Finnish pronunciation of English

Introduction

The ways in which Finns pronounce English is probably interesting as such to some readers of this book. It is relevant to pronunciation of English names in Finnish speech, as it may involve deeper adaptation to Finnish in order to the phenomena described in the preceding section. Moreover, it illustrates some phonetic features of Finnish as looked from a different perspective.

British English as the standard

English is spoken by Finns mostly according to what people have learned at school and to some extent from other sources. It generally tries to follow British English (Received Pronunciation), since this is what has commonly been regarded as standard in Finland and treated as neutral, as opposite to American or other accent. For example, a word-final “r” is usually not pronounced when speaking English, though it is usually pronounced when using English words in Finnish. Thus, “Baker” is pronounced [beikə] in English speech but normally [beikker] in Finnish speech. In inflected forms, the “r” is pronounced even when otherwise following British English strictly, e.g. Bakerin [beikərin].

Dominance of written text

Most Finns are more familiar with using English as a written language than in spoken form. There are many exceptions, of course, and most Finns hear a lot of English in TV and movies, since they are subtitled, not dubbed (except for those intended for small children). However, they are more used to reading and writing than to listening to and speaking.

This means that Finns may get into trouble with using long, complicated, and unfamiliar words, trying to pronounce them “as written”, i.e. using Finnish sound values for letters, if they have not learned the word in spoken form, too. For example, if they are unsure about the pronunciation of the noun “console”, they might say [konsole] instead of [konsəul], especially since the Finnish equivalent is konsoli.

As an implication, Finns often mispronounce English words that are in some way exceptional so that the pronunciation cannot be be inferred from the spelling by applying simple rules. For example, mispronouncing “swap” as [swäp] (or [sväp]) instead of [swop] is common, and you might even hear “header” spoken as [hiidə].

Common mistakes

The following features are common when Finns speak English. They can be classified as errors in such contexts, whereas in pronunciation of English words in Finnish speech, we may call them just features.

• Quality of vowels is not observed. In particular, Finns tend to pronounce words like “fill” and “feel” with the same vowel, just short and long, respectively, [fil] and [fiil]. Using a long vowel does not cause problems, but using the same quality of vowel, instead of a more open [i], can be a problem to a listener that primarily observes the quality, not quantity. The issue is similar with “full” and “fool”.
• Contrast between voiced stops [b], [d], [g] and unvoiced stops [p], [t], [k] tends to be insufficient: the voiced stops are incompletely voiced or even unvoiced, and there is no aspiration in unvoiced stop. This may make “bat” and “pat” sound confusingly similar. As a less problematic feature, Finnish [t] is dental (the tongue touches upper teeth), hence different from English “t”.
• There tends to be insufficient contrast between [s], [š], [z], [ž], which might all be pronounced much a like an [s] sound with some [š] style. This might make “sip”, “ship”, and “zip” too alike. But Finns have a tendency to read letter z as [ts], which may help sometimes, or confuse in a different way.
• The English “v” is usually mispronounced as Finnish [v], which is a different sound and may be confused with the English “w” sound.
• The English “w” is often read much the same as [v], sometimes as [u], which is used even in some old pronunciation instructions: Wallace [uolis].
• No distinction is usully made between voiced and unvoiced “th”, as in “this” vs. “thing”, and typically an unvoiced “th” is used. The pronunciation can be even more different from English, for example [t], [th], [d], or even [r].
• The neutral vowel [ə], like initial vowel of “about”, is often pronounced either as [ö] or according to the spelling, e.g. [öbaut] or [abaut].
• The stressed syllable is often not as clearly stressed as it should be, and the Finnish feature of simulating foreign stress with consonant doubling is often manifested in English speech, too. E.g. “snooping” might be pronounced [snuuppiŋ].
• Stress can be on a wrong syllable, especially in less common words, e.g. “equivalent” might be pronounced [ékwivälənt], with stress on the first syllable as in Finnish, instead of [ikwívələnt].