finnish phonetics

This article deals with the sound patterns of the Finnish language. The grammar of Finnish and the way(s) in which Finnish is spoken are dealt with in separate articles.

Phonetics

Originally, Finnish had no initial consonant clusters, this however is changing due to influence from other European languages. Older borrowings from (e.g.) Swedish have had initial consonant clusters eroded. For example "koulu" <- school, "tuoli" <- stool. More recent borrowings have retained their clusters, for example 'presidentti' = 'president'. However, it is common to hear these clusters eroded in speech ("resitentti") particularly, though not exclusively, by Finns who know little or no Swedish or English and who are not used to making sounds for letters such as d, c or x.

Vowels

Like the Turkish language, Finnish has vowel harmony, i.e. only certain designated vowels can appear together in a morpheme. However, this vowel harmony is only partial: i and e are considered neutral vowels, but front vowels y, , never mix with back vowels u, o, a; e.g., 'tytt' = 'girl' is a possible Finnish morpheme because it has only front vowels, whereas *tytto is impossible because it has both front and back vowels. Vowel harmony affects case suffixes, for example: poikamainen (boyish, from poika 'boy') but tyttminen (girlish). However, vowel harmony does not transcend intra-word boundaries in compound words, for example: seinkello 'wall clock' (from sein 'wall' and kello 'clock'). The suffixes of compound words are determined by the last part of the word. Note that in the sections below, wherever a is mentioned, should also be understood, depending on vowel harmony.

Vowel phonemes

/a/ open back unrounded vowel

/e/ close-mid front unrounded vowel

/i/ close front unrounded vowel

/o/ open-mid back rounded vowel

/u/ close back rounded vowel

/y/ close front rounded vowel - as in French 'but', Old English and Finnish spelling: 'y'

/æ/ open front unrounded vowel - as in English 'bat', Finnish spelling: 'ä'

/ø/ close-mid front rounded vowel - as in French 'deux', Finnish spelling: 'ö'

Consonants

Plosives

/k/ voiceless velar plosive

/p/ voiceless bilabial plosive

/t/ voiceless dental plosive

/d/ voiced alveolar plosive (though very little voicing if any — see below)

Fricatives

/s/ voiceless alveolar fricative

/h/ voiceless glottal fricative

š (as English 'sh') and f only appear in non-native words.

Exceptions to the phonetic principle

While Finnish orthography is generally reasonably photemic, there are a number of noteworthy exceptions.

Velar nasal

The velar nasal /ŋ/ (ng-nne) does not have its own letter. A single velar nasal is written "nk", as in ke'nk keŋk, while the doubled velar nasal is written "ng", as in keng'n keŋŋn. While this works tolerably well for Finnish, treatment of the velar nasal in loanwords is highly inconsistent. eŋlanti is written e'nglanti, maŋneetti is written magneetti (cf. gnu), koŋgestio is written kon'gestio, etc.

Voiced plosives

Finnish has no voiced plosives in native words - with the exception of /d/ that developed from /ð/, a voiced dental fricative (as in English 'the'). Without /d/, Finnish plosives have (in native words) no distinctive voicing at all. The letters b and g do occur in Finnish in loanwords, but more often than not, they are pronounced voiceless, /p/ and /k/ respectively. Furthermore, the voiceless plosives in Finnish are never aspirated. The letter D is never pronounced as soft as in English or Swedish. The linguists trying to create a "uniform Finnish language" for writing ran into a problem: there was phoneme that every dialect pronounced differently. It was developed from a voiced dental fricative, but dialects used things like an absence of any phoneme, a hiatus, a flap consonant, T, R, J, JJ, or T-H. For example, "of your water" could be (*undocumented):

tein veen
tei'n ve'en
teirn veren
teijjn vejen
teidn veden
teitn veten
*tein veen
teidhn vethen

So, they decided to substitute the letter D for this position. Now, especially dialectal Finnish does not use voiced stops such as B, D or G, so this wound up being foreign for almost everyone. Nevertheless, it was decided that "proper Finnish" uses a soft D, which should be pronounced as soft as the Swedish D. Today, this case of "proper Finnish" orthodoxy is no longer practiced, but as a result there is a large population of people who pronounce the D, even though it's less voiced than the "proper D". It can be said that Finnish T is a T without aspiration, and Finnish D is a D without voiced stop character. For example, Vin Linna uses the "soft D" as a hallmark of unpleasant command language in the novel The Unknown Soldier. Interestingly, Stadin slangi, the dialect of Helsinki proper, uses voiced stops even in native words, e.g. dallas "s/he walked".

Consonant gradation

The consonant preceding the inflection of a word (either noun or verb) is subject to consonant gradation. Broadly, a consonant will adopt a 'strong' form if the following syllable is 'open' - containing a double vowel or not ending in a consonant - and a 'weak' form otherwise. The following is a partial list of strong → weak correspondences:

tt → t

kk → k

pp → p

t → d

k → Ø

k → v (only in words which end in -uvu/-yvy)

p → v

mp → mm

nk → ng

rt → rr

nt → nn

rti → rsi, lti → lsi, ti → si

The last pattern, ti/si, is not yet established, e.g. kielt → kielsi but st → sti, although both alternate forms (kielti and ssi) are found. Note that in any given grammatical situation, the consonant can grade either way depending on the word involved. Here are some examples:

'mki' = 'hill' → 'men' (genitive form)

'ranta' = 'shore' → 'rannan' (genitive form)

'ranne' = 'wrist' → 'ranteen' (genitive form)

'tavata' = 'to meet' → 'tapaan' (I meet)

'tiet' = 'to know' → 'tiedn' (I know)

There are rare exceptions to the general rule, some of which are noted in the noun cases section.

Length

All phonemes have distinctive length, except for /v, d, j, h/. Some example sets of words:

tuli = fire, tuuli = wind, tulli = customs

muta = mud, muuta = other (partitive sg.), mutta = but

In dialects or in the "everyday language" /v, d, j, h/ can have distinctive length. Some examples:

sevverran, kuvvoo (sen verran, kuvaa)

teijjn (teidn)

Hmmeellinnaah Helsingist (Hmeenlinnaan Helsingist)

Stress

Like Hungarian, Finnish always places the primary stress on the first syllable of a word. This can be used to distinguish the pronunciation of homonyms, for example "puunaama", meaning "wooden face", is pronounced /puu-naa-ma/ but "puunaama", meaning "which was cleaned", is pronounced /puu-naa-ma/.

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