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. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ... Phonetic (pho-NET-ic) is a nationwide voicemail-to-text messaging service available for most digital mobile phones in which a subscriber is provided a custom voice mailbox for the purpose of receiving all incoming voice messages as actual transcribed text for reading via short messaging (also known as SMS... Technical note: Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... This is a concise version of the International Phonetic Alphabet for English sounds. ... Finnish ( (help· info)) is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland (92%) and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. ... This article deals with the grammar of the Finnish language. ... This article deals with features of the spoken Finnish language, specifically how it is spoken in Greater Helsinki capital region and the cities in the Central Finnish dialectal area, such as Jyväskylä, Lahti, Hyvinkää, and Hämeenlinna. ...

Vowels

Finnish, like other Finno-Ugric languages as well as Turkish, has a pattern called vowel harmony that restricts the distribution of vowels in a word. Due to vowel harmony, only certain vowels can appear in a given word, according to the vowel in the root of the word. The vowels i and e are considered neutral (they can appear anywhere), but the front vowels y, ö and ä never mix with the back vowels u, o, and a in a single word (except across compound limits). For example, tyttö "girl" is permissible it only has front vowels, but *tytto is impossible, because it has both front and back vowels. Geographical distribution of Finno-Ugric (Finno-Permic in blue, Ugric in green). ... Vowel harmony (also metaphony) is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels. ...

Vowel harmony affects case suffixes and derivational suffixes, which often have two forms, one for use with front vowels, and the other with back vowels. For example: poikamainen ("boyish", from poika "boy") but tyttömäinen ("girlish"). Vowel harmony does not transcend intra-word boundaries in compound words, for example: seinäkello "wall clock" (from seinä "wall" and kello "clock"). The suffixes of compound words are determined by the last part of the word. In linguistics, declension is a feature of inflected languages: generally, the alteration of a noun to indicate its grammatical role. ... Suffix has meanings in linguistics, nomenclature and computer science. ...

Note that in the sections below, wherever a is mentioned, ä should also be understood, depending on vowel harmony.

Vowel phonemes

/ɑ/ open back unrounded vowel. More or less as in English father. Finnish spelling: a.

/e/ close-mid front unrounded vowel

/i/ close front unrounded vowel

/o/ close-mid back rounded vowel

/u/ close back rounded vowel

/y/ close front rounded vowel. As in French vu, German müde.

/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

The appropriateness of these IPA symbols traditionally used for Finnish has generated some discussion among phoneticians. Acoustic measurements indicate that the vowels in the middle series /e ø o/ actually have vowel qualities somewhat nearer to the open-mid cardinal vowels [ɛ œ ɔ] than the close-mid [e ø o]. Practically speaking, however, they are more or less in the middleway of these two and since they do not contrast with each other, either one of them may be used. Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ...

Some phoneticians have also raised the question, whether it would be more appropriate to mark the open front vowel as /a/ instead of /æ/. This would make the Finnish phonological system seem more symmetric, since IPA [æ] is strictly speaking a little higher than the open front vowel [a]. Some acoustic studies seem to indicate that there is in fact no significant difference between the orthographical a and ä in terms of vowel closeness.

Consonants

Plosives

/k/ voiceless velar plosive

/p/ voiceless bilabial plosive

/t/ voiceless dental plosive

/d/ voiced alveolar plosive (also varies immensely by dialect, see below)

The voiceless plosives in Finnish are never aspirated. The voiceless velar plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. ... The voiceless bilabial plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. ... The voiceless dental plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The voiced alveolar plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ...

Fricatives

/s/ voiceless alveolar fricative

/h/ voiceless glottal fricative

[f] appears on native words only in the Southwestern dialects, but is reliably distinguished by Finnish speakers. The rest of the foreign fricatives are not. 'š' or 'sh' [ʃ] appears only in non-native words, often pronounced 's', although some educated speakers make a distinction between e.g. šakki 'chess' and sakki 'a gang (of people)'. The orthography also includes the letters 'z' [z] and 'ž' or 'zh' [ʒ], although their use is marginal, and they have no true phonemic status. For example, azeri and džonkki may be pronounced aseri and tsonkki without fear of confusion. The voiceless alveolar fricatives are a type of consonantal sound. ... The voiceless glottal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ...

The phoneme /h/ is not necessarily differentiated from its absence or a long vowel simply by voicelessness. This means that speakers add weak frication consistent with the vowel: it is a weak pharyngeal next to /a/, a rounded bilabial next to /u/, and a palatal next to /i/. The articulation of these fricatives is weak, and does not differ much from the vowel in question, and so cannot be different phonemes from /h/. The voiceless pharyngeal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The voiceless bilabial fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The voiceless palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ...

Nasals

/m/ bilabial nasal

/n/ alveolar nasal

/ŋ/ velar nasal — allophonic in /nk/ to [ŋk], but if the 'k' elides, appears as /ŋŋ/. Finnish spelling varies, see below.

The bilabial nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The velar nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ...

Trills

/r/ alveolar trill — /r/ and /rr/ as in Italian.

The alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages (such as Russian, Spanish, Armenian, and Polish). ...

Approximants

/l/ lateral alveolar approximant

/ʋ/ labiodental approximant. Finnish spelling: v.

/j/ palatal approximant. As in English yes or German ja.

The alveolar lateral approximant is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The labiodental approximant is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The palatal approximant is a type of consonantal sound, used in very many spoken languages. ...

Consonant clusters

Originally, Finnish (outside the Southwestern dialects' area, roughly the triangle Helsinki-Turku-Kristiinankaupunki) had no initial consonant clusters. This is changing due to influence from other European languages. In older borrowings, initial consonant clusters have been simplified. For example koulu ← Swedish skola ('school'), tuoli ← Swedish stol ('chair'). In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. ...

More recent borrowings have retained their clusters, e.g. presidentti ← Swedish president ('president' as a head of state). In the past decades it used to be common to hear these clusters simplified in speech (resitentti), particularly, though not exclusively, by either rural Finns or Finns who knew little or no Swedish or English. Even then Southwestern dialects formed an exception: consonant clusters, especially those with plosives, trills or nasals, are common: examples contain place names Friitala and Preiviiki near town Pori, or town Kristiinankaupunki. Nowadays the overwhelming majority of Finns have adopted initial consonant clusters in their speech.

Consonant gradation

Main article: Consonant gradation

If the onset of the last syllable is a plosive, it is subject to consonant gradation, which is simplification for geminates and a change to an archphonemic fricative for simple consonants. The phonetic environment controls which actual phoneme corresponds to the "fricative". Generally speaking, the uninflected form is the strong form, but there are exceptions. (Sometimes this is described as a result of syllable coda, but verbal imperatives typically have weak-grade open syllables, e.g. pukea "to dress" → pue "dress!"). Consonant gradation is a linguistic term for the changing of consonants. ...

The following is a partial list of strong → weak correspondences:

• Simplification of geminates

• tt → t (katto - katot)
• kk → k (pukki - pukit)
• pp → p (pappi - papit)

• The most common

• t → d (lato - ladot)
• k → hiatus (jalka - jalat)
• p → v (läpi -lävet)

• Change into a chroneme following a sonorant

• mp → mm (kampi - kammet)
• nk → ng (notice the odd spelling, phonetically [ŋk] → [ŋŋ]) (kenkä - kengät)
• rt → rr (merta - merrat)
• nt → nn (lento - lennot)

• Examples of some exceptions

• uku → uvu and yky → yvy, e.g. in puku, kyky
• sp → no change, e.g. piispa → piispan

Note that in any given grammatical situation, the consonant can grade either way depending on the word involved. Here are some examples: In spoken language, a chroneme is a basic, theoretical unit of sound that can distinguish words by duration only of a vowel or consonant. ... In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a member of a class of speech sounds that are continuants produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract. ...

ranta "shore" → rannan: strong in nominative, weak in oblique cases

ranne "wrist" → ranteen: weak in nominative, strong in oblique cases

tavata "to meet" → tapaan "I meet": weak in infinitive, strong in oblique cases

tietää "to know" → tiedän "I know": strong in infinitive, weak in oblique cases

There are rare exceptions to the general rule, attributable to historical forms and consonant syncope, some of which are noted in the noun cases section. For example, juosta/juokse-. Syncope has two distinct and apparantly unrelated meanings, one in linguistics and another in medicne. ...

Other consonant alterations

Many of the "irregular" patterns of Finnish noun and verb inflection are explained by a change of a historical /ti/ to /si/. This can be seen in words like vesi (sg. nom.):veden (sg. gen.):vetenä (sg. ess.):vesissä (pl. iness.) 'water', which displays an s only in front of an i. In other positions, it inflects just like other nouns with a single t alternating with the consonant gradated d.

This pattern is, however, not fully established, e.g. kieltää → kielsi ('deny') but säätää → sääti ('devise (a rule)'), although both alternate forms (kielti and sääsi) are found. Apparently the end of its productivity was caused by word pairs such as noutaa → nouti ('bring') and nousta → nousi ('rise'), which were felt important enough to keep them contrastive.

Orthography

While Finnish orthography generally follows its phonology in a regular way, there are a number of noteworthy exceptions. The orthography of a language is the set of symbols (glyphs and diacritics) used to write a language, as well as the set of rules describing how to write these glyphs correctly, including spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. ...

Velar nasal

The velar nasal /ŋ/ (äng-äänne) does not have its own letter. A single velar nasal is written nk, as in kenkä /keŋkæ/, while the doubled velar nasal is written ng, as in kengän /keŋŋæn/. The treatment of the velar nasal in loanwords is highly inconsistent, following the original spelling of the word more than the proper Finnish spelling. /eŋlɑnti/ is written englanti, /mɑŋneetti/ is written magneetti (cf gnu), /koŋɡestio/ is written kongestio, etc. The velar nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ...

Voiced plosives

Traditionally, /b/ and /ɡ/ are not counted as Finnish phonemes, since they appear only in loanwords. However, these borrowings being relatively common, they are nowadays considered part of the educated norm. The failure to use them correctly is often ridiculed in the media, e.g. if a news reporter or a high official consistently and publicly realises Belgia ('Belgium') as Pelkia. Even many educated speakers, however, still make no distinction between voiced and voiceless plosives in regular speech if there is no fear of confusion. Minimal pairs do exist: /bussi/ 'a bus' vs. /pussi/ 'a bag', /ɡorillɑ/ 'a gorilla' vs. /kori+llɑ/ 'with a basket'.

The status of /d/ is somewhat different from /b/ and /ɡ/, since it appears in native Finnish words, too, as a regular 'weak' correspondence of the voiceless /t/ (see Consonant gradation below). At the time when Mikael Agricola, the 'father' of literary Finnish, devised a system for writing the language, this sound still had the value of the voiced dental fricative /ð/, as in English then. Since neither Swedish nor German of that time had a separate sign for this sound, Agricola chose to mark it with d or dh. Mikael Agricola Mikael Agricola (c. ...

Later on, the */ð/ sound developed in a variety of ways in different Finnish dialects: it was deleted, or became a hiatus, a flap consonant, or any of t, r, l, j, jj, th. For example, of your (pl.) water could be: Hiatus in linguistics is the separate pronunciation of two adjacent vowels, sometimes with an intervening glottal stop. ... In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another. ...

• teiän veen
• tei'än ve'en
• teiä vede
• teirän veren
• teilän velen
• teijjän vejen
• teidän veden
• teitän veten
• teiðän veðen
• teidhän vethen

In the middle of the 19th century, a significant portion of the Swedish-speaking upper class in Finland decided that Finnish had to be made equal in usage to Swedish. They even started using Finnish as their home language, even while very few of them really mastered it well. Since the historical */ð/ no more had a common way of pronunciation between different Finnish dialects and since it was usually written as "d", many started using the Swedish pronunciation [d], which eventually became the educated norm.

Initially, few native speakers of Finnish acquired the foreign plosive realisation of the native phoneme. Still some decades ago it was not entirely exceptional to hear borrowings like deodorantti ('a deodorant') pronounced as teotorantti, while native Finnish words with a /d/ were pronounced in the usual dialectal way. Nowadays, the Finnish language spoken by native Swedish speakers is not anymore considered "proper", but as a result of their long-lasting prestige, many people particularly in the capital district acquired the new [d] sound. Due to diffusion of the standard language through mass media and basic education, and due to the dialectal prestige of the capital area, the plosive [d] can now be heard in all parts of the country, at least in loanwords and in formal speech. Nowadays replacing /d/ with a /t/ is considered as a finnish hill billey language, for example "Nyt tarvittais uutta tirektiiviä." "Nyt tarvittaisiin uutta direktiiviä" ("Now we could use a new directive").

Väinö Linna uses the plosive d as a hallmark of unpleasant command language in the novel The Unknown Soldier. Lieutenant Lammio was a native Helsinkian, and his language was considered haughty upper-class speech. On the other hand, private Asumaniemi's (another native Helsinkian) plosive d raised no irritation, as he spoke Stadin slangi as his everyday speech. Väinö Linna (December 20, 1920 - April 21, 1992) was one of the most influential Finnish authors of the 20th century. ... The Unknown Soldier (Tuntematon sotilas) is perhaps the most famous novel by Väinö Linna. ... Helsinki slang or slangi is a local variation of the Finnish language mainly used in the capital Helsinki. ...

In Stadin slangi, the dialect of Helsinki proper, the voiced stops are found in native words even in positions which are not the result of consonant gradation, e. g. dallas "s/he walked" (< native verb root talla-), bonjata "to understand" (< Russian /ponʲiˈmatʲ/ понимать). In the Southwestern dialects of Rauma-Eurajoki-Laitila area, b, d and g are commonplace, since the voicing of nasals spread to phonemes /p/, /t/ and /k/, making them half-voiced, e.g. sendä ← sentään or ningo ← niin kuin. They are also found in those coastal and border areas, where Swedish and Russian have influenced the speech. Helsinki slang or slangi is a local variation of the Finnish language mainly used in the capital Helsinki. ...

Length

All phonemes have distinctive length, except for /ʋ/, /d/, and /j/.

Some example sets of words:

tuli = fire, tuuli = wind, tulli = customs

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

A double /h/ is rare, but possible, e.g. hihhuli "bigot". Whereas /ʋ/ and /j/ may appear as geminates when spoken (e.g. vauva [ʋɑuʋːɑ], raijata [rɑijːɑtɑ]), this distinction is not phonemic, and is not indicated in spelling.

In dialects or in the "everyday language" /ʋ/, /d/, and /j/ can have distinctive length, especially due to final consonant mutation, e.g. sevverran (sen verran), kuvvoo (kuvaa), teijjän (teidän). This article deals with features of the spoken Finnish language, specifically how it is spoken in Greater Helsinki capital region and the cities in the Central Finnish dialectal area, such as Jyväskylä, Lahti, Hyvinkää, and Hämeenlinna. ... Consonant mutation is the phenomenon in which a consonant in a word is changed according to its morphological and/or syntactic environment. ...

Stress

Like Hungarian, Finnish always places the primary stress on the first syllable of a word. Secondary stress can be used to distinguish the pronunciation of homographs, for example puunaama, meaning "wooden face", is pronounced [ˈpuː-ˌnɑː-mɑ] but puunaama, meaning "which was cleaned", is pronounced [ˈpuː-nɑː-mɑ]. In linguistics, stress is the emphasis given to some syllables (often no more than one in each word, but in many languages, long words have a secondary stress a few syllables away from the primary stress, as in the words cóunterfòil or còunterintélligence. ... This article discusses the unit of speech. ... Homonyms (in Greek homoios = identical and onoma = name) are words which have the same form (orthographic/phonetic) but unrelated meaning. ...

Sandhi

Finnish sandhi is extremely frequent, appearing between many words and morphemes, in formal standard language and in everyday spoken language. In most registers, it is never written down; only dialectal transcriptions preserve it, the rest settling for a morphemic notation. There are two processes. The first is simple assimilation with respect to place of articulation (e.g. np → mp). The second is predictive gemination of initial consonants on morpheme boundaries. Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. ... In Morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest language unit that carries a semantic interpretation. ... Assimilation is a regular and frequent sound change process by which a phoneme changes to match an adjacent phoneme in a word. ... Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-07-20, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ...

Simple phonetic incomplete assimilations include, using Finnish notation:

• n + k → ŋk, velarization due to 'k', e.g. sen kanssa /seŋ kɑnssɑ/
• n + p → mp, labialization due to 'p' e.g. menenpä /menempæ/
• V + V → VʔV, dissimilation of a sequence of individual vowels (compared to diphthongs) by adding a glottal stop, e.g. kuorma-auto /kuormɑʔɑuto/ (not obligatory)

Gemination of a morpheme-initial consonant occurs when the morpheme preceding it ends in a vowel and belongs to one of certain morphological classes: Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Dissimilation, in the context of phonology, is a phenomenon whereby similar consonant sounds in a word have a tendency to become different over time, so as to ease pronunciation. ... The glottal stop or voiceless glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in many spoken languages. ... Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-07-20, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ...

• nouns in -e (apart from some new loanwords)
• imperatives of the second person singular, as well as the negative form of the present indicative, which always has the same form
• first infinitives (the dictionary form)
• noun cases in -e: allative -lle as well as the more marginal sublative -nne (as in tänne) and prolative -tse (as in postitse); not the instructive, though
• some other words such as kai 'probably', luo 'to, towards (a person, a place)', tai 'or'

The gemination can occur between morphemes of a single word as in /minulle/ + /kin/ → /minullekkin/ 'to me, too' (orthographically minullekin), between parts of a compound word as in /perhe/ + /pɑlɑʋeri/ → [perheppɑlɑʋeri] 'family meeting' (orthographically perhepalaveri), or between separate words as in /tule/ + /tænne/ → [tulettænne] 'Come here!'. In elaborate standard language, the gemination affects even morphemes with a vowel beginning: /otɑ/ + /omenɑ/ → [otɑʔʔomenɑ] or [otɑʔomenɑ] 'Take an apple!'. In casual speech, this is however often rendered as [otɑomenɑ] without a glottal stop.

These rules are generally valid for the standard language, although many Southwestern dialects, for instance, do not recognise the phenomenon at all. Still in the standard language there is disagreement between different speakers, whether for instance kolme 'three' should cause a gemination of the following initial consonant or not: [kolmeʋɑristɑ] or [kolmeʋʋɑristɑ] 'three crows'. Both forms occur and neither one of them is standardised, since in any case it does not affect writing. In some dictionaries compiled for foreigners or linguists, however, the tendency of geminating the following consonant is marked by a superscript x as in perhe^x.

The historical origins of the morpheme-boundary gemination are in complete assimilation of a consonant sound to another. For instance, the modern Finnish word for 'boat' vene used to be venet. This is found in 19th century texts, and as assibilated forms such as venes in the modern Pohjanmaa dialect, or a voiceless ending veneh. Now these earliest form could combine with other words of the language as in veneh kulkevi 'the boat is moving'. At some point of history, the sequence /h+k/ on morpheme boundaries was reduced to /kk/, thus manifesting a complete assimilation of the /h/ to the /k/ sound. Here we get the modern Finnish form [ʋenekkulkee] (orthographically vene kulkee), even though the independent form [ʋene] has no sign of the old final consonant /h/.

In many Finnish dialects, including that of Helsinki, the gemination on morpheme boundaries has become more widespread due to the loss of additional final consonants. For example, the standard word for 'now' nyt has lost its t and become ny in Helsinki speech. However, in a sequence like /ny/ + /se/ 'now it [does something]' you can still sense the original final consonant, since the combination is pronounced [nysse] and not *[nyse] (although the latter would be permissible in the dialect of Turku).

Similar remnants of a lost word final /n/ can be seen in dialects, where e.g. the genitive form of the first singular pronoun is regularly /mu/ (standard language minun): /se/ + /on/ + /mu/ → [seommu] 'It is mine'. Preceding an approximant, the /n/ assimilates completely: [muʋʋɑimo] 'my wife'. Preceding a vowel, however, the /n/ however pops up in a different form: /mu/ + /omɑ/ → {{[munomɑ] or even [munnomɑ] 'my own'.

See also

• List of phonetics topics