Paragoge is the addition to a sound to the end of a word. Often, this is due to nativization, and a logical counterpart of epenthesis, particularly vocalic epenthesis. In poetry and phonetics, epenthesis (Greek epi, on × en, in + thesis, putting) refers to the insertion of a phoneme or syllable into a word, usually to facilitate pronunciation. ... In linguistics, an epenthetic vowel breaks up a consonant cluster that is not permitted by the phonotactics of a language. ...

Characteristic to Finnish as an Uralic language is the vocalic paragoge. Standard Finnish phonotactics, in strong contrast with others language including those closely related to it, require a vowel to end a word. Finnish has, as per Proto-Uralic, only two vowels that it can add, namely /a/ and /i/. The former, /a/, is historical, and in modern usage only in Karelian. However, it has become lexical in modern Finnish, e.g. person was loaned as persoona, where *persooni is not interchangeable. The latter, /i/, is modern, and is added whenever a word is nativized, e.g. bar → baari (here, there is also a long vowel, as the difference is phonemic in Finnish). In addition, it is always added whenever a foreign word need a case ending, e.g. Blairista "from Blair". Geographical distribution of Finnic, Ugric, Samoyed and Yukaghir languages The Uralic languages form a language family of about 30 languages spoken by approximately 20 million people. ... A standard language (also standard dialect or standardized dialect) is a particular variety of a language that has been given either legal or quasi-legal status. ... Proto-Uralic is the ancestor language of the Uralic languages, including the hypothetical families of the Samoyedic languages and the Finno-Ugric languages. ... The Karelian language is a variety closely related to Finnish. ... In linguistics, vowel length is the duration of a vowel sound. ...

It should be noted that whenever the consonant is phonetically geminate, Finnish speakers hear it, irrespective of the native phonemics, thus creating — to Germanic language speakers — apparently inconsistent vowel doubling. In particular, all Germanic stressed short vowels are followed by phonetically geminate consonants in a word-final position, e.g. English rack → techspeak Finnish räkki. This is phonemic, e.g. imp → imppi; cf. impi "virgin".