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Finnish phonology

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Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for a pronunciation key.

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.

Contents

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.

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.

Monophthongs

/ɑ/ open back unrounded vowel. More or less as in English father. Finnish spelling: a.
/e/ mid front unrounded vowel
/i/ close front unrounded vowel
/o/ mid back rounded vowel
/u/ close back rounded vowel
/y/ close front rounded vowel. As in French vu, German müde.
/æ/ near-open front unrounded vowel. As in English bat. Finnish spelling: ä
/ø/ 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.

Diphthongs

This is a list of segmental diphthongs that are independent phonemes, both of each other and of the long and short vowels. Finnish dialects have diphthongization and diphthong reduction processes. For example, Savo Finnish contrasts /a/ - /ua/ instead of standard /a/ - /aa/. These are not found in standard language.

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.

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 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/.

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.

Trills

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

Approximants

/l/ lateral alveolar approximant
/ʋ/ labiodental approximant. Finnish spelling: v.
/j/ palatal approximant. As in English yes or German ja.

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').

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!").

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

*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
    *sC → no change, e.g. piispa → piispan, kaski → kasken, lasta → lastan
    Note that in any given grammatical situation, the consonant can grade either way depending on the word involved. Here are some examples:

    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-.

    Personal first names (e.g. Hilta - Hiltan, Hilla - Hillan) do not gradate. Surnames, however, do. Acronyms do not gradate if they include the vowel (NaPa - NaPan, cf. common word napa - navan), but gradate if end in a consonant (PIK [pikki] - PIK:n [pikin]).

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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:

    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.

    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.

    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).

    Stress

    Like Hungarian and Icelandic, 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].

    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.

    Simple phonetic incomplete assimilations include, using Finnish notation:

    Gemination of a morpheme-initial consonant occurs when the morpheme preceding it ends in a vowel and belongs to one of certain morphological classes:

    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 perhex.

    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

     

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