certain phonological features in Turkmen, such as consonant clusters and vowel systems, have distant resemblances to Finnish phonology.
(to be considered for the list, the language must be spoken by at least one million people)