Finnish orthography

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Template:Short description Template:See also Template:Use mdy dates Template:Use American English Template:IPA notice Finnish orthography is based on the Latin script, and uses an alphabet derived from the Swedish alphabet, officially comprising twenty-nine letters but also including two additional letters found in some loanwords. The Finnish orthography strives to represent all morphemes phonologically and, roughly speaking, the sound value of each letter tends to correspond with its value in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) – although some discrepancies do exist.

Alphabet

Template:Listen

The following table describes how each letter in the Finnish alphabet (Template:Langx) is spelled and pronounced separately. If the name of a consonant begins with a vowel (usually Template:Vr Template:IPA), it can be pronounced and spelled either as a monosyllabic or bisyllabic word.<ref name="Länsimäki" /> In practice, the names of the letters are rarely spelled, as people usually just type the (uppercase or lowercase) glyph when they want to refer to a particular letter.

The pronunciation instructions enclosed in slashes are broad transcriptions based on the IPA system. In notes, more narrow transcriptions are enclosed in square brackets.

Glyphs Name<ref>Aakkoset.</ref> Name pronunciation Notes on usage (for more, see Finnish phonology)
A, a Template:Lang Template:IPA
B, b Template:Lang Template:IPA Occurs in relatively new loanwords, such as Template:Lang 'banana' and Template:Lang 'bus'. Typically represents Template:IPA or Template:IPA.
C, c Template:Lang Template:IPA Occurs in unestablished loanwords, such as Template:Lang and Template:Lang. Typically represents Template:IPA or Template:IPA.
D, d Template:Lang Template:IPA In present standard language, Template:Vr stands for Template:IPA, but the pronunciation in dialects varies greatly.
E, e Template:Lang Template:IPA The precise pronunciation tends to be between Template:IPA and Template:IPA.
F, f Template:Lang, Template:Lang Template:IPA, Template:IPA, occasionally Template:IPA Occurs in relatively new loanwords, such as Template:Lang 'asphalt' or Template:Lang 'uniform'. Historically and in dialectal pronunciation (apart from some Western dialects), Template:IPA is typically replaced with Template:IPA or medially Template:IPA (e.g. Template:Lang Template:IPA ← Swedish Template:Lang 'coffee'). Even newer loanwords may have an alternative spelling where Template:Vr has replaced Template:Vr (Template:Lang, Template:Lang). Note that the names of the country, language, and nationality beginning with F (Finland, Finnish, Finn) are non-native, the native ones being Template:Lang, Template:Lang, and Template:Lang.
G, g Template:Lang Template:IPA Occurs natively in the [[Ng (digraph)|digraph Template:Vr]], which marks the long velar nasal Template:IPA (with no Template:IPA sound). Otherwise Template:Vr only occurs in relatively new loanwords, such as Template:Lang 'gala' and Template:Lang 'gene'. Typically represents Template:IPA or Template:IPA.
H, h Template:Lang Template:IPA Normally a voiceless fricative, but the precise pronunciation depends on the preceding vowel; between two vowels may be pronounced as breathy-voiced Template:IPA.
I, i Template:Lang Template:IPA Template:IPA
J, j Template:Lang Template:IPA Without exception Template:IPA (English consonant Template:Vr), as in German and Swedish, never fricative or affricate as in French or English.
K, k Template:Lang Template:IPA
L, l Template:Lang, Template:Lang Template:IPA, Template:IPA, occasionally Template:IPA
M, m Template:Lang, Template:Lang Template:IPA, Template:IPA, occasionally Template:IPA
N, n Template:Lang, Template:Lang Template:IPA, Template:IPA, occasionally Template:IPA
O, o Template:Lang Template:IPA The precise pronunciation tends to be between Template:IPA and Template:IPA.
P, p Template:Lang Template:IPA
Q, q Template:Lang Template:IPA Mainly occurs in foreign proper names (in loanwords digraph Template:Vr has often been replaced with Template:Vr, aside from unestablished recent loanwords, such as queer). Typically represents Template:IPA, though some speakers pronounce it as Template:IPA.
R, r Template:Lang, Template:Lang Template:IPA, Template:IPA, occasionally Template:IPA
S, s Template:Lang, Template:Lang Template:IPA, Template:IPA, occasionally Template:IPA
T, t Template:Lang Template:IPA The precise pronunciation tends to be dental Template:IPA rather than alveolar Template:IPA.
U, u Template:Lang Template:IPA The precise pronunciation tends to be between Template:IPA and Template:IPA.
V, v Template:Lang Template:IPA Typically represents approximant Template:IPA rather than fricative Template:IPA.
W, w Template:Lang
Template:Lang 		Template:IPA,
Template:IPA,
Template:IPA 		The "double-v" may occur natively as an archaic variant of Template:Vr, but otherwise in unestablished loanwords and foreign proper names only. It occurs in some rare surnames such as Template:Lang (e.g. Mika Waltari, a world-famous author) or in some rare first names such as Template:Lang (e.g. Werner Söderström, a well-known publisher). In collation the letter Template:Vr was treated like Template:Vr before 2022. Typically represents Template:IPA.
X, x Template:Lang, Template:Lang Template:IPA, Template:IPA, occasionally Template:IPA Occurs in unestablished loanwords, such as taxi or fax, but there is often a preferred alternative where Template:Vr has been replaced with digraph Template:Vr (Template:Lang, Template:Lang). Typically represents Template:IPA.
Y, y Template:Lang Template:IPA The precise pronunciation tends to be between Template:IPA and Template:IPA.
Z, z Template:Lang, Template:Lang Template:IPA, Template:IPA Occurs in unestablished loanwords, such as Template:Lang Template:IPA 'zenith' or Template:Lang, but there may be an alternative spelling with Template:Vr (e.g. Template:Lang). Typically represents Template:IPA (like in German), but sometimes Template:IPA or Template:IPA.
Å, å Template:Lang Template:IPA, Template:IPA The "Swedish Template:Vr", carried over from the Swedish alphabet and redundant in Finnish; retained especially for writing Finland-Swedish proper names (such as Ståhlberg). All Finnish words containing Template:Vr are proper names and their derivatives (Template:Lang); there it represents Template:IPA (identically to Template:Vr). The spelling Template:Lang ('tram', colloquial, from Swedish Template:Lang) sometimes occurs in practice, but the standard spelling is Template:Lang.
Ä, ä Template:Lang Template:IPA
Ö, ö Template:Lang Template:IPA The precise pronunciation tends to be between Template:IPA and Template:IPA.

The letters Template:Vr and Template:Vr are variants of Template:Vr and Template:Vr, but they are often overlooked, as they are only used in some relatively new loanwords and foreign names, and may be replaced with Template:Vr and Template:Vr, respectively,<ref name="Saukkonen" /> if it is technically impossible to reproduce Template:Vr and Template:Vr.<ref>This rule is stated in the standard SFS 4900 (Transliteration of Cyrillic characters: Slavic languages), p. 7.</ref> The Finnish keyboard layout on Microsoft Windows does not include Template:Vr or Template:Vr; thus, in practice, only highly formal sources such as official texts, encyclopedias or Helsingin Sanomat use them.

Glyphs Name Name pronunciation Notes on usage (for more, see Finnish phonology)
Š, š Template:Lang,
Template:Lang;
Template:Lang,
Template:Lang 		Template:IPA,
Template:IPA;
Template:IPA,
Template:IPA 		The "Template:Vr with caron" is a rare variant of Template:Vr. It occurred in some relatively new loanwords, such as Template:Lang 'chess' and Template:Lang 'shilling', but is often replaced with digraph Template:Vr (Template:Lang → Template:Lang) or, in more established loanwords, with plain Template:Vr (Template:Lang). In theory it represents Template:IPA but actual pronunciation may vary.
Ž, ž Template:Lang,
Template:Lang 		Template:IPA,
Template:IPA 		The "Template:Vr with caron" is a rare variant of Template:Vr. It occurs in some unestablished loanwords, such as Template:Lang 'junk', and foreign proper names, but is often replaced with digraph Template:Vr. In theory represents Template:IPA but the actual pronunciation may vary.

The extra letters Template:Vr and Template:Vr

The sign at the bus station of the Finnish municipality Mynämäki, illustrating a stylized variation of ⟨ä⟩.

The main peculiarities in the Finnish alphabet are the two extra vowels ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ö⟩ (and Swedish ⟨å⟩, which is not actually needed in Finnish). In Finnish, these extra letters are collectively called Template:Lang when they need to be distinguished from the ISO basic Latin alphabet; the word is a somewhat playful modification of Template:Lang, which is Finnish for "alphabet". Another informal term is Template:Lang or Template:Lang, short for Template:Lang "Scandinavian characters" (however, the Danish and Norwegian ⟨æ⟩ and ⟨ø⟩ are usually not taken into account).

In Finnish, ⟨ä⟩, ⟨ö⟩ and ⟨y⟩ are the "front vowel" counterparts to the "back vowels" ⟨a⟩, ⟨o⟩ and ⟨u⟩; grammatical endings and suffixes using these letters, use either the front or back form depending on the vowel harmony of the word. The glyphs for ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ö⟩ are derived from the similar-looking German umlauted letters, but as with ⟨y⟩ versus ⟨u⟩, they are considered letters in their own right and thus alphabetized separately (after ⟨z⟩).

The Germanic umlaut or convention of considering digraph ⟨ae⟩ equivalent to ⟨ä⟩, and ⟨oe⟩ equivalent to ⟨ö⟩ is inapplicable in Finnish. Moreover, in Finnish, both ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩ are vowel sequences, not single letters, and they have independent meanings (e.g. Template:Lang "I seek" vs. Template:Lang "he, she").

In handwritten text, the actual form of the extra marking may vary from a pair of dots to a pair of short vertical bars, to a single horizontal bar, or to a wavy line resembling a tilde. In practice, almost any diacritic situated above the base glyph (such as, á ā ã) would probably be interpreted as a carelessly written pair of dots (ä). However, in computerized character sets, these alternatives are incorrect. The front-vowel counterpart of ⟨u⟩ using ⟨y⟩ rather than ⟨ü⟩ is carried over from Swedish, and also avoids confusion in cursive script with ⟨ii⟩, which is common in Finnish.

Non-native letters in the Finnish alphabet

Ålandsbanken 'Bank of Åland' uses a stylized letter Template:Vr in its logotype.

In the Finnish writing system, some basic Latin letters are considered redundant, and other letters generally represent sounds that are not inherent in the Finnish language. Thus, they are not used in established Finnish words, but they may occur in newer loanwords as well as in foreign proper names, and they are included in the Finnish alphabet in order to maintain interlingual compatibility. The pronunciation of these letters varies quite a lot.

Collation order

In Finnish, words are ordered alphabetically according to the collation rules specified in the official standard SFS 4600.<ref name=Korpela /> There are a few cases where Finnish collation is different from the rules applied in English:

Diacritics are never added to letters in native Finnish words (as the dots above the Finnish graphemes Template:Vr and Template:Vr are not considered diacritics). Generally, diacritics are retained in foreign-language proper names, e.g. Vilén, if possible, but when arranging words alphabetically, diacritics are usually ignored (this also applies to Template:Vr and Template:Vr, despite them being an officially recognized part of Finnish orthography). There are, however, some exceptions:

The standard does not specify how one should alphabetize the letter Template:Vr when used in other languages than German, but at least as regards the Estonian or Hungarian Template:Vr, it seems consistent to treat it as equivalent to Template:Vr (and even more so, since Template:Vr in Estonian and Hungarian is not considered a mere variant of Template:Vr, as it is in German). It would seem problematic, however, to apply the same principle to e.g. Template:Vr (u-diaeresis) as used in Spanish or Template:Vr (nasal vowel) as used in Portuguese, as these letters represent quite different orthographic traditions.

Other special cases:

Ligatures are alphabetized as two individual letters:

Letters and characters taken from other alphabets (e.g. Σ 'Greek capital letter sigma') or writing systems are collated after Latin letters.

Orthographic principles

Template:See also When writing Finnish, the foundational principle is that each letter stands for one sound and each sound is always represented by the same letter, within the bounds of a single morpheme. The most notable exception to this rule is the velar nasal Template:IPA, which does not have an allotted letter.

Short and long sounds

In Finnish, both vowels and consonants may be either short or long. A short sound is written with a single letter, and a long sound is written with a double letter (digraph). It is necessary to recognize the difference between such words as Template:Lang Template:IPA 'fire', Template:Lang Template:IPA 'wind' and Template:Lang Template:IPA 'customs'. However, long consonants are sometimes written as short consonants in morpheme boundaries (see Finnish phonology#Sandhi for this phenomenon), thus, Template:IPA is written as Template:Lang "open-box bed for wood chips" instead of expected *hakellava, and Template:IPA is Template:Lang "come here" instead of *tule ttänne or *tulet tänne.

In syllabification, a long consonant is always regarded as having a syllable break in the middle (as in Template:IPA), but a long vowel (or a diphthong) is regarded as a single unit that functions as the nucleus of a syllable. Either a long or short vowel may occur in a stressed as well as unstressed syllable. The phonetic quality of a vowel remains the same regardless of whether the vowel is long or short, or whether it is stressed or unstressed.

Velar nasal

The velar nasal Template:IPA (generally referred to as Template:Lang 'the eng sound') does not have a letter of its own. Natively, a short Template:IPA only occurs before Template:IPA, and it is simply written with Template:Vr, as in Template:Lang Template:IPA 'shoe'. Since the alveolar nasal Template:IPA can not occur in such a position, Template:IPA can be seen as an allophone of Template:IPA. However, if the Template:IPA is weakened (because of a phenomenon called consonant gradation that occurs when the word is inflected), the result is a long, or geminated, velar nasal Template:IPA that is written with digraph Template:Vr, as in Template:Lang Template:IPA 'shoes'. The geminated Template:IPA is not an allophone of geminated Template:IPA, since minimal pairs do exist: Template:Lang Template:IPA 'textile' vs. Template:Lang Template:IPA 'isthmus'.

The treatment of the velar nasal in loanwords is highly inconsistent, often mixing the original spelling of the word with an applied Finnish pronunciation pattern. Template:Lang "England" is pronounced Template:IPA (with a short Template:IPA but no Template:IPA), and even Template:Lang "magnet" is pronounced Template:IPA (with plain Template:Vr being pronounced as Template:IPA when followed by Template:Vr, as in classical Latin) – cf. a more specialized term Template:Lang Template:IPA 'diagnosis', and in a word-initial position Template:Lang Template:IPA "gnu". Following the typical Finnish pronunciation pattern, Template:Lang "congestion" is often pronounced Template:IPA, but Template:IPA may also occur.

Voiced plosives

Traditionally, Template:IPA and Template:IPA are not counted as Finnish phonemes, since they only appear in loanwords. However, these borrowings being relatively common, they are nowadays considered part of the educated norm. The failure to use them correctly is sometimes ridiculed, e.g. if a news reporter or a high official consistently and publicly pronounces Template:Lang 'Belgium' as Template:IPA. Even many educated speakers, however, still make no distinction between voiced and voiceless plosives in regular speech, although minimal pairs exist: Template:IPA 'bus' vs. Template:IPA 'bag', Template:IPA 'gorilla' vs. Template:IPA 'with/at a basket'.

The status of Template:IPA is somewhat different from Template:IPA and Template:IPA, since it appears in native Finnish words, too, as a regular "weak" correspondence of the voiceless Template:IPA (as a result of consonant gradation), and even in the infinitives of many verbs, such as Template:Lang, "to eat". 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 Template:IPA, 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 Template:Vr or Template:Vr.

Later on, the Template:IPA sound developed in a variety of ways in different Finnish dialects: it was deleted, or became a hiatus, a flap consonant, or any of Template:Vr, Template:Vr, Template:Vr, Template:Vr. For example, historical and rare dialectal Template:Lang, Template:Lang "our" (gen.), "hand" (gen.) 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.Template:Citation needed They even started using Finnish as their home language, even while very few of them really mastered it well. Since the historical Template:IPA no more had a common way of pronunciation between different Finnish dialects and since it was usually written as Template:Vr, many started using the Swedish pronunciation Template:IPA, 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 loanwords like Template:Lang 'deodorant' pronounced as Template:IPA, while native Finnish words with a Template:IPA were pronounced in the usual dialectal way. Nowadays, the Finnish language spoken by native Swedish speakers is not anymore considered paradigmatic, but as a result of their long-lasting prestige, many people particularly in the capital district acquired the new Template:IPA 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 Template:IPA can now be heard in all parts of the country, at least in loanwords and in formal speech. Nowadays replacing Template:IPA with a Template:IPA is considered rustic, for example Template:IPA instead of Template:IPA 'now we could use a new directive'.

In Helsinki slang, the slang used by some, more rarely nowadays, in Helsinki, the voiced stops are found in native words even in positions which are not the result of consonant gradation, e.g. Template:IPA 's/he walked' (← native verb root Template:Lang), Template:IPA 'to understand' (← Russian Template:IPA понимать). In the Southwestern dialects of Rauma-Eurajoki-Laitila area, Template:IPA, Template:IPA and Template:IPA are commonplace, since the voicing of nasals spread to phonemes Template:IPA, Template:IPA and Template:IPA, making them half-voiced, e.g. Template:IPA ← Template:Lang or Template:IPA ← Template:Lang. They are also found in those coastal areas where Swedish influenced the speech.

The spelling alphabet

Letter spelling name
A, a Template:Lang
B, b Template:Lang
C, c Template:Lang
D, d Template:Lang
E, e Template:Lang
F, f Template:Lang
G, g Template:Lang
H, h Template:Lang
I, i Template:Lang
J, j Template:Lang
K, k Template:Lang
L, l Template:Lang
M, m Template:Lang
N, n Template:Lang
O, o Template:Lang
P, p Template:Lang
Q, q Template:Lang
R, r Template:Lang
S, s Template:Lang
T, t Template:Lang
U, u Template:Lang
V, v Template:Lang
W, w Template:Lang
X, x Template:Lang
Y, y Template:Lang
Z, z Template:Lang
Å, å Template:Lang
Ä, ä Template:Lang
Ö, ö Template:Lang

References

Template:Reflist

Template:Language orthographies

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