Finland bilingualism · Bilingualism in Finland
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Bilingualism in Finland
Bilingualism in Finland
Street reference chart
| Finnish |
Swedish |
English
|
|---|
| -katu |
-gatan |
street
|
| -tie |
-vägen |
road
|
| -kuja |
-gränden |
alley
|
| -väylä |
-leden |
highway
|
| -polku |
-stig |
path
|
| -tori |
-torget |
market
|
| -kaari |
-bågen |
crescent
|
| -puisto |
-parken |
park
|
| -ranta |
-kajen |
quay
|
| -rinne |
-brinken |
bank (hill)
|
| -aukio |
-platsen |
square
|
Finland has a 5.5% Swedish-speaking minority and is officially a bilingual country, so maps nearly always bear both the Finnish and Swedish names for eg. cities and towns. For example, Turku and Åbo are the same city, even though the names differ totally. Roads can be especially confusing: what first appears on a map to be a road that changes its name is, in most cases, one road with two names. This is common in the Swedish-speaking areas on the southern and western coasts, whereas in the inland Swedish names are far less common. In far north Lapland, you'll almost never see Swedish, but you will occasionally see signage in Sámi instead. Google Maps, in particular, seems to select the language randomly, even though the Swedish names are rarely used in practice in most places.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Finland
Where To Stay & Best Hotels in Finland - updated Apr 2024
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Finland Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.