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The terms Finns and Finnish people ( , ) are used in English to mean "a native or inhabitant of Finland". They are also used to refer to the ethnic group historically associated with Finland or Fennoscandia, and they are only used in that sense here. As with most ethnic groups, the definition of Finns may vary. In every definition, the term includes the Finnish-speaking population of Finland. The group can also be seen to include the Finnish-speaking population of Sweden and the traditionally Swedish-speaking population of Finland, although the inclusion of the latter into the Finnish ethnicity is a subject of discussion. Smaller populations that may or may not be seen to fall under the term Finns include the Kvens in Norway, the Tornedalians of Sweden and the Ingrian Finns of Russia. Finns can be divided according to dialect into subgroups sometimes called heimo (lit. tribe), but such divisions have become less important with internal migration. Linguistically, Finnish, spoken by most Finns, is part of the Uralic language family and is most closely related to other Finnic languages such as Karelian and Estonian, while Swedish, spoken by Swedish-speaking Finns, is unrelated to the Finnish language and a member of the Indo-European language family. Finnish has loanwords from Swedish, other Germanic and broader Indo-European languages in different chronological layers while Swedish has few loan words from the Finnic languages. Genetically, Finns "have been shown to differ strikingly from other European populations". |