The Finnish Writing System

Although Finnish descends from an entirely different language family than those languages spoken by its Scandinavian neighbors Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, its writing system, based on the Latin alphabet with a total of 28 letters, is very much the same.

According to the Wikipedia, the following are some of the main features of the Finnish alphabet and writing system:

• The three additional letters in the Finnish alphabet are Å/å, Ä/ä, and Ö/ö and are also included in the Swedish alphabet. Following the Swedish alphabet's ordering rules, these additional characters are placed after the z. In Finnish, the Å/å character is only found in proper names of Swedish origin.¹
• The W is not included in the Finnish alphabet, since it is considered another variation of V; however, the W can still show up in proper names. To illustrate how these variations are handled in Finnish alphabetization, the Wikipedia gives the following example: "In a Finnish phone book, the following names would be arranged in this alphabetical order: Vaaja, Wellamo, Virtanen."²
• Finally, the "Š" and "Ž" characters can sometimes be found in transcriptions and words Finnish has incorporated from other languages. The Wikipedia points to the following examples: Tšaikovski (Tchaikovsky), Gorbatšov (Gorbachev), Tšekki (Czech), and šekki (cheque).³

Additional resources on the Finnish writing system can be found on the Web at:
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/finnish.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_alphabet
¹ "Finnish alphabet" Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_alphabet
[Accessed December 8, 2004]
² "Finnish alphabet" Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_alphabet
[Accessed December 8, 2004]
³ "Finnish alphabet" Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_alphabet
[Accessed December 8, 2004]