Finnish

Finnish is a Finnic language of the Uralic family of languages of northern Europe and one of the few non-Indo-European languages spoken in Europe. It is spoken primarily in Finland with many speakers in Sweden, Norway, and Russia. Other Finnic languages include Estonian, Veps, and Karelian.

The phonotactics of the Finnish language excited J.R.R. Tolkien which he likened to "bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before" that "quite intoxicated" him.

It became was the inspiration for the Elvish language which Tolkien named Qenya (later Quenya), a language designed to emulate the beauty evoked by Finnish. Other than in the field of phonotactics, a small part of the Quenya vocabulary was probably directly inspired by Finnish words, cf. Q. lapsë "babe", perhaps from F. lapsi "child".

Tolkien used genuine Finnish for the names of Paksu and Valkotukka, the two polar bears in The Father Christmas Letters.