Finnish is a Uralic language, specifically a Finno-Ugric language, spoken primarily in Finland. It's not related to Scandinavian or Slavic languages, despite Finland's geographical location and historical connections to those regions. Instead, it's closely related to Estonian and distantly related to Hungarian. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland, alongside Swedish.

Finnish is spoken by 5 million people, primarily in Finland, with significant Finnish-speaking minorities in Sweden, Estonia, Norway, and Russia.

The Finnish people are predominantly Christian with about 5% other religions, primarily Islamic.

Standard Finnish is prescribed by the Language Office of the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland and is the language used in official communication. Colloquial Finnish tends to be more relaxed and include loanwords from other languages. The situation is somewhat akin to King James English compared to the English commonly spoken.