Finnish pronunciation
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Opening Notes
A characteristic of Finnish is that it differentiates between short and long vowels and short and long consonants.
You can hear some sample recordings here: UCLA Phonetics Lab (Finnish)
Phonology
Segments
The following table shows the distribution of consonant phoneme to consonant graph:
| Consonants | |||||
| Labial | Dental | Palatal | Dorsal | ||
| Oral Stop | vcl | /p/ p | /t/ t | -- | /k/ k |
| vcd | (/b/1 b) | (/d/2 d) | (/g/1 g) | ||
| Nasal Stop | /m/ m | /n/ n | -- | /N/3 n(k), ng | |
| Fricative | vcl | (/f/1 f) | /s/ s | (/S/1 š) | /h/ h |
| vcd | -- | -- | (/Z/1 ž) | ||
| Lateral | -- | /l/ l | -- | -- | |
| Rhotic | -- | /r/ r | -- | -- | |
| Glide | /v\/ v | -- | /j/ j | -- | |
Notes:
1. These sounds, b, f, g, š, ž occur in foreign borrowings:
ex:
bussi "bus"
šekki "check/cheque"
2. This sound occurs in initial position in foreign words, but between vowels or between a consonant and a vowel in all other contexts, native or borrowed.
3. This sound occurs in its short form natively just before k. The graph ng represents a long nasal, /N:/. In foreign words the simple consonant may precede other consonants too: englanti /eNlanti/ "English".
The following table shows the distribution of vowel phoneme to vowel graph:
| Vowel | ||||
| Front (Unround) | Front (Round) | Back | ||
| High
| long
| ii
| yy
| uu
|
Application
Two of the salient features of Finnish are vowel harmony and consonant gradation. Also featured in Finnish are vowel length and consonant length.
Vowel Harmony
Finnish phonology features the principle of vowel harmony, i.e. native words contain either one type of vowel or another. Vowels are divided into three categories:
- front: y/yy, ö/öö, ä/ää
- back: u/uu, o/oo, a/aa
- neutral: i/ii, e/ee
Simple words tend to contain either all front vowels or all back vowels:
tyttö "daughter" (front)
talo "house" (back)
Neutral vowels can be found either in front words or back words. However, words with all neutral vowels tend to group with front vowels:
silmä "eye"
teko "act"
but:
kieli "language" --> kieltä language (part.sg.)
Neutral vowels may group with back vowels, too: veri "blood" --> verta blood (part.sg.), veressä "in blood" (iness.sg.).
Word final consonant gemination
Some bound morphemes and many independent words trigger the lengthening of the following consonant inside a word or across word boundaries. For instance, the 2nd person singular of the imperative tule! "come!" is pronounced independently as it's spelled: /tule/. However, if it's followed by another word, the initial consonant of that word becomes long (geminated): tule tänne! "come here!" is pronounced /tulet:{n:e/. This change is not indicated in the spelling. If the following word begins with a vowel, a short glottal stop (or even a long glottal stop) is possible, but nowadays less and less compulsory. Otherwise glottal stops occur in Finnish just optionally before a vowel initial sentence or between two vowels belonging to two different morphemes. For example, kuorma-auto "lorry" may be pronounced [kuorma?auto] in highly elevated speech. Usually it's just simply [kuorma.auto] with a syllable break but no audible glottal stop. In the following examples, the geminating final is marked with an asterisk (*).
The following categories of words and morphemes trigger the lengthening:
- The allative ending -lle (minulle* "to me").
- Most nouns ending with a short "e" (kone* "machine"). This excludes most recent borrowings (pelle "clown") and given names (Jonne, Rale). Pronouns and numerals ending in -e do not geminate either: kolme "three", me "we".
- Verbs in the short form of the first infinitive (haluta*, mennä*, laittaa*). (Note that this also distinguishes between a verb in infinitive and a verb in 3rd person singular (hän, se), when they look alike, because only the infinitive triggers the gemination: Hän laittaa ruokaa / Osaatko sinä laittaa* ruokaa?)
- Verbs in the 2nd person singular imperative (ota*!) (Note that this also distinguishes between a verb in imperative and a verb in 3rd person singular (hän, se), when they look alike, because only the imperative triggers the gemination: Hän syö jo / Syö* jo!). No gemination after "älä" though (älä mene*!).
- Verbs in negation (en syö*, emme halua*), excluding the negation verb "ei" in all its forms.
- Adverbs ending in -sti (kovasti*, nopeasti*, mielenkiintoisesti*) or -tse (postitse*, meritse*).
