The Finnish alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, and especially its Swedish extension. It comprises 29 letters: The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ...

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, Å, Ä, Ö For other uses of A, see A (disambiguation). ... Look up B, b in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up C, c in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up D, d in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up E, e in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up F, f in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Look up H, h in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up I, i in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... J# redirects here for technical reasons; see J Sharp. ... Look up K, k in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up L, l in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up M, m in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up N, n in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up O, o in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Template:WiktionarSDypar2 P is the sixteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. ... Look up Q, q in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up R, r in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up S, s in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Its name in English is tee . ... Look up U, u in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up V, v in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up W, w in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up X, x in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Look up Z, z in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The letter Ã… represents various o sounds in the Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, North Frisian, Walloon, Chamorro and Istro-Romanian language alphabets. ... Ä, or ä, is a glyph which represents either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, the letter A with umlaut, or a letter A with diaeresis. ... Ö, or ö, is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut or diaeresis. ...

Summary of the main characteristics

In the following table, the letters of the Finnish alphabet are supplemented with IPA compatible spelling instructions: IPA may refer to: The International Phonetic Alphabet or India Pale Ale ...

For other uses of A, see A (disambiguation). ... Look up B, b in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up C, c in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up D, d in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The voiced dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... Look up E, e in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up F, f in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Ng (lowercase: ng) is a digraph of the Latin alphabet. ... The velar nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... Look up H, h in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up I, i in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... J# redirects here for technical reasons; see J Sharp. ... Look up K, k in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up L, l in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up M, m in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up N, n in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up O, o in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Template:WiktionarSDypar2 P is the sixteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. ... Look up Q, q in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up R, r in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up S, s in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Its name in English is tee . ... Look up U, u in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up V, v in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up W, w in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up X, x in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Look up Z, z in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The letter Ã… represents various ò sounds in the Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Norwegian, North Frisian, Walloon, Chamorro and Istro-Romanian language alphabets. ... The Swedish alphabet consists of the following 28 letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, X, Y, Z, Å, Ä, Ö The main feature separating it from the Latin alphabet are the three additional vowels, Å, Ä and Ö. The... ... Ä, or ä, is a glyph which represents either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, the letter A with umlaut, or a letter A with diaeresis. ... Ö, or ö, is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut or diaeresis. ...

Writing Finnish

The Finnish orthography strives to represent all morphemes phonologically and, roughly speaking, the sound value of each letter tends to correspond with its value in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) – although there do remain some discrepancies. When writing Finnish, the foundational principle is that each letter stands for one sound and each sound is always represented by the same letter, within the bounds of a single morpheme. The most notable exception to this rule is the velar nasal [ŋ], which do not have an allotted letter; instead, it is written with digraph "NG" when geminated, and otherwise with "N" that is followed by "K". The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of writing in that language. ... Phonology (Greek phonÄ“ = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... IPA may refer to: The International Phonetic Alphabet or India Pale Ale ... The velar nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... Ng (lowercase: ng) is a digraph of the Latin alphabet. ...

In Finnish, the vovels and consonants may be short or long, and the difference is significant. A short sound is written with a single letter, while a long sound is written with a double letter. It is necessary to recognize the difference between such words as tuli (fire), tuuli (wind) and tulli (customs) or tapaan (I meet) and tapan (I kill). Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence. ...

The extra letters "Ä" and "Ö"

The main peculiarities of the Finnish alphabet are the two extra vowel letters "Ä" and "Ö", which are added to the end (accompanied by the Swedish "Å", which actually is not needed for writing Finnish). In Finnish, these extra letters are collectively referred to as the ääkköset (a somewhat playful modification of aakkoset, which is the Finnish word for the alphabet as a whole) when they need to be distinguished from the basic Latin alphabet. Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

Unlike the similar looking German umlauted letters (from which the glyphs are derived), the ääkköset are considered letters in their own right and thus alphabetized separately (after "Z"). The dots above the base glyph are not modifications but essential parts of each letter, much like the hook in "Q" distinguishes "Q" from "O". As Finnish is unrelated to Germanic languages, the Germanic umlaut or convention of considering "Ä" and "AE", and "Ö" and "OE" equivalent is inapplicable in Finnish. Moreover, in Finnish, both "AE" and "OE" are vowel sequences, not single letters, and have independent meanings, e.g. hän (he, she) vs. haen (I seek). The umlaut mark (or simply umlaut) and the trema or diaeresis mark (or simply diaeresis) are two diacritics consisting of a pair of dots placed over a letter. ... variant glyphs representing the character a (allographs of a) in the Zapfino typeface. ... In linguistics, umlaut (from German um- around/the other way + Laut sound) is a process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a vowel or semivowel in a following syllable. ...

In handwritten text, the actual form of the extra marking may vary from a pair of dots to a pair of short vertical bars, to a single horizontal bar, or to a figure resembling a tilde (in practice, almost any diacritic mark situated above the base glyph would probably be interpreted as a carelessly written pair of dots), but in computerized character sets, if the correct graphemes are available, these alternatives are incorrect. The tilde (~) is a grapheme with several uses. ... Example of a letter with a diacritic A diacritical mark or diacritic, also called an accent, is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. ... A character encoding is a code that pairs a set of characters (such as an alphabet or syllabary) with a set of something else, such as numbers or electrical pulses. ...

If the proper letters are not available, "Ä" and "Ö" must be replaced with "A" and "O", respectively. Although the distinction is phonemic, the resulting graphical shape does not differ greatly from the correct word, and the correct meaning can usually be reconstructed. Nevertheless, there are lots of minimal pairs, e.g. saari (island) vs. sääri (leg), or vaara (danger) vs. väärä (wrong), which may be confused.

Non-native letters in the Finnish alphabet

In the Finnish writing system, some basic Latin letters are considered redundant, and other letters generally represent sounds that are not inherent in the Finnish language. Thus, they are not used in established Finnish words, but they may occur in newer loanwords as well as in foreign proper names, and they are included in the Finnish alphabet in order to maintain ínterlingual compatibility. The pronunciation of these letters varies quite a lot. A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. ... A proper name [is] a word that answers the purpose of showing what thing it is that we are talking about writes John Stuart Mill in A System of Logic (1. ...

• The redundant letters are "C" (which is usually replaced with either "K" or "S"), "Q" (which is replaced with "K" or "KV"), and "X" (which is replaced with "KS" /ks/, or even just /s/).
• The letters representing foreign sounds are "B", "F", and "G" (which, however, is also used to mark the inherent velar nasal [ŋ]). From historical point of view, even "D" could be said to belong to this group, but the /d/ sound is today considered an established part of standard language.
• "W" and "Z" could be classified into both of the aforementioned groups. The English-style w-sound is foreign to Finnish language, but historically "W" was used (as in German) to mark a /v/ sound. Although this is today considered archaic and "V" is used instead, "W" may still occur in some old surnames as a variant of "V". Likewise, voiced /z/ sound is not inherent in Finnish language, but "Z" was formerly used to denote /ts/. It is still often pronounced /ts/, but some speakers may pronounce it as /s/.

In addition to the alien letters shared with the basic Latin (and Swedish) alphabet, "Š" and "Ž" with special diacritics have been adopted, originally from the Czech alphabet, in order to represent two extra sounds, which are not inherent in Finnish. They may be seen in transcriptions and a few loanwords: Tšekki (Czech), Tšetšenia (Chechnya), Azerbaidžan (Azerbaijan), Tšaikovski (Tchaikovsky), Gorbatšov (Gorbachev), Brežnev (Brezhnev), datša (dacha), šakki (chess), šillinki (shilling). In less careful orthography, they are often replaced with "SH" and "ZH", but this may sometimes cause confusion (for example, pasha – where "S" and "H" are pronounced as two distinct sounds – is a traditional Russian Easter delicacy, while pašša – in English, pasha – is a Turkish rank or honorary title). The velar nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The Czech alphabet consists of 42 letters (or more precisely - graphemes): A, Á, B, C, ÄŒ, D, ÄŽ, E, É, Äš, F, G, H, Ch, I, Í, J, K, L, M, N, Ň, O, Ó, P, Q, R, Ř, S, Å , T, Ť, U, Ú, Å®, V, W, X, Y, Ý, Z, Ž Most of the diacritic letters were added to the alphabet through reforms... Transcription is the conversion into written, typewritten or printed form, of a spoken language source, such as the proceedings of a court hearing. ... Pasha refers to: Pasha, a high rank in the former Ottoman Empire Russian-speakers use Pasha as a diminutive form of the given name Pavel, equivalent to the English Paul. ...

Diacritical or accent marks are never added to letters in Finnish words (since the dots above the Finnish graphemes "Ä" and "Ö" are not diacritics). Generally, diacritics are retained in foreign-language proper names, e.g. Vilén, if possible, but when arranging words alphabetically, diacritics are usually ignored. A few foreign characters or glyphs may need closer scrutiny: Lenin as Vilén Vilén (also spelled Wilén) is a Finnish family name of Swedish origin: Jari Vilén, Finnish Minister of Foreign Trade (2002–2003) Erik Vilén, silver-medalist at the 1924 Summer Olympics The pseudonym Vilén was used by Vladimir Ilich Lenin while hiding...

• "Œ" is alphabetized as "OE", not as "Ö".
• "Æ" may sometimes be replaced with "Ä", but when retained, "Æ" is alphabetized as "AE", not as "Ä".
• "Ø" may sometimes be replaced with "Ö", but even if it is retained, these two glyphs are considered equivalent to each other.
• Estonian "Õ" and Hungarian Ő are alphabetized as "Ö", not as "O", when the Portuguese "Õ" is alphabetized as "O".
• "Ü" and "Ű" are alphabetized as "Y", not as "U".
• "ß" is alphabetized as (and should be replaced with) "ss".
• "Ð" is alphabetized as (and usually replaced with) "D".
• "Þ" is alphabetized as (and usually replaced with) "TH".

Œ œ Œthel (pronounced ) is a Roman script letter (Œ, œ) used in medieval and early modern Latin, and in modern French, and also the vowel sound it represents. ... n. ... // The Ø (minuscule: ø), is a vowel and a letter used in the Danish, Faroese and Norwegian alphabets. ... The double acute accent ( ˝ ) is a diacritic mark of the latin script used primarily in written Hungarian. ... Ü, or ü, is a glyph which represents either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, the letter U with umlaut, or a letter U with diaeresis. ... The double acute accent ( ˝ ) is a diacritic mark of the latin script used primarily in written Hungarian. ... ß as the combination of ſs on a Pirna street sign (Waldstraße) This article is about the letter ß in the German alphabet. ... Ð (capital Ð, lower-case ð) (or eth, eð or edh, Faroese: edd) is a letter used in Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and present-day Icelandic and Faroese. ... Þþ The letter Þ (miniscule: þ), which is also known as thorn or þorn is a letter in the Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic alphabets. ...

See also

• Finnish phonology
• Estonian alphabet
• Latin alphabet
• Swedish alphabet
• Norwegian alphabet
• Letter Å, Letter Ä, Letter Ö

Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... The Estonian alphabet is used for writing the Estonian language and is based on the Latin alphabet, with German influence. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... The Swedish alphabet consists of the following 28 letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, X, Y, Z, Å, Ä, Ö The main feature separating it from the Latin alphabet are the three additional vowels, Å, Ä and Ö. The... The Danish and Norwegian alphabet consists of 29 letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, Æ, Ø, Å The letter Å was introduced in Norwegian in 1917, replacing Aa. Similarly, Å was introduced in Danish... The letter Ã… represents various o sounds in the Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, North Frisian, Walloon, Chamorro and Istro-Romanian language alphabets. ... Ä, or ä, is a glyph which represents either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, the letter A with umlaut, or a letter A with diaeresis. ... Ö, or ö, is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut or diaeresis. ...

External links

• Omniglot: writing systems and languages of the world: Finnish
• Aakkostus Suomessa (the standard for Finnish alphabet, SFS 4600, explained in Finnish)
• Letters in Finnish
• Finnish orthography and the characters š and ž (official recommendation)