Venla

Phonetics

Pronunciation

One helpful thing when studying Finnish is the regular pronunciation: Finnish is almost always pronounced as it's written.

Click an example to listen it.

|Sound|	|Finnish example|	|sound in English|
a	auto	car
b
c
d	sydän	David
e	esine	egg
f
g	gaselli	gate
h	hevonen	hello!
i	iso	wit
j	jano	young
k	kivi	key
l	lapsi	lip
m	mies	man
n	nainen	nail
o	osata	four
p	pelata	pool
q
r	ruma	roof
s	saada	soap
t	tie	tear
u	uida	blue
v	vaja	verb
w
x
y	ystävä	like /i/, but lower
ä	äiti	cat
ö	öljy	like /e/, but lower

Notes:

• Stress is always on first syllable.
• Finnish is pronounced like it's written, nothing sould be left out.
• nk is pronounced , like in lanka. ng is pronounced double like in langat

Diphtongs

ai, ei, oi, ui, yi, äi , öi, au, eu, iu, ou, äy, öy, ie, uo, yö

Vowel harmony

Vowel harmony is very typical phenomenon in Finno-Ugric languages.

Basic rule: There cannot be front vowels (y, ö, ä) and back vowels (u, o, a) in a same word. This rule is important when using different endings and suffixes. There is usually two allomorphs of one ending, eg. -nut /-nyt, -ko/kö , -ssa/-ssä.

Examples:

Illative: Minä asun Turussa, but Hän asuu Helsingissä

Ko-question Tuletko mukaan? but Lähdetkö pois?

Nut-participle: En ole nukkunut hyvin but, Olen syönyt paljon

Other suffixes: Hän on ammatiltaan taitelija, but Minä olen piirtäjä

Consonant gradation

The length of phoneme is important in Finnish, because it has distinctive function. For example : tuli - tuuli - tulli. (fire, wind, customs.)

One side of this phenomenon is the consonant gradiation, wich means that length of plosives (k, p, t) vary.

Basic gradation

Strong grade	Weak grade
kk/pp/tt	k/p/t
kukka pappi matto	kukan papin maton
k/p/t	-/v/d
käki käpy koti	käen kävyn kodin

Other gradations

Strong grade	Weak grade
mp	mm
lampi	lammen
nt/lt/rt	nn/ll/rr
santa lanta ranta	sannan lannan rannan
nk	ng
kenkä	kengän
k	v
suku	suvun
lke/rke/hke	lje/rje/hje
kärki	kärjen

Basic rule: strong grade is used in the syllable is open (ends with vowel), weak grade when syllable is closed (ends with consonant). Usually this means, that when you add an ending wich closes the syllable (for example genetive -n) you must use weak grade.

Vowel changes caused by i-phoneme

There's four different ending, wich include i-phoneme:

• plural -i
• superlative -in
• imperfect -i-
• conditional -isi

Very often this means some changes in vowels before -i.

The typical changes are:

1. Short round vowels -o, -ö, -u, -y.
• no changes.
2. Long vowels shorten.
3. Diphtongs
• the first vowel disappears.
4. Diphtongs ending with -i
• The -i disappears. ie, uo, yö -> e, o, ö,
5. Short -e disappears
6. Short i becomes e in case of plural and superlative (noun), and disappears in case of imperfect and conditional (verb)
7. -ä disappears
8. -a
• conditional: no changes
• superlative: disappears
• plural and imperfect
• a,e, i -> o
• u,o -> disappears