Handbook of Finnish, 2nd edition

Preface

The purpose of this book

This book is a manual of the Finnish language, describing its features and difficulties in addition to the basic grammar, word derivation information, spelling and style guidance, etc. This is not a textbook but a reference. The idea is that you can use the book to check specific issues in Finnish that are important to you in some occasion. For example, a reader with limited or maybe no previous knowledge about Finnish can consult this book to find information about a particular phenomenon or language form in Finnish, about the way to write some notation in Finnish, or about some specific difficulty in translating into Finnish.

However, the book can also be read systematically to get a more thorough understanding of Finnish and to find new interesting pos­si­bil­i­ties or pitfalls in the language. For this, you probably need to know Finnish well enough to read simple newspaper text or to use Finnish in simple everyday conversation.

In principle, no previous knowledge is assumed, but in practice, most people would find this book hard to read if they do not know Finnish at all—unless they are linguists or polyglots. The problem would be lack of motivation and general framework. For example, due to the systematic approach, the book has a long discussion of variation of word stems and suffixes before it deals with specific suffixes and their meanings.

The links in this book mostly refer to pages in English. However, there are some links to material in Finnish, for readers who wish to read more thorough descriptions of things discussed here. Such material may require fairly good under­standing of Finnish. You might wish to try to use some automatic trans­lation software to get an idea of the content, though. Such links are marked in a special way; example: Iso suomen kielioppi (ISK). ISK is a large descriptive grammar of Finnish; the printed version has about 2,000 pages. For features of Finnish, ISK is the basic reference in general; therefore, this book does not usually link to ISK but to specialized material elsewhere.

The scope of this book

This book primarily describes standard written Finnish, but common features of spoken Finnish are presented both as a summary and in the context of normal presentation of the grammar. In addition, widespread “language errors” (i.e., deviations from language norms) are discussed, since the purpose is also to help to understand written and spoken language in the wild.

The book also covers many topics that most grammars do not deal with, such as details of pronunciation, adaption of foreign words into Finnish, various notational conventions that differ from those used in English, and even dialects and poetic language.

The vocabulary of a language, including information about the inflection patterns, as well as the use of phrases belongs to dictionaries and phrase books rather than a manual like this. However, this book contains some information about vocabulary, including word derivation and composition. It also describes forms of common words as used in spoken language, since these are not that well covered in dictionaries. Moreover, meanings of example words are often given in parentheses, when this seems to be relevant to under­stand­ing the general description. Consulting a good dictionary is useful, though, especially since the descriptions of meanings in this book are very brief.

Suggestions to different types of readers

Even people who speak Finnish well, perhaps as their native language, may find this book interesting. An analysis of a language feature may give you a deeper understanding of something that you use fluently at the practical level. Moreover, such understanding helps a native speaker of Finnish to avoid language errors when speaking a foreign language: we all tend to use features of our native language in other languages, too. This book also describes features that are not in widespread use in modern language but help you to understand older texts—and maybe to enrich your own texts with carefully used “old Finnish”.

In particular, this book documents phenomena that are common in Finnish but generally not described in textbooks or grammars. For example, actual pronunciation of foreign names in Finnish often greatly differs from the instructions given in encyclopedias and other sources.

People learning Finnish at an early phase may find descriptions in this book useful for orientation, for explaining background, and especially for dealing with complicated phenomena, such as word inflection. Language learning is both cumulative (you just add new words, phrases, etc., to the repertoire you have) and perceptional (you learn completely new concepts and ideas). This book mainly helps with the latter, though as an aside, you will learn new words as well.

People who know Finnish well can read this book systematically to improve their command of the language, written and spoken. This is useful especially to people who have mostly learned the language by the natural method. This book can be also used as a reference book when you are uncertain about some features of the language.

Translators, interpreters, and localizers can use this book as a reference to Finnish grammar, orthography, and to some extent style. This book discusses both normative rules of Finnish and common usage; the latter may be relevant e.g. when translating informal material or dialogues.

The structure of this book

This book is divided into sections grouped into chapters. The sections are numbered consecutively through the entire book. Within each section, and even each subsection, the presentation proceeds from simple descriptions to finer details and exceptions, if possible. In systematic reading, if you find some topic covered in more detail than you care about on first reading, just skip to the next section (or subsection).

The single-page version of this book is large, but it might be suitable e.g. for doing searches over the entire content. Normally, you would use the version consisting of sections, with an index page for selecting them.

The overall structure of this book is the following:

• First, some general information about Finnish is presented for orientation, in chapters “Historical and cultural background” and “Key features of Finnish”. The latter describes principles of using suffixes, phenomena like variation in word stem in inflection, and other general concepts and principles. Many features are described here at the general level, to be repeated in more concrete forms later.
• The chapter “Pronunciation and writing” then describes the rules for writing and pronunciation, covering differences between them in detail. It also presents punctuation rules and special writing rules applied in various notations, such as dates and monetary quantities.
• The vocabulary is described next. For practical reasons, this part consists of three chapters: “Vocabulary”, “Word derivation”, and “Compound words”.
• Then the parts of speech are described, in chapters “Nouns”, “Adjectives”, “Adverbs”, “Pronouns”, “Numerals”, “Particles”, and “Word-like suffixes". The description includes both the formation of inflected forms and their meanings and use. Intermixed with the presentation of parts of speech, there are two chapters “Singular and plural” and “Possessive suffixes”, which would be differently placed in a purely logical order.
• Higher-level structural issues like word order and subclauses are discussed in chapter “Sentence structures”. It also includes things like the choice of the case form of an object, one of the tough parts for advanced learners.
• After this systematic presentation, some additional topics are covered. First, chapter “Poetic features” describes phenomena like alliteration, described as something appearing in normal prose, too, rather than as poetry proper.
• Chapter “Spoken Finnish” describes first common spoken Finnish, a language form that you normally hear in TV, public discussions, and everyday language when it lacks specific dialect features. Then some key features of major dialects are described.
• The last of the normal chapters, “Language technology and Finnish” describes technical aspects, such as writing Finnish on a computer, typesetting Finnish texts, and translation and localization issues specific to Finnish. The chapter starts with an executive summary of the topic, designed to be readable as standalone, too.
• The remaining chapters are appendix-like: “Suffix glossary”, which is an index to derivation, inflection, and other suffixes; “Inflection classes”, which lists the inflection types of noun-like words and verbs; “Compositive forms of verbs”, which covers a large number of forms of verbs used in compound words; “Proper names”, which lists Finnish forms of foreign proper names, with English equivalents and some explantations; “Abbreviations”, which lists the commonly used (and some less common) abbreviations; “Style settings for Finnish in Word”, which has information that is otherwise very difficult to find; “Ref­er­ences”, which describes essential reference material on Finnish, mostly in Finnish, in printed or online form; and “Finnish grammar terms”, which lists Finnish-language terms used in Finnish grammars, with English equivalents.

About this book

This book was first published in 2015 as an e‑book by the Finnish company E‑painos. In July and August 2025, the author, Jukka K. Korpela, converted it to HTML format and made some corrections and additions. The resulting second edition was published August 20, 2025.

Notations used in this book

Historical and cultural background

A short history of Finnish

Language forms similar to modern Finnish have been spoken in the current area of Finland and some neighboring areas for a long time, but it is unknown how long. The oldest written evidence is in a birch bark letter from the 13th century. These language forms are the origin of what are now regarded as Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, and some other languages, collectively known as Finnic (or Fennic or Balto-Fennic) languages. They have been heavily influenced by Baltic, Slavic, and Germanic languages, but mostly in vocabulary only. To some extent, and somewhat debatably, Germanic languages have also affected some features of grammatical structures.

The Finnish language, in the strict sense of the word, was created in the 16th century when a literary standard form was developed for a Bible translation and other religious purposes, based mostly in the language form spoken in the area of Turku (in southwest Fin­land). It was later developed by adapting features from other language forms (“dialects”), by adopting a more uniform orthography, and by extending the vocabulary in a planned manner especially in the 19th century, for use in administration, science, etc.

For centuries, religious use was the main context of using standard Finnish, as opposite to the local language forms, or “dialects”. Administration, education, etc. used Swedish, because Finland was part of Sweden (until 1808–1809). This was not changed by the annexation of Finland to Russia, though Russian was taken into use in some contexts in administration. However, later in the 19th century, there were many attempts at establishing a role for Finnish, the language of the majority of people, and it was increasingly used in literary form. In the 1860’s, a decision was made to give Finnish an official position along with Swedish.

The use of Finnish in official contexts as well as in literature and public communication increased, through some difficulties. The language had been just a spoken language in everyday use by mostly uneducated people, on one hand, and a standard language in limited use in the church and some other contexts, on the other hand. The language was developed by introducing a large number of words in all areas of life, often after systematic design. For example, Elias Lönnrot, the author of Kalevala, the national epos, also created a large number of Finnish terms for botany.

The standard variant of Finnish is known as yleiskieli (general/common language) or, especially in written form, as kirjakieli (book language) in Finnish. It has been taught at school, and it has been widely adopted. However, like most standard languages, it is really nobody’s native language. Radio, tv, and the Internet have made the common spoken language of the Helsinki area largely known and imitated in other areas, too, so we can say that in addition to standard literary Finnish and old local language forms, dialects, there is also a common “standard” spoken language. To many people, it is their most natural language, which they use in speech and often in informal writing, too, though they may switch to the standard literary variant in some contexts (like speaking to someone who does not seem to speak Finnish fluently).

From the late 20th century, the influence of English has been considerable especially in technology, science, humanities, and administration. The impact has mostly been limited to vocabulary and phrases.

How is Finnish related to other languages?

The Finnish language, now spoken by over 5 million people, belongs to the Fenno-Ugric group of the Uralic languages. Uralic (or Uralian) languages are called that way because they are spoken both to the west and to the east of the Ural Mountains and their original area is thought to be somewhere in the vicinity of those mountains.

Estonian and Karelian are close relatives of Finnish, but mutual intelligibility is rather limited. Both Estonian and Karelian have considerable internal variation, and each of them is divided into two or more languages according to some scholars. These languages, in addition to some small languages, are classified as Finnic languages

The Sámi languages, spoken in Northern Finland and Scandinavia, are more remote relatives. Hungarian, the largest of Uralic languages, is very different from Finnish—linguistic comparisons were needed to establish that the languages are related at all. Other Uralic languages, such as Mari, are mostly spoken in various areas in Russia.

The following table of the first three numerals in some Uralian languages illustrates the similarities and differences.

The Uralic family of languages is possibly related to Indo-European languages (such as English, German, Swedish, Latin, Russian, Hindi, etc), but the relationship is highly debatable. The arguments are based on a few similarities which might, according to other scholars, be based on language universals, loanwords, or pure coincidences. Some similarities in vocabularies are caused by relatively new loanwords which were taken into Finnish, largely via Swedish, due to strong cultural contacts (only very few words have gone in the opposite direction).

There are several structural similarities between Uralian and Turkic languages (such as Turkish), for example vowel harmony. However, linguists generally do not regard the undeniable typological similarities as evidence for common origin.

Is Finnish a difficult language?

It depends on your background and attitude whether Finnish is a difficult language. Generally, a person who speaks e.g. English, French, Spanish, or German as his native language will learn any of the other languages more easily than Finnish. The reason is that Finnish belongs to an entirely different group of languages and has both a different structure and its own vocabulary, where you won’t see many words you know from other languages.

Finnish is a strongly suffix-oriented language. To English-speaking people, for example, this poses both a conceptual difficulty and a practical challenge. First, you need to get acquainted with the princples of using suffixes. Second, you need to learn the actual suffixes and their use, which is comparable to learning a large number of prepositions.

The difficulties are often exaggerated, however. Although a Finnish word can have dozens of inclined forms, many forms are rather rare. For example, Finnish is conventionally described as having 14 or 15 cases for nouns, but 2 cases (nominative and genitive) cover well over 60% of occurrences. A word can have a large number of different suffixes, with no theoretical upper bound, but difficult clusters of suffixes are rare.

The pronunciation is rather regular, with some exceptions like doubling of consonants at word boundaries under certain conditions. Some sounds or combinations of sounds can be difficult to learn; e.g. “ö” and “y” and syllable-final “h” (which do not exist in English).

Learning a Finnish word usually means that you also need to learn something about its inflection, such as a few thematic forms. Learning that “elk” is hirvi in Finnish is not sufficient for using the word properly; you also need to know whether its genitive is hirven or hirvin (it’s the former) so that you can form its different case forms. On the hand, you do not need to learn the grammatical gender (there is none), and you do not need to learn the written and spoken form of a word separately.

Where is Finnish spoken?

Finnish is spoken mainly in Finland, where it is the native language of about 90% of the population. People with Swedish as their native language generally speak Finnish well, and many of them are truly bilingual, whereas other language minorities have rather varying skills in Finnish.

Finnish is also spoken by about 450,000 people in Sweden, though the estimates on this vary a lot. In other neighboring countries, Finnish-speaking minorities are much smaller. There are also Finnish-speaking people in the US, Canada, Australia, etc., but the use of Finnish has decreased there.

Two dialects of Finnish, meänkieli (meidän kieli) and kveeni in Norway, have been defined as languages by the national authorities. Of these, meänkieli, spoken in northern Sweden by about 30,000 people, is relatively close to standard Finnish, and it is linguistically one of the northern dialects of Finnish.

Variants of Finnish

Like almost any living language, Finnish exists in several different variants. “Standard Finnish” is what grammars, dictionaries, and textbooks mostly deal with, and it is taught at schools and used in public presentations and formal occasions. It is hardly anyone’s native language, though.

In the old days, people learned a local language version, or “dialect”, as their native language. We will cover some main features of major dialects in this book. In urban areas, and even more generally, differences between dialects have partly been leveled down. Especially young and urban people tend to use “common spoken Finnish”, which differs from standard Finnish in several ways. It might even be called standard spoken Finnish, even though it lacks all formal standards.

Later in this book, basic deviations of standard spoken Finnish from standard (written) Finnish and some features of dialects of Finnish will be described. Standard spoken Finnish is what you can expect to hear in informal discussions between people from different areas of Finland or people living in the Helsinki area, where the use of dialectal features is uncommon. The language used e.g. in TV and radio broadcasts tends to be standard spoken Finnish in informal programs, standard Finnish in news, interviews of officials, etc., though spoken language features may be used intentionally or unintentionally in them. Standard spoken Finnish can be characterized as the common spoken language in Helsinki, originally reflecting some dialectal features, but now recognized as rather neutral with respect to dialects. Especially radio, TV, and to some extent films made it known and imitated in other parts of the country.

In addition, there are local slangs and professional jargons. These language forms are not discussed much in this book.

Regulation of Finnish

In this book, we refer to standard Finnish as a language form that follows the norms and conventions defined for written Finnish. As with other languages, this is not a matter of standards issued by standards organizations, except for a few issues. Instead, the rules are set by language authorities, such as Kielitoimisto (language bureau), which has had different organization statuses; now it is a department of Kotimaisten kielten keskus, Kotus (Institute for the Languages of Finland). There is also suomen kielen lautakunta (Board for the Finnish language), working in cooperation with Kotus.

The national standard SFS 4175 Numeroiden ja merkkien kirjoittaminen (with the English title “Typing of numbers, marks and signs”) specifies several notational conventions.

The recommendations of the authorities can be characterized as “official”, but they have no legal status. However, they have widely been regarded as defining what is correct and what is not. In recent years, the recommendations have partly been changed to a more liberal direction, causing protests.

There is a large number of language guides for Finnish in Finnish, mostly promoting the rules of the language authorities, but partly with some added principles and intentional or unintentional deviation from the “official” rules. The most extensive online guide is Nykyajan kielenopas, by the author of this book. Section Official language guides lists some official printed and online materia by Kotus.

Publishers and educational institutions have their own guides, but they are mostly limited to presenting special rules only. They typically emphasize some principles in the official rules, present some deviations from them, or give some added instructions on matters not covered by them. Thus, the situation is different from the regulation of English, which is largely handled by major publishers and language guides issued by them.

Key features of Finnish

Finnish as a suffix-rich language

Use of suffixes

Finnish uses suffixes—short parts of a word appended to a word—for a wide range of purposes. Suffixes are used to form different cases of a noun, largely for the same purposes as English uses prepositions. In English, we say “at school”; in Finnish, this is one word, koulussa, consisting of the base koulu (school) and the case suffix ssa. Some suffixes of nouns, conventionally called possessive suffixes, are used to express association with a person or a thing: “my school” is kouluni in Finnish.

Suffixes of verbs are used to express person, tense, and mood. The verb from sanoisin means “I would say”, with sano being the verb base, isi being the suffix of the conditional mood, and n being the person suffix for first person singular.

To take a more complicated example, juoksentelisinkohan (I wonder if I should run around aimlessly) is one of the examples often presented about the complexity of Finnish word forms. Its division into morphemes (parts that have a meaning of their own) is: juokse|ntel|isi|n|ko|han. It starts with the verb stem juokse- (to run; infinitive: juosta). This is followed by the suffix -ntel-, which is one of the variants of a derivational suffix that indicates repeated action, often with some other change in meaning, too (hence “to run around aimlessly”). The -isi- suffix is the conditional suffix, -n- is 1st person singular suffix, -ko is an interrogative suffix (turning the verb to a predicate of a question), and -han is a suffix with varying meanings, such as softening a question or turning it to express doubt (hence “I wonder if”).

Suffixes as the only form of inflection

Adding suffixes is the only way of inflecting words in Finnish, though this may involve changes in word stem. In linguistics (but not in this book), the inflection of nouns, adjectives, and numerals is often called declension, and the inflection of verbs is often called conjugation.

To be exact, some inflection of pronouns means using infixes, something added inside a word, rather than at the end, e.g. joka : jonka (which : of which). However, these are formally described in terms of using suffixes and an invariable ending like ka.

Some features of Finnish may look like stem inflection in the same sense as in English use of vowel alteration inside a word, e.g. “sing : sang : sung”. The words vyössä and vöissä are forms of the Finnish word vyö (belt), in the inessive case, in singular and plural. So it may look like Finnish formed the plural by changing the diphthong yö to the diphthong öi. Here the plural suffix is i, but it causes changes in the form stem: yö before i is simplified to ö.

Inflection of noun-like words

Finnish nouns have 14 or 15 case forms, most of which have both a singular form and a plural form. The plural forms have a plural suffix before the case suffix. Adjectives, pronouns, and numerals have in principle the same case forms as nouns, but pronouns have many specialties in this respect.

Word-like suffixes

Some suffixes, called word-like suffixes or enclitic particles, are comparable to independent words in meaning but attached to another word. Many of them have varying and even idiomatic usage, which is difficult to master. One of the simplest suffix of this kind is kin, which basically corresponds to “also” or “too”, so that e.g. koulussakin means “at school, too”. Instead of this suffix, the separate adverb myös (e.g., myös koulussa) can often be used. However, the kin suffix may have a special tone or even special meanings.

Suffixes in word derivation

Suffixes are also widely used for word derivation. Words with multiple derivational suffixes are common in Finnish. For example, from tila (status, state, condition), the word tilasto (statistics) has been derived, and from it, the verb stem tilastoi- (to collect statistics) has been formed—and this can go on, e.g. tilastointi means the act or process of collecting statistics.

Few prefixes

Suffixes and compound words are by far the most important methods of forming new words in Finnish. Prefixes are used much less, and all prefixes can actually be explained as words used in compounds rather than true prefixes. The common negative prefixes are ei- and epä-, corresponding to English “non-” or “un-”, but they can be regarded as forms of the negation verb.

Order of suffixes

The order of suffixes is regular: derivational suffixes come first, then inflectional suffixes, then possessive suffixes, and finally the word-like suffixes. For example, the word tilastoinnissammekin consists of the base word tila, the derivational suffixes sto, i-, and nni- (a contextual variant of nti), the case suffix ssa, the possessive suffix mme, and the enclicitic kin. In English, the corresponding expression is “in our process of collecting statistics, too”. In inflection of nouns, the plural indicator (i or j) precedes the case suffix.

The following figure illustrates the order of suffixes in an another example, varastoistasiko (from your stores, with an interrogative suffix ko; such a form is used in questions of a particular type).

A word may contain several derivational suffixes and several enclitic suffixes. Only one plural suffix, one case suffix, and one possessive suffix may appear. As an exception, the word montaa, a double partitive form of moni (many) with two partitive suffixes ta and a, is now accepted in standard language. The words sinällään and sinälleen (as such) have the essive suffix nä and another case suffix (adessive llä or allative lle) are in use, but regarded as substandard; the simpler sinänsä (or sillään) and silleen are recommended.

Few small words

Due to the extensive use of suffixes, Finnish has relatively few “small words”. It has no articles and almost no prepositions. Very short words are usually conjunctions, common pronouns, interjections, or other affective particles.

Synthetic language

Finnish is often characterized as a “synthetic” language, as opposite to e.g. English, which is largely “analytic” language. Synthetic languages express relationships using suffixes or other inflection of words, whereas analytic languages use auxiliary words or word order for the same purpose.

How suffix-rich, really?

Although Finnish uses suffixes heavily, it is possible to exaggerate this. In contests for the longest word, you may encounter words like epä­järjes­tel­mällis­tyttä­mättö­myy­del­län­sä­kään­k­öhän. It is understandable in principle, but would never be used in practice. There is no theoretical upper limit on the amount of suffixes in a word, but at some point, words just become incomprehensible if they have too many suffixes.

In spoken language and in informal writing, very long words are rare, and separate words might be used instead of or in addition suffixes. For example, instead of kouluni, common spoken language uses mun kouluni, expressing the first person singular in two ways, or simpler mun koulu, using just the genitive of a personal pronoun (mun is a spoken form of the literary minun).

Similarly, many complicated word forms that you might see mentioned as good examples of the suffix-rich, synthetic nature of Finnish are more or less just literary creations. A word like kirjoitettuasi corresponds to a multi-word clause in English: “after you have/had written”. However, you rarely hear such words. Normal spoken language, as well as informal written language, would use a clause that is structurally close to the English example: kun olet/olit kirjoittanut.

Considering only inflection, not word derivation or word-like particles that may be appended to words, Finnish has about 140 forms for a noun and about 260 forms for a verb.

Lexicalization

Inflection suffixes create new forms of a word, whereas derivational suffixes create new words. The difference is conventional and relative, though. In particular, derived forms often become used as independent words and lose connection with their base word. This is called lexicalization.

Quite often, a lexicalized form still survives as an inflection form, too. For example, the postposition jälkeen (after), e.g. tämän jälkeen (after this), is a lexicalization of the illative form of jälki (track, trace), thus originally meaning “into the track/trace of…”. It is still possible to use it as a normal inflected form of jälki, too. This may be confusing, but mostly a lexicalized form is used primarily in its special meaning; when such an interpretation is impossible, it is interpreted as an inflected form.

Impact of word formation

Due to extensive use of word derivation and compound words, Finnish words that are related to the same concept are often related in an apparent way. This may help in learning new words, and it makes many words easier even to native speakers to the language. Compare, for example, the English words “botany” and “phytology”, with no roots in the basic vocabulary of English, with their Finnish counterpart kasvitiede, formed from the common words kasvi (plant) and tiede (science).

On the other hand, the repetition of the same base word can be stylistically disturbing, and Finnish writers and translators often need to take extra measures to avoid too much repetition. It is easy to construct sentences that are formally quite correct but ridiculous due to base word repetition, e.g. Kirjailija kirjoitti kirjeen kirjastossa (An author wrote a letter in a library).

It is easy to present examples of dozens and hundreds of words based on a single root word. However, such sets of words do not always form a cluster of interrelated words in the mind of a native speaker. For example, it is easy to see that järjestelmällinen (systematic) is derived from järjestelmä (system), but the latter is not intuitively seen as ultimately a derivative of järki (reason, sense), even though it historically is. Irregular changes in word stem may hide the relationships. For example, probably only a Finn who has studied the history of the language recognizes the verbs käydä (to visit etc.) and kävellä (to walk) as related.

Congruence

The congruence concept

As a general concept, congruence means that the grammatical form of a word is the same as the form of another word, at least in some respect. This need not mean that the suffixes are the same. For example, the expression iso kala (small fish) has the illative form isoon kalaan; the suffixes here are different, on and an, but they both are illative suffixes.

We can express congruence by saying that a word congrues with another word.

Congruence is sometimes called agreement.

Congruence between adjective and noun

An adjective used as an attribute of a noun congrues with the noun. A simple example was given above. If a noun has several adjectives as its attributes, they all congrue with it. For example, uusi punainen auto means “new red car”, and to express “in a/the new car”, we need to put all the words into the inessive case (ssA case): uudessa punaisessa autossa.

Congruence may make expressions sound or look funny in their repetitiveness. On the other hand, it often makes the structure of a sentence easier to see: you can infer that words probably belong to the same expression when they are in the same case form.

Many Indo-European language have congruence to some extent, but English has lost it. Congruence shows little signs of vanishing from Finnish, except for expressions like trade names in marketing texts. When a large shopping center was opened with the name Iso omena, “big apple”, the name was used without congruence, e.g. Iso omenassa, for some time. Due to people’s protests, normal congruence, e.g. Isossa omenassa, became dominant. On the other hand, long trade names of products are nowadays common, and in them, companies tend to inflect only the last word, e.g. Valio rasvaton maito : Valio rasvaton maitoa (instead of rasvatonta maitoa). However, such names are not used outside marketing texts.

Exceptions to congruence of attributes

There are some exceptions to congruence, i.e. expressions with incongruence. A few adjectives such as pikku (little) are always uninflected, i.e. they always have the same form. For example, we say pikku poika (a little boy), pikku pojalle, pikku pojan etc.; often compound words like pikkupoika are used instead of such expressions, with a slight difference in meaning. The most common uninflected adjectives are: aika, aimo, ensi, eri, joka, kelpo, koko, melko, pikku, tosi, viime. Some of these are also used as nouns, with inflection (e.g. aika : ajan : ajat), and tosi is an inflected adjective when used in the meaning “true”. Colloquially, some nouns are used as uninflected adjectives, e.g. ihme (meaning “miracle” as a noun, “weird” as an adjective).

There are also several sayings where congruence is broken so that an adjective and a noun are both inflected, but in different cases. From hyvä (good) and mieli (mind, state of mind), we can form the expression hyvällä mielellä (in good mood), but we can alternatively use plural forms, and then the parts are in different cases: hyvillä mielin (instead of hyvillä mielillä). The form hyvillä is adessive, the form mielin is instructive plural, having here the same meaning as the adessive. The noun can also be in the partitive case, e.g. pitkän aikaa (for a long time).

In some phrases, incongruence is obligatory, but in others, it varies with a congruent phrase. Additional examples, in alphabetic order by the main word (the noun): vähän aikaa, vähäksi aikaa, sillä aikaa, tällä erää, tällä haavaa, näillä keinoin ∼ keinoilla, samalla kertaa ∼ kerralla, missä kohtaa ∼ kohdin ∼ kohdassa, näillä main ∼ mailla, pahoilla mielin, kaikella muotoa, missä määrin, näiltä nurkin ∼ nurkilta, tältä osin ∼ osalta, toiselle puolen ∼ puolelle, puolelta päivin, näillä main ∼ mailla, näillä seuduin ∼ näillä seuduilla, tällä tapaa ∼ tavoin ∼ tavalla, tällä tietoa, yksissä tuumin, sillä välin.

Such expressions may have incongruence in number, too. If the main word is in the instructive, it is plural, as the instructive almost always is, but the attribute can be singular, e.g. tällä keinoin as an alternative to näillä keinoin (by this means).

Congruence between two nouns

In Finnish, a noun that is an attribute of another noun is normally in the genitive, e.g. Helsingin alue (Helsinki area), so there is no question of congruence. However, a title or a job description of a person may appear before a name, e.g. tohtori Lehto (doctor Lehto). Although it is somewhat debatable what the grammatical structure is in such expressions, the following principles are applied:

• A simple title indicating a degree, honorary position, or job title is uninflected, e.g. tohtori Lehdolle. A title can be regarded as simple even though it consists of several words, if it is an established expression with a fixed meaning, e.g. tekniikan tohtori (PhD in technology).
• A description is normally inflected, congruing with the name, e.g. tuotanto-osaston johtaja tohtori Lehto : tuotanto-osaston johtajalle tohtori Lehdolle (doctor Lehto, the director of production division).
• When it is not clear whether a simple title or a description is present, it can be inflected or uninflected, but the tendency is to keep it uninflected. E.g. the word syytetty (the accused) is normally treated like a title, syytetty Virtanen : syytetty Virtaselle, even though it is not a title but indicates the role of a person in a certain context. The language standards in this issue used to be relatively strict but complicated; now it is permitted to keep all titles uninflected.

A proper name may have a common noun before it, characterizing the type of thing denoted, e.g. hotelli Adlon (hotel Adlon). When the common noun has no attributes, it is always uninflected, e.g. hotelli Adlonissa. When it has attributes, it is inflected, e.g. kaupungin parhaassa hotellissa Adlonissa (in Adlon, the best hotel in the city).

Finnish personal names are combinations of two or more nouns. In them, only the last part (surname) is inflected, e.g. Jukka Korpela : Jukka Korpelalle.

Congruence in number

The congruence described above applies also to number, i.e. the use of plural versus singular. For example, we say iso talo (big house) : isossa talossa (in a/the big house) : isoissa taloissa (in big houses), where the last two words both have the plural suffix i before the case suffix ssa.

When the noun is plural in its form but singular in meaning (a plurale tantum word), congruence follows the grammatical form, e.g. kauniit kasvot (beautiful face).

A predicate and a predicative usually congrue with the subject in number, e.g. Tämä on hyvä auto (This is a good car) but Nämä ovat hyviä autoja (These are good cars), where all words are in plural form. This is described in more detail in chapter Singular and plural.

Congruence of verbs

When the subject of a clause is a personal pronoun, the predicate is in the corresponding personal form, e.g. minä tiedän (I know), sinä tiedät (you know). This is an important phenomenon, but it is not congruence in the sense described above, since the grammatical form is not the same.

It is customary to say that the predicate congrues with the subject in number, even though the plural of a verb and the plural of a noun are different concepts. For example, we say ministeri tietää (the minister knows), but ministerit tietävät (the ministers know). There are some exceptions to such “congruence” in standard language, and in common spoken language, it is largely absent—we say ministerit tietää.

Parts of speech

Words in Finnish can be divided into the following broad classes:

• Noun-like (or name-like) words: nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and numerals. There is no suitable name for this class in common use in English, though the word “nominals” is sometimes used; the Finnish term is nominit. These words have inflection in cases and singular/plural distinction.
• Verbs. They have inflection in person, tense, and mood. Some inflected forms of verbs, namely participles and infinitives, have dual essence: they also have properties of name-like words, like case forms.
• Particles. This covers all other words: adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, postpositions, and interjections. They have no inflection as such, though many adverbs are originally case forms of nouns, and some words might be interpreted either as adverbs or as noun forms that have special use.

Syllable boundaries

The syllable concept

The division of words to syllables is largely conventional, but it relates to real phenomena in pronunciation. A syllable break does not break the flow of sounds, but it may affect the relative strengths of sounds. For example, the Finnish word maanosa is a compound that consists of the parts maan and osa. This division is also a syllable break, and this means that there is a secondary stress on the syllable o, giving the vowel higher strength. It is this stress, rather than any pause, that may create the impression of a two-part word.

Mostly syllable breaks do not cause any direct audible effect. Syllable division is, however, important for several reasons:

• it affects consonant gradation, described in the next two sections
• it affects the placement of secondary stress
• in poetry, syllables are used as basic units

Syllable division is not the same thing as hyphenation as used for word division. Hyphenation is allowed at syllable breaks only, but not every syllable break is a permitted hyphenation point.

Open and closed syllables in consonant gradation

Syllables are important in Finnish due to their effect on consonant gradation, which is one form of stem variation. For example, the plural of lakki (cap) is lakit, where the double kk has turned into a single k.

In consonant gradation, the stem depends on whether a syllable is open or closed. In this context, the syllable concept is metric, and a syllable is open if it ends with a vowel (which can be a short vowel or a long vowel or part of a diphthong) and closed if it ends with a consonant. This can be alternatively formulated as follows: a syllable is closed if its vowels are followed by a consonant cluster or a word-final consonant.

Determining syllable boundaries

To divide a word to syllables, we first need to split it to component words if it is a compound word (closed compound).

Otherwise, the syllable concept is defined so that there is a syllable boundary within a word before the last consonant of any consonant cluster. Thus, a single consonant between two vowels starts a syllable, and in when there are two consonants between two vowels, the syllable boundary is between the consonants.

There is also a syllable boundary between vowels, too, unless they form a long vowel or diphthong. In syllables other than the first one, diphthongs are possible only with i, u, or y as the second component (with few exceptions). It is not always possible to infer the location of syllable boundary in a group of three (or more) vowels without information about words and even their meanings. For example, the written form hauista can have the syllable structure hau.is.ta or the structure ha.uis.ta, depending on meaning. This spelling can be a form of three different words: hauis, hauki, haku. For the first two, the form hauista contains the diphthong au; for the third one, it contains the diphthong ui. In such words, it is permitted, but not common, to indicate the syllable boundary with a hyphen: hau’ista or ha’uista.

In the following examples, a period “.” is used to indicate syllable boundary:

• ka.la
• saa.lis
• o.me.na
• kau.la
• kais.la
• kors.ke.a
• keit.ti.ö

As the examples show, there can be a syllable consisting of a single short vowel only at the start or at the end of a word. However, in word division, it is not permitted to separate such a syllable from the rest of a word, to another line. Thus, there are three syllables in the word keittiö, but only one permitted word division point (hyphenation point). The word asioin has three syllables, a.si.oin, but no good word division point.

Variation in word stem and in suffixes

Finnish has often been characterized as an agglutinative language, in the typological classification of languages. This is misleading, however. A purely agglutinative language uses affixes (suffixes, infixes, or prefixes) that are “glued” to base words so that both the base word and the affix remain unchanged. In Finnish, the affix often varies, and it often causes changes in word stem.

Word inflection and derivation is partly agglutinative in Finnish; e.g. kouluni (my school) simply combines an unchanged base word koulu with an unchanged possessive suffix ni). Howeverm there is considerable variation both in stems and suffixes. The only stems with no variation are those that end with the short vowel o, u, ö, or y and that vowel is preceded by something else than a consonant k, p, or t participating in consonant gradiation. To be exact, there are also some word stems that invariably end with e (e.g. nalle : nalle|n), but in most stems, a final e varies with either i or ee (e.g., kivi : kive|n, aine : ainee|n).

Word stem means the part of a word that does not include suffixes (or other affixes). It is not always the same as the dictionary form, and it may vary between forms of the word. For example, the dictionary form rikas (rich) has a stem that differs from most case forms; the stem is rikkaa- in most singular forms and rikka- in most plural forms.

Most of the stem changes can be described in simple terms, though quite a few rules are needed to describe all the variation. A very common variation in the stem is a phenomenon called consonant gradation, e.g. so that the plural of kauppa (shop; trade) is kaupat, with the double pp turning to the single p when the plural suffix t is appended. In these examples, the stem has two forms, kauppa- and kaupa-; in plural forms, this word has additionally the stems kauppo- and kaupo-.

The most common variation in suffixes is vowel variation due to a principle called vowel harmony. For example, we say kaupassa (in a/the shop) but metsässä (in a/the forest), i.e. the case suffix has two forms ssa and ssä depending on what vowels appear in the base word.

In this book, we describe some of the stem variation by writing different forms separated by a colon “:”. This a common convention in Finnish grammars. For example, poika : poja- means that the word poika (boy; son) appears in inflected forms mostly as poja-, e.g. in the plural form pojat and in the genitive form pojan.

The nature and origin of stem variation

In addition to consonant gradation and vowel harmony, there is other variation in word stems in Finnish. A good example is verb inflection like juon : join (I drink : I drank), which seem to have the tense expressed by vowel changes in the verb stem, much like in the corresponding English verb. Similarly, the relationship poika : pojan (boy : boy’s), explained in the description of consonant gradation, is substantial word stem inflection.

Knowledge about the history of Finnish may help in understanding and remembering phenomena of the current language. For example, the verb stem juo- (to drink) is based on the earlier form with a long vowel, joo-, which is still in use in Estonian. In past tense forms, i was added to the stem, causing length reduction of the preceding vowel, and a diphthong was born: joi-. Therefore, the past tense forms did not participate in the change that produced juo-.

“Basic forms” can be exceptional

By convention, the basic form of a word is

• nominative singular for a noun, an adjective, a pronoun, or a numeral (collectively called noun-like words)
• I infinitive, short form, for a verb

In Finnish, as in many other languages, the “basic form” (nominative singular) of a noun is often more or less exceptional and deviates from most other forms. For example, words that end with s in the “basic form” have varying types of stems in most other forms, such as tulos : tuloksen (result), with the stem tulokse-, and vapaus : vapauden (freedom), with the stem vapaude-. Language learning might be somewhat easier if dictionaries had the inflectional stem rather than the nominative singular as the key form.

One reason why the basic form is often exceptional is that some phonetic changes have taken place only at the end of a word. For example, at some point of language history, a word-final e was changed to i. Words like kivi originally ended with e in the basic form, too, and had regular inflection: kive : kiven : kivessä etc.

Consonant gradation

Consonant gradation in a nutshell

Consonant gradation is a specific kind of variation inside a word stem. It means variation between alternatives called strong grade and weak grade involving a stop (a k, p, or t sound, or rarely a g, b, or d) at least in the strong grade. The weak grade mostly appears at the start of a closed syllable (i.e., a syllable ending with a consonant).

In the following examples, the n suffix makes the last syllable closed, causing the weak grade: kato : kadon, katto : katon, pelto : pellon. The examples illustrate gradation of t in different contexts.

Basic rules of gradation

Consonant gradation applies to the voiceless stops k, p, and t when they appear as the last consonant of a word stem, as follows:

• If a word has a double consonant kk, pp, or tt in a “strong” position before the end of the word stem, they turn to the corresponding single consonant in a “weak position”. In grammars, this is often called quantitative gradation.
• Single k, p, and t in a strong position similarly turn to –, v, or d, respectively. Here the dash “–” denotes lack of any sound or letter. This is often called qualitative gradation, since the stop changes to another sound of vanishes. Instead of d, almost all dialects have some other sound here (or no sound).

Basically, a position is “strong” if the syllable is open, “weak” otherwise. In addition to calling the position strong or weak, we can also say that the consonants are in the strong grade or in the weak grade.

In consonant gradation when a word has boundary gemination at the end, it is treated as ending in a consonant, corresponding to usual pronunciation. For this reason, most basic forms of nouns ending with e in spelling have strong grade, e.g. liike : liikkeen.

Consider the word hattu (hat). The double tt participates in consonant gradation. In the basic form, the syllable structure is hat.tu, and the open syllable tu causes the strong grade tt. If the suffix n is appended, the last syllable becomes closed, requiring the weak grade t, i.e. hatun (syllable division: ha.tun). The suffix ssa has the same effect, hatussa (ha.tus.sa). What matters here is the syllable tus, since it follows the location where the gradation takes place.

We can describe this also by saying that evey word where consonant gradation takes place has two alternative stems, one with strong grade and one with weak grade, e.g. hattu and hatu. The weak grade is used when a suffix is appended so that the syllable containing the last vowel of the stem becomes closed. Additional examples, with syllable boundaries marked: hat.tu.a, hat.tu.ja, hat.tu.jen but ha.tul.la, ha.tuil.la, ha.tuk.si.

Thus, for example, when the basic form of a word ends with a vowel, forming the nominative plural with the t suffix usually causes consonant gradation. Examples: lakki : lakit (cap), pappi : papit (priest), matto : matot (mat); laki : lait (law), lupa : luvat (permission), koti : kodit (home).

Due to the effects of syllable structure, some consonants that would otherwise participate in gradation remain invariant. For example, the double tt in keittiö (kitchen) remains in all forms: keittiön, keittiössä etc. The reason is that there is a syllable break before the ö in all forms. This word is derived from the verb keittää (to cook), which has regular gradation, e.g. keitän (I cook), keitämme (we cook). But the derivational suffix -iö changes the situation, since it contains a syllable break.

Gradation in consonant combinations

Consonant gradation takes place when the stop (double or single) is between vowels or it is part of a combination that starts with h, l, m, n, or r. However, the hk combination may or may not participate in gradation, depending on the word and on dialect; for some words, both alternatives can be used in standard Finnish (e.g. vihko : vihkon or vihon).

In some combinations of consonants with a stop as the second component, special gradation takes place:

• hk, lk, and rk vary with hj, lj, and rj under certain constraints before e and i, e.g. järki : järjen (reason, as a property of human beings)
• nk varies with ng, e.g. kenkä : kengät (shoe)
• mp varies with mm, e.g. lampi : lammet (small lake)
• lt, nt and rt vary with ll, nn, and rr, e.g. ranta : rannan (shore, beach)
• Otherwise, a stop following another consonant does not participate in gradation, e.g. masto : maston, matka : matkan.

Gradation and the basic form

Since nouns usually end with a vowel in the dictionary form (nominative singular), that form mostly has strong grade, e.g. kukka : kukan (flower). If a noun ends with a consonant in the dictionary form, it has weak grade, e.g. ommel : ompelen (stitch). Dictionary forms ending with e usually have a final consonant in pronunciation (see Boundary gemination) and thus weak grade, e.g. aie : aikeen (intention), syke : sykkeen (pulsation).

In contrast, the dictionary form of a verb (I infinitive) has strong grade, since such forms normally consist of a stem ending in a vowel and the infinitive suffix A, tA, or dA. For example, sulkea (to close) consists of the stem sulke- and the infinitive suffix a. The grade is therefore strong, lk, and in many other forms, as in suljen (I close), it is replaced by the weak grade lj. Contraction verbs like kerrata : kertaan are an exception to this, as described in the next subsection.

Finnish grammars sometimes call gradation “direct”, if the dictionary form has strong grade, as in kukka : kukan, and “indirect” if it has weak grade, as in ommel : ompelen and sulkea : suljen. However, dictionary forms have no special status in gradation.

Exceptions to grade selection

The following exceptions apply to the choice of strong versus weak grade:

• Before a long vowel, the grade is always strong. For example, the illative of kukka (flower) is kukkaan, event though the word ends with a consonant. The reason is that the suffix was earlier han and not an, and in the form kukkahan (still used in some dialects and in poetry), the double consonant kk appears before the final vowel of an open syllable (the syllables are kuk, ka, han).
• In partitive plural forms with a three-syllable stem and tA as case suffix, the grade is weak, e.g. lusikka : lusiko|i|ta.
• In illative plural forms of many words, the weak grade is possible, as an alternative to the strong grade, which follows general rules. In some of these words, the weak grade is more common, e.g. yksikkö : yksiköihin ∼ yksikköihin.
• In other plural case forms, the grade is strong, if the corresponding singular form has a vowel lengthening in suffix (and hence strong grade). For example, the elative plural of rengas (ring) is renkaista, because the elative singular is renkaasta. In contrast, the elative plural of lanka (thread) is langoista, since the elative singular langasta lacks a long vowel.
• The grade is also strong in plural case forms (except the nominative) of words with s : t variation, e.g. (käsi : kädet : kätenä :) käsillä. In such forms, the strong grade t has changed to s (before i) during the history of the language.
• Before a possessive suffix, the grade is always strong. For example, the word forms kukka, kukat (flowers), and kukan (of flower) all become kukkansa, when the 3rd person possessive suffix nsa is appended.
• The basic infinitive of a contraction verb has weak grade, e.g. hakata : hakkaan. The reason why e.g. the 1st person singular form has strong grade is the long vowel. In other types of verbs, the basic infinitive has strong grade and the 1st person singular form has weak grade, e.g. rikkoa : rikon.
• Before a 4th person suffix (called “passive suffix” in most grammars), the grade is always weak. For example, the verb rikkoa (to break) has the strong stem rikko- and the weak stem riko-, e.g. rikkovat (they break), rikon (I break). In 4th person forms, the weak stem is used: rikotaan, rikottiin, rikottaisiin etc.
• In derived verbs with the derivational suffix OidA, the grade is weak before the suffix, e.g. otsikko → otsikoida, isäntä → isännöidä.
• Words that normally participate in boundary gemination are interpreted as ending with a consonant, even if the actual pronunciation in some situations lacks a consonant. Thus, the imperative of ottaa (to take) is ota, with a weak grade as in otan, otat etc., and we have syöte (input), even though the t is in gradation (the genitive is syötteen etc.).

Words exempted from gradation

Consonant gradation is not applied to the following:

• Single stops in
  • relatively new loanwords, such as auto : autot (car)
  • many “made-up” new words, such as hetu : hetun (a word formed as an abbreviation of henkilötunnus, personal number) or laku : lakun (colloquial for lakritsi “liquorice”)
  • many first names, such as Aapo : Aapon; some names have variation, e.g. Satu : Sadun ∼ Satun
  • some surnames, especially “made-up” names, such as Arko : Arkon
• Stops in foreign names, such as Atlanta : Atlantassa. In speech, gradation is often applied to double consonants, but this is not indicated in standard writing, e.g. Olivetti : Olivettin [olivetin]. Some foreign names have special Finnish forms, and to them, gradation is usually applied, e.g. Englanti : Englannissa (England), Riika : Riiassa (Riga).
• Some proper names, especially nicknames like Stokka : Stokan (denotes the Stockmann warehouse), Botta : Botan, Skatta : Skattan. But with gradation e.g. Nykki : Nykin (nickname for New York).
• In some Western dialects, double consonants in proper names in general, e.g. Reetta : Reettan (standard: Reetan). Such usage can sometimes be seen e.g. in newspapers, too.
• The hk combination in most words, e.g. pahka : pahkan. There is gradation in some two-syllable stems; there are no general rules for this, so consult a dictionary when needed. In some words, gradation may or may not take place, e.g. vihko : vihon ∼ vihkon. For example, the noun uhka (threat) may or may not have gradation (uhan ∼ uhkan, but the verb uhata (threaten) definitely has gradation, e.g. uhkaa (threatens). When there is gradation, the weak grade is usually hj before e or i (e.g. lahkeet : lahje), but there are some exceptions (e.g. vihkiä : vihin). The variation is caused by dialect differences, and some variants, such as nahka : nahkan, though accepted in standard language as an alternative to nahan, may be recognized as dialectal.

Gradation of voiced stops

Sometimes even a voiced double stop gg, bb, or dd may have consonant gradation in loanwords, e.g. blogata : bloggaan (two forms of a verb that means “to blog”). These are exceptions, however, and mostly apply to a few slang words. For example, there is no gradation in words like rabbi : rabbin.

In the newest dictionary of modern Finnish, Kielitoimiston sanakirja, gradation of voiced stops is not described as consonant gradation but as a change in stem that is similar to gradation. According to the grammar guide Kielitoimiston kielioppiopas, gradations gg : g and bb : b are possible for contraction verbs such as blogata, dubata, and logata.

Summary of consonant gradation

The following table summarizes the information presented above. The letters in the first column refer to the identifiers of classes of gradation types used in Kielitoimiston sanakirja.

Words with a gradation of a single t may also have the t : s variation, e.g. käsi : käte|nä : käde|n.

Effects of disappearance of k

When an intervocalic k disappeas in gradation, as in pako : paon (escape), a syllable break may be preserved, so that in the example, there are two syllables pa and on. In older language, this was often denoted using an apostrophe, as in pa’on, but this is not standard now and it looks outdated. Moreover, the syllable break may disappear, so that paon is a single syllable with a diphthong, though this is somewhat debatable.

Between a diphthong and a vowel that is the same as the second component of the diphthong, a syllable break is always preserved and it is indicated with an apostrophe, e.g. ruoko : ruo’on. The apostrophe only indicates that the two o’s belong to different syllables and do not form a long vowel.

An apostrophe is also used between a long vowel and the same vowel as short, e.g. vaaka : vaa’an. Between two identical short vowels, no apostrophe is used, and they form a long vowel when a k disappears, e.g. haka : haan, where the latter form is one syllable.

After a vowel ending with i, the general rules apply in principle, e.g. reikä : reiässä : rei’issä. However, in pronunciation the weak counterpart of k in such contexts is usually j or even jj, so way say (but should not write) reijässä or reijjässä, reijissä or reijjissä.

Exceptionally, in some words, the i in a diphtong is changed to the consonant j, namely in aika : ajan (time) and poika : pojan (son; boy). The regular forms would be aian and poian, but instead of forming a diphthong, the i turns to a consonant, causing a different syllable structure, eg. a.jan instead of ai.an. Other phonetically similar words have regular gradation, e.g. taika : taian (charm, spell; magic trick).

After a vowel ending with u, the disappearance of k often causes a v-like consonant to be pronounced, although no letter is written. The consonant varies: it could be (Finnish) v, or double vv, or a sound like English “w”. For example, tauon, the genitive of tauko (pause), is pronounced as written or tauvon or tauvvon or tauwon. When a u follows, as in naukua : nau’un (to miaow), some v-like sound is more common in pronunciation, e.g. nauwun.

Double gradation

Gradation takes place in the word stem, but a word may still have several consonants or consonant clusters in gradation. For example, there is normal gradation in the adjective hoikka : hoikan (slim). The comparative of this adjective, hoikempi (slimmer) in the basic form, has the weak grade, k. The comparative can be inflected, and then its mp, now appearing before the last consonant of the stem of the derived word, participates in the gradation mp : mm, e.g. hoikempi : hoikemman.

Participles of verbs may have double gradation, too. For example, the verb tietää (to know) has regular gradation t : d, e.g. tietää : tiedän. Its participle tiedetty (known) has the weak grade d in all forms, but it has tt : t gradation later in the word, e.g. tiedetty : tiedetyssä.

Ambiguity caused by gradation

As we can see from the summary table above, there are many word forms that could contain a weak grade with different strong grades in other forms of the same word. In a word form like luvun, there is nothing that says whether the dictionary form is luku or lupu or luvu. It is just a matter of the vocabulary that luku (number) is a real word and lupu and luvu are not.

It is also possible that a word may be a form of two different words due to gradation. For example, lavan can be the genitive of lava (platform, stand), but also the genitive of lapa (shoulder). This seldom causes confusion except in language learning; usually the context removes the ambiguity. Yet, the phenomenon constitutes an infinite source of playful intentional misunderstandings and word jokes.

However, even the sentence context is not sufficient for resolving the ambiguity of the following text: Ilmoitus teille varatuista ajoista. It means “A note on times reserved for you”, with ajoista being a form (elative plural) of aika (time), but ajoista is also the same form of the noun ajo, which means many things like run (e.g. test run). Only the wider substantial context helps to make sure which interpretation is correct.

Two verbs may have the same dictionary form (the basic infinitive) but differences in other forms due to gradation. The reason is that the dictionary form always has the strong grade. For example, the infinitive tavata may mean “to meet” or “to spell, to read by syllables”. These are really two different verbs, and e.g. the normal indicative forms are tapaan, tapaat, tapaa etc. versus tavaan, tavaat, tavaa etc.

Vowel harmony

Basic harmony rules

Vowel harmony means that a non-compound word contains either back vowels (a, o, u) or front vowels (ä, ö, y), but the vowels e and i (though phonetically front vowels) are neutral in the sense that they may appear with both back and front vowels. For this harmony, any suffix with a back vowel in it has a variant with a front vowel. If the base word contains only the neutral vowels e and i, the suffix has a front vowel.

Thus, any suffix with a, o, or u has a variant with ä, ö, or y, respectively. Examples: talo : talossa – kylä : kylässä (the inessive suffix ssA); sanoa : sanonut – kysyä : kysynyt (the past tense participle suffix nUt), yksi : yksiö – kaksi : kaksio (the word derivation suffix O).

In this book, we use the capital letters A, O, and U as above, to refer to a vowel in a suffix so that A is realized as a or ä, O is realized as o or ö, and U is realized as u or y, depending on vowel harmony. This notation is generally used in modern descriptions of Finnish.

The Finnish vowels can be schematically presented as follows:

Thus, the dots in ä and ö indicate them as front vowel counterparts of a and o. It would be logical to use ü rather than y for the front vowel counterpart of u (as Estonian does), but the Finnish alphabet was adopted from Swedish, which does not use ü.

The neutral vowels e and i

Although the vowels e and i are treated as neutral with respect to vowel harmony, their quality depends on the type of the word, but this is not expressed in writing. For example, the e in kerä (clew) is somewhat different from the e in kera (with), where it is closer to a back vowel.

Compound words as exceptions

In a compound word, the last part determines the vowels of suffixes. For example, kesäaika, a compound of kesä (summer) and aika (time) has back vowels in suffixes, as in kesäaikana.

This means that vowel harmony does not apply to a compound word as a whole.

New loanwords and vowel harmony

New loanwords and foreign words may contain a mix of front and back vowels, without being compounds. They are handled differently, e.g. analyysi : analyysissa ∼ analyysissä. The recommendation is that the last non-neutral vowel is decisive, unless it is y and there is an a, o, or u earlier in the word. Thus, analyysissa is recommended (though analyysissä is common, too), but we write miljonääri : miljonäärillä, for example.

In foreign names, “visual vowel harmony” is usually applied: the suffixes are selected as if the word were read as is written. This explains inflection like Mary : Marylla, even though the pronunciation of Mary in Finnish is normally [meəri] or [meri] and the suffix lla is here pronounced llä. Such inflection is allowed and even preferred by the language norms. Pronunciation-based writing like Maryllä is allowed as an alternative, but less common.

Loanwords that have four syllables or more are often inflected as if they were compounds, even though they are not compounds in Finnish or even in the original language. Such a tendency is strongest in words like barometri : barometria ∼ barometriä, since it looks like a compound due to may other words ending with metri. The phenomenon may also affect words like karamelli : karamellia ∼ karamelliä that are not compounds in any sense.

Other exceptions to vowel harmony

There are a few other exceptions to vowel harmony:

• The partitive singular forms merta and verta of meri (sea) and veri (blood) have back vowel suffixes. Other forms of these words have regular suffixes, e.g. meressä and veressä.
• Some derivations of words that have front or neutral vowels in their stems have a back vowel in the derivational suffix. For example, from the stem mene-, infinitive mennä (to go), we get the derived noun meno (going), and from tietä-, infinitive tietää (to know) the noun tieto (knowledge, information).
• Some words that are historically compounds but now generally understood as indivisible have mixed back and front vowels. For example tällainen (of this kind) is originally a compound of tän = tämän (of this) and lainen (of kind); it is often pronounced so that vowel harmony is applied: tälläinen (or, colloquially, tällänen).
• In urban slang, vowel harmony is often violated, e.g. in dösa, Helsinki slang word for bus (standard Finnish bussi or linja-auto).

Other variation in word stem

Variation -i : -e-

Words that end with i in nominative singular very often have e- in inflected forms, as in kivi : kiven (stone). However, new loanwords normally have an unchanged i-, as in filmi : filmin. Moreover, in many words, i is a derivational suffix and is preserved in inflection, as in koti : kodin (home), based on kota (hut).

Due to this stem variation, different forms of different words may coincide. Some forms of the words vuori : vuoren (mountain) and vuori : vuorin (lining) are shown in the next table.

This means that the illative plural of vuori : vuoren is the same as the illative singular of vuori : vuorin. Other case forms are similarly confusing, but the illative tends to confuse even native speakers. It is now permitted to inflect both of these specific words as vuori : vuoren, since language authorities regard the distinction as too difficult. However, this is not a general rule. For example, the words laki : lain (law) and laki : laen (top of hill) must be kept as separate.

Vowel changes before an i suffix

Some vowel changes take place at the end of a stem that ends with a vowel, when followed by a suffix that starts with i. One of the changes is that a final long vowel becomes short, e.g. aa changes to a. The suffixes that cause such changes are:

• the plural suffix i, e.g. maa : ma|i|ssa (country : in countries)
• the superlative suffix in : imma : impa, e.g. vapaa (free) → vapa|in : vapa|imma|n : vapa|impa|na (the most free : of the most free : as the most free)
• the past tense suffix i, e.g. saa|da : sa|i|n (to get : I got)
• the conditional mood suffix isi, e.g. i, e.g. jää|dä : jä|isi|n (to stay : I would stay)

The changes that may happen are:

1. Shortening of a long vowel, as described above. This includes changes like kaunis : kaunii|ssa : kauni|i|ssa, where the last form is plural—identical with the corresponding singular form, but analyzed differently.
2. Change of ii to e.
3. Loss of the first component of a diphthong ie, uo, yö.
4. Loss of the i in a diphthong that ends with i. This means that two successive i’s are not used, and it could also be described so that the latter i is omitted. It is however better to describe this as stem variation, especially since the suffix may consist of i alone.
5. Loss of short e. This relates to words that have e in the normal inflection stem and i in the dictionary form, e.g. suuri : suure- (large).
6. Change of i to e. This relates to words that otherwise have the i unchanged, e.g. lasi : lasin, filmi : filmin.
7. Loss of i.
8. Loss of a or ä after another vowel.
9. Loss of ä.
10. Change of ä to ö. This happens only for some 3-syllable nouns; it usually happens in them if the vowel of the 2nd syllable is i or y (e.g., kynttilä, päärynä, rähinä, tekijä).
11. Loss of a.
12. Change of a to o.

The changes do not always take place in all of the forms and contexts. The following table shows the basic rules for this. Each cell there shows an example; if there is no example in a cell, then the change does not apply.

The changes of a final A (the last four rows of the table) are subject to somewhat complicated rules, and even native speakers make mistakes with them. In two-syllable words, the basic rules are that in plural and past tense forms,

• -a is lost, if the first vowel is o or u (i.e., a labial vowel), e.g. sola : sol|i|ssa
• -a is changed to -o-, if the first vowel is a, e, or i, e.g. sala : salo|i|ssa, reuna : reuno|i|ssa
• -ä is always lost, e.g. kylä : kyl|i|ssä, määrä : määr|i|ssä

  There are some exceptions to these rules, e.g. suola : suolo|i|ssa (salt : in salts), which avoids clashes with the forms of the word suoli : suol|i|ssa (intestine : in intestines).

  In words longer than two syllables in the base form:

• In past tense forms of verbs, -A is always lost before the i, e.g. pitä|ä : pit|i.
• In plural forms of nouns, -A is mostly changed to -O- before the i, e.g. ikkuna : ikkuno|i|lla. However, -A is lost if it is
  • preceded by m, e.g. satama : satamissa (but in new loanwords, there are exceptions to this exception, e.g. dioraama : dioraamoissa)
  • preceded by v, e.g. kanava : kanavissa
  • preceded by a consonant
  • part of jA derivational suffix preceded by something else than a consonant and i, e.g. opettaja : opettajilla (but lukija : lukijoilla); but armeija : armeijoilla, since here jA is not a derivational suffix but part of a loanword
• In plural forms of adjectives, -A is mostly lost before the i, e.g. kapea : kape|i|lla. However, -A is changed to -O- in the kkA ending, e.g. rivakka : rivakoissa. In some words, -O- is possible in older language; e.g. Nykysuomen sanakirja describes matala : mataloissa along with the more common matala : matalissa.

Some nouns ending with lA, mA, nA, or rA have two types of plural stems, e.g. pykälä : pykälissä ∼ pykälöissä. Usually the one without O is more common, with some exceptions like omena : omenissa (less often omenoissa). A few adjectives ending with kkä (namely jämäkkä, rämäkkä, and ärhäkkä) have dual inflection, too, with the one with O being more common, e.g. jämäkkä : jämäköillä, less often jämäkillä.

Diphthong variation

The variation uo : oi appears when uo would be followed by an i at the start of a suffix, e.g. indicating plural for nouns or past tense for verbs: suo : soilla (swamp : on swamps), tuon : toin (I bring : I brought).

There is similar variation for the corresponding front vowels: yö : öi, eg. yö → öinen (night → nocturnal), where the variation is caused by the derivative suffix -inen.

The variation ie : ei has similar conditions and origin. Example: tie : teiden (road : of roads).

Other variation in final vowel

The final vowel of a word often changes before a suffix is different ways, in addition to the phenomena described above.

In certain verb forms, 4th person forms, a final vowel a or ä in the verb stem changes to e, e.g. maksa|a : makse|taan : makse|ttu.

Before a derivational suffix, the final vowel of the base word is often lost when the suffix starts with a vowel, e.g. kaiva|a (to dig) → kaiv|o. The final vowel may also change in irregular ways, e.g. reuna → reunu|s. Such phenomena could alternatively be described so that the vowel is part of the suffix (here us) and the suffix causes omission of final vowel: reun|us.

Special changes also sometimes occur at the end of the first part of a compound word, in the compositive forms. E.g., the compound of sika and tauti is sikotauti.

Variation -nen : -se-

Adjectives and nouns that end with nen in nominative singular have se- in inflected forms, for example punainen : punaisen : punaisessa etc. Before the partitive suffix tA and the genitive plural suffix ten, the e is lost, e.g. punaista, punaisten. In the plural stem, the e is lost before i, according to general rules, e.g. punaisissa.

Variation -t- : -s-

In many words, some forms have a t or its consonant gradation counter­part d before the final vowel of the stem, whereas some forms have an s there when an i follows. These words are old and have originally had just t or d, but the t has changed to s before i under certain conditions. Example: vesi : vete|nä : vede|n.

Such words have complicated inflection, since it may involve this variation, consonant gradation, and the variation i : e. The inflection is important because many words of this type, like vesi (water) and käsi (hand; arm) are very common.

A further complication is that words of this type have s in plural forms like vesillä. Such forms are best described so that the -i- is the plural suffix, causing the preceding stem vowel to disappear.

Old nouns ending with -si all have this variation. Newer words lack it, e.g. riisi : riisin (rice).

The variation also appears in verbs, e.g. vastat|a : vasta|s|i.

Vowel stem vs. consonant stem

Many nouns have two different stems across case forms, one ending with a consonant and another ending with that consonant and the vowel e. An example is kannel ∼ kantele, the name of a traditional Finnish harp. Note that the presence of the final e also affects consonant gradation (here nn ∼ nt). This word has in principle two series of forms, kannel : kantelen : kannelta : kantelella etc. versus kantele : kanteleen : kanteletta : kanteleella. The first series has the inflection stem kantele-, the other one has kantelee-. In practice, these series are very often mixed with each other, so that some forms are taken from one series, others from the other.

For example, the word askel (step) has the variant askele, but it is rarely used in the nominative form. Instead, some other forms are used, so we can say e.g. askel askeleelta, mixing the two series (paradigms).

More often, two different stems do not appear as full series but only in some forms. For example, the word nuori has normally the stem nuore- (e.g. in the genitive nuoren), but the partitive has the consonant stem nuor-, in nuorta. Moreover, in the essive, along with the normal form nuorena, the consonant stem form nuorna has also occurred, though it is now used only in poetry, if at all.

Some special forms are based on consonant stems. For example, the normal essive of vuosi (year) with the stems vuote- and vuode- is vuonna, developed via assimilation from the older consonant stem form vuotna. The word form vuonna is very common in the meaning “in the year…”, e.g. vuonna 2014 (in 2014).

For verbs, consonant stems are more common than for nouns and have more variation in the way they differ from the vowel stem. Some inflection forms of verbs have the consonant stem as their basis, others use the vowel stem. This explains much of the stem variation in verbs, e.g. juos|ta (to run) : juokse|n (I run). This is discussed in detail in section The stems of a verb.

Derived words are usually based on the vowel stem of the base word, e.g. nuore|hko (youngish), juokse|nnella (to run around).

The following types of words have a consonant stem:

• Most words with a basic (vowel) stem that ends with a short e, e.g. ääni : ääne|n : ään|tä. This does not include words that end with e in nominative, too (e.g. nalle : nalle|n) or words where the e is preceded by k, p, or v (e.g. kivi : kive|n) or by a consonant combination ending with h, s, or t (e.g. hanhi : hanhe|n), with a few exceptions (e.g. lapsi : lapse|n : las|ta)
• Most verbs with a basic stem (longer than one syllable) that ends with two vowels, e.g. (varat|a :) varaa|n : varat|kaa. This does not include verbs like (luke|a :) lue|n, where the two-vowel combination results from consonant gradation.

Articles

Lack of articles

Finnish has no indefinite or definite article like the English “a” and “the”. This may sound uncomfortable if you are accustomed to the article system of English. However, Finnish, like many other languages, works well without articles.

For example, in English we might start a story by telling “Yesterday I saw a fox” and later refer to “the fox”. The articles “a” and “the” are part of English grammar, but they don’t really have much of a role here. The situation is usually just as clear, from the context, when we say in Finnish Eilen näin ketun and later use just the word kettu without an article.

Article-like use of pronouns and the numeral yksi

In spoken Finnish, the numeral yksi (colloquial form: yks) is often used much like an in­def­i­nite article, and the demonstrative pronouns se and tämä (colloquial form: tää) and sometimes tuo (colloquial toi) are used like a definite article. Thus, people might say Eilen mä näin yhden ketun and later refer to the fox as se kettu or, less often, tää kettu or occasionally toi kettu. Scholars disagree on the interpretation of the situation. Some say that spoken Finnish already has articles, others say that there are just signs of increasing article-like use of words and perhaps a competition between tämä and se on becoming the definitive article.

Standard Finnish rules do not allow article-like usage of demon­stra­tive pronouns, but expressions like tämä kettu can be used when there is a specific reason to use a demonstrative pronoun for clarification. On the other hand, tämä is often used when there is no such reason. When something has just been mentioned (e.g, Tuolla on kettu “There is a fox over there”), a noun (like kettu) can be used as such, since the context establishes a definitive meaning for it. A typical reason for using tämä as an attribute is that you are physically pointing at something.

The use of eräs or yksi (yks) is often necessary in a manner that makes them indefinite articles in a limited sense. The English expression A man gave me this phone cannot really be translated without using eräs or yksi or some equivalent expression (such as muuan). So we write Eräs mies antoi minulle tämän puhelimen and perhaps say Yks mies anto mulle tän puhelimen. If we started the sentence with mies, it would effectively be definite, just like the English expression “the man”.

Article-like use of adjectives and abbreviations

In formal writing, people often use the adjective kyseinen (or the longer expression kyseessä oleva) or asianomainen or the abbreviation ko. or ao., all meaning “the one in question”, for indicating something as definite. This is not regarded as incorrect, but it is clumsy style.

Gender and sex

Lack of gender

Finnish has no grammatical gender and has never had. There is nothing corresponding to the division of nouns to masculine, feminine, and neuter in many Indo-European languages.

The neutral 3rd person pronoun

The same 3rd person pronoun hän (plural he) is used for both sexes, i.e. as corresponding to both “he” and “she” in English. The colloquial 3rd person pronoun se is also sex-neutral.

There is no way to distinguish between male and female by the choice of a pronoun. This often causes problems in translation and other contexts. For example, a person’s name may need to be repeated for clarity, instead of using a pronoun. Another, usually clumsier method is to use nouns like mies (man) and nainen (woman).

Indicating natural sex

Although Finnish lacks gender as a grammatical category, it has a few ways to indicate the natural sex of a person or an animal with the choice of a word. As in English, many domestic animals have different words for the sexes, such as härkä (bull) and lehmä (cow). Finnish has such words even for a few wild animals, though most of them are nowadays little known to most speakers of the language, such as koppelo (female capercaillie) as opposite to metso (capercaillie as a species, also used for male capercaillies).

However, in most situations, the sex is indicated using a synthetic expression involving a word that means male or female. For example, a male bear is uroskarhu and a female bear is naaraskarhu, if you need to or wish to make the distinction. The word uros : uroksen simply means a male animal, and naaras : naaraan means a female animal. Alternatively, such a compound may have the parts in the opposite order, emphasizing the sex: karhu-uros and karhunaaras. As a synonym for uros, the word koiras : koiraan is also used, though usually not about bears or other mammals.

When referring to people, the words mies and nainen are used in a similar manner to express the sex of a person, if it is relevant. They are normally used as the first part of a closed compound, e.g. naisopettaja (female teacher). For nationalities, a compound with mies or nainen as the second part is used, e.g. suomalaismies or suomalainen mies.

Female derivational suffixes

The tAr : ttAre- suffix can be used to derive words for “female…” or “wife of…”, e.g. piispatar : piispattaren (bishop’s wife) from piispa (bishop). The old-fashioned inna suffix, of Swedish origin, e.g. tohtorinna (doctor’s wife), is used for the same purpose for some words, and so is the popular language ska, e.g. Virtaska (Virtanen’s wife). Most of these derivations are now mostly regarded as outdated or even obsolete. Instead of piispatar, one would normally say piispan puoliso (bishop’s spouse).

It might still be relevant and accepted in some situations to use the word laulajatar for a female singer, instead of the sex-neutral laulaja, but this is due to tradition. An actor is näyttelijä, whereas an actress can be called näyttelijä or näyttelijätär. A mistress is rakas­ta­ja­tar, not rakastaja, which is male only (lover). On the other hand, calling a female teacher opettajatar, as opposite to opettaja, would make you sound very old-fashioned.

Words such as pariisitar (female Parisian) still have some use, and they can in principle be derived from any country or place name. Such words are used in some forms of literature and also in sports language, where e.g. italiatar might be used to refer to a female Italian competitor.

However, the word suometar is not used, except historically as the proper name of a newspaper.

Some words like kuningatar (queen), derived from kuningas (king) and denoting both a king’s wife and a ruling queen, are an established part of the vocabulary.

The suffix tAr is normally appended to the stem of the base word, using weak grade in all forms, e.g. englannitar : englannittaren, from Englanti : Englannin. However, kuningatar, ruhtinatar, and valtiatar have exceptionally been formed by replacing the final s of the base word with the tar suffix.

There are loanwords like prinsessa (princess) containing a foreign feminine suffix, but such suffixes are not used to derive new words.

A rather exceptional word is venakko (female Russian), a colloquial old word, related to venäläinen (Russian). It is nowadays often misunderstood and used as denoting a Russian person in general.

Titles of people and sex

As in other languages, some words denoting professions or positions contain a part that denotes man (or less often woman), e.g. puhemies (chairman), poliisimies (policeman). There are different opinions and practices on them. E.g., puhemies is generally used about a female chairman, too, but instead of poliisimies, one might use poliisinainen when referring to a female policeman. In official contexts, one might use the longer and somewhat clumsy word poliisivirkailija (police officer) about a policeman of either sex. Compounds formed from old compounds by replacing mies with henkilö (person), e.g. puhehenkilö and poliisihenkilö, are mostly taken as jocular and not as par­tic­u­lar­ly good jokes.

The word emäntä means originally a housewife and is derived from the old word emä (mother). Yet, some professional titles ending with emäntä might nowadays be used about men, too. On the other hand, lentoemäntä (stewardess) means a female person only; for the male counterpart, the loanword stuertti (steward) is used.

Phonetic structure

The phonemes in Finnish

The phoneme concept

In linguistics, “phoneme” is a more abstract concept than “sound”. Different sounds are treated as being appearances of the same phoneme, if their differences do not make a difference in meaning of words. We can say that two sounds represent different phonemes if there is a minimal pair of words that differ only by the difference of those sounds. For example, the minimal pair of “sip” and “ship” shows that in English, “s” and “sh” represent different phonemes.

Basic phonemes in Finnish

In standard Finnish words excluding relatively new loanwords, only the following phonemes appear (indicated here by their letters in normal Finnish orthography, except for the eng sound ŋ):

• vowels a, e, i, o, u, y, ä, ö
• consonants d, h, j, k, l, m, n, ŋ, p, r, s, t, v

Almost all dialects lack the d sound, but it is well established in standard language as the “weak” counterpart of the t phoneme (between vowels), e.g. katu (street) : kadut (streets). The phoneme d also appears in different positions in loanwords, such as demokratia,

Additional phonemes in loanwords

In new loanwords, and in some Western dialects, the consonants b and g may appear too. Moreover, š may appear in educated speech, and so may ž in the combination dž in a few words. Some minimal pairs like sakki (gang) – šakki (chess) for making š a distinct phoneme can be found, but it is questionable whether their difference is recognized from the difference of s and š sounds or from the context. (See also š versus s.) The sound ž can hardly be classified as a phoneme in Finnish, due to its limited contexts of use.

The phoneme status of b and g is more debatable. Minimal pairs like paarit (stretcher) – baarit (bars; cafés) can be recognized, but it is questionable whether the phonetic difference between p and b really makes a difference in meaning. This is discussed in more detail in section Unvoiced and voiced stops.

In foreign names and in newest loanwords, the consonant w (as in English) and the neutral vowel ə (as “a” in English “about”) as well as some nasalized vowels may be heard, but they can hardly be said to have phoneme status.

Long vowels

Vowels appear as short or long. A long vowel is normally written with two identical letters. The length of a long vowel is about two times the length of a short vowel in the same position.

The difference between short and long vowels is a phoneme distinction, i.e. it can make a difference in meaning. E.g. tuli (fire) and tuuli (wind) are distinct words, and so are of takka (open fireplace) and taakka (burden).

A long vowel could be described as a separate phoneme or as two identical phonemes in succession. However, the conventional approach in Finnish grammar is to treat the length of a vowel as a separate phoneme-like feature. Thus, a word like tuuli is analyzed as containing four phonemes, with the second phoneme as long.

In Finnish, long vowels may appear in unstressed syllables. This deviates from many European languages, where long (or half-long) vowels appear only in stressed open syllables. In the Finnish word paniikki (panic), the second syllable is unstressed and closed (ends with a consonant), but the vowel is still long.

Thus, it is important to make vowel length distinctions; they are not just a matter of sounding native. It is better to exaggerate the distinction, pronouncing a long vowel as really long, than make it too short.

When a foreign word contains a half-long (or long) vowel in a stressed position, Finns tend to interpret it as a long vowel. This is why there are long vowels, written with two letters, in loanwords such as gaala (gala) and miljöö (from Swedish “miljö”, which comes from French “milieu”). However, original spelling is retained in many words, e.g. ameba, commonly pronounced ameeba; see section Length of vowels in loanwords.

Double consonants

Consonants appear as single or double. A double consonant, normally written with two identical letters, is conventionally treated as two sounds, in different syllables. A word such as taakka (burden), with a long vowel and a double consonant, thus has the syllable structure taak.ka.

The syllable division is partly just conventional, but it may help to pronounce Finnish better: to produce a double consonant, try to pronounce first a syllable ending with a consonant, like taak, then immediately another syllable starting with the same consonant, like ka. Just remember that there should be no pause between the syllables. Instead, the consonant sound lasts longer; its length is typically two times the length of a simple consonant, but it can be even longer.

The difference between single and double consonants can be the only difference between two words, e.g. tuli (fire) and tulli (customs) are distinct words. Finnish grammars conventionally treat a double consonant as two phonemes.

According to some descriptions, consonants the d, h, j, and v do not appear as long. In reality, h, j, and v, can be pronounced (though not written) as long due to boundary gemination. For d, this is possible only when a new loanword is involved; it may appear as long in loanwords otherwise, too. Some interjections and descriptive words have a long h, e.g. hihhuli. Long j and long v are often pronounced, but not written, after diphthongs that end with i or u, respectively, e.g. leija [leijja]; see section Transitory sounds.

Diphthongs

Vowels can form diphthongs, such as ai (pronounced like “eye” in English), but consecutive vowels may also belong to different syllables, like io in radio. This is described in section Diphthongs.

Restrictions on appearance of consonants

Except for new loanwords and some dialects, a word cannot begin with a consonant cluster. Old loanwords have adapted to this by losing all but the last one of the consonants, so that e.g. the word for beach or shore, from Swedish “strand”, is ranta.

Consonant clusters do not normally appear at the end of a word, except that some word-final clusters like ks are common in spoken language. Old koanwords have usually been adapted to this so that an i has been appended, e.g. pankki (bank).

Double consonants do not normally appear at the end of a word. A double consonant at the end of a foreign word is pronounced single, e.g. Mann [man]. However, a final vowel of a word may be omitted before a word that starts with a vowel, and in such a legato pro­nun­ci­a­tion, a double consonent before the lost vowel is retained. For example, missä on (where is) is often miss on in speech, pronounced as [mís.són], i.e. phonetically as two words in the sense that there are two main stresses, but as one word otherwise, with syllable break inside [ss]. Such a word combination may develop into a contraction word, such as ettei [ét.tei] from että and ei.

Some colloquial emphatic pronunciations such as toss (for tos, a shortened form of kiitos, ”thanks”) and jess (reflecting English ”yes”) have a word-final long (or even overlong) consonant, and it is shown in some forms of writing.

Even the appearance of a single consonant at the end of a word has restrictions. In standard language, not counting boundary gemination, word-final assimilation, and new loanwords, only l, n, r, s, and t may end a word, and l and r are rare in that position. Moreover, they rarely appear in the basic form of a noun, since a final is has usually been appended, e.g. Yet another explanation is that loanwords that have ended with a consonant have usually got a final i appended, e.g. paneeli (panel), paperi (paperi).

A vowel-rich language

Finnish is rich in vowels, not by the amount of different vowel sounds but by the frequency of vowels. Finnish has eight simple vowels, which can appear as short or long and as diphthongs in many combinations. Especially if we count a long vowel as two vowels, corresponding to the orthography (a long vowel is written with two letters, like aa), the relative amount of vowels is larger than in most languages, typically about 50 %. This is one reason why Finnish somewhat resembles Italian phonetically; another reason is that the Finnish vowel signs a, e, i, o, and u have phonetic values similar to those of Italian (rather than English).

The relative amount of vowels is partly explained by the conservative nature of Finnish. A word like kala (fish) is, as far as we can know, very similar to the corresponding word in the Uralic proto-language thousands of years ago. In other Uralic languages, the final vowel has often been lost, in addition to other phonetic changes.

Another reason to the large proportion of vowels is that Finnish has not been conservative in one respect: it avoids consonant clusters, as described above.

Sentences and clauses

The clause concept

The concept of a sentence is simple, if we only think of the written form of a language that has a punctuation system roughly similar to that of English. A sentence normally starts with an uppercase letter and ends with a period “.”, a question mark “?”, an exclamation mark “!”, or sometimes an ellipsis “…” indicating premature ending.

A sentence consists of one or more clauses. A clause contains a predicate verb, i.e. a verb in a finite form, such as “is” or “helps” or “wrote”, as opposite to forms like “to be” or “being”. The following sentences in English and in Finnish contain three clauses, with the predicates underlined:

He was thinking what he should do next, and then the phone rang.

Hän mietti, mitä tekisi seuraavaksi, ja sitten puhelin soi.

The example illustrates how Finnish uses commas between clauses more often than English does. The rules for using the comma are one of the key reasons why the clause concept is relevant in Finnish grammar.

Analyzing a sentence

Although Finnish often uses commas between clauses, a sentence cannot be divided into clauses simply by splitting at commas. Commas are also used also inside clauses, and commas are omitted between clauses in some contexts.

For adequate analysis of a sentence, we need to recognize the finite forms of verbs, i.e. predicates, and interpret other words as belonging to the same clause. Some words, like mitä and ja in the example above, will then be analyzed as constituting “glue” that joins clauses, such as relative pronouns and conjunctions.

Analyzing a clause

Analyzing a clause is more difficult in Finnish than in English, because the word order varies more freely and because you will not find most words as such in dictionaries. A word typically has inflection, which needs to be recognized before you can look the basic form up in a dictionary. This is made more complicated by the fact that many suffixes have multiple uses. If you see a word like sanomme, you can recognize mme most probably as a suffix, but this same suffix is used both in some verb forms and as attached to nouns.

This means that recognizing predicate verbs requires both knowledge about verb inflection and dictionary information. The word form sanomme can be resolved as a verb form, because there is verb with the stem sano- but no such noun. Sometimes there are complications here. For example, the word uskomme can be analyzed both as a verb form (we believe) and as a noun with a possessive suffix (our faith). The context is needed to distinguish between them. If there is no other word in the sentence that looks like a verb, you would analyze that uskomme is probably a verb form.

Sample analysis of a sentence

Here is a complete sentence in Finnish, one that you might encounter when filling out a form:

Jos haluat, että olemme yhteydessä sinuun, kirjoita puhelinnumerosi tähän.

It is a long sentence, and you can hardly recognize more than one part of one word only (numero), if you did not learn any Finnish before reading this. However, you can tentatively divide it into parts by assuming that commas separate clauses. Here this gives a correct analysis of the overall structure. An analysis of the words:

• jos is simply the word for “if”
• haluat means “you wish” or “you want”; so it is a verb form that includes an indication (the t suffix) of the agent, corresponding to “you”
• että is the Finnish word corresponding to “that” as a conjunction; unlike English “that”, it is usually preceded by a comma, which somewhat helps to see the sentence structure
• olemme is a verb form, with the suffix mm indicating the agent, corresponding to “we”, and the verb stem ole- means “to be”; thus, the word may mean “we are” or, like here, “we will be”—Finnish normally does not distinguish between present and future in verb forms
• yhteydessä is a noun form, with the noun stem yhteyde- “contact” (basic form when no suffix is used is yhteys) and the suffix ssä, which often, and here, corresponds to the English preposition “in”; so the meaning is “in contact”
• sinuun is a form of the personal pronoun sinä (you, when addressing an individual); this form relates to the preceding word, and it has the same function as the preposition “with” in the English expression “contact with you”
• kirjoita is yet another verb form, the imperative of a verb that means “to write” (Finnish infinitive: kirjoittaa); here the imperative means an instruction
• puhelinnumerosi consists of three parts: puhelin (telephone), numero (number), and the si suffix, which corresponds to the English word “your”
• tähän is an adverb that means “here” or “in(to) this place”; it could further be analyzed as being originally a case form (illative) of the pronoun tämä (this)

Thus, a more or less literal translation would be “If you wish that we will be in contact with you, write your telephone number here.”

Analyzing a word

Working backwards

In order to understand a Finnish word, you need to recognize its structure. Normally you start from the end and try to recognize suffixes, then see if the remaining word can be recognized or found in a dictionary. If it is long, it might be a compound word. So some general knowledge is needed to analyze e.g. the word form puhelinnumerosi. You would first recognize si as a possible possessive suffix, then notice that there is nothing suffix-like before it, and finally try to interpret puhelinnumerosi as a compound.

The suffix glossary in this book may be of help in recognizing words as derived words or as inclined forms.

Analyzer programs

There are various word analyzer programs, which take a word form as input and display one or more ways to decompose it into components.

It is quite possible that a word form has several interpretations, several “parse trees”. For example, kannat can be a plural form of the noun kanta (base) but also a 2nd person singular form of the verb kantaa (to carry). Analyzers usually show the different inter­pretations.

On the other hand, a word form might be ambiguous only in a hypothetical sense. For example, by its form only, ojennat could be a form of the verb ojentaa (to stretch out), or a form of the noun ojenta or ojenna—but such nouns do not actually exist. Analyzers normally use a word data base to exclude pos­si­bil­i­ties that are not real. This also means that an analyzer may fail to show an analysis when it involves a word that is not its database due to being too new, too rare, dialectal, or colloquial.

The Oikofix analyzer

Oikofix is a free online service, available at oikofix.com. It is based on voluntary work and still under development, but very useful. It can be used to spellcheck Finnish (or English) text, submitted as plain text, but also to perform morphological analysis.

Oikofix has alternative user interfaces in Finnish and in English. The screen shot below is from the English version.

The user interface is somewhat special. Instead of entering text and then selecting a function, you need to

1. first select function on the left
2. then enter text in the text area
3. and finally activate the desired action using buttons above the text area.

You select the analysis mode by clicking on the button “Read and analyze texts” (Lue ja analysoi tekstiä) on the left. Then type or paste text in the large text area and click on the button “Analyze” (Analysoi teksti), which then changes to “Continue editing” (Jatka tekstin muokkausta), shown in the screenshot above. After this, click on any word in your text to get an analysis of it; the screenshot above shows an analysis of the word haluat.

The HFST analyzer

The HFST analyzer is a multilingual word analysis software. It requires a formal morphological description of a language, and there is such a description for Finnish as well as for a large number of other languages. It is an academic activity rather than a common practical tool, so the user interface is clumsy.

To use it, enter the word or text in text area provided, select Finnish from the language menu, and click on “Process wordform”. There are two alternative display formats, selectable from a dropdown: “CG/TWOL analysis sets” (the default) uses a notation like “haluta+V+Act+Ind+Prs+Sg2”, whereas “Apertium style analyses” uses a notation with “<” and “>” symbols as shown in the screenshot below. The notations are briefly explained on the page jkorpela.fi/omorfi-en.html.

There is an alternative service based on the same technology, at the University of Tromsø: giellatekno.uit.no/cgi/d-fin.eng.html.

Generating word forms

Large Finnish dictionaries contain information about word forms, as numbers referring to inflection patterns (paradigms). Bilingual dictionaries may lack such information, making things more difficult. You may therefore find the online service Joukahainen at joukahainen.puimula.org useful, although its user interface is in Finnish and somewhat clumsy. It accepts a dictionary form of a word as input (use the infinitive for a verb) and shows basic information about the word, including some inflected forms:

These forms show the basic variation in the stem of word and its suffixes. They can be used to generate other forms by following general principles, once you have learned them. For nouns and adjectives, almost all case forms are shown on request. The service does not cover pronouns and numerals.

For verbs, there is also Verbix.com, which generates all the normal forms of a verb.

The official Kielitoimiston sanakirja also contains inflection information. However, the information is largely implicit: it refers to inflection patterns. For verbs, it contains the same type words as Joukahainen and additionally the potential form, 3rd person singular (e.g. halunnee). For nouns and adjectives, eight forms are shown.

Pronunciation and writing

The alphabet

The traditional Finnish-Swedish alphabet

The traditional Finnish alphabet, as taught at Finnish schools, is the same as the basic Latin alphabet with the letters Å, Ä, and Ö added at the end: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V (W) X Y Z Å Ä Ö. It is the same as the traditional Swedish alphabet, and the letter Å is included only due its use in Swedish.

The role of the letter W is ambiguous. Historically, it is a variant of the letter V and appears in some Finnish names, such as the surname Wirtanen, a rare variant of the very common name Virtanen. Traditionally, W has been treated as equivalent to V in sorting. On the other hand, W appears in foreign words such as show and watti (watt), and it is nowadays often treated as a separate letter in sorting, as in English.

Names of letters

The names of the traditional letters are aa, bee, see, dee, ee, äf, gee, hoo, ii, jii, koo, äl, äm, än, oo, pee, kuu, är, äs, tee, uu, vee, (kaksoisvee,) yy, tseta, ruotsalainen oo, ää, öö. When reading an abbreviation by letters, w is usually read as vee, e.g. WWW as vee vee vee, but kaksoisvee can be used for clarity.

Instead of äf, äl, äm, än, är, äs, the longer forms äffä, ällä, ämmä, ännä, ärrä, ässä (often shortened to äff, äll etc. before a vowel) can be used, and these forms must be used as the basis in inflection; e.g., the genitive of äf is äffän. These names, except är(rä), also appear with e instead of ä, e.g. ef or effä. The use of the forms with e is often regarded as Swedish influence, and it has lost popularity, except in contexts where it is phonetically better due to vowel harmony, e.g. in reading USA as uu ess aa.

The common spelling alphabet (names used when saying a word letter by letter) is Aarne, Bertta, Celsius [selsius], Daavid, Eemeli, faarao, Gideon, Heikki, Iivari, Jussi, Kalle, Lauri, Matti, Niilo, Otto, Paavo, kuu, Risto, Sakari, Tyyne, Urho, Vihtori, wiski [viski], äksä, Yrjö, übel [yybel], tseta, Åke [ooke], äiti, öljy.

Finnish additions to the alphabet, Š and Ž

According to the official orthography, as amended in the early 20th century, Š and Ž belong to the alphabet, too, but they are treated as S and Z in sorting. Their Finnish names are hattuässä and hattutseta.

Alphabetic order

Although the basic alphabetic order in Finnish is well-established, except for the changed status of W, there are many difficulties in putting expressions in alphabetic order when foreign letters and non-alphabetic characters are included.

There are even several conflicting national standards on sorting: SFS 4600, which is little known and little used and impossible to apply automatically; SFS 5050 for bibliographic sorting; and SFS-EN 13710, which is based on a pan-European standard, with some adaptations to Finnish usage.

According to SFS-EN 13170, the basic order of letters A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Þ Å Ä Ö. This means that W is a separate letter, and the Icelandic letter thorn Þ (þ) is placed after Z. Other added letters, like the Icelanding eth Ð (ð), are treated as variants of basic letters like D; the difference is taken into account only in words that are otherwise identical.

Most diacritic marks are ignored, except of course for Å, Ä, and Ö. For example, É is sorted like E, just so that in otherwise identical words like Linden and Lindén, the one with the diacritic mark comes later. However, for historical reasons, SFS-EN 13710 makes the following exceptions from pan-European rules, reflecting relatively well-established Finnish practices:

• Æ (æ) is treated like Ä, due to its use to denote [ä] sound in Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic
• Ø (ø) is treated like Ö, due to its use to denote [ö] in Danish and Norwegian
• Ü (ü) is treated like Y, due to its use to denote [y] in German and some other languages
• ß, normally used in lowercase only, is treated like SS, following German practice
• Œ (œ) is treated like OE, following French practice

Case of letters is ignored in sorting, except when two strings differ only in case of some letter(s). In that situation, lower case is sorted before uppercase. This means that in a glossary, a common name like meri (sea) should precede an identical proper name, like Meri as a surname.

SFS-EN 13170 sorts data as strings, with no regard to meaning. This makes it possible to apply it automatically, but it also makes the results unintuitive in a manner that may require tuning. The overall order of characters is:

• the space
• punctuation marks (including e.g. “-”)
• special symbols (e.g. “+”)
• digits
• Latin letters (as described above)
• Greek letters
• other letters, in a specific order by writing system

This means e.g. that the name Suomen ympäristökeskus appears before Suomenlinna, since the space is counted as a character and precedes all letters. Similarly, golf-osake is sorted before golfkenttä. Thus, the placement of an expression may depend on its spelling as an open compound, a closed compound, or a hyphenated compound. Some older practices still in use, and defined in SFS 4600, try to avoid such problems by ignoring most other characters than letters and in one mode of sorting, called sanoittainen lajittelu (sorting by words), even spaces.

When sorting personal names, it is common to ignore prepositions at the start of surnames, e.g. sorting af Julin as Julin and von Schulz as Schulz. However, this is not consistent, and SFS 4600 defines how different prepositions are handled differently.

Letters used in Finnish

Only the following letters appear in Finnish words, when foreign words (loanwords that preserve the original spelling) are not considered: A B D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S Š T U V Y Z Ž Ä Ö. Of these, letters B, F, Š, Z, and Ž appear in relatively new loanwords only. For more details on the use of letters in Finnish texts, see section A closer look at the use of letters in Finnish texts.

The basic phonetic values are described in section Pronunciation of letters.

Historical note: In a book on Finnish phonetics and orthography, Suomen kielen äänne- ja oikeinkirjoitusoppi (published in 1949), Aarni Penttilä wrote about the alphabetic order as consisting of “a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, (š), t, u, v, x, y (ü), z, (ž), å, ä, ö (ø), (õ)”. According to him, this list constitutes suomalais-ruotsalainen aakkosto (Finnish-Swedish alphabet) when the letters in parentheses are omitted. He described the letter w essentially as a stylistic variant (allograph) of v and as a holdover from Fraktur fonts.

Casual deviating spellings

In informal writing, the letter x is sometimes used (irregularly) instead of ks, e.g. writing colloquial yks (standard Finnish yksi, “one”) as yx. Other casual playful writing styles include using z for ts, q for kuu (e.g. qkausi for kuukausi, “month”) and c for see.

Use of capital letters

Continental usage

In the use of capital vs. small letters, Finnish mostly follows the continental European tradition, as in e.g. Spanish and French, rather than English. This means that capital (uppercase) letters are used much less than in English.

Within a sentence or a heading or title, only the first word and proper nouns are capitalized. The same applies to entries in a command menu, for example (e.g. Avaa tiedosto, cf. English usage “Open File”).

Using all-caps

In older style, headings are often written in capital letters. This is now old-fashioned and advised against e.g. in the national standard for office documents.

In logos, short menu items, buttons, etc., it is common to use all capitals, but this is a design issue and not a language rule.

In contract texts, the English style of writing contract terms like CUSTOMER and PRODUCT in uppercase (or as capitalized, e.g. Customer) does not match Finnish tradition and rules. It is however nowadays often used due to requirements imposed by companies.

Capitalization of proper names

In Finnish, proper names are capitalized as in English, but the concept of proper name is partly different. Names assigned to individual persons, organizations, places and other geographic entities, or product brands are treated as proper names, e.g. Charles Darwin, Apple, Helsinki, Windows.

Derivations of proper nouns are written in lowercase, e.g. pariisilainen (Parisian) from Pariisi (Paris) and darwinismi or darvinismi from Darwin. However, if the derivation itself is a proper name e.g. as an epithet, it is capitalized, e.g. Vilhelm Occamilainen (William of Ockham).

Compounds with a proper name as a component have different spellings, e.g. ranskan­leipä (French white bread), from Ranska (France) and leipä (bread) but—in a more casual compound—Ranskan-matka (trip to France). Widely used compounds with specialized meaning are generally written in lowercase, whereas other compounds usually preserve the spelling of the proper name and have a hyphen between the parts.

Names of officials have varying spellings, and the standards for them have not been quite stable. By current rules, we write e.g. ulkoministeriö (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) but Viestintävirasto (Finnish Communications Regulations Authority). The reason is that the latter is a separate bureau. Since this looks unsystematic, people often capitalize the names of ministries, for example.

Names of companies and associations often have all their words capitalized, e.g. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. This helps in recognizing them as proper names, especially when the first word as such is a proper name. Although the official rules are not clear, it is usually best to use the same spelling as the organization itself.

Trademarks and company names should normally be capitalized, though this is debatable for names written differently by the companies themselves, e.g. iBook and airberlin.

Many names are protected as trademarks in Finland, even though they might be common names in other countries, e.g. Aspirin. Although forms like aspiriini are very often used as common names, such use is still less common than in US English, for example. The legal status of trademarks can be checked from the official trademark databases.

The following table shows, by examples, whether some names are capitalized or not in Finnish. Proper names of places, people, etc. have been omitted, since they seldom raise questions about capitalization.

Deviations from the standard spellings are common, e.g. Paavi, Talvisota, or (for ideological reasons) jumala.

Non-alphabetic characters in words

Hyphen

Within a word, a hyphen (-) may appear between the parts of a compound word, as in English, but with more complicated rules for its use, described in section Hyphens in compounds. For example, a hyphen is used when the first part ends with a vowel and the second part starts with the same vowel, e.g. kuorma-auto (truck). A hyphen may also appear at the start of a word, representing an omitted first part of a closed compound. For example, syntymäaika ja -paikka is short for syntymäaika ja syntymäpaikka, and maa- ja metsätalous is short for maatalous ja metsätalous. Thus, a hyphen at the start of a word indicates that the word is the second part of a compound, with two or more preceding words constitutins the first part of the compound.

The hyphen should be kept as separate from the en dash (–). When mistakes are made with this, usually the hyphen is used instead of the en dash. However, when writing with Microsoft Word, the default settings have caused a word-initial hyphen to turn to an en dash. Incorrect written forms like syntymäaika ja –paikka have therefore been very common. The bug has been fixed in new versions of Word.

Apostrophe

An apostrophe (’) is used inside words for a few purposes:

• to separate a foreign word from a Finnish suffix under certain conditions explained below, e.g. show’t (Finnish plural of the English noun show)
• to indicate syllable boundary between identical vowels, e.g. rei’issä, inessive plural of reikä “hole”
• rarely otherwise in three-vowel combinations as in ha’uissa
• in old poetry and in old written forms of some words, to indicate omission of a final vowel or other final part of a word (including part of a compound), e.g. voip’ = voipi, jok’ainoa = joka ainoa, Kivikk’aho (a surname, shortened from Kivikkoaho)

In inflection, an apostrophe is used if the spelling of a foreign word ends with a consonant but the pronunciation ends with a vowel, as in show [šou]. Additional examples: Bordeaux [bordoo] : Bordeaux’n [bordoon], Kaj [kai] : Kaj’lla [kailla]. Mistakes are often made with this, either by omitting the apostrophe when it is required or by using it in words of other types.

However, an apostrophe is in principle permitted whenever it is necessary to indicate the base form of the word. You might use it e.g. in the word form Sinise’n to indicate that it is the genitive of the foreign name Sinise and not a regular genitive of the Finnish word Sininen. Tthis is rare; usually the basic form of the name is obvious enough from the context or otherwise.

The correct apostrophe character is curly (’), as in English, but a vertical apostrophe (') is very common, as in English, since it is easier to type.

Colon

When a suffix is added to a word that is written using digits or special symbols or an abbreviation, the suffix is preceded by a colon “:”. Thus, we can write kolmessa as 3:ssa (the digit stands for the stem of the numeral, kolme) and ulkoministeriössä (in the Foreign Office) as UM:ssä (the abbreviation UM stands for the base form ulkoministeriö). If an abbreviation is read as a word and not as spelled out or by pronouncing the names of letters, no colon should be used. Thus, “in NATO” is written as NATOssa or Natossa.

When the colon is used that way, it is followed by the suffix only. This is difficult even to native speakers, since it requires a grammatical analysis of the word rather than just naturally learned inflection of words. Therefore, mistakes are very common in this area. Native speakers may even have greater difficulties than people who have learned Finnish as a foreign language on a more theoretical basis. For example, to write the word kymmenenteen using digits, you need to recognize that the word has the ordinal number suffix nte- and the illative suffix -en, so that you need to write 10:nteen. The digits 10 here represent the inflectional stem kymmene-.

A binding vowel i that appears in the full form of a word is omitted when the word is written using an abbreviation or symbol. For example, if the symbol Å is used for the outdated unit ångström and the genitive form ångströmin is needed, it is written “Å:n”, not “Å:in”.

Further complications are caused by the additional rule that if a suffix starts with a vowel that is pronounced as part of a long vowel, the long vowel is written in full, with two letters. For example, ulkoministeriöön would be written as UM:öön, if UM is meant to be read as ulkoministeriö, and as UM:ään (pronounced uu ämmään), if UM is read by letters, uu ämmä or uu äm.

The nature of Finnish pronunciation

The phoneme principle

The original Finnish orthography as developed in the 16th century was unsystematic, and it imitated some of the oddities of Swedish and German orthography. It was later reformed and became rather systematic, mostly with one-to-one corresponding between letters and sounds. After this, the pronunciation has not changed substantially, so the simple correspondence has been preserved. This is good news to anyone who wants to learn Finnish, as well as to speech synthesis and speech recognition.

The correspondence is, to be exact, between letters and phonemes. As mentioned in chapter The phonemes in Finnish, a phoneme is an abstract concept in linguistics. For example, the “t” sounds in English “hat” and “tin” can differ from each other, but they are still recognized as the same; pronouncing the “t” in “tin” as normally in “hat” might sound a bit odd (the “t” sounds too weak, so to say), but it would not change the meaning of the word. Changing the “t” sound in “tin” to the English “th” sound would change the meaning. In Finnish, too, phonemes vary considerably, especially the “h” phoneme. For example, the letter h in the words hei, paha, and lyhty are pronounced very differently, but these sounds still represent the same phoneme. The differences are determined by the phonetic context, so they cannot make a difference in meaning.

There are actually several deviations from the one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds, although they are small as compared with e.g. the writing system of English. The deviations, such as boundary gemination, are discussed in in different sections of this book and summarized in section Deviations from the phoneme principle: a summary.

Difficult sounds?

Some of the sounds in Finnish are difficult, however. This does not mean any particular physical difficulty in producing them. Rather, it is a matter of sounds and phonetic contexts of sounds that are unfamiliar e.g. to many people who speak English as their native language.

A language learner needs to learn to pronounce unfamiliar sounds such as y and ö, to pronounce Finnish diphthongs, and to make a distinction between short and long vowels (even in unstressed syllables) and between single and double consonants. Some exercise is needed to say taka, takka, takaa, taakkaa etc. so that the listener knows which word you mean.

Pure vowels

Although unstressed vowels can be somewhat shorter and slightly less clear than stressed vowels, there is no vowel reduction comparable to, say, how the first vowel of the word “about” is pronounced in English. Word-final vowels are full vowels, too; the three vowels of the word vasara (hammer) are basically identical, except that the first one is stressed. Similarly, the vowels in the word vene (boat) are identical.

In free speech, some final vowels are dropped, e.g. yksi (one) often becomes yks. However, there is usually no partial reduction: either the vowel is fully pronounced, or it is omitted. Partial reduction may appear in fast speech and in dialects. Dialects also have reduced (very short) vowels that may appear between consonants to ease pronunciation. For example, in Eastern dialects, you may hear kolome, with second o very short, instead of the standard kolme (three).

Towards native pronunciation

When you can handle the issues described above, you can pronounce Finnish quite understandably. Some additional effort is needed to produce more native-like pronunciation. For example, it is a basic requirement to pronounce the letter r audibly in all contexts, but the exact quality of this sound is less important for understandability. To produce a native Finnish r, you need to pronounce it as a fairly strong trill, as in Scottish pronunciation of English.

Pronunciation of letters

The following presentation covers all Finnish letters as well as some “foreign” letters that may appear in Finnish texts in foreign names and in loanwords adopted “as such”.

a

Finnish a is similar to the “a” sound in the English word “father” in British English (Received Pronunciation), except that the Finnish a may be short or long. The “a” in “father” is between short and long in Finnish terms, usually closer to long. In US English (General American), the vowel in “top” is close to Finnish a. Finnish a is similar to the “a” in German, Italian, Spanish, and many other languages.

Care must be taken to keep a as separate from ä. These sounds are recognized as distinct by speakers of Finnish, and their difference often makes a difference in the meaning of a word, i.e. the sounds are distinct phonemes.

b

Finnish b is nominally similar to English “b”, but it appears only in relatively new loanwords and is mostly pronounced as “p” or almost as “p”, only partly voiced. A clearly voiced b appears typically only in educated public speech. See section Unvoiced and voiced stops.

c

Letter c appears only in foreign words and in a few loanwords. It is in principle pronounced according to the rules of the original language. In practice, it is usually pronounced as s before e, i, or y and as k otherwise.

d

In standard Finnish pronunciation, d is similar to English “d”. However, its role in the language is somewhat artificial, as described in The story of d.

When d appears in relatively new loanwords, it is often pronounced as Finnish t or almost as t by some people, although such pronunciation is often regarded as vulgar.

On the other hand, d appears as a counterpart of t in consonant gradation, in normal Finnish words, as in katu : kadut. In such contexts, it is very rare in dialects; Western dialects typically have r instead of it (e.g. karut), or sometimes l (kalut), whereas Eastern dialects may have lack of any sound there (kaut), or v (kavut), or something else. Sometimes t is exempted from gradation, e.g. the genitive of äiti (mother) can be äitin instead of the standard äidin.

When speaking standard Finnish, simply pronounce d as in English, but stay tuned to hearing many other pronunciations.

e

Finnish e is similar to English “e” in “get”, but more closed. The difficulty is that in Finnish, the vowel can be long, too, written as ee, and this has no counterpart in standard forms of English. Finnish does not make a distinction between open and closed e. The Finnish e tends to be rather closed, to keep it far enough from ä, and a foreign-language open [e] often sounds like [ä] to a Finn. The Finnish e resembles the first component of the diphtong in the word “ace” in British and US English.

f

Finnish f is similar to English “f”, but it appears only in relatively new loanwords. It is pronounced as v or (between vowels) as hv by many people. Such pronunciation is substandard, except in some words like asfaltti (asphalt), which is normally pronounced (and sometimes written) as asvaltti. However, the common pronunciation of f is weaker than in English (except when doubled, ff) and may come close to Finnish v.

g

The letter g has two roles in Finnish. It appears in relatively new loanwords, and in them, it is typically pronounced as k, except in educated public speech, where it may be pronounced more or less like “g” in English “get”. See section Unvoiced and voiced stops. On the other hand, it appears in the combination ng, which is usually the consonant gradation counterpart of the combination nk, e.g. Helsinki : Helsingissä, and it is pronounced as a double “eng sound”. In loanwords, ng may appear otherwise, too, and the gn combination may occur, too; see The eng phoneme.

h

The letter h denotes a single phoneme in Finnish, but its pronunciation varies greatly by phonetic context. There are two different positions in a syllable where h may appear:

• At the start of a syllable, as in hän (he/she), raha (money), and vanha (old). Inside a word, between vowels, h is usually voiced. The vowel after h strongly affects the quality of the [h] sound.
• At the end of a syllable, before a consonant (or at the end of a word), as in lahti (bay) or lehti (leaf; newspaper). The quality of the sound varies according to the preceding vowel. To many people, the main difficulty with Finnish h is its appearance in such a context.

  The pronunciation of h is greatly affected by the vowel of the syllable that the h belongs to or, if the syllable has a diphthong, the vowel closest to h. The main features of the variation are:

• a makes h similar to “h” in English “hat”, a pharyngeal or glottal fricative; this applies e.g. to h in hattu and lahti
• e, ä, o, and ö also have a similar effect, but h is weaker with them and is not pronounced that deep in the throat; this applies e.g. to h in heinä and lehti
• i makes h similar to “ch” in German “ich”, a palatal fricative, produced so that the tongue is very close to the palate, causing strong friction; this applies e.g. to h in hiili and pihdit
• u and y make h a labial fricative, produced with friction caused by lips being somewhat close to each other; this applies e.g. to h in huhu and lyhyt

Finns usually do not realize how much the pronunciation of h varies, since the same letter is used. They have unconsciously learned to pronounce it differently according to phonetic context.

The letter h is always pronounced, except that the second h of hiha (sleeve) is usually mute, especially in inflected words (e.g. hihan is pronounced [hian]).

The [h] sound does not usually appear as a double consonant, except in some interjections and descriptive words like huhhei and hihhuli and, in some pronunciations, due to boundary gemination; e.g. ole hiljaa (be silent) is mostly pronounced as written, but may also be pronounced oleh hiljaa.

At the end of a word, [h] appears only in interjections such as huh, in words participating boundary gemination, and in foreign words. Finns tends to pronounce a word-final letter h in foreign names where it is used (in the foreign language) only to indicate the quality or length of the preceding vowel or just as part of the spelling, e.g. Savannah.

i

The quality of Finnish i similar to English “ea” in “seat”, i.e. more closed than “i” in “sit”, but as such Finnish i is short. The difference between Finnish i and ii is primarily in the length, whereas the English sounds differ primarily in quality. As a foreigner speaking Finnish, just make sure you make the length distinction clearly—it does not disturb much if the vowels are also qualitatively more different than in native Finnish speech.

j

Finnish j is pronounced like “y” in English “yes”. Between i and a vowel, j is pronounced weakly or not at all, e.g. lukija (reader) is typically pronounced lukia (three syllables: lu, ki, a). After a diphthong ending with i, as in leijona (lion), the pronunciation varies from inaudible (leiona) to a double j (leijjona), as described in section Transitory sounds.

k

The letter k stands for the “k” sound, which is always written with k in Finnish; c and q appear only in foreign words. The Finnish k is not aspirated at all, so it sounds softer than English “k”. See section Unvoiced and voiced stops.

l

Finnish l is similar to English “l”, though with less variation by phonetic context. Compared with the various variants of English “l”, the Finnish l is more or less average, neutral.

m

Finnish m is similar to English “m”.

n

Pronunciation of n is similar to English “n”, including the special phonetic value in the nk combination. For the ng combination, see notes on g. Before p, the letter n is pronounced as m (e.g. olenpa is read as olempa), usually even across word boundaries (pojan pallo is read as pojam pallo). Other assimilations occur, too.

o

Finnish o is similar to “o” in British English “hot”, but more closed. When long (oo), it resembles “aw” in English “hawk”. Finnish does not make a distinction between open and closed o.

p

Finnish p stands for the “p” sound, which is not aspirated at all in Finnish, so it sounds softer than English “p”. See section Unvoiced and voiced stops.

q

The letter q appears only in foreign words and is in principle pronounced according to the rules of the original language. In practice, Finns read it as k, and a u after q is usually read as v.

r

The letter r is always pronounced and stronger than any variant of “r” in standard American or British English. Pronounce it first like word-initial “r” in English. The important thing is that r is always pronounced, even at the end of word and before a consonant. Later you can try to imitate the native Finnish trilling r.

s

Finnish s is basically the unvoiced “s” as in English “sing”. However, since Finnish lacks a contrast between that sound and the voiced “s” (as in English “busy”) as well as between “s” and the “sh” sound of English, the Finnish s can vary a lot and is generally less sharp than English “s”. Different people and social groups can have varying special versions of s, since Finnish speech remains quite understandable despite such variation.

š

The letter š appears only in new loanwords and denotes in principle a sound similar to English “sh”. However, it is generally pronounced more or less the same as s, though an š sound may be produced to make a word sound more foreign. The letter is part of the official orthography, but it has never become really popular; even many newspapers use sh instead of š (e.g. sheikki instead of šeikki). Moreover, official rules for using š have varied, replacing š by s in many words; see section š versus s.

Sometimes š is also used to write the interjection šš, which asks for silence; a more common spelling is shh or shhh.

The combination sh may appear in purely Finnish words when the letters belong to different parts of a compound word, as in naishenkilö, or the h belongs to the hAn suffix, e.g. mieshän. In such contexts, the letters s and h are pronounced separately.

t

The letter t stands for the “t” sound, which is not aspirated at all in Finnish, so it sounds softer than English “t”. Moreover, it is dental, i.e. the tongue touches the upper teeth. This is one way of keeping t and d as different in Finnish.

u

Finnish u is similar in quality to “oo” in British pronunciation of “goose”, but may appear as short or long. It is thus more closed than English “u” in “put”. Finnish does not distinguish between different qualities of u; instead, the difference between Finnish u and uu is primarily in the length, whereas the English sounds mentioned differ primarily in quality.

v

Finnish v resembles English “v” but is weaker. Phonetically, Finnish v is an approximant: the lower lip just comes close to the upper teeth or slightly touches them, whereas English “v” is a fricative, with some sound of friction produced. Finns generally do not pronounce “v” correctly when speaking English, since they are unaware of this difference. However, using English “v” when speaking Finnish does not affect understandability, partly because Finnish lacks a “w” phoneme.

After a diphthong ending with u, as in vauva (baby), the pronunciation of v varies from inaudible (vaua) to a double v (vauvva), as described in section Transitory sounds.

w

The letter w appears mostly in foreign words only and is in principle pronounced according to the original language. In practice, Finns tend to pronounce it before a vowel like Finnish v even in words like watti.

In Finnish names where w is used as a holdover from old orthography, as in the surname Wirta, it is always read as Finnish v.

x

The letter x appears in foreign words only and is in principle pronounced as in the original language, but normally as ks. Earlier it was used in a few international words, e.g. xylofoni instead of now standard ksylofoni, and such usage can still be seen.

y

Finnish y has no counterpart in English; the vowel in some pronunciations of “new” may come close, and so may the vowel in “dude” (due to the effect of the d’s). It corresponds to German “ü” and French “u”. You can try to produce it by saying “u” (as in “put”) but moving your tongue towards the front part of the mouth. The y sound is the front-vowel counterpart of the back vowel u. It is important that the lips are rounded.

z

The letter z appears mostly in foreign words only and is in principle pronounced according to the original language. In practice, it is generally pronounced as ts, following German orthography. Thus, Tarzan is normally pronounced Tartsan in Finnish. However, in modern foreign names, like Zimbabwe, z may be pronounced as in English (voiced s) or as a normal s.

ž

The letter ž is in principle part of Finnish orthography, denoting a sound like “s” in English “measure”. In practice, it only appears in the combination dž, e.g. maharadža, and the actual pronunciation of dž is typically dš or, most often, ds. The letter ž is also used in Finnish transliteration of Russian, e.g. Žukov (Zhukov).

å

The letter å appears in Finnish texts only in Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian names and their derivations, like ångström. It is pronounced like o and can be short or long according to the rules of the Scandinavian languages.

ä

The letter ä is pronounced like “a” in “hat” in most versions of English. It is the front vowel counterpart of a and very common in Finnish (about 5% of occurrences of letters). It is essential to keep ä different from a.

ö

Finnish ö has no direct counterpart in English, but it corresponds to German “ö” and French “eu”. To pronounce it, try saying “aw” (as in “hawk”) but keeping your tongue in the front part of the mouth. It is the front vowel counterpart of o and rather rare in Finnish (about 0.5% of occurrences of letters). Finns often interpret the neutral (schwa) vowel like the initial vowel of the English word “about” as ö and may (jocularly) write that word as öbaut in Finnish texts. However, the ö sound is very different from the neutral vowel; but these vowels might have samewhat similar “dark” feeling around them in people’s minds.

The dots in ä and ö

The dots in letters ä and ö, called diaeresis or dieresis in character code standards, are treated as an integral part of the letters, even though they are called diacritic marks in international terminology. In other words, ä and ö are treated as basic letters of the alphabet, not e.g. just as “a Umlaut” and “o Umlaut” as in German. Finnish keyboard have separate keys Ö and Ä (to the right of J K L).

However, the dots are recognized as visually separate parts of the letters, called ä:n pisteet (the dots of ä) and ö:n pisteet in Finnish.

In handwriting, and in fonts simulating it, the two dots in ä and ö are usually written as a wavy line (as in ã) or a short horizontal line (as in ā).

The Scandinavian æ and ø

The letters æ and ø as used in Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese are recognized as corresponding to ä and ö, respectively, and conventionally called tanskalainen ä ja ö (Danish ä and ö).

Previously, it was common even in reference books in Finnish to write Danish and Norwegian names using ä and ö instead of æ and ø, e.g. writing Bodö instead of Bodø. However, this is nonstandard: the names should be written as in the source language, except for established Finnish replacements, like Tromssa for the Norwegian “Tromsø”.

The eng phoneme [ŋ]

The eng sound, called äng-äänne in Finnish, lacks a letter of its own in the Finnish writing system. It is pronounced as “n” in English “sink”. Its appearance in Finnish before k could be described just as a variant of the “n” phoneme, if Finnish did not have the ng combination, which is pronounced as a double eng sound. The difference between [n] and the eng sound, denoted in grammatical descriptions by [ŋ], makes a difference in meaning e.g. for rannan [rannan] – rangan [raŋŋan], the genitives of ranta and ranka.

In originally Finnish words, and in old loanwords, the eng sound appears only in the nk [nk] combination and its consonant gradation counterpart ng [ŋŋ], between vowels, e.g. Helsinki [helsiŋki] : Helsingissä [Helsiŋŋissä]. There is no “g” sound in the Finnish pronunciation of ng in such contexts.

In loanwords, ng may appear before a consonant or at the end of a word. It is then pronounced as a single eng sound, e.g. englanti [eŋlanti] (English language) and pingpong [piŋpoŋ]. The word-final pronunciation corresponds to English practice, but pronunciation before a consonant is different, due to lack of “g” sound in Finnish. When a word ending with ng is inflected, a double eng sound is pronounced, e.g. pingpongissa [piŋpoŋŋissa].

In a few loanwords, ng is pronounced as [ŋg] or [ng], because the n and the g are recognized as belonging to different parts of the word, e.g. pangermanismi, which is read as written, or kongressi, which is read [koŋressi] or [koŋgressi].

The pronunciation of the gn combination in new loanwords varies between [gn] and [ŋn]. The latter is normal in common words like magneetti [maŋneetti], but [g] is used in words like prognoosi. At the start of a word, gn is always read as written, e.g. gnuu.

Practicing Finnish pronunciation

On a computer with a microphone or on a tablet or a smartphone, you can test and tune your pronunciation of Finnish words by visiting www.google.fi or translate.google.fi on the Chrome browser. Click on the microphone icon, with the tooltip Puhehaku (Speech search), and see if Google recognizes your pronunciation of e.g. kala, kylä, köli, työ, and other Finnish words that you can find in this book.

Transitory sounds

When a diphthong ending with [u] or [i] is followed by a vowel, there is usually a transitory sound of some kind between them. After [u], it can be [v], [vv], or even [w], which does not otherwise appear in Finnish. After [i], it is [j] or [jj]. In some contexts, such transitory sounds appear after [u] or [i] even when it is not part of a diphthong.

The appearance, quality, and quantity of a transitory sound vary by the phonetic structure of a word, by language form, by speaker, and by situation. We can say that word kauan (a long time) may be pronounced as [kauan], [kauvan], [kauvvan], or [kauwan], but this describes just part of the variation. The length of the consonant may vary, too: it can be so short that the pronunciation can be between [kauan] and [kauvan], or it can be between [v] and [vv], or even longer than [vv].

Transitory sounds are written inconsistently, but according to specific rules. This means that in some words, v or j is written where a transitory sound may appear, in some words not, according to rules that depend on the type of word. To some extent, the variation in pronunciation may vary according to spelling, too; people may pronounce a transitory sound more clearly in a word like hauva than in a word like kauan.

The rules are:

• A transitory sound is not written when it appears as the weak counterpart of k in consonant gradation, e.g. kauan, rei’issä [reijissä] ∼[reijjissä]. Note that the adverb kauan is originally a case form of the the stem kauka-. The apostrophe in rei’issä is just orthographic: it indicates that the two identical vowels belong to separate syllables.
• Otherwise, a transitory sound is usually written as v or j, e.g. hauva, leija. The letter appears in all forms and derivatives of the word.
• As an exception, a transitory sound is not written in some new loanwords like aioni (eon), with no apparent logic. For example, it is written in harpyija (harpy).
• A transitory sound is not written in the word lauantai (Saturday).

Words where a transitory sound may appear between a non-diphthongal [i] and a vowel have special rules and special pronunciation. The transitory sound is never long, and when a [j] appears, it is often very short. However, j is written when it is part of a -jA suffix denoting an agent, e.g. kulkija (wonderer), a derivation of kulkea (to walk). This rule has been set to keep the suffix similarly spelled independent of the variation that the j is usually not pronounced after i. Due to the spelling, people may occasionally pronounce a full [j] in a word like lukijoissa, a form of the word lukija, to distinguish them from words like lukioissa (form of the word lukio).

In some dialects, a transitory sound appears e.g. after [u] in a word like kakkua so that it is pronounced [kakkuva]. When such dialects are written, the writing usually reflects pronunciation: kakkuva.

Unvoiced and voiced stops

Smaller difference than in English

In Finnish, the distinction between voiced and unvoiced stops, i.e. b vs. p, g vs. k, and d vs. t, is not at all as clear as in English. A Finn very often pronounces the word bitti (bit) almost as pitti. Such pronunciation is often criticized and ridiculed when used in public speech, but on the other hand, clearly voiced b and g are rare except in formal speech. The common pronunciation seldom causes real confusion. Even though e.g. pitti also exists as colloquial word (covering a small part of the meaning of English “pit”), the context normally resolves any ambiguity between bitti and pitti.

Lack of aspiration

In English, the difference between “b” and “p” is partly in the voicedness of “b”, partly in the aspiration of ”p” in many contexts. In Finnish, b is usually only mildly (if at all) voiced, and p lacks any aspiration, so the difference is usually small.

Similar considerations apply to g and k. Although the contrast between d and t is a different issue, the t sound lacks all aspiration in Finnish.

If you use normal English pronunciation for p, t, and k e.g. at the start of a word, the aspiration may make them sound almost like ph, th, and kh to a Finn. In the midst of a word, they may sound like pp, tt, and kk—at least when a word is pronounced in isolation.

Background

Originally, the Finnish language lacked the [b], [d], and [g] sounds. In loanwords, they were replaced by [p], [t], and [k], respectively, e.g. pekoni (bacon), timantti (diamond), kirahvi (giraffe).

Later, it became common to preserve them in newer loanwords in educated speech. Although this is now the norm, it is followed to a varying degree, and the pronunciation is seldom completely voiced. Since the sounds [b] and [g] appear in new loanwords only, they are thus markedly foreign when pronounced as fully voiced.

The story of d

The sound d was artificially introduced into Finnish in the 18th century, and it is now relatively well-established. In standard language, the distinction between d and t is essential: it often makes a difference in meaning in purely Finnish words. For example, matot is the plural of matto (mat), madot is the plural of mato (worm).

When Finnish was formed as a written language, the consonant gradation counterpart to t was a dental fricative similar to voiced “th” in English. It was written as dh or d. Later, this sound vanished from most forms of Finnish and was replaced by different sounds in different dialects. Due to the influence of the writing system of Swedish and other languages, people started to read the letter d and the combination dh as the [d] sound. This became part of the standard language, and the spelling was unified to use d.

However, dialects were not changed. Later, the [d] pronunciation has become more common even in informal speech and can be regarded as part of standard spoken Finnish, though it is common to use one’s dialectal pronunciation instead.

Outside its role as a consonant gradation counterpart to t, the letter d and the sound [d] are somewhat foreign in Finnish. It is often replaced by [t], though e.g. pronouncing demokratia as [temokratia] probably sounds somewhat uneducated or outdated to most Finns nowadays.

In pronunciation, the difference between [d] and [t] in Finnish is not just in voicedness. Another, usually more important difference is that [t] is dental: the tongue touches the upper teeth.

Prestige sounds

Since the b and g sounds appear mostly just in formal speech when trying to pronounce loanwords “right”, they can be regarded as prestige sounds. They might be used instead of p and k just to sound educated, saying (and writing) e.g. grooninen instead of krooninen (chronic). This could mean parody or a simple mistake (hypercorrectism), and it is a common phenomenon in slang (e.g., biisi comes from English “piece”). Similarly, d may appear instead of t (e.g., daideilija as a parodic form of taiteilija “artist”), even though d is not as foreign as b and g.

Long vowels and double consonants

As described in section Phonetic structure, Finnish has short and long vowels and single and double consonants. Normally, a long vowel is written with two identical vowel letters like aa, and a double consonant is written with two identical consonant letters like kk.

In loanwords, the spelling may differ from the pronunciation both in vowel length and in consonant doubling. This is described in section New loanwords.

In pronunciation information in Finnish dictionaries and other reference works, there are three common ways to indicate vowel length in foreign (and occasionally even Finnish) words: doubling as in normal writing, e.g. eaux [oo]; a colon after the vowel, e.g. eaux [o:]; and a macron (short horizontal line) above the vowel, e.g. eaux [ō].

Diphthongs

The diphthong concept

A diphthong is a combination of two adjacent different vowels in the same syllable, as ie in the Finnish word tie. If two adjacent vowels do not form a diphthong, as au do not normally form in the Finnish word vapaus, there need not be any sound or any pause between them. The pronunciation still makes the vowels more separate, e.g. so that the tone of voice slightly falls at the end of a and then raises at the start of u. In contrast, the diphthong au in in the Finnish word kausi is pronounced so that a smoothly glides to u.

Since the details of pronunciation vary, the diphthong concept is relative and partly just a matter of conventional syllable division. However, the syllable division and hence the diphthong concept matters in metric poetry. In Finnish, it also matters as regards to secondary stress.

Diphthongs in Finnish: traditional view

Diphthongs are very common in Finnish, but only a limited number of combinations of the eight vowels occur as diphthongs. In standard Finnish, according to conventional classification, the following diphthongs occur:

• diphthongs with i as the second vowel: ai, ei, oi, ui, yi, äi, öi
• diphthongs with u or y as the second vowel, under the constraints set by vowel harmony: au, eu, ey, iu, iy, ou, äy, öy
• the diphthongs ie, uo, and yö (normally in the first syllable only)

In dialects, many of these diphthongs have changed to other diphthongs. In particular, ie, uo, and yö largely appear as ia or iä, ua, and yä in Western dialects (e.g. hiano suara miäs instead of hieno suora mies), though such pronunciation is clearly substandard in public speech. The diphthong ai has changed to ae in Eastern dialects, au to ao in some dialects, etc.

Variation in first syllable

In reality, there are many other combinations of vowels that are pron­ounced more or less as diphthongs in the first syllable of a word. For example, the words pian (soon) and luen (I am reading/I will read) are often pro­nounced as single syllables. This means that words like piankohan and luentoja have only three syllables, hence no secondary stress: pían.ko.han, lúen.to.ja; reading them as pí.an.kò.han and lú.en.tò.ja is less natural.

The above only applies to the first syllable, including the first syllable of a component of a compound word. In other syllables, vowel combinations other than those listed in the traditional view do not form diphtongs. For example, the word lukea (to read) consists of three syllables (lu.ke.a).

Diphthongs in other syllables

Two-vowel sequences with i as the latter vowel form a diphthong in any position within a word, e.g. in kirjoittaisimme (kir.joit.tai.sim.me), unless the i starts a component of a compound word, as in saunailta (sau.na.il.ta). A few loanwords have exceptions to this, e.g. ateisti (atheist), where isti is recognized as a unit and the syllable division is a.te.is.ti.

When the second vowel is u or y, pronunciation varies. The vowels do not form a diphthong if that would make the word have just two syllables. Thus, vapaus is pronounced va.pa.us and not va.paus. In longer words, diphthong pronunciation is common, e.g. vapaudessa is mostly pronounced va.pau.des.sa, though va.pa.u.des.sa, is possible, too. This variation was originally a dialect feature, but now varies by speaker, by word, and by context. The diphthong pronunciation is more common in open syllables than in closed syllables. In some words, the variation may affect secondary stress. For example, vapauden has no secondary stress in diphthong pronunciation, vá.pau.den, but may have it when pronounced as four syllables: vá.pa.ù.den.

Otherwise, two vowel sequences do not form a diphthong in other syllables than the first one. Rare exceptions to this include words ending with niekka (e.g. vitsiniekka), which could be classified as compounds rather than derivations, and the historical word lampuoti.

Diphthongs in writing

All diphthongs are written according to the general principles of Finnish orthography: each component is written using the same vowel sign as for the vowel when occurring alone. This is very different from English, where pronunciation has often changed after the written form was established. For example, in Finnish ai is always a combination of a and i, never like the “ai” in English “nail” in standard British or US pronunciation.

Pronunciation of Finnish diphtongs

If you pronounce, say, suomi (Finnish language) as three syllables (su.o.mi), it sounds odd, but you will be understood. In native pronunciation, uo is clearly a diphthong, which means that the u sound smoothly glides to an o sound, with no break.

All Finnish diphthongs have the first vowel somewhat more stressed than the second one. This is different from e.g. Spanish and Italian diphthongs, where the second vowel is clearly more stressed.

Triphthongs and three-vowel combinations

There are no triphthongs (three consecutive vowels in the same syllable) in Finnish, except debatably in the interjection miau (miaow).

When there are three vowels in succession, there is a syllable boundary inside it. If the boundary is between two identical vowels, it is marked with an apostrophe, e.g. rei’issä. Otherwise, it is normally not marked.

However, it is permitted (though rare) to use an apostrophe to remove ambiguity in any three-vowel combination, e.g. hau’issa versus ha’uissa (which are inessive plural forms of hauki and haku, respectively). Usually the syllable boundary can be inferred from other forms of the word, since the three-vowel cluster results from the loss of a k in consonant gradation. For example, the syllables of kiuas are kiu and as, since other forms of the word have the stem kiukaa-. (Besides, the diphthong ua would be possible only in the first syllable of a word.)

Stress

Simple stress on first syllable

The first syllable of a word takes the main stress. The stress is primarily a matter of strength of voice, rather than tonal (musical). The simple stress principle greatly helps in recognizing word boundaries from Finnish speech: a stressed syllable starts a new word. Very short words that are grammatical rather than content words (such as on “is”) are often unstressed, however.

The simple stress principle is so strong that it also applies to new loanwords and usually even to foreign names. In educated speech, foreign words from some languages, like French, may sometimes take the stress of the original language. More often, there is “simulated stress”. For example, a French word like gourmet is pronounced as gurmee (or kurmee), with stress on the first syllable, but the vowel of the second syllable (which is stressed in French, when the word is spoken as isolated) is clearly long. The vowel length thus somewhat imitates the French stress.

There are a few exceptions to the main stress principle. In some styles of pronunciation in colloquial language, a word like kiitos (thank you) often has stress on the second syllable. It might even be pronounced so that the first syllable is barely audible or not pronounced at all: tos. A word like aivan (right so, exactly) might be pronounced with main stress on both syllables (áiván) or with main stress on the second syllable (aiván). In emphatic pronunciation, the word todellakin (indeed) may get stressed as todellákin.

Secondary stress

In a compound word (closed compound), the first syllable of the second part usually has secondary stress in Finnish. Thus, if we denote primary stress with the acute accent (´) and secondary stress with the grave accent (`), the compound aikataulu, from aika (time) and taulu (table), is pronounced áikatàulu.

No stress marks are ever used in normal Finnish writing. Sometimes a written word is ambiguous in the sense that it can be a compound or a non-compound word, and the context is needed to resolve the ambiguity. For example, piilevä (hidden) is normally a participle of piillä (to be hidden), but in some contexts, it can be a compound word consisting of pii (silicon) and levä (alga), thus pronounced píilèvä, meaning a small organism, diatom. It is in principle permitted, but not common, to use a hyphen in such words for clarity: pii-levä.

Secondary stress may appear in a non-compound word, too, if it consists of four syllables or more. The rules are complicated, but the basic rule is that secondary stress appears on the 3rd, 5th, 7th, etc. syllable, but never on the last syllable. If a word is longer than four syllables and the 3rd syllable is short (ends with a short vowel), secondary stress usually moves forward and thus appears on the 4th, 6th, 8th, etc. syllable.

The following examples illustrate the basic rules:

• máa (one syllable, main stress)
• máa.ta (two syllables, only main stress)
• máa.la.ri (three syllables, only main stress)
• máa.la.rèi.ta (four syllables, secondary stress on third syllable)
• máa.lauk.sìs.sam.me (five syllables, secondary stress on third syllable)
• máa.lauk.si.àm.me (five syllables, secondary stress on fourth syllable, since the third syllable is short)
• máa.lauk.sèl.li.sùu.des.sà.si (eight syllables, secondary stress on 3rd, 5th, and 7th syllables)

The main complication to the basic rules is that some relatively long derivational suffixes such as lAinen, mAinen and minen have secondary stress on their first syllable. In this sense, they are treated as parts of a compound word. For example, we have áuttamìsella (with helping; inflected form of auttaminen), even though mi is short, and rómahdusmàinen (crash-like, catastrophical), even though dus is long.

The secondary stresses create a rhythm into long compound words. For example, kaupallistuminen (commercialization) is pronounced as káupallìstumìnen and keskusteluissammekin (in our discussions, too) is pronounced as késkustelùissammèkin (since the third syllable te is short).

Intonation

Intonation in Finnish is generally rather flat. The tone is usually falling even in questions, and questions are differentiated from statements by grammatical means (the kO suffix and the word order) rather than intonation.

However, there is normally a rise in the tone at the start of a new clause. This does not always mean the first word of the clause. For example, in the sentence Hän sanoi, että tulee huomenna, mutta aika myöhään (He said that he will come tomorrow, but rather late), the words hän, tulee and mutta are typically pronounced in a higher tone (and stronger). The connective että (that), although it starts a clause, is usually pronounced without emphasis (and often shortened to et in speech).

Boundary gemination and other sandhi phenomena

Boundary gemination and sandhi in a nutshell

Probably the most widely misunderstood and misrepresented feature of Finnish pronunciation is boundary gemination. It is a relatively simple phenomenon: there are word forms that end with a consonant, but this consonant varies by context so that it is the same as the initial consonant of the next word. This consonant is not expressed in standard writing in any way. For example, the phrase ota se (take it) is pronounced otas se.

Boundary gemination can be classified as a sandhi phenomenon. Generally, “sandhi” refers to phonetic changes that occur in speech at word boundaries.

Word forms with boundary gemination

Boundary gemination appears most regularly in the following word forms and endings, where it can be regarded as part of standard pronunciation:

• basic infinitive form of a verb, such as antaa (to give)
• basic imperative form of a verb, such as anna (give!)
• negative form of a verb, coinciding with the imperative, such as anna in en anna (I don’t give)
• 3rd person possessive suffix nsa, nsä
• allative suffix lle
• adverb derivation suffix sti, as in kauniisti (beautifully, nicely)
• basic form of most nouns ending with e, namely those that have een in the genitive, e.g. vene (: veneen), but not in nukke (: nuken)
• the words kolme (three) and itse (self), even though their genitives are kolmen and itsen
• some adverbs that end with e and indicate movement towards something, e.g. tänne (here, to this direction), tuonne, minne, taakse, luokse
• some individual words, mostly adverbs, such as kiinni (closed, off).

There are many other situations where boundary gemination may appear in some language forms. For example, in negative imperative forms like antako, as in Älkää sanoko (Do not say), it is possible and probably goes unnoticed, whereas in passive past participle forms like annettu it is clearly a dialectal feature.

Conditions for boundary gemination

Boundary gemination does not appear when a word is pronounced in isolation or before a pause, as in the exclamation Anna! But in a normal flow of speech, the word is pronounced (though not written) so that ends with a consonant that is identical with the initial consonant of the next word. This means that anna se is pronounced annas se, anna tuo is pronounced annat tuo, etc. If the next word starts with a vowel, there is usually no boundary gemination, e.g. anna olla is pronounced as written. Boundary gemination is rare before h; e.g. anna heti is usually pronounced as written, less often as annah heti.

Boundary gemination also appears inside a word before a word-like suffix such as pa. For example, tulepa is pronounced tuleppa, and talonsakin is pronounced talonsakkin. It also appears at the junction of the parts of a compound word. For example, the word itse normally has boundary gemination, and this often applies to compound words like itsepäinen (stubborn; literally “self-headed”), which is pronounced itseppäinen. However, boundary gemination is much less systematic inside compound words. When the first part is a noun, lack of boundary gemination is probably more common, e.g. kirjekuori (envelope) is pronounced as written, rather than kirjekkuori. Similarly, hernekeitto (pea soup) is usually pronounced as written, but hernekkeitto is possible, too. This may extend to phrase-like open compounds like terve tuloa (welcome), which may be pronounced as tervet tuloa, but it is common to pronounce it as written.

Variation in boundary gemination

The description of boundary gemination above is mostly sufficient for a language learner. There is much variation in the appearance of boundary gemination, by dialect, by speaker, and by word type, so stay tuned to hearing it in many other contexts than those mentioned. Some dialects do not have boundary gemination at all, though more often it appears to some extent.

Some dialects lack boundary gemination, so lack of it does not necessarily sound foreign—though somewhat odd outside the areas of those dialects.

Effect of boundary gemination on consonant gradation

In the context of consonant gradation, a word with boundary gemination is treated as ending with a consonant, irrespective of its actual pronunciation. Thus, the word liike^x : liikkeen (movement) has weak grade in the nominative; the syllable ke is treated as closed. Similarly, the 2nd person singular imperative forms have weak grade, e.g. liikkuu (moves) : ei liiku^x (does not move).

Impact of boundary gemination on understandability

Boundary gemination seldom affects the understandability of speech. However, many verbs have the infinitive and the 3rd person singular written identically (e.g. ostaa “to buy; buys”) but pronounced differently, because the infinitive has boundary gemination. In rare situations, this might affect the meaning of a sentence. More often, the gemination just helps the listener to recognize infinitives and therefore understand the sentence structure easier.

Myths about aspiration and glottal stop

Many descriptions of Finnish characterize boundary gemination using words like “aspiration” or “glottal stop”, which is seriously misleading. No aspiration is involved, and a glottal stop only occurs in specific situations: in some dialects, boundary gemination appears before a word that starts with a vowel, causing e.g. anna omena to be pronounced anna? ?omena, where ? denotes the glottal stop.

Background of boundary gemination

Historically, boundary gemination is caused by the assimilation of a final consonant. The imperative form that is now written as anna was earlier probably pronounced as annak in all contexts. The final consonant was then assimilated (adapted) to be same as the initial consonant of the next word or, under certain conditions, completely omitted.

Such a process has relatively recently taken place in common spoken Finnish in participle forms ending with nUt, such as sanonut.

Notations for boundary gemination

The assimilated consonant is not written at all in current standard orthography. In linguistic contexts, it is often marked with a superscript x, e.g. anna^x. This notation is used in this book to some extent.

When writing dialogue or other spoken words, whether common spoken language, a dialect, or a jargon, words are often written as spoken, e.g. Annam mullet toi kirja (standard Finnish: Anna minulle tuo kirja). However, it is more common to follow the standard language writing convention of not indicating boundary gemination, e.g. Anna mulle toi kirja.

Assimilation phenomena

Other sandhi phenomena in Finnish include the following.

• Partial or total assimilation of a word-final consonant according to the next consonant. E.g. pojan pallo is pronounced pojam pallo (the n sound becomes m, which is phonetically more similar to p). Assimilation is described in the next section.
• Loss of a final vowel, especially before a vowel. For example, missä on is often pronounced as misson (which may be written as miss on when writing a dialogue).
• Loss of a final consonant. In standard spoken language, this is limited to verb participles ending with Ut, where the t has no separate meaning, and to a few other words. In dialects, it is more common; see section Spoken Finnish.

Legato

The pronunciation misson mentioned above can be classified as legato, which means that successive words are pronounced as one word. Since there is normally no pause between words, legato means in this case that there is a double s, as opposite to pronunciation before a consonant, like mis Pekka on. Legato pronunciation can also be said to change the syllable structure; e.g. misson has the syllables mis and son. However, syllable division is largely a matter of convention rather than phonetic reality.

Legato pronunciation may also cause a short consonant to be doubled, e.g. nyt on may be pronounced as nytton and jos ei as jossei.

Some legato pronunciations have been established as a standard language words, as contractions, e.g. ettei (että ei), ehkei (ehkä ei), and jollei (jolla ei). In word division, they may be divided according to structure (ett-ei) or phonetically (et-tei), though both ways may look somewhat odd to some people.

Assimilation

Assimilation in the general sense means that a sound is changed due to the effect of a nearby sound so that the sounds become more similar or even identical. Vowel harmony can be described as a form of remote assimilation. However, in descriptions of Finnish, assimilation usually means just assimilation of a consonant due to an effect of another consonant after it.

The most common type is assimilation of [n] so that it becomes

• the eng sound [ŋ] before [k] and [g]; this assimilation is not shown in writing, i.e. [ŋk] is written as nk
• the [m] sound before [m], [p], and [b], e.g. olenpa [olempa]
• identical with the next sound when it is [j], [l], [r], [s], or [v] e.g. pojan luo [pojal luo]; these assimilations are not regular; they depend on dialect, speaker, speed of speech, and other factors

Assimilation of [n] is usually not indicated in writing, except inside a primary word. By “primary word”, we mean that word-like suffixes and components of a compound word are regarded as words in this context. Thus, we write onpa [ompa], talonpoika [talompoika], and monenmoinen [monemmoinen]. The assimilation is indicated in the word ompi (poetic variant of on), since pi is an inflection suffix. As an exception, assimlation is also indicated in compound words where the first part is a one-syllable pronoun, e.g. tällainen (tän + lainen) and sellainen (sen + lainen), but e.g. toisenlainen [toisellainen]. The rules are difficult to master even to native speakers, so misspellings are common.

Assimilation of [t] is never indicated in writing; it may occur

• frequently in common spoken language in the participle endings -Ut and in the word nyt; the [t] becomes identical with next consonant, e.g. ollutkaan [ollukkaan]
• often in Western dialects in other word-final positions when the next sound is a stop, e.g. standard miehet kantavat may correspond to [miehek kantaa]; this may also happen before a word-like suffix, e.g. [miehekkin], standard Finnish miehetkin

Other assimilations occur within a word before an inflectional suffix and are described in sections that deal with each inflection form. A typical example is assimilation of the [n] consonant in participle endings -nUt so that it becomes identical with the preceding consonant, e.g. tul- (stem of tulla) + -nUt = tullut. Such assimilations are always indicated in writing, and they can alternative be described just as suffix form variation.

Pronunciation of foreign names and phrases

Between original and adapted

The pronunciation of foreign names varies greatly between two extremes: imitating the pronunciation of the original language and pronouncing words “as written”, i.e. using the Finnish phonetic values for letters. This also applies to proper names that apparently consist of foreign words. For example, the name of the largest Finnish airline company, Finnair, is very often pronounced as written, but sometimes an English-like pronunciation is used (pronouncing “Finn” and “air” more or less as in English, [fineər]).

Very often, the pronunciation is between the extremes, if the name comes from a language that is relatively well known in Finland, such as Swedish, English, German, or French. The original pronunciation is imitated in general, but in details, it is adapted to Finnish, perhaps strongly. For example, Finns generally do not pronounce Jamestown is as written; instead, people try to imitate the English pronunciation the best they can or the best they see fit in Finnish speech, e.g. [dseimstaun].

Thus, the pronunciation varies. To make things worse, companies that have foreign names for themselves or their products do not usually inform the public about the intended pronunciation in Finnish.

According to most Finnish language guides, foreign names should be pronounced just as in the original language. This means a strict division of names: some widely used names of foreign origin have forms adapted to Finnish, such as Lontoo for London, but all other foreign names should have foreign pronunciation. Finnish encyclopedias and other reference books tend to describe foreign names according to this principle. This means the the information give is “too good”, i.e. it tries to specify the original pronunciation even if it is not in actual use in Finnish.

In reality, use of original pronunciation is very rare and sounds odd&emdash;it might be regarded as humoristic or snobbish. The level of adaptation varies greatly, by language, by word, by speaker, and by context. When a foreign name is used in isolation, typically as an answer to a question, its pronunciation may be close to original, but when used in sentence context, it is adapted in many ways.

The common pronunciation of foreign names in Finnish is generally something to be learned by listening to people rather than from books. In fact, this book is probably the first that tries to describe the pronunciation realistically.

Treatment of words from different languages

For English and Swedish names, the foreign pronunciation is usually the starting point, but it is adapted to the system of Finnish. Even people who speak English well tend to pronounce English names in Finnish speech more or less “Finnish way”. Moreover, pronunciation of English by Finns varies a lot, as described in section Finnish pronunciation of English. For Swedish, the standard pronunciation of Swedish as spoken in Finnish is normally used; this deviates from Swedish as spoken in Sweden.

For German and French names, people usually try to imitate the foreign pronunciation but often fail, since they have wrong ideas of the languages. For example, it is not rare to hear people pronounce Bordeaux as [bordöö] rather than the more correct [bordoo]. A final vowel in a French word, unless it is mute, is usually pronounced long, imitating stress on it. Word-final consonants that are mute in French are usually pronounced, e.g. Cannes [kannes] rather than [kan].

Spanish names are mostly pronounced as written, except that ch is pronounced [tš] or [ts] and ll usually as [lj], though the name Mallorca is typically pronounced [majorka]. The letter c is usually pronounced [s] before e and i, [k] otherwise, and z as [ts], though people who know Spanish may pronounce [s].

Thus, Kennedy is pronounced [kenedi] and Björn, a Swedish name, is pronounced [bjöörn], using a long vowel. But the Spanish word paella is pronounced as written, [páel.la], mostly even by people who know the Spanish pronunciation [paéjja]. For the French car brand Renault, some people say [renault], some say [renoo], but using genuinely French pronunciation would be regarded as snobbery.

Latin names and phrases are usually pronounced by using Finnish values for letters, except that “ae” and “oe” are read as ee, “ph” as f, and “qu” as kv. The combinations “ch” and “th” are read either as k and t or as kh and th (with an h sound). Latin vowel length and stress may be observed depending on the speaker’s knowledge of Latin and on the context. The pronunciation of “c” before “e”, “i”, and “y” varies; many people pronounce it as k as in classical Latin, whereas e.g. in medicine it is pronounced as s, and in some contexts even the Italian-based tš is used. Duplication of a consonant after a long vowel often takes place as described in section Doubling of consonants in loanwords. For example, “Caesar” is pronounced in principle keesar, but keessar is more often heard.

Russian names are usually pronounced by reading the the transliterated form according to Finnish rules. The transliteration of Russian used in Finnish has been designed to roughly reflect the pronunciation, but the result is actually rather far from genuine Russian. For example, a “y” letter in transliteration is read like Finnish y, even though it means a “back i” in Russian. The stress tends to be on the first syllable, independently of the stress in Russian. If the first syllable is open, its vowel is often pronounced as long or half-long, and the consonant after it may be pronounced as doubled. For example, the name Putin may be pronounced as written, or as Puutin or (most often) as Puuttin.

For most other languages, the written form is usually the starting point. Even people who know the foreign language may use such a pronunciation, for understandability.

Grades of adaptation

Variation in the pronunciation of foreign words tends to follow certain principles, even though this is intuitive, and there are no official rules. The following list tries to describe the adaptation process, starting from those adaptations that are almost universal in Finnish speech and proceeding to stronger adaptations.

1. Reduced vowels—which are shorter than normal vowels and often of nondescript quality—are replaced by full vowels, often using the spelling as the basis. E.g. Boston is pronounced [boston] rather than [bostən].
2. The stress is on the first syllable, e.g. Palermo is pronounced [pálermo] rather than in Italian style [palérmo]. However, the stress in the source language may be imitated using both a long vowel and a doubled consonant after it, e.g. the Latin laudatur is usually pronounced [láudaattur] rather than the Latin style [laudáatur]. French words are sometimes pronounced with stress on the last syllable, e.g. Calais as [kalée], but normally only when saying the word in isolation.
3. The letter s is pronounced as [s] even when it is pronounced as [z] in the source language, e.g. Basel as [baasel] rather than the more German-style [baazel].
4. The letter z is pronounced as [ts], though in Spanish names, [s] may be used, too. Examples: Tarzan [tartsan], Zaragoza [saragosa].
5. Sounds that do not normally appear in Finnish are replaced by their closest counterparts. For example, French or English “r” is replaced by Finnish [r], English “w” by Finnish “v”, and Spanish “ñ” is pronounced [nj] rather than as a palatalized [n]. However, English “th” is often retained. Nasal vowels, especially in French words, may be retained, but more often they are pronounced according to spelling, possibly as long; e.g. chanson may be pronounced [šaanson] or [šansoon], less often in a more French way [šãsõ] (where ã and õ denote nasal vowels).
6. A “mute” t the end of a word e.g. in English and French is pronounced as [e], e.g. Grenoble [grénoble].
7. Consonant letters that are not pronounced in the source language are pronounced, especially at the end of a word. For example, even when otherwise following British English pronunciation, Oxford is pronounced [oksford], with Finnish [r], and French Orléans is pronounced [orleaans], even though neither “n” nor “s” is pronounced in French.
8. The voiced [ž] is replaced by the unvoiced [š] or by a Finnish [s].
9. Some consonant sounds are replaced by more familiar sounds: [b] by [p], [g] by [k], and sometimes [d] by [t]. This may be regarded as provincial or even uncivilized.
10. Consonant clusters are simplified especially at the start of a word, e.g. Bretagne pronounced as [retanje]. This clearly sounds provincial but may be common in some communities or in some people’s speech.

Deviations from the phoneme principle: a summary

Deviations in new loanwords

Mainly due to the complicated history of Finnish language spelling standards, there are many deviations from the phoneme principle in relatively new loanwords. Many of the items of the following list are described in more detail in section New loanwords.

• Letters b and g are usually pronounced as [p] and [k], respectively. Even when they are somewhat voiced, this is mostly unsufficient for making a phoneme distinction. When spoken, words like paarit and baarit are distinguished by context, rather than a difference between [p] and [b].
• Letter š or its replacement sh is usually pronounced as [s] or almost like [s]. When spoken, words like šakki and sakki are distinguished by context, rather than a difference between [š] and [s].
• A double consonant before a consonant is often written as in the original language, even though it is pronounced as single, e.g. attribuutti [atripuutti] ∼ [atribuutti].
• In some contexts, a written double consonant between vowels is commonly pronounced single, e.g. penisilliini [penisiliini], though such pronunciation is not officially accepted.
• A single consonant is often pronounced as double, e.g. kampanja [kamppanja] and Internetiin [internettiin] ∼ [intternettiin].
• A single vowel is pronounced as long in some words either regularly, e.g. moa [mooa], or as a very common pronunciation, e.g. bonus [poonus] ∼ [boonus]. This also applies to many given names; e.g. Pia and Piia are both pronounced [piia].
• Many common loanwords have preserved their original spelling, partly for prestige reasons, e.g. pizza [pitsa], rock [rok], wok [vok]. There are also adapted forms spelled phonetically: pitsa, rokki, vokki. The spelling is sometimes debated heavily. On the other hand, the use of the original spelling has not been seriously questioned yet e.g. for lasagne [lasanje], bridge [pridse] ∼ [bridže], show [šou].
• Some loanwords have mostly been adapted to the Finnish writing system, but the letter z, c, or x has been retained, e.g. zootomia [tsootomia], cerium [kerium] ∼ [serium], taxi [taksi], though x can no longer be regarded as accepted in such words.
• Foreign names, words, and phrases are written according to their original spelling, but pronounced in different ways. If they were always read according to Finnish values for letters, the phoneme principle would apply. If they were always read according to original pronunciation, as the official rules say, it would be a rather well-defined exception to the principle. In practice, the pronunciation is one of the alternatives or somewhere between them, e.g. Baker [beikker].
• Finnish suffixes appended to foreign names are often written according to “visual vowel harmony”, deviating from the pronunciation. Example: Dale [deil] : Dalea [deiliä]. It is also common, though substandard, to write the suffixes according to the written form but to use other forms of the suffixes in pronunciation. Example: Bordeaux [bordoo] : Bordeauxiin [bordoohon]; correct spelling: Bordeaux’hon.
• In inflected forms of words ending with a mute -e, the e is written but instead [i] is pronounced in most words, e.g. Greene [griin] : Greenen [griinin], but not consistently, e.g. Applen [äplen].

Other deviations

Deviations in originally Finnish words and in old loanwords also reflect the history of Finnish language standards, in particular attempts at maintaining regularity in writing. For example, according to general principles of Finnish inflection, the genitive of the word ruoka is ruoan, because consonant gradation just makes the k vanish, when the genitive suffix n is appended. However, in practice the pronunciation has been simplified to ruuan. This means that to preserve regularity in written form of the language, irregularity in the correspondence between spelling and pronunciation has been introduced. Although it is now accepted to write ruuan, this has just created additional complexity, since the “regular” spelling is still allowed and often presented or regarded as more correct.

The main deviations are:

• Boundary gemination, which means that in many words, there is a consonant at the end but this is not reflected in spelling in any way. E.g., Anna se! is pronounced [annas se].
• The eng sound has no letter of its own. Instead, it is written as n before k and as ng when doubled, and as n, ng, or g in new loanwords.
• Assimilation of n to [m] before p (and b) is not indicated in writing, i.e. np may also denote [mp], e.g. kunpa [kumpa].
• Transitory sounds [j] ∼ [jj] and [v] ∼ [vv] ∼ [w] between vowels are written inconsistently, e.g. aion [aijon] but leija, kauan [kauvan] but hauva. In particular, different words like lukijoilla (adessive plural of lukija “reader”) and lukioilla (adessive plural of lukio, a school form resembling US high school) are usually pronounced identically.
• The j in sija is normally not pronounced, except perhaps as a short transitory sound. Several grammars say this rather directly in their rules for using the sija spelling to distinguish the word from inflected forms of sika : sian.
• The weak-grade forms of ruoka and vuoka have uu instead of uo in pronunciation, e.g. ruuan, but the old and still accepted (and effectively recommended) spelling e.g. ruoan does not indicate this.
• The second h is often not pronounced in the word hiha, at least in some inflected forms like hihan [hian].
• Most inflected forms of sydän have [mm], but the only accepted spelling is with a single m, e.g. sydämessä [sydämmessä]. This also affects derivations, e.g. sydämellinen [sydämmellinen].
• The word mitali is commonly pronounced [mitalli], though this pronunciation is not even mentioned in dictionaries.
• The word maailma is normally pronounced with a short a and just two syllables, [mail.ma]. In poetry and in emphatic pronunciation, it may have three syllables [maa.il.ma], but hardly secondary stress on the il syllable, even though the word is historically a compound word.

Marking stress

The stress is not a phoneme, but it can be comparable to a phoneme due to making a distinction in meaning. As described in section Stress, the stress cannot always be inferred from the written form of a word. The main reason to this is that compound words are not written systematically so that their structure is indicated.

For example, the spelling tangoilta is used both for a compound word consisting of tango and ilta, with a syllable break between o and i and with secondary stress on the syllable il tán.go.ìl.ta), and for a form (ablative plural) of tango, pronounced as three syllables and without a secondary stress (tán.goil.ta). The same spelling is also used for the ablative plural of tanko and tanga, but these do not differ in pronunciation from the form of tango.

The spelling piilevä may be a form of the verb piillä or (rarely) a compound word consisting of the words pii and levä. The syllable division is the same, but in the latter case, there is a secondary stress, [píilèvä], making the pronunciations different.

Syllable boundaries

Similarly to stress, syllable boundaries are not phonemes but may act like phonemes in the sense of making a difference in both pronunciation and meaning. This happens in non-compound words, too. The spelling hauista can be elative plural of hauki, the partitive singular of hauis, or the elative plural of haku. In the first two cases, the syllable structure is hau.is.ta, but in the third case it is ha.uis.ta, since a syllable break appears in the place of a lost k.

In some loanwords, a combination of a vowel and i does not constitute a diphthong, but this is not indicated in spelling, e.g. ateisti [á.te.ìs.ti], but on the other hand polyteisti [pó.ly.tèis.ti].

According to language rules, a syllable boundary is indicated when it appears between identical vowels. It is indicated with a hyphen if the vowels belong to different parts of a compound, as in linja-auto, and with an apostrophe otherwise, e.g. ruo’on. Moreover, in new loanwords, this principle is not always followed; e.g. kooperaatio, admittedly a rare word, is pronounced [ko.o.pe.raa.ti.o], whereas koordinaatio is pronounced [koor.di.naa.ti.o].

It is allowed to use an apostrophe to indicate syllable boundary otherwise, too, e.g. hau’ista and ha’uista, but this is very rare in modern language.

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].

Punctuation

This section deals with punctuation marks in a strict sense. The hyphen (-) and the apostrophe (’) were discussed in section Non-alphabetic characters in words. However, as a character, the apostrophe is identical with the single quotation mark used in Finnish, as described below.

“Big” punctuation marks

The “big” punctuation marks are the period “.”, the exclamation mark “!”, and the question mark “?”. They are used at the end of a sentence. Their use does not differ from English usage.

Comma

The use of the comma is grammatical rather than pause-based in Finnish. This means that a comma separates clauses of a sentence or other structural parts. It does not always indicate a pause, and often a pause is not expressed with a comma. Consider the following sentences:

He said that the man who bought the house was his friend.

Hän sanoi, että mies, joka osti talon, oli hänen ystävänsä.

In the Finnish version, a comma separates the subsidiary clause from the main clause, and commas are also used around the relative clause joka osti talon (who bought the house) embedded in another clause.

In fiction prose, commas are very often omitted even when required by the grammar, since many authors and translators prefer such style.

The rules for using the comma, pilkkusäännöt, are complicated, and only experienced authors master them in all detail. However, the basic rules are relatively simple:

• Use a comma between clauses of a sentence, unless there is a rule that requires or allows the comma to be omitted. Example: Maija kävi kalassa, ja Matti odotti kotona.
• If parallel clauses share a constituent part, no comma is used between them. Example: Maija kävi kalassa ja lähti sitten kokoukseen. The clauses share the subject, Maija.
• However, if the latter clause starts with mutta or vaan, which correspond to “but”, the old practice is to always use a comma before it, even when there is a shared constituent. Example: Maija kävi kalassa, mutta lähti sitten kokoukseen. This is still a permitted alternative and commonly used.
• Before kuin (than), no comma is used. The formal rules say that this applies when kuin expresses comparison, but we can interpret any use of the word that way.
• Within a clause, parallel expressions are separated by commas, unless there is a conjunction between them. Examples: Maija, Matti ja Ville lähtivät kalaan. Finnish does not use serial comma, i.e. a comma before a conjunction in a list (as often used in English: “Maija, Matti, and Ville”).
• Consecutive attributes are separated by commas, if they are parallel, not hierarchic. For example, uusi, punainen auto (new, red car) refers to a car that is both new and red, whereas uusi punainen auto (new red car) in principle means a new one among red cars, implying that there is or has been at least one other red car. In practice, punctuation mistakes are so common in such issues that you should be careful in drawing conclusions from commas.
• Before an “afterthought” addition, a comma can be used even when it would violate the other rules. This relates to additions that are structurally separate from the main content; we can mentally imagine a phrase like “oh, and by the way…” before them.
• Commas are omitted from very short sentences, e.g. Sataa ja tuulee.

Dashes

The en dash “–” is used much like in British English – like this. In older usage, the em dash “—” was commonly used, but the same way as the en dash now, with spaces around—unlike in US usage of the em dash.

The en dash, without spaces, is also used in range notations and similar constructs like 10–20 (from 10 to 20), as in English. However, spaces as used around the en dash when at least one of the connected expressions consists of two or more words, e.g. Namika Lahti –Tampereen Pyrintö 77–63, a sports event result where each team name has two word.

Two consecutive dashes, with spaces between and around (“ – – ”) indicated omission in quoted text, though nowadays the ellipsis “…” is often used for the purpose, as in English.

It is very common (as in English) to use the hyphen “-” instead of the en dash “–”. In situations where the en dash cannot be used, the recommendation is to use a hyphen with always spaces around, even in range notations, e.g. 10 - 20.

Ellipsis

In standard usage, the ellipsis “…” indicates omission of some kind, but not omission in quoted text. For example, in a dialogue, Annas kun mietin… (Let me think…) indicates that the speaker ends a sentence without completing it; this often reflects a certain intonation.

The ellipsis is also used in range notations like 5…10.

Typographic rules for the ellipsis vary by language: some languages, like English, favor spaced dots, whereas others use unspaced dots, which are rather close to each other . At the level of characters, these can be interpreted as the use of the horizontal ellipsis character (U+2026) versus three normal periods “.” (full stop, U+002E). Finnish language rules do not explicitly deal with the issue, but they can be read as preferring the use of horizonal ellipsis character (…), with three uns In older written language, three spaced dots ( . . . ) were often used.

Quotation marks

The quotation marks are symmetric, i.e. the same character is used at the start as at the end. The normal quotation mark is the same as American English closing quotation mark. Compare:

Hän sanoi: ”Tulen huomenna.”

He said: “I’ll come tomorrow.”

American English quotation marks often appear in Finnish texts. This is unintentional and caused by using Microsoft Word without due consideration of language settings. When document language is set to English (as it often is by default), Word turns an input of "abc" (with upright quotation marks) to “abc”; with proper Finnish settings, it is turned to ”abc”.

Alternatively, we can use double angle quotation mark, also known as guillemets. The same, right-pointing mark is used at the start and at the end. This usage is common in printed matter, especially in fiction prose, but rare otherwise.

Hän sanoi: »Tulen huomenna.»

When text inside quotation marks ends with a punctuation mark, as in the examples above, the punctuation mark is alwys considered as part of the quoted expression.

When a word is put in quotation marks, the marks enclose the entire word, including any suffixes. Similarly, when a word is set in italic, the suffix is in italic, too. Deviations from these principles are not uncommon, but they are substandard.

He puhuivat ”taalasta”. (They talked about “taala”.)

He puhuivat taalasta.

As the examples show, the use of quotation marks in conjunction with other punctuation is logical rather than typographic in Finnish. In English, a punctuation mark is often placed before the closing punctuation mark for better appearance, as in the following: They talked about “taala.” This is not accepted in Finnish when the punctuation is not part of the quoted text.

Single quotation marks are symmetric, too, e.g. ’hei’. The character used is the same as the English closing single quotation mark. It is identical with the apostrophe. Single quotation marks are very often used instead normal quotation marks, perhaps because on a Finnish keyboard, they can be typed with a single keypress, whereas double quotes require the Shift key. However, according to the rules of standard Finnish, single quotation marks should be used only

• for a quotation inside a quotation
• for the explanation of the meaning of a word

Examples of nested quotations in Finnish and in American English:

Leena kysyi: ”Sanoiko hän ’Tulen huomenna’?”

Leena asked: “Did he say ‘I’ll come tomorrow’?”

Example of using quotation marks for a word and its meaning:

Vanhan arkikielen sana ”taala” ’dollari’ on peräisin amerikansuomesta.

The example says that the old colloquial word taala, which means “dollar”, comes from American Finnish. It could alternative be written using italic instead of normal quotation marks:

Vanhan arkikielen sana taala ’dollari’ on peräisin amerikansuomesta.

Notational conventions in Finnish

General

There are rules of written language that govern various general and specialized notations, such as abbreviations, notations of quantities, and formats of bulleted lists. For many of them, there are international standards, but the standards are often not followed in practice, and national conventions and even national standards may differ from them.

This section describes the most common notational conventions in Finnish, in alphabetic order by topic. The presentation does not cover issues where there is no significant difference between international standards, rules for English, and rules for Finnish. Additional information is available in Finnish in the online guide Nykyajan kielenopas, by the author of this book.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations used in Finnish can be classified as follows:

• Common abbreviations, which are widely used and recognized by practically all literate speakers of Finnish: esim. = esimerkiksi (for example), huom. = huomautus ∼ huomaa (remark; please note), mm. = muun muassa, s.o. = se on (that is), ym. = ynnä muut (and other), tms. = tai muuta sellaista (or things like that), v. = vuonna (in the year), yms. = ynnä muuta sellaista (and things like that). Even these abbreviations are avoided in the most formal prose, in fiction, and often in journalistic style. In informal language, some common abbreviations are occasionally pronounced as words and possibly written without a period (esim, huom, yms), making them truncated words.
• Other general abbreviations, defined in principle in abbreviation glossaries such as Lyhenneluettelo by the Institute for the Languages of Finland. Most of them cannot be expected to be generally known, but some of them can be expected to be known to some group of readers. They normally end with a period, e.g. agrol. for agrologi, and they have most often been formed the same way as temporary abbreviations. In this book, the appendix-like chapter Abbreviations lists frequently used general abbreviations (and some other abbreviations).
• Temporary abbreviations of words, formed by breaking a word between a consonant and a vowel and appending a period. For example, opettaja could be abbreviated as op. or as opett., though the latter saves just two characters. Such abbreviations often need some context or an explicit definition to be understandable.
• Encyclopedic abbreviations, consisting of the first letter of a word or phrase and a period. For example, in an article with the title algoritmi, the abbreviation a. would be used to denote the title word, in one encyclopedic style.
• Initialisms, formed from initial letters of words, e.g. EU for Euroopan unioni. These are traditionally written in all upper case, without a period. However, abbreviations that are used as common names rather than proper names are increasingly written in lower case, e.g. alv = ALV = arvonlisävero, and this is accepted practice.
• Foreign abbreviations, adopted as such from another language, such as NHL. They are mostly pronounced using the Finnish names for letters, e.g. [än hoo äl]. For a few abbreviations, foreign pronunciation is in use, e.g. [bii bii sii] for BBC; for some, like CIA and FBI, the practice varies.
• Internationally standardized symbols, such as “m” for meter and “Pt” for plutonium. These are usually called abbreviations, though they are best classified as identifiers. They are read either using the corresponding Finnish names, like metri (or metriä) and plutonium, or in some contexts by naming the letters (e.g. “Pt” as pee tee).

Abbreviations and their use vary by time, since they are mainly used for expressions that are repeated often, and this may depend on changes in the society. The same abbreviation may have different meanings in different areas of life and at different times. Dictionaries generally make heavy use of abbreviations, including usage where the meanings are specialized; e.g. s. may stand for substantive (noun) and not any of the common meanings.

For example, the abbreviations for political parties reflect name changes. For abbreviations at present, consult the recommendation Puolueiden nimet ja lyhenteet. Currently kd. (often written kd without period) refers to Christian Democrats; from 1940s to 1980s, it stood for kansandemokraatit, a left-wing party.

An abbreviation mostly stands for one form of a word only, usually the basic form. (Exceptionally, the abbreviation v. stands for both vuonna and vuosi.) If the grammatical context requires another form, the suffix needs to be written and separated from the abbreviation with a colon “:”, e.g. EU:ssa = Euroopan unionissa, except when the abbreviation as such is a pronounced word (see below). An identifier of a unit stands for both the basic form and the partitive, e.g. 1 m = yksi metri, 5 m = viisi metriä; for other case forms, the suffix is written, e.g. 1 m:ssä = yhdessä metrissä.

The use of a period at the end of abbreviations has been debated a lot, but the rules have remained essentially the same for a long time:

• An abbreviation usually ends with a period, if it has been formed by omitting letters from the end of a word, e.g. s. = sivu, prof. = professori. However, in dictionaries, abbreviations are often written in italic without a period, e.g. “hoopo (ark) stupid”, where ark = arkikieltä = colloquialism.
• If both parts of a compound word have been abbreviated by omitting trailing letters, a period is used at the end of each abbreviated part, e.g. lastent.op. = lastentarhanopettaja.
• Initialisms are written without a period, e.g. PRH = Patentti- ja rekisterihallitus.
• However, some common abbreviations such as jne. = ja niin edelleen are written with a period. They are written in lowercase and spelled out in reading, as opposite to e.g. abbreviations of organisation names, which are mostly read by letters, e.g. PRH [pee är hoo]. However, in informal language, even abbreviations like jne. may be pronounced by letters: jii änn ee.
• Symbols of units never have a period, whether the unit is internationally standardized or not, e.g. m = metri, prk = purkki (can). The same applies to other standardized symbols, which are identifiers rather than abbreviations, e.g. U = uraani (uranium).

In the armed forces, abbreviations are written without periods, e.g. kers for kersantti (sergeant) instead of kers. as used in standard Finnish.

When a person’s given names are abbreviated, only the first letter of each word is included. However, if the name starts with a consonant cluster, all consonants in it are included (e.g. Fredrik is abbreviated as Fr.). Spaces are left after each abbreviation, e.g. J. K. Paasikivi, although a thin space may be used instead of a normal space. It is common to violate this rule (e.g. J.K.Paasikivi) due to the influence of English.

In addition to abbreviations proper, there are words that are abbreviations by origin but used in any way as a normal word, such as “radar” in English. Some of them, being originally initialisms, are often written in all upper case, e.g. NATO, but normal spelling like Nato is also accepted and increasingly common. If such a word is inflected, the suffixes are written in lower case (except in all-uppercase text of course), e.g. NATOssa ∼ Natossa.

An abbreviation can be read in three ways:

• By spelling it out, e.g. RUK [reserviupseerikoulu]. This of course requires that you know what it stands for and are sure of it.
• By reading the letters, e.g. RUK [ärr uu koo].
• By pronouncing it as a word, e.g. RUK [ruk]. This is of course possible only for abbreviations that can reasonably be read so.

The intended reading affects the inflection. For example, the illative of RUK is written and pronounced in one of the following ways:

• RUK:uun [reserviupseerikouluun]. This looks rather formal and maybe even odd.
• RUK:hon [ärr uu koohon]. This is suitable for both formal and informal texts.
• RUKiin [rukkiin]. This looks colloquial.

An abbreviation that is read as a word (not as expanded or by saying the letters) can be regarded as an acronym word. Such words may become common, normal words so that their origin is no longer relevant or even known to many people. This applies even stronger to abbreviations turned to words e.g. by appending a letter (like turning the abbreviation alv to the colloquial word alvi).

Comparison of quantities

An expression like “five times as big as” has a direct structural counterpart in Finnish: viisi kertaa niin suuri kuin. However, it is much more common to say viisi kertaa suurempi kuin (literally: five times greater than). This expression is well understood and unambiguous, even though there is an opinion that regularly pops up claiming that it is illogical and wrong. A cautious author may avoid it for this reason.

Similarly, viisi kertaa pienempi kuin means the same as viisi kertaa niin pieni kuin (five times as small as), i.e. 80% smaller, or 20% of the size.

Percentage comparisons like 300 % suurempi (300% larger) have the same meaning in both languages. However, in most styles, it is better to write neljä kertaa suurempi than to use percentages.

Real ambiguities have arisen with expressions like puolet suurempi (literally: half bigger). Originally, this means the same as kaksi kertaa suurempi, i.e. twice as big. In modern language, however, it can also mean the same as 50 % suurempi (50% bigger). Thus, this type of expression is best avoided, especially since in many contexts, both interpretations are possible.

Centuries and decades

In Finnish, centuries are usually expressed using notations like 1900-luku (20th century) and 2000-luku (21st century). Expressions like 20. vuosisata are possible, too, but mostly used with small numerals only, e.g. 5. vuosisata = 400-luku (5th century); for the first century, this type of expression, 1. vuosisata, is the only possibility.

Decades are expressed using notations like 1960-luku or, shorter, 60-luku (1960s). This makes expressions like 1900-luku and 2000-luku ambiguous in principle.

Dates

Many date notations have been used in Finnish, but nowadays only the following are in common use and recommended:

• 15.2.2016 (short all-numeric notation day.month.year)
• 15. helmikuuta 2016 (longer, with month name)

In the short notation, no spaces are used, though small added spacing (such as hair spaces in typographic sense) is permitted. Some publications still use spaces (15. 2. 2016). When reading aloud, the day and month number are read as ordinal numerals, and the latter in the partitive, e.g. viidestoista toista kaksituhatta kuusitoista. For clarity, the month number (especially if it is 2) can also be read as month name, e.g. saying helmikuuta instead of toista.

The longer notation has normal spaces between its three parts. It is read like the short notation, just using the month name, which appears here in the partitive: viidestoista helmikuuta kaksituhatta kuusitoista.

The month names are compound words with kuu (month; moon) as the second part: tammikuu, helmikuu, maaliskuu, huhtikuu, toukokuu, kesäkuu, heinäkuu, elokuu, syyskuu, lokakuu, marraskuu, joulukuu. There are no reasonable abbreviations for them in text; using e.g. tammik. is possible, but rather useless. In computer-generated texts, months may appear as tammi, helmi etc., but this is inadequate, except in calendars.

Both the short and the long notation are written without leading zeros. They can both be used without the year number. The short notation retains both periods (e.g. 15.2.).

The year-month-day notation as defined in the international standard ISO 8601, e.g. 2016-02-15, is used to some extent, but it is not accepted by Finnish language authorities for use in texts. Even multilingual documents published in Finland often use the 15.2.2016 notation.

It is not uncommon to see other date notations displayed by computer software that has been localized improperly. For example, HelMet, the online system of public libraries in the Helsinki area, uses partly the 15-02-16 notation (with year as the last component), partly the 15-02-2016 notation.

Durations of time

A duration of time is expressed using a number and a unit of time, possibly followed by another expressions of the same kind, e.g. kaksi vuotta ja viisi kuukautta (two years and five months). The word ja is sometimes omitted. General rules for noun forms used with numerals are applied, so the unit of time is normally in the partitive (except when the number is 1).

Abbreviations or identifiers are often used for units of time when numbers are written with digits, e.g. 2 v 5 kk (always without periods). The following table summarizes the notations used. The Finnish word is shown in nominative and partitive. When both an abbreviation and an identifier are shown, the abbreviation is recommended by language authorities.

There is no official abbreviation for millions of years (“My” in English), but in geology, “Ma” is sometimes used.

For relatively short durations, notations similar to those for times of the day are often used when compactness is needed, e.g. in sports results. For example, instead of 2 min 30,5 s, one can write 2.30,5 (recommended) or 2:30,5 (commonly used). Such notations are usually read by pronouncing just the numbers and the comma, e.g. kaksi kolmekymmentä pilkku viisi.

Footnote references

When footnotes are used, they are usually numbered, either consecutively through a document or a chapter or within a page. The numbers are used as superscripts to refer to footnotes. When only one or a few footnotes appear per page, the asterisk “*” may alternatively be used, repeating it when necessary, using “**” to refer to the second footnote.

It is relatively common to use a right parenthesis, without any matching left parenthesis, after a footnote reference, e.g. xxx²⁾ instead of xxx². Language authorities do no recommend such usage.

The practice of using symbols *, †, ‡, §, **, †† in this order as footnote references is outdated in Finnish and tends to cause confusion if used.

Lists

Bulleted lists and numbered lists are used much as in English, with the following differences:

• The recommended list marker in unnumbered lists is the en dash “–” (called ranskalainen viiva, the French dash, in this context), not the bullet “•”. However, bullet characters or decorative symbolss are generally used in office documents, presentation graphics, etc.
• In a numbered list, the number is followed by closing parenthesis rather than a period, e.g. “1)” instead of “1.”, though there is no strict rule on this.
• If a list is part of a sentence that starts before it, the last item of the list should be terminated by a period (unlike in English).

Example:

Suomessa elää kolme joutsenlajia:
– laulujoutsen
– kyhmyjoutsen
– pikkujoutsen.

Written as a numbered list, the list would be as follows:

Suomessa elää kolme joutsenlajia:
1) laulujoutsen
2) kyhmyjoutsen
3) pikkujoutsen.

A numbered list could also be written as an inline list with the same structure but with commas between the items. The last comma can be replaced by the word ja.

Suomessa elää kolme joutsenlajia: 1) laulujoutsen, 2) kyhmyjoutsen,
3) pikkujoutsen.

It is nowadays common to deviate from these principles, largely because popular word processors and other tools generate different presentations by default.

Mathematical expressions

Mathematical notations are generally meant to be language-independent, but in practice there are some cultural differences in writing them. On the other hand, much of the variation depends on adherence to standards and tradition rather than language differences.

Finnish practices differ from practices in English texts in a few ways:

• Numbers are written using a comma as decimal separator and a space as a thousands separator, e.g. 4 200,5 instead of 4,200.5.
• Spaces are often omitted around the operators “⋅” (multiplication dot) and “×” (multiplication sign), if the operands are short, e.g. 320×240. A national standard (SFS 4175) allows this, but an international standard requires spaces: 320 × 240.
• The so-called division sign “÷” is never used to denote division. In some usage (in commercial contexts) it denotes subtraction.
• The book MAOL-taulukot and its precedessors as well as its e-book verson MAOL-digitaulukot have been very influential due to use at schools. They contain several notations of their own, favoring e.g. an italic letter with overline (ā) for vectors, instead of international standard notations like boldface italic (a).

Mathematical notations as they are used in Finnish text are described in detail in the book Matemaattisten merkintöjen kirjoittaminen, by the author of this book. The corresponding book in English, Writing mathematical expressions, focuses on standards and on practices in texts in English.

Monetary quantities

A monetary quantity is expressed using a number, a space, and a currency designator. The designator can be a name, a currency symbol, a currency code, or a currency abbreviation. Examples: 42 euroa = 42 € = 42 EUR = 42 e and 42 Ruotsin kruunua = 42 kr = 42 SEK = (42 Swedish crowns). In text, the currency name is preferred, but a currency symbol can be used in tables and other contexts for brevity. The international currency codes like EUR should be used only in international banking business and other contexts where several currencies appear, but it is also used otherwise.

The currency symbols used in Finnish are €, $, and £, very rarely others like ¥.

The currency abbreviations used are kr = kruunu (crown, for currencies of Nordic countries), doll = dollari (dollar, rarely used), rpl = rupla (rubel), fr = frangi (franc), e = euro, snt = sentti (eurocent), mk = markka (mark, former currency of Finland), and p = penni (one 100th of mark). The abbreviation e is presented as secondary in recommendations, but many publications use it instead of €, perhaps for typographic reasons.

According to official recommendations, sentti (eurocent) can be abbreviated snt or c. Such abbreviations are used in some special contexts like phone charge rates, e.g. puhelut 7 snt/min, and energy rates, e.g. energia 4,73 c/kWh. Otherwise, small amounts are expressed using the word sentti, e.g. 60 senttiä, or as euros, e.g. 0,60 € rather than 60 snt or 60 c.

If decimals are used in monetary notations, there are always two digits to the right of the decimal point, e.g. 42,50 €, though nonstandard notations like 42,5 € are not rare. An en dash is often used instead of two zeros, e.g. 42,– € = 42,00 €. Often the dash is interpreted as meaning a currency notation, so that e.g. 42,– is used alone.

An expression like 42,50 € can be read as neljäkymmentäkaksi euroa viisikymmentä senttiä, but usually the currency names are omitted: neljäkymmentäkaksi viisikymmentä.

There is no accepted abbreviation for thousands of euros, but t€, k€, tEUR, kEUR are sometimes used. In standard language, one must write e.g. 100 000 €. For millions of euros, M€ is accepted, though not all regard it as good style. See also Notations for large numbers.

Numbers

Chapter Numerals describes how numbers are written using words or digits. The differences from English practice when using digits can be summarized as follows:

• The comma is used as the decimal separator, e.g. 3,14 (in English: 3.14).
• Groups of digits are separated by spaces, not commas, e.g. 25 000 (in English: 25,000).
• In ordinal numerals, the digits are followed either by a period or by a colon and a suffix, e.g. 7. or 7:s (7th), which is read as seitsemäs.
• When required by the grammatical context, a numeral written with digits is followed by a colon and a case suffix (or a combination of an ordinal suffix and a case suffix), e.g. Määrä pieneni 28:sta 24:ään (The amount was decreased from 28 to 24).

Physical quantities and units

For physical quantities, the metric system and, more generally, the SI system of units is used. The main exception is that in information technology, the inch is used to express some sizes. In aviation, the foot is used, following international practice.

According to SI principles, a number and an identifier are separated with a nonbreaking space, e.g. “42 m”. In engineering, this rule is often violated, e.g. “42m”.

Note: in this subsection, Finnish expressions appear in quotes, not in italic as otherwise in this book. The reason is that according to SI principles, SI unit symbols must never appear in italic.

The principle also applies to percentages, e.g. “15 %” instead of the English “15%”.

International identifiers are generally used for units and prefixes. For example, even though the word for centimeter is written senttimetri, its symbol is “cm”; the old abbreviation “sm” fell into disuse decades ago.

However, Finnish language authorities recommend that Finnish abbreviations be used instead of international symbols for two units:

• for the hour, Finnish tunti, the abbreviation “t” instead of international “h”
• for the metric ton (1,000 kg), Finnish tonni, the abbreviation “tn” instead of international “t”.

On the other hand, national standards mandate the use of international symbols for these, too. In practice, you can see both systems in use, e.g. “50 km/t” and “50 km/h”.

When needed by the context, a case suffix is appended to the unit symbol, using a colon as separator, e.g. “5 m:iin asti”. In engineering, it is common to ignore this rule and write e.g. “5 m asti”, though it is still meant to be read “viiteen metriin asti”.

According to international standards, the symbol for liter is either lowercase “l” or uppercase “L”. The latter is often used in the US for clarity. In Finland, “l” has traditionally been used, but “L” is nowadays also common, e.g. “1 L” instead of “1 l”.

When expressing temperatures, it is common to use the degree sign “°”, e.g. “20°”, implying the Celsius (centigrade) scale. A space is not used in such expressions. However, the SI symbol for degree Celsius is “°C”. When using it, it is separated from the number with a space, e.g. “20 °C”. If the unit is written in letters, the formally correct way is “20 celsiusastetta”, but “20 astetta” is much more common.

Identifiers of quantities are written in italic, when international standards are applied, as is common in Finnish practice. The identifiers are conventional and should therefore remain invariant in translation. They are largely based on English (or Latin) words, e.g. V for voltage, which is jännite in Finnish. Subscripts used for them are written in normal (non-italic) style, unless they themselves denote quantities. For example, effective voltage, tehollinen jännite in Finnish, is written V_eff, i.e. with the symbol V and “eff” as subscript. Here “eff” should be regarded as international and conventional and kept as-is, though the practice has been inconsistent.

Percentages

The per cent sign “%” is preceded by a space in Finnish, though this rule is often violated due to the influence of English. The sign is read prosentti and inflected according to the rules for nouns associated with numerals, e.g. “10 %” = kymmenen prosenttia, “5 %:ssa” = viidessä prosentissa (in five per cent).

A colloquial form of prosentti is prossa. The word pinna is even more colloquial; it also means “point” (e.g. when counting points in a game).

According to language rules, the per cent sign should be used only after a number written in digits. However, it is often used in abbreviations like til.-% = tilavuusprosentti; the abbreviation til.pros. would be correct.

Postal addresses

The following exemplifies a Finnish postal address, including recipient name on the first line:

The postal rules recommend that the municipality name be written in all uppercase. It must be preceded by a five-digit postal code and a space.

Numbering of floors assigns number one to ground floor, which is thus ensimmäinen kerros, usually abbreviated 1. krs in addresses.

Quotations

Quotations are marked with symmetric quotation marks or with formatting, such as indentation of a long quotation. Within quoted text, omissions are indicated with two en dashes “– –” with spaces around and between, though it is nowadays common to imitate the English practice of using the ellipsis “…”. Content added for clarification is placed in brackets “[” and “]”, whether added as pure insertions or to replace content in the original. Changes of the case of letters are normally not indicated, except in some modern usage imitating English practices.

The following example is an actual text taken as such from a law:

Tämän luvun säännökset eivät koske maassa olevien kuivien risujen, maahan pudonneiden käpyjen tai pähkinöiden taikka luonnonvaraisten marjojen, sienten, kukkien tai, jäkälää ja sammalta lukuun ottamatta, muiden sellaisten luonnon­tuotteiden keräämistä toisen maalta.

The following illustrates how a part of this law text might be quoted, with some omissions and a change to make it clearer in a particular context:

Marjojen poiminta kuuluu jokamiehen oikeuksiin. Rikoslain 28. luvun 14. §:n mukaan ”tämän luvun [’Varkaudesta, kavalluksesta ja luvattomasta käytöstä’] säännökset eivät koske – – luonnonvaraisten marjojen – – keräämistä toisen maalta”.

In the example above, the changes are that the title of the chapter has been inserted to give context and some items have been removed to focus on the topic being discussed.

Ranges

To express a range like “from 5 to 10”, there are several ways in Finnish:

• Spelling out the end points and using the elative and illative case, e.g. viidestä kymmeneen.
• Expressing the same using digits and indicating the inflection of numbers, e.g. 5:stä 10:een. This is relatively rare and clumsy.
• Writing the numbers with digits and using an en dash between them, e.g. 5–10. This can be read as above, viidestä seitsemään, though now it is also accepted to read them viisi viiva seitsemän, pronouncing the numbers in base form and the dash as viiva.
• As above, but using the ellipsis instead of a dash, e.g. 5…10. This has been common in science and engineering, and it is now accepted in general language, too, though perhaps not suitable for formal style.
• Using the preposition à [aa], a loanword from French: 5 à 10, read as viisi aa kymmenen. This is convenient, but not very common.

Special characters

The use of the following characters may differ from English practice:

• * asterisk, used (in addition to many other uses) before a year or date to refer to the birth of a person, e.g. *9.2.1952. Normally no space is used, and the asterisk can be read syntynyt or syntyi (was born) in this context.
• ✓ check mark, traditionally used to mark errors as väärin-merkki at school and other contexts. It is now widely recognized as a tick mark due to use in online forms and other technical contexts.
• ❌︎ cross mark, traditionally used to select an option in a form on paper; called e.g. ruksi or rasti in such usage. Probably not generally recognized as meaning “wrong” or “delete”, unless crossing over something and in red.
• † dagger, used almost exclusively before a year or date to refer to the death of a person, e.g. †19.2.1856. Normally no space is used, and the character can be read kuollut or kuoli (died) in this context.
• ÷ division sign, normally not used in Finnish; use “/” for division instead. In specialized usage, this character is used, but for subtraction, not division!
• & ampersand, used in standard language mainly as part of a name or when listing e.g. authors of a book. Less officially, used in menus and other contexts instead of the word ja (and). Read as ja or, more often, as the Latin word et.
• # number sign, traditionally not used in Finnish, but now in some use due to influence of English, e.g. vihollinen #1 (enemy #1), more properly expressed as vihollinen numero 1 or even better pahin vihollinen (worst enemy).
• ® registered sign and ™ trade mark sign, used as in English, but written after the inflected form of a trade mark, e.g. Windowsissa™ (in Windows™).
• § section sign, used together with a number written with digits, to refer to a section of law or clause of a contract or minutes. It is used either as in 9. § (read: yhdeksäs pykälä) or as in § 9 (pykälä yhdeksän), though 9 § without a period is very common in legal contexts; see section Ordinal numbers written with digits. The paragraph sign ¶ is not used in Finnish.

Several characters (about 1,000 in number) have Finnish names assigned to them in a recommendation by SFS, the Finnish standards institute: Eurooppalaisen merkistön merkkien suomenkieliset nimet. The list can be useful, but note that it was composed primarily to define Finnish equivalents to the formal Unicode names, and they are partly too theoretical for normal use. There is a more extensive collection of names by the author of this book: Kirjoitus­merkkien suomen­kielisiä nimiä.

Telephone numbers

The official recommendation was to write telephone numbers as defined in the international recommendation ITU-T E.123, but in 2008 it was decided that the area code is never put in parentheses, e.g. (09) 888 2675 was changed to 09 888 2675. This reflected the decrease in the use of landline phones and simplified the structure. The recommended format now consists of

• the “+” prefix followed by country code (358 for Finland) and a space, when using the international notation
• the operator code such as 040 or 050 or the area code such as 09 (for the Helsinki area), with the leading “0” omitted in the international notation
• a space
• the subscriber code, in groups of 3 or 4 digits, with spaces as separators; usually 3 + 3, 3 + 4, 4 + 4, or 3 + 3 + 3 grouping is used.

Examples: 050 5500 168 in national notation, +358 50 5500 168 in international notation.

Thus, hyphens or parentheses should not be used. In practice, there is still considerable variation in the writing of phone numbers.

In the EU administration, rules for all languages mandate that phone numbers be written in international notation and with no space except after the country code, e.g. +358 505500168.

Time of the day

In formal prose, the time of the day is normally expressed as follows:

• 24-hour clock is used.
• A period is used between hours and minutes (and between minutes and seconds), e.g. 9.45. However, instead of a period, which is the accepted separator, a colon is used very often, e.g. 9:45. One reason to this is that when a period is used, confusion with a date notation is sometimes possible (e.g. when an expression like 12.10. appears without sufficient context).
• Leading zeros are normally not used for hours. They may sometimes be used for clarity, i.e. in an attempt to make it clearer what 23–07 refers to.
• The time notation is usually preceded by the word kello or its abbreviation klo, except in tables and other contexts where it is clear that a time of the day is presented.

Such notations are usually read by pronouncing hours and minutes (and seconds) separately, but with no word between them, e.g. 9.45 as yhdeksän neljäkymmentäviisi. However, leading zeros in minutes (and seconds) are read, too, e.g. 12.05 is read kaksitoista nolla viisi and 15.00 as viisitoista nolla nolla, unless it is read just as viisitoista.

Notations like 9.45 are also used for durations of time.

It is increasingly common to use the forms described above in speech, too, since they correspond to the kind of digital display of times that people are now used to. However, an older system is still in common use, in speech and in many styles of writing:

• 12-hour clock is used.
• The designation of AM or PM is usually left implicit, but when needed, it can be expressed using words like yöllä (at night), aamulla (in the morning), aamupäivällä (before noon), iltapäivällä (in the afternoon), or illalla (in the evening), e.g. kello kahdeksalta illalla (8 PM).
• Noon is often indicated by the word puoleltapäivin and midnight by puoleltaöin. These are not normally taken as exact indications of time, unless preceded by the word tasan.
• The word kello is often used before the time denotation for clarity.
• The hours are expressed using the ablative case of the numeral, e.g. viideltä (at 5). Nowadays the nominative, the basic form, is also common, though colloquial, but then the word kello is needed, e.g. kello viisi. The word tasan can be used before the expression, e.g. tasan viideltä, to emphasize that exact hour is meant, as we say “5 o’clock sharp”.
• Times exactly between sharp hours are expressed using the word puoli followed a numeral indicating the next full hour, e.g. puoli kuudelta ∼ puoli kuusi (half past five).
• Other times are expressed as relative to the nearest full hour using expressions like the following:
  • kymmentä yli viiden ∼ viisi (ten past five)
  • kymmentä vaille viiden ∼ viisi (ten to five)
• In expressions as the above, the first numeral is either in the partitive as in the examples or in the nominative, e.g. kymmenen yli viiden. It may also be replaced by a fuller expression that explicitly mentions the word for minutes, e.g. kymmenen minuuttia yli viiden.
• In colloquial style, the word vartti (a quarter) is mostly used for 15 minutes, e.g. vartin ∼ varttia yli viiden (a quarter past five) and varttia vaille kuusi (a quarter to six).

The following table shows examples of formal numeric designations of time, using 24-hour clock, and corresponding common informal verbal designations. There are no strict rules for using e.g. yöllä vs. aamuyöllä. Specifiers written in parentheses are seldom needed and used.

Years

A year is normally mentioned using the word vuosi : vuoden, e.g. vuosi 1984 (year 1984). When specifying the year of an event in text, the special consonant-stem essive form vuonna (as opposite to the more regular vuotena) is used: vuonna 1984 (in 1984). By convention, the abbreviation v. can be used for vuonna, e.g. v. 1984. In some newspaper style, the year number is used alone, e.g. Yhtiö perustettiin 1984 instead of the more normal Yhtiö perustettiin vuonna 1984 (The company was founded in 1984).

Year numbers are mostly read like other numbers, e.g. tuhat yhdeksän­sataa­kahdeksan­kymmentä­neljä. However, it can also be read so that hundreds are used like a unit: yhdeksäntoista­sataa kahdeksan­kymmentä­neljä, corresponding to “nineteen hundreds eighty-four), though this may sound old-fashioned.

For eras, the old abbreviations used for AD and BC are jKr. and eKr., read as jälkeen Kristuksen syntymän and ennen Kristuksen syntymää or, more often, shorter as jälkeen Kristuksen and ennen Kristusta. The newer abbreviations, corresponding to CE and BCE, are jaa. = jälkeen ajanlaskun alun and eaa. = ennen ajanlaskun alkua. They are accepted alternatives. Official recommendations do not specify whether jKr. and eKr. or jaa. and eaa. are preferred. All these notations are written after the year number, e.g. 1984 eKr. or 1984 eaa.

Vocabulary

Descriptions of the vocabulary

The main reference to the vocabulary of standard modern Finnish is the official dictionary Kielitoimiston sanakirja, which has about 100,000 headwords. The vocabulary of the language is much larger, however. The dictionary does not contain many common derivations of words, and it contains just a sample of compound words. In particular,

• For every verb (except the negation verb), a noun for the corresponding action or being can be formed using the suffix minen, e.g. paisuminen (swelling) from paisua (to swell). Such derivations do not normally appear as headwords.
• For most verbs, other nouns for action or being can be formed using different suffixes, e.g. paisunta from paisua, lannoitus (fertilization) from lannoittaa (to fertilize). The suffixes vary by verb, and they have other meanings too, e.g. producing names the result of an action. Such derivations are often, but not always, described under a separate headword. (In an older dictionary, Nykysuomen sanakirja, derivations of this class were usually mentioned systematically under the headword for the verb.)
• For most adjectives and many nouns, comparative and superlative adjectives can be formed, e.g. vanhempi (older) and vanhin from vanha (old). They do not appear as headwords, but for adjectives, they are mentioned under the headword for the base word.
• For most adjectives and some nouns, a noun expressing the corresponding property can be formed using the suffix Us or UUs (depending on the base word), e.g. mustuus (blackness) from musta (black). Only a limited number of them appear as headwords.
• For adjectives, an adverb of mode can be formed using the sti suffix, e.g. pahasti (badly) from paha (bad) .

Since Finnish has rich word inflexion, which is partly different for different words, Finnish dictionaries generally show some information of inflection. Kielitoimiston sanakirja shows it with an inflection type number, which is an index to a Table of inflectional types. However, this information is not given for compound words; you are expected to understand that e.g. työaika (working time) is a compound of työ and aika and to see the headword aika for the inflection. (For some compounds, the inflection type is specified as 51, meaning that both parts of it are inflected, or as 50, 51, meaning that the first part may or may not be inflected.) If a word has consonant gradation, the inflection type is followed by an asterisk (*) and a letter that indicates the gradation type. For example, the headword “lento^1*J” says that the inflection type is 1, which is the simplest of all, and that there is consonant gradation of type J, which is nt : nn. This is sufficient for forming the nominative plural lennot (flights). Such things are explained in more detail in the dictionary itself, in part How to read the dictionary. (Such explanations and the user interface of the dictionary can be set to Finnish, English, or Swedish using one of the buttons FI, EN, SV in the upper left corner of pages.)

Structural classification of words

Words in Finnish can be classified by their internal structure as follows:

• root words, which are “atomic” in Finnish, though if they are loanwords, they may have some decomposition in the original language; examples: talo (house), injektio (injection)
• derived words, formed (in Finnish) almost exclusively using suffixes; examples: talous (economy), derived from talo, and taloudellinen (economic), derived from talous
• compound words, formed from two or more words; examples: puutalo (wooden house), from puu (wood; tree) and talo (house), and kansantalous (national economy).

In this “Vocabulary” part, we discuss root words and some general issues with the vocabulary. It is followed by parts about derived words and compounds.

The original two-syllable word structure

According to linguists, there are good reasons to think that in the proto-Uralic language from which Finnish has evolved, the word stems of “content words” (nouns, adjectives, numerals, and verbs) had two syllables, whereas pronouns had one syllable. This structure has largely been preserved in Finnish, though many common content words now have one syllable only, e.g. tie (road), due to phonetic changes. There are also many three-syllable words that may look like base words but are probably derivations of two-syllable words that have been lost, e.g. pihlaja. Most pronouns have now two syllables or even more; they have been formed by joining two one-syllable words or a word and a suffix. This explains the somewhat odd inflection of many pronouns, e.g. joku : jonkun : jotakuta, which historically consists of jo and ku, which are both inflected.

The two-syllable base word structure still affects the way Finns analyze words. A four-syllable loanword such as arkkitehti (architect) or papukaija (parrot) is often treated as if it were a compound word. This is reflected in inflection, e.g. arkkitehdeillä (with the vowel ä selected according to the tehti part) instead of the regular arkkitehdeilla. Splitting such words into two-syllable constituents may have other implications, too; e.g., the part kaija has been treated as a separate word when creating Finnish names for parrot species.

Made-up new words very often consist of two syllables, such as hetu, abbreviated from henkilö­tunnus (personal identity number; literally: person identifier).

When a word has more than two syllables, it can mostly be decomposed into smaller meaningful parts, either as a compound word or as a derived word, mostly with a two-syllable word as the ultimate base. For example, sanakirja (dictionary) is a compound of sana (word) and kirja (book), and johtaja (director) is derived from the verb stem johta- (to direct, to lead) with the suffix ja. However, there are exceptions: some base words have more than two syllables for various reasons. In any case, long words are not as difficult as they may look like. The word rautatieasema becomes understandable when you know its constituent words: rauta (iron), tie (road, way), and asema (station)—so it means railway station. In principle, the word asema is decomposable into the verb base ase and derivative suffix ma, but this is not par­tic­u­lar­ly useful for learning the language, since the verb ase- (to be, to stay) has as such vanished from the language; it only lives in its derivations.

Origins of Finnish vocabulary

Finnish vocabulary uses word derivation and compound words extensively, but there must be some root words to start from. The Finnish root words can be roughly classified and dated as follows:

• Original Uralic words, dating back over 6,000 years ago. These include words like kala (fish), lumi (snow), and nähdä : näkee (to see). The amount of these words is relatively small, but their frequency is often high.
• Words that have relatives in other Finnic languages and possibly in some other Uralic languages, too. The origin is often unknown or debated. For example, saari (island) is a Finnic word, perhaps a loanword from an unknown language,
• Descriptive (expressive) words, which have phonetic features that associate them with sounds, such as humista : humisee (to sigh, referring to e.g. sounds of trees) and kalske (clang, clash). They are formed rather freely in Finnish, and they are difficult to date.
• Oldest Indo-European loanwords, possibly about 5,000 years old, such as sata (hundred, cf. Persian “sad”) and porsas (young pig; cf. English “pork”).
• Baltic loanwords, from language forms related to present-day Lithuanian and Latvian (which are Indo-European languages), about 4,000 years old, such as sisar (sister) and kirves (ax).
• Old Germanic loanwords, from languages related to present-day German, English, Swedish, etc., about 2,000 to 3,000 years old, such as kulta (gold), laina (loan), and airo (oar).
• Slavic loanwords, mainly from 9th century AD to present day. Examples of old words: pappi (priest) and sirppi (sickle). Newer words include siisti (tidy, clean) and toveri (comrade, pal).
• Swedish loanwords, during a long period starting in the 11th century, such as ankka (duck), kakku (cake), maanantai (Monday), mummo (grandmother), uuni (oven), and lääke (medicin).
• Newer loanwords, from different languages, normally via Swedish, such as appelsiini (orange, originally from Dutch), kurkku (cucumber, originally from Czech), and kapteeni (captain, from French via Swedish).
• International words, first adopted usually from Swedish, later also directly from other European languages such as German, French, and English. Examples: raketti (rocket) and demokratia (democracy).

The following table shows the most common words in written Finnish, together with explanations of their origin.

Native words, loanwords, and foreign words

Introduction

When you start learning Finnish, you will have difficulties with the vocabulary, since few of the common words look familiar at all. After learning a basic vocabulary, things get easier, partly because you will learn new words that are derivations or compounds of words that you already know.

Although the core vocabulary is very different from English, there are many recognizable words in the somewhat less frequent words, such as prosentti (per cent), sama (same), and viikko (week). You can guess the meaning of these words on the basis of English, because the words are ultimately of the same origin. The word sama comes from some Germanic language form and is thus a relative of the English “same”. The word viikko is a similar case. These loanwords have been phonetically fully adapted to Finnish, and they are used just like originally Finnish words. The word prosentti is a different case. It comes from Swedish procent, and it is an international word. It is a relatively new loanword in Finnish and has not been fully adapted: it has the initial consonant cluster pr, which never appears in originally Finnish words. A more adapted form rosentti appears, too, but it is regarded as substandard.

Some loanwords can be difficult to recognize due to the conservative nature of Finnish. When there has been no phonetic reason to simplify a word, Finnish has often preserved a word in a rather original form. For example, Finnish kuningas is very close to the re­con­struct­ed proto-Germanic form “kuningaz” that was once adopted into Finnish, whereas in English it has been shortened to “king”, in German to “König”, and (as a loanword) in Russian to “knyaz”.

New loanwords may contain sounds and combinations of sounds that do not otherwise appear in Finnish. However, they have normally been adapted to the writing system and to the inflection system.

Foreign words

“Foreign word” is not an exact concept but refers to a word taken from another language and preserved in its original spelling and pronunciation, in principle. This includes foreign names, with the exclusion of a small set of old names that have been adapted to Finnish, such as Lontoo (London) and Pariisi (Paris). Names like Oxford or Bordeaux are treated as foreign names in Finnish.

Foreign words other than proper names are typically learned words or otherwise in special usage, such as chanson, status quo, and bridge (the card game), and they are often used as such in many languages.

In practice, even foreign words are often adapted to Finnish phonetics to some extent. Thus, bridge is typically pronounced as if it were written pridse or bridse. Foreign names are adapted, too. This is described in some detail in section Foreign names in Finnish.

There are also foreign words that have been partly adapted to Finnish, so that some part of the the original spelling has been preserved, such as watti (watt), pronounced [vatti].

Inflection of foreign words

Foreign words are inflected as required by their role in a sentence. The inflection is mostly much simpler than inflection of Finnish words in general, but it has some specialties.

Case inflection of foreign words is discussed in a separate section.

Verbs are always adapted to Finnish instead of using them as foreign words, typically using the AtA suffix, e.g. trimmata (to trim). This applies even when foreign spelling is retained, e.g. sprayata : sprayaan (to spray).

Adaptation of loanwords

In old loanwords, the following changes have taken place when a foreign word has been adapted into Finnish.

• The spelling is based on the Finnish writing system. In oldest loanwords, the foreign pronunciation has usually been the starting point, but the spelling may have had some impact. Example: “taxa” (Swedish for “fare”) → taksa.
• Vowels are interpreted as long under certain conditions, discussed later in subsection Length of vowels. Example: “tiger” → tiikeri.
• Foreign consonants are replaced: “b” by p, “g” by k, “d” by t, different s-like sounds like English “sh” and “z” by s, and “f“ by hv or (at the start of a word) by v. Example: “giraff” → kirahvi.
• Consonants are doubled in contexts described later in section Doubling of consonants. Example: “skåp” → kaappi.
• Any consonant cluster at the start of a word is simplified so that only the last consonant is left. Example: “strand” → ranta.
• A word ending with a consonant has a vowel appended, e.g. jul (Swedish for “Christmas”, cf. “Yule”) → joulu. In new loanwords, and in most old loanwords, the appended vowel is i, e.g. “palats” (Swedish for “palace”) → palatsi.

In new loanwords, adaptation is much more limited, usually restricted to spelling adaptation, changes in the ending of the word as described in subsection Endings of international words, and appending an i after a final consonant. However, in colloquial use, even new loanwords may be adapted more strongly, perhaps jocularly, e.g. filosofi → vilosohvi.

Loanword verbs

Most loanwords are nouns. For verbs, Finnish has a few adaptation methods, but only two of them are productive:

• A verb is fitted into the pattern of contraction verbs, e.g. filmat|a : filmaa|n (to film). This is common for verbs ending with a consonant in the original language.
• The foreign suffix is replaces by the -Oi- suffix, e.g. integroi|da : integroi|n (to integrate). The corresponding English verb often ends with “-ate”. The Finnish verbs are usually based on Swedish verbs ending with “-era”, e.g. “integrera”, and in older language, the -eerata suffix was used in Finnish. In modern language, its use is mainly restricted to words where the suffix follows a one-syllable base, e.g. noteerata (to quote; to note).

Classification

From a practical point of view, especially as regards to writing rules, words of foreign origin in Finnish can be classified as follows:

• Old loanwords. They have been completely adapted to the Finnish phonetic and writing system. In practical use, they are indistinguishable from originally Finnish words. Example: vasara (hammer).
• New loanwords. They may have additional letters like b, and their phonetic structure may otherwise differ from basic Finnish rules, e.g. so that a word begins with a consonant cluster. They are in principle read according to normal Finnish rules, but in practice, there is often some variation. Examples: baari (bar), trukki (forklift truck), kampanja [kamppanja] (campaign).
• Foreign words. These are written according to the rules of a foreign language, though they may be inflected by appending Finnish suffixes. Pronunciation varies. This includes foreign proper names and words and phrases taken from another language as such. Examples: Bordeaux, pizza, status quo.

Most of the problems in writing and pronouncing words of foreign origin are related to new loanwords, discussed in the next section.

The borders between the classes are not exact. Many loanwords that are rather new, such as netti (net, Internet) behave like old loanwords. There are intermediate forms between new loanwords and foreign words, i.e. words that have partly been adapted, partly retained foreign spelling, e.g. zeoliitti [tseoliitti](zeolith), which has kept the foreign z but has the ending adapted to Finnish.

New loanwords

Background

This section deals with loanwords that are new in the sense that their form is not completely adapted to Finnish phonetic and writing system. Their age varies considerably. Their spelling and pronunciation were mostly established in the early 20th century, with some later modifications. The rules have been taught at Finnish schools and in language guides, but the situation is still partly unstable. It constitutes an important part of the differences between spelling and pronunciation in Finnish.

Two major issues with new loanwords are the length of vowels and doubling of consonants. The rules for them, described in the next two sections, are somewhat complicated and cause variation in the spelling of pronunciation of interrelated words, e.g. demokratia (democracy) but demokraattinen (democratic).

The rules are important to native speakers, since they often learn these words first in spoken form and then need to learn the written form. The formulation of the rules more or less requires some understanding of Swedish, since the problem often revolves around adapting Swedish words into Finnish. To a non-native speaker, these rules are less important, since you can check the spelling from a dictionaries and you can mostly pronounce these words as written (it is mostly accepted, though not always most natural).

The presentation of the basic rules in this book is more explicit than traditional Finnish grammars about the association with Swedish and more realistic about actual pronunciation. Yet, the presentation is partly incomplete. The correspondence between written and spoken form is not always predictable. Glossaries of international words, sivistyssanakirja in Finnish, may indicate the pronunciation, but often just the normatively correct one. A small online glossary by the author of this book, Pienehkö sivistyssanakirja, describes the pronunciations of the most common international words in Finnish.

š versus s

The letter š is a somewhat artificial addition to the Finnish language, originally adopted from the Czech language to denote the “sh” sound in relatively new loanwords, such as šeikki (sheikh). The rules for using it have been changed a few times, and the rules are often broken. In particular, sh is very often used instead of š.

In most situations, š (or its replacement sh) is pronounced as [s]. In some contexts, an [š] sound is used for affective or prestige reasons. This may well happen even when the official spelling is s, if the word is recognized as having an [š] sound in foreign languages. For example, the recommended spelling and pronunciation is now samppanja (champagne; also incorrectly used for sparkling wine in general), but it is often pronounced šamppanja.

Currently the principles of using š in new loanwords are:

• š is used as corresponding to an [š] or [ž] sound in the source language, e.g. paaši (pageboy), šeriffi (sherif), šintolaisuus (Shinto), tšekki (Czech person/language). However, there are so many exceptions to this that it really applies to a minority of relevant words only.
• Original spelling is preserved in some words, including common words like show. Other examples: cha-cha-cha, chanson, chic, jive, nacho, schäfer, sherry. Such words are often names for types or brands.
• The following word types, which previously had š recommended, are now written with s, and this rule is mostly well-established:
  • Words based on Latin words with sc before e or i, e.g. konvalesentti (convalescent).
  • Words based on French words ending with age, ege, or ige, e.g. sabotaasi (sabotage). The word paaši (pageboy) is an exception.
  • Words based on French words ending with che, earlier written with šši ending in Finnish, e.g. fetissi (fetish).
• Some other words that were earlier written with šš, e.g. apassi (apache), borssi, gulassi, tussi.
• Some words that earlier began with tš, e.g. tsasouna.
• At the start of several other words, largely because they were regarded as common vocabulary, e.g. sampoo, sortsit, saali, sakaali, srapnelli, sellakka, sifferi, snitseli as well as sekki (cheque) and sokki (shock), though especially in these two words, the change is not well-established.
• In a few words, both š and s are permitted, e.g. šamaani ∼ samaani.

According to an old recommendation, š is replaced by sh, if š cannot be written. Such a replacement, e.g. sheriffi, is very common even in situations where it is possible to write š. This explains why the current official recommendations do not mention the replacement.

In some words, both š and sh are possible: š, if the word is used as loanword, sh if the word is used as a transliterated or transcribed foreign word. Examples: geiša ∼ geisha, šoguni ∼ shogun, suši ∼ sushi, šaria ∼ sharia. The form with sh is usually more common.

As a special exception, shakki is allowed as an alternate form of šakki (chess), as requested by organizations of chess players.

Loanword adjectives

Most new loanword adjectives have been adapted to Finnish by adding the inen suffix, which replaces an ending corresponding to English “-ic” or “-ical”, e.g. klassinen : klassisen (classic). In older usage, the illinen suffix was used instead, but since the 1940s, it has mostly fallen into disuse, first in long words like romantillinen, now romanttinen (romantic). It is still retained to some extent in words like teknillinen, which is flagged as outdated in dictionaries but is still in common use to mean “technological”, as opposite to tekninen (technical). A few adjectives have kept the longer form, e.g. kristillinen (Christian).

However, there are many adjectives that have been derived with the llinen suffix from loanword nouns, instead of being based on an adjective in another language. Examples: kemiallinen (chemical) from kemia (chemistry), historiallinen, persoonallinen.

The nen suffix appears also after aali, aari, iivi, and some other Finnish versions of international forms corresponding to “-al”, “-ar”, “-ive”, etc. in English, e.g. bipolaarinen (bipolar). However, the nen suffix has often been omitted when it has no function, e.g. banaali (banal). The nen suffix remains in use especially when needed to distinguish an adjective from a noun, e.g. moraalinen (moral) vs. moraali (morals) and aktiivinen (active) vs. aktiivi (activist; active voice). In compositive forms, the nen suffix is omitted, e.g. aktiivipalvelus (active service).

Some international adjectives like “civil” do not have a direct counterpart in Finnish. The word siviili is as such only a noun (civilian). In compounds, it can be interpreted as having an adjectival meaning, e.g. siviilihallinto (civil administration).

Length of vowels in loanwords

Reflecting source language vowel length

In pronunciation, loanwords originally had a long vowel when the source language (usually Swedish) had a stressed long or half-long vowel. Thus, from Swedish “banál” we have banaali, but from Swedish “banalitét” we have banaliteetti. (Here we indicate the stress in Swedish words with an acute accent; this does not belong to the Swedish writing system.) Typically, this happens in words of Latin origin, with the Swedish stress reflecting a long stressed vowel in a Latin word, in the second last or third last syllable.

Conflict between written and spoken form

In old loanwords, two vowel letters are systematically used to denote a long vowel. In newer loanwords, often more learned words and often primarily adopted in written form, the spelling is more complicated. There were serious debates a hundred years ago about using the spelling of the source language (and most other languages) versus applying normal Finnish writing rules. People said banaali, but were used to seeing the spelling banal in other languages. A compromise was made, mixing the two systems. Thus, we have banaali, but invalidi, even though the latter has a long vowel in Swedish, “invalíd”.

Originally, the compromise was meant to be about spelling only. Decades later, it was decided that the pronunciation should follow the spelling. This created further complexity. By now, pronunciation like invalidi has become dominant, but you can still hear invaliidi.

The rules of the “great compromise”

The rules on vowel length in new loanwords are described in the following. They somewhat deviate from the original rules of the compromise.

• A long or half-long stressed vowel in the source language corresponds to a long vowel in Finnish, e.g. motiivi, from Swedish “motív”, unless some of the following exceptions applies.
• The word endings -oli, -omi, -oni, -ori, -ovi have short o, e.g. ekonomi, even though Swedish has “ekonóm”. This also applies when that ending is followed by a Finnish suffix, e.g. astronominen, or by -o, e.g. observatorio. Note: old loanwords may deviate from this, e.g. pistooli, from Swedish “pistól”.
• Short vowel is used before the foreign consonants b, d, f, g, if a) the word has at least three syllables, b) the foreign consonant starts the last syllable of the word, when Finnish suffixes and an -o suffix are not counted. Examples: ameba, balladi, typografi, synagoga, topologinen, gonidio. But the vowel is long (as in Swedish) in graafi, since it has only two syllables, and in makaaberi, since the b does not start the last syllable. Note that looginen (logical) has long o, since the part before the Finnish nen suffix is just two syllables, whereas longer words have short o before g, e.g. biologinen.
• A short vowel is used in a syllable preceding the ending -ia, even when it is followed by a Finnish suffix. This was originally formulated as applying to geographic names like Australia, later extended to general names like akasia, araukaria, magia, media. Exception: geographic names ending with -ia and consisting of three syllables have a long vowel, e.g. Aasia, Fryygia.
• The vowel i is short in a syllable preceding the ending -io (mostly in Latin-based words), but other vowels are long, e.g. editio but notaatio. This rule has been set to imitate Latin vowel length rather than Swedish; in Swedish these words end with “-ión”.
• The vowel is short before a consonant cluster, e.g. setri, bulevardi. This is not included in official rules as a principle, but it is applied in the official forms of the few words to which it applies.
• Words ending with -ium have short vowel. This includes names of chemical elements, such as kalium and radium. This is not listed in official rules, but official glossaries follow this principle.
• Some words have short vowel, with no apparent logic, e.g. alkali, bonus, evankelinen, farao, kameli, kaneli, laser, paneli, virus. This group includes many names of nationalities, such as berberi and tamili.

Variation in pronunciation

As mentioned above, pronunciation still varies. For example, agronomi may be pronounced agronoomi, though this is not as common as it used to be. In ameba, the e is mostly still pronounced long, and the spelling ameeba is common.

The vowel length may be somewhat indeterminate, between short and long, e.g. in many country names like Australia (which may sound almost like Austraalia).

In some popular first names, there is variation in vowel length, e.g. Miia ∼ Mia, and even the latter is usually pronounced Miia.

Doubling of consonants in loanwords

Common doubling

In loanwords, the stops k, p, and t and less regularly the sounds s and f are often doubled in Finnish, in situations where the original language has a single consonant. The word “cent” is sentti in Finnish, even though most European languages show no sign of doubling the “t” in this word.

There has been and there still is variation in the doubling of consonants in new loanwords, both in pronunciation and in spelling. Although the rules are mostly well-defined and generally followed nowadays, there are words where a single consonant is read as double or vice versa.

Orthographic doubling

A double consonant written before a consonant is always read as single, as in English, e.g. attraktio [atraktio] (attraction). Such a double consonant usually comes from a Latin origin. There is no difficulty in pronunciation, but if you know a word in spoken form only, or from another language, the Finnish spelling cannot always we inferred correctly. For example, adressi (petition; scroll) is written with one d just because Swedish has “adress”.

The doubling issue discussed here is an opposite phenomenon: only a single consonant is written and pronounced in the original language, but Finnish has a double consonant at least in pronunciation.

The “great compromise” rules for doubling

In loanwords, a consonant following a long vowel, a diphthong, a liquid consonant (l, r), or a nasal consonant (m, n) is usually pronounced doubled. In old loanwords, this is reflected in spelling, e.g. kaappi (from Swedish “skåp”), manttaali (from Swedish “mantal”), marssi (from Swedish “marsch”). In early 20th century, after heavy debate, a different spelling policy was adopted for newer loanwords. A compromise was made between two logical solutions.

It was decided to express the doubling when the consonant is followed by a final i or a Finnish suffix or both, but not otherwise. Therefore, the standard spelling is satraappi (satrap) but kampanja (campaign), even though the latter is normally pronounced kamppanja and also often written that way. Often the distinction between old and new loanwords is rather arbitrary; for example, samppanja (champagne) is the standard spelling. Note that rule means that the double consonant, if it is a stop, usually participates in consonant gradation, e.g. satraappi : satraapin.

The compromise has some additional exceptions: before eri, eli, ori the doubling is standard and expressed in writing: eetteri, tuberkkeli, senaattori. In some words in these categories, doubling is not common in speech (e.g. kraatteri, preettori).

The doubling does not apply, in pronunciation or spelling, to stops (p, t, k) when the original language has a voiced stop (b, g, d). For example, the ending -lanti in country names comes from Swedish “-land”. In contrast, the Atlantic Ocean is Atlantti.

Common pronunciation

Common pronunciation often doubles the consonant even when it should be single according to the rules described above, e.g. beeta [beetta], delta [deltta], kvartaali [kvarttaali], andante [andantte], though this is far from systematic. When it happens, there is consonant gradation in pronunciation but not in spelling, e.g. beeta [beetta] : beetan [beetan].

The compromise was originally made to establish the written form. Only later was it decided that the pronunciation should follow the spelling. Yet, after about a hundred years after the compromise, doubling is still normal pronunciation, under the conditions specified above, for the stops k, p, and t. Examples (with common pronunciation in brackets): sampoo [samppoo], temperamentti [tempperamentti], internetiin [intternettiin]. Most Finns probably use such pronunciations without thinking and without realizing the difference between the spelling and the pronunciation. Yet, spellings that correspond to such pronunciation are commonly recognized as erroneous.

The situation is somewhat different for s and f: doubling is common, e.g. in marsilainen [marssilainen] (Martian, from the name Mars) and graafinen [graaffinen], but less common than for the stops and possibly regarded as vulgar. However, when f appears after a consonant, doubling is regular. Official spellings are golfin (of golf) and surfata (to surf), but practically everyone says [golffin] and [surffata]; and now surffata is allowed as an alternate spelling.

There are many further complications in the phenomenon. In some words, like alkoholi, doubling, [alkkoholi], may sound odd to many people; in some words, like beeta, it would probably sound odd not to pronounce [beetta]. The variation is usually not described in dictionaries.

The rules cause difficulties even to educated native speakers especially in words that are apparently related, but should be treated differently according to the rules, e.g. hierarkia (hierarchy) versus hierarkkinen (hierarchic). The former has single k before the foreign-origin ia ending, whereas the latter has doubled kk, since it is followed by i and the Finnish suffix nen.

Doubling of word-final consonant

Foreign words that end with k, p, or t in the basic form have that consonant doubled in inflected forms, except that it participates in consonant gradation. To put this in a perhaps better way, these words are inflected as if their basic forms ended with kki, ppi, or tti. However, according to the rules, the double consonant is written with one letter.

For example, pop is inflected as if it were poppi, but written with p instead of pp: pop : popia [poppia] : popina [poppina] : popiin [poppiin] : popin [popin] etc. In practice, in singular forms, only the partitive, essive, and illative cases have a double kk, pp, or tt pronounced in them; in other cases, consonant gradition makes the stop short. According to language guides, the doubling described here may or may not take place, but in reality, it is part of normal pronunciation – [popia] would sound artificial.

For one-syllable words ending with s, doubling is also common, in all inflected forms, e.g. fis [fis] : fisiä [fissiä] : fisin [fissin]. However, here it may actually vary with single-consonant pronunciation, especially when the s appears after a consonant, e.g. Mars [mars] : Marsin [marssin] ∼ [marsin]. In-between pronunciation, with a half-long consonant, is probably common. However, abbreviations ending with s and pronounced as one-syllable words have the [s] sound regularly doubled, e.g. SAS [sas] : SASin [sassin]. Some abbreviations may be pronounced without doubling when speaking formally, e.g. HUS [hus] : HUSin [hussin] ∼ [husin].

Other consonants may also be doubled after a stressed syllable with a short vowel, e.g. ROM [rom] : ROMin [rommin] ∼ [romin]. This may also happen in foreign, especially French names, if they are pronounced with stress on last syllable, e.g. Laval [lavál] : Lavalin [lavállin].

Language rules require that the doubling described here must not be reflected in writing. However, for some words, doubling is now a permitted alternative, e.g. pop : popia ∼ poppia.

Background

The background is that the doubling described in this section is applied in Swedish as spoken in Finland, at least in the Helsinki area. When words were adopted from it into Finnish, it was natural to retain both their pronunciation and their spelling, even though this deviated from Finnish orthography. Swedish as spoken Finnish, on the other hand, has been phonetically affected by Finnish. In Sweden, a word like kantarell is pronounced so that the t sounds emphatic, mainly due to the phonetic features in the change from n to t and from t to a. Swedish as spoken in Finland lacks such features and tends to compensate for this by doubling the t, to keep t sufficiently different from d.

Shortening of double consonants

An opposite phenomenon is that a written double consonant is often pronounced as short in words like assistentti [asistentti], penisilliini [penisiliini], and renessanssi [renesanssi]. In a word like penisilliini, such pronunciation is regular and can be observed from secondary stress: [pénisilíini] versus [pénisílliini], which we would have if the ll were pronounced long.

The reason for the shorttening is that the corresponding Swedish word has a written double consonant after an unstressed vowel, “assistént”, “penicillín”, “renässáns”, and in such a context a consonant is pronounced single in Swedish.

International words in Finnish

General

International words are words that occur in many languages, typically in most European languages, just adjusted in form to each language. International words such as “panel”, “radio”, and “banana” are usually recognizable even from texts in a language that you do not know at all. They may at least give some idea of what the text might be about.

Finnish has a large number of international words, adapted to the phonetic and writing system, for example paneeli, radio, and banaani. However, Finnish often uses a different word even when most European language have an international word, e.g. puhelin (telephone); the word telefoni is outdated and would be used nowadays only in a jocular meaning.

The preceding sections have described vowel length and consonant doubling in international words in Finnish. This section discusses other aspects, such as substitution of letters and adaptation of pronunciation.

Classical forms

Words of Latin or Greek origin typically have a rather “classical” form in Finnish: their spelling, and largely pronunciation as well, is similar to the form in the classical languages. For example, inflaatio reflects the Latin nominative form “inflatio” (lacking the final “n” that we have e.g. in English), and geologia has the same -ia ending as Greek (as opposite to English “geology”). The appendix-like section Endings of international words describes such correspondences between English and Finnish in detail.

Adaptation of letters

Some letter combinations in international words are adapted to Finnish as shown in the following table. It mainly applies to words of Latin or Greek origin.

There are some exceptions like using k as a counterpart to “c”even before e, i, or y, e.g. keraaminen (ceramic) and kyyninen (cynical).

“Own” words instead of international words

Finnish often has its own words, based on old Finnish vocabulary, instead of international words. For example, in Finnish “electricity” is sähkö (a made-up word, related to descriptive words describing hissing sound) and “plastic” is muovi (as a noun) or muovinen (as an adjective), derived from the verb muovata (to shape, to model). Such words are often much easier to pronounce and to write to a Finn than the corresponding international words would be. There has also been intentional linguistic purism, motivated in part by making the language “more democratic”. International words are easy to learn and use to people who know foreign languages, but they are more difficult to people with less education.

Often there is an international word in Finnish but it is used as a learned word only, or as sivistyssana, “cultivated word” or “culture word”, as we say in Finnish. For example, you can use the word struktuuri for structure, and at least educated Finns will see what you mean, but the normal word for structure is rakenne, derived from the verb rakentaa (to build).

Many international words are not used in Finnish as such, only as derivations. For example, the word for national is kansallinen, but nationalism is usually nationalismi. So if you used a made-up Finnish form of the word national, nationaali or nationaalinen, you might still be understood.

The situation has changed due to the accelerated adoption of new concepts and words. In modern times, a new term coined for a technological innovation or new political or scientific concept tends spread very fast, typically as an English word. There is seldom time for developing, say, Finnish words for such use before people widely know it by its English name, or by a loanword taken from English. For example, a tablet, as a device, is tabletti in Finnish, despite some efforts at finding a “more Finnish” name for it and coining words like the somewhat clumsy taulutietokone (literally “table computer”). However, the second part of that word, tietokone, is in actual use, for a computer; the loanword kompuutteri is just jocular. The components are tieto (knowledge, information, data) and kone (machine).

Words formed from Finnish ingredients are often in common use in general texts and public communication but not that much in professional jargon. In information technology, professionals speak and write about serveri or systeemi, but they are expected to switch to palvelin and järjestelmä when addressing a general audience. Similarly, in medicine, suturing a wound might be referred to with the verb suturoida, but the common language word is ommella (the same as used for sowing).

Foreign names in Finnish

Adapted forms

Names of places, people, etc. often have different forms in different languages. In English, we say “Venice” when referring to a city in Italy known as “Venezia” in Italian. In Finnish, the name is close to Italian, just in Finnish spelling: Venetsia.

There is no official list of Finnish names to be used for foreign places, buildings, people, etc. The most comprehensive general list of them is in the book Vierasnimikirja, by the author of this book. The list, with some omissions and some additions, has been included in the appendix-like section Proper names of this book.

Geographic names

For countries and places that have been known in Finland for a long time, the name used might have changed a lot from the original, such as Tukholma for Stockholm or Pietari for St. Petersburg. The name might also be of a completely different origin: Ruotsi (Sweden), Venäjä (Russia), Viro (Estonia), Saksa (Germany).

As in English, some parts of geographic names are translated, sometimes even the entire name, e.g. Tanganjikajärvi (Lake Tanganyika), Alankomaat (the Netherlands).

Place names in Russia

Many places now located in Russia have Finnish names. For the areas that were ceded to the Soviet Union in 1940 and again in 1944, it is customary to use Finnish names like Viipuri (Russian: Vyborg). Finnish names are often used also for places in East Karelia, e.g. Karhumäki (Russian: Medvezhyegorsk). Many of these names are really not foreign in Finnish; instead, the Finnish names are original and Russian names are newer, often based on the Finnish name.

There is a large compilation of these names and their Russian equivalents in the online publication Venäjän federaation paikannimiä.

Place names in other neighboring countries

Many places in northern Sweden and Norway have Finnish names given to them by local Finnish-speaking people, e.g. Jällivaara (Swedish: Gällivare) and Tromssa (Norwegian: Tromsø). Some of the Finnish names are becoming less common; e.g. Alattio in Norway is now often called by its Norwegian name Alta in Finnish texts.

Finnish forms for Estonian names have a different origin. Finnish and Estonian languages are related, and Estonian names therefore often resemble Finnish words. They have often been adapted, at least as regards to the second part of compound word, e.g. Munamäki (Estonian: Munamägi).

Personal names

The names of kings and other monarchs often have rather different form in Finnish than in English or other languages. For example, the English king names “James” and “John” are Jaakko and Juhana in Finnish. However, according to a decision by language authorities in 2002, such adaptations should not be applied to names of future monarchs. Thus, although the Philips of Spain (“Felipe” in Spanish) are still called Filip in Finnish up to Filip V, the present king of Spain should be called Felipe VI as in Spanish; the Finnish media generally follows the recommendation.

Swedish first names of notable persons of Finnish history have traditionally been used in a form adapted to Finnish, e.g. Sakari Topelius instead of Zacharias Topelius. However, there is now a tendency of using original names as “more correct”. For example, the national biography kansallisbiografia.fi uses them.

Among other personal names, very few have (mildly) adapted forms: Martti Luther (Martin Luther), Leo Tolstoi (the first name is Lev in Russian), Josif Stalin (the first name is Iosif in Russian).

Common mistranslations

It is not uncommon to see foreign names in English form (say, “Bavaria”) in news, because the text was translated from English and the translator did not know that a Finnish form (such as Baijeri) should be used. A similar mistake is that names used in English-language newsfeed are used as such even though the local name is different. For example, “Munich” is a grave mistake in Finnish texts when referring to a city in Germany; the German name München is used in Finnish.

Requirement on exact spelling

Apart from a limited set of adapted traditional names discussed above, foreign names should be written Finnish exactly as in the original language, according to language authorities. This means that all accents and other diacritic marks as well as foreign letters be retained, e.g. Bárðarbunga (not Bardarbunga).

In practice, this rule is often not followed, especially in newspapers. For example, instead of the correct Spanish name Málaga, people often write simply Malaga, which is common in English too. Even in publications that generally follow the rule, it is very common to use ss in German names that have ß in the original (e.g. Hess instead of Heß, Gauss instead of Gauß) and omit diacritic marks from Vietnamese words (e.g. dong instead of đồng). Replacing foreign letters, e.g. ð by d and þ by th in Icelandic names, can be a conscious decision, in fear of alienating effects on the reader.

Pronunciation

The pronunciation of foreign names should follow the original, according to official rules. This is very unrealistic in general, and often names as just “read as written”, according to Finnish values for letters. See Pronunciation of foreign names and phrases.

Transliterations

Names written in other writing systems need to be transliterated (romanized, written in Latin letters), and this often differs from the transliteration used in English.

There is a Finnish standard for writing Russian names. It gives a relatively good idea of the original pronunciation, when read according to Finnish rules. The scope of the standard also covers other Slavic languages written in Cyrillic letters (e.g. Bulgarian), but it is applied to them much less consistently. The following table shows the main differences between Finnish translation and common English transliteration of Russian. The first column shows the Cyrillic letter. The notation е- means that this row applies to a Cyrillic е appearing at the start of a word or after a vowel or the soft sign or the hard sign; otherwise е is transliterated as e in all systems.

For Japanese names, the modern trend is to use the same transliteration (Hepburn) as in English. An older system (with tš instead of ch, dž instead of j, š instead of sh, v instead of w, and j or i instead of y) is still in some use, especially for some words. This explains variation like Jokohama ∼ Yokohama.

For Greek names, the situation is very confused, with different authorities recommending different transliterations, e.g. Chania vs. the traditional Hania vs. current Finnish (SFS) standard Haniá. In newspapers, the transliteration of modern Greek names nowadays usually follows English practice more or less, e.g. Alexis rather than Aleksis. This generally coincides with the Greek ELOT 743 standard, which is also the current recommendation of the Institute for the languages of Finland, although the recommendation discusses place names only: Kreikan paikannimet.

For Hebrew and Yiddish, there is a Finnish standard, but it is obscure and not much known. On the other hand, it is close to common English practices. The main difference is that the Finnish standard (and practice) allows the use of j instead of y, e.g. Netanjahu ∼ Netanyahu.

For other languages, international practices are applied. In particular, Chinese is commonly written using the pinyin system, though some names are sometimes still written using an older transcription system (e.g. Mao Tse-tung instead of the pinyin Mao Zedong).

Personal names and addressing people

Names

In Finland, people have up to four (earlier: three) given names and a family name. A married person may use two family names: the maiden name followed by the spouse’s name. Conventionally, they have been written as a copulative compound using a hyphen “-”. Example: Maija Meikäläinen-Teikäläinen. Nowadays, a person who chooses to use such a combination may also choose to use them as separate words, e.g. Maija Meikäläinen Teikäläinen. (The word Meikäläinen, literally “a person who is one of us”, is not in real use as a proper name, but it is often used as a dummy surname in examples. Teikäläinen, “one of you”, is a similar name.) On the other hand, some surnames are normal compounds with a hyphen, typically with Ala or Ylä as the first part, e.g. Ala-Tuuhonen.

Finnish surnames often end with the locational suffix la or lä, and such names have originally referred to houses (farms), later changed to surnames. Another common suffix is nen. The ten most common surnames, according to an official list, are: Korhonen, Virtanen, Mäkinen, Nieminen, Mäkelä, Hämäläinen, Laine, Heikkinen, Koskinen, Järvinen.

Finnish given names have multiple origins. Many common names are of international and often Christian origin, a few are Finnish words, often with a meaning relating to nature, such as Helmi (from helmi “pearl”), and some names are just made-up words. The international origin is often difficult to recognize due considerable phonetic changes; e.g., Juhani, Juha, Jukka, and Jussi all have the same origin as the English John.

The most popular first names are: for men, Juhani, Johannes, Olavi, Antero, Tapani, Kalevi, Tapio, Matti, Mikael, Ilmari; for women, Maria, Helena, Johanna, Anneli, Kaarina, Marjatta, Anna, Liisa, Annikki, Hannele. The reason why many female names end with a is that they are based on international names that have a final “a” in the original (e.g., Maria, like English “Mary”, comes from Latin “Maria”). The ending a is not feminine in Finnish, and some male names like Juha and Pekka end with a.

In modern literary usage, given names precede the surname, and the given names are not inflicted in this context, e.g. Jukka Korpela : Jukka Korpelalle (to Jukka Korpela). However, older usage where the surname appears first, in the genitive, is still often used in speech. In that style, the given name is inflected: Korpelan Jukka : Korpelan Jukalle.

Addressing people

In Finnish, we use a person’s first name when addressing close relatives, friends, and pals. At work, practices vary: first name, surname, nickname, or title might be used. Using surname together with a title is rare and typically occurs in formal contexts only.

Being on a first-name basis is coupled with the use of sinä as 2nd person singular pronoun, as opposite to te, and with the use of corresponding verb forms and possessive suffixes, as explained in section Personal pronouns. For example, in English we can say “Paula, please open this” or “Doctor Smith, please open this” when addressing Dr. Paula Smith, depending on whether we are on a first-name basis or not. In Finnish we would say Paula, avaisitko tämän or Tohtori, avaisitteko tämän (using just the title tohtori “doctor”).

Names of languages, countries, etc.

Names of languages

By convention, names of human languages are written in lowercase in Finnish: suomi, italia, esperanto. Names of computer “languages” are capitalized, e.g. C, Perl, Java.

Finnish often has the same name for a language and for country, just with the spelling difference that that the country name is capitalized, the language name is not. Examples: suomi – Suomi (Finnish – Finland), ruotsi – Ruotsi (Swedish – Sweden), italia – Italia (Italian – Italy), englanti – Englanti (English – England).

When needed, the language name can be clarified by using it as a genitive attribute before the noun kieli (language), e.g. suomen kieli. This principle extends to language names that do not match a country name, e.g. kurdi – kurdin kieli. Adjectives for languages are based on such longer expressions, e.g. suomenkielinen (Finnish, Finnish-language).

Country names ending with -maa

A country name can sometimes be clarified by using a compound where the first part is the name in the genitive and the second part is maa (country), e.g. Suomenmaa = Suomi, Venäjänmaa = Venäjä (Russia), Ranskanmaa = Ranska (France), Tšekinmaa = Tšekki (Czech). However, such longer names are somewhat poetic, and they cannot be formed from most names. If really needed, the corresponding open compound could be used, e.g. Italian maa = Italia.

Derivations of country names

The suffix lAinen is used to derive words from country names for use both as an adjective and as a noun. In noun usage, the word denotes an inhabitant of the country or a member of the nation. In adjective usage, it means something belonging to or typical of the country or the nation. Thus, for example, saksalainen, derived from Saksa (Germany), can mean a German person (either as “a person living in Germany” or as “a member of the German nation”) or “German” as an adjective. However, saksalainen does not normally refer to language; for that, saksankielinen is used, e.g. saksankielinen kirja (a book in German).

The derivations suomalainen and ruotsalainen have an irregular vowel change from i to a in the base word. Another irregularity is venäläinen (Russian) from Venäjä.

Swedish names for places in Finland

Most places in Finland have only a Finnish name, but many places also have a Swedish name, e.g. “Åbo” for Turku, “Vanda” for Vantaa. In Lapland, places also have names in Sámi languages.

When referring to places in Finland in foreign-language texts, it can be difficult to decide whether Swedish names should be used for places in an area where the majority speaks Swedish. At least for Åland (Finnish Ahvenanmaa) and places there, Swedish names can be preferred in languages other than Finnish, since Swedish is the only official language in Åland.

Different scopes of words

Quite often, a word of a language has no direct counterpart in another language but corresponds to two or more different words. This causes problems in language learning and usage. For example, a Finn might mistakenly say “I didn’t wait for that” when he means “I didn’t expect that”, since both “to wait” and “to expect” correspond to the Finnish verb odottaa. Similarly, the Finnish verb lainata means both “to loan” and “to borrow”, and vuokrata means both “to rent” and “to rent out”. Thus, halutaan vuokrata (where halutaan means “one wants to…”) contains in principle an ambiguous infinitive; in language practice, it means that one wants to rent an apartment.

For a person with English as native language, an English word that corresponds to two or more Finnish words may cause difficulties in language learning, but also in usage. You may have understood and learned the correspondences, but you keep forgetting it, and sometimes you just don’t know which word to use. For example, the English word “wood” mainly corresponds to puu in Finnish, but in some contexts, especially in the plural, it corresponds to metsä (forest). A more difficult word is the English verb “to play”: when playing games, it is pelata in Finnish; when playing a record, it is soittaa; when children play, it is leikkiä; and so on.

Family relationship and relationship by marriage

Family relationships are a good example of different scopes of words mentioned in the previous section. Such differences may cause difficult problems in translation in situations that lack sufficient context.

The English word “uncle” must be translated as eno, if it means “mother’s brother”, and setä, when it means “father’s brother”. Similarly, the words “nephew” and “niece” cannot be translated without knowing the relation more exactly. For example, in early translations of Donald Duck, Aku Ankka in Finnish, Hewey, Dewey, and Louie—Tupu, Hupu, and Lupu—were called Donald’s veljenpojat, even though this means “brother’s sons” and they are actually Donald’s sister’s sons.

Family relationships

The systems of words for relationship by birth are partly different in Finnish and in English. Both languages use simple words for the very basic relationships, but they have different approach to referring to grandchildren, nephews, etc. The following table shows the correspondences in standard languages. As in most languages, there are many colloquial or dialectal words especially for the basic relationships, e.g. äitee, äiskä, mutsi for äiti (mother).

The word täti is also used by children and by adults talking to a child, to refer generally to a woman who is essentially older than the child, without implying any family relationship. Similarly, setä is used generally about older men in such a sense.

The Finnish word vanhempi is used mostly in plural in this meaning, vanhemmat : vanhempien (parents). When referring to one parent only, the word for mother or father is used or, when necessary, an expression like äiti tai isä (mother or father) is normally used. When the word “parent” is used metaphorically, as in “parent node” (in a tree-like data structure), Finnish normally uses isä, e.g. isäsolmu.

For stepmother, stepfather, stepsister, and stepbrother Finnish uses äitipuoli, isäpuoli, sisarpuoli, and velipuoli, where the latter component is inflected puoli : puolen. The words sisarpuoli and velipuoli are also used for half sister and half brother, respectively.

Marriage

In a marriage, avioliitto in Finnish, the general word for spouse is puoliso, but it is mostly used in formal language only. Usually the words vaimo (wife) and aviomies or mies (husband) are used. Normally mies is used, but since it also means “man”, it is sometimes prefixed with avio for clarity. Several colloquial words, with varying tones, are in use, e.g. eukko, akka, and muija for wife and ukko for husband.

A married couple can be called using the plural form puolisot or the singular noun pariskunta or aviopari, of which the latter is more formal.

Relationship by marriage

In English, relationship by marriage (affinity) is expressed systematically using words like “mother-in-law”, based on the word for a relationship by birth. Finnish has simple words for each basic relationship, such as anoppi. They are listed in the following table.

These words, especially käly and lanko, are nowadays often replaced by analytic expressions, e.g. miehen veli or vaimon veli or sisaren mies instead of lanko.

In old poetry, nato : nadon is sometimes used for husband’s sister and kyty : kydyn husband’s brother.

Common-law marriage

The word avoliitto (as opposite to avioliitto “marriage”) is generally used to denote a marriage-like but unofficial relationship between a woman and a man. The closest English equivalent is “common-law marriage”. In the Finnish legal system, avoliitto has some of the legal implications of a marriage, especially if the couple has children.

Marriage-related terms such as vaimo and anoppi are often used about relations based on common-law marriage. They may be prefixed with avo, e.g. avovaimo (common-law wife) is often used, whereas avoanoppi (mother of common-law wife) may sound humoristic or colloquial. A couple living in common-law marriage is usually called avopari.

Since common-law marriage is by definition unofficial, there are no strict rules for applying this concept.

False friends in Finnish and English

The concept of false friends

False friends (French “faux amis”) are pairs of words in two languages so that the words are written or pronounced identically or similarly but differ in meaning. False friends cause problems especially when you see or hear a word in a foreign language and you assume that it has the same meaning as a similar word in your native language.

A special case of false friends consists of words that, in addition to being similar in two languages, have the same origin but different meaning, due to differences in changes of semantics. False friends in this sense, sometimes called false cognates, usually appear in closely related languages. For example, there is a large number of such false friends in Finnish and Estonian, such as Finnish vaimo (wife) and Estonian “vaimu” (spirit, ghost) and Finnish huvittava (amusing, funny) and Estonian “huvitav” (interesting). Between English and Finnish, such false friends are mostly caused by changed meanings of international words.

Some examples

In the following table, each row contains

• an English word
• a Finnish word resembling (in spelling or pronunciation or both) the English word
• an explanation of the meaning of the Finnish word in English.

Specialized meaning

There are some word pairs that could be regarded as false friends in the sense that a Finnish word has a much more restricted meaning than its “friend” in English. For example:

In English, “sex” can refer to the two sexes, but in Finnish seksi means sexual activity or sexual at­trac­tive­ness only (and sukupuoli is used for one of the sexes).

In Finnish, sortsit (or shortsit) means short trousers only, whereas short underpants are called alushousut.

The English word “tape” occurs as a loanword in Finnish, written teippi, but it has the very restricted meaning: adhesive tape (whereas a tape in general is nauha).

False friendship may depend on the context

Some words are false friends in some contexts only:

• English “positive” can usually be translated as positiivinen (and in some contexts it must be translated that way), but translating “I’m positive” that way would be an error (it must be translated e.g. as olen varma).
• “invalid” can often be translated as invalidi or synonymously vammainen, but not in a context like “invalid command” (which could be translated as virheellinen komento).
• “liberal” is often liberaali (or synonymously vapaa­mielinen, “free-minded”), but “liberal education” is certainly not liberaali kasvatus (though it might be seen mistranslated that way) but rather klassillinen koulutus
• “moral” as an adjective is normally translated as moraalinen, but “moral of the story” is not tarinan moraali (rather, tarinan opetus).

Some special false friends

Originally, pateettinen means “high-flown”, whereas the English “pathetic” in its modern meaning, as opposite to its old dictionary meaning, is translated e.g. as säälittävä or surkea. But it seems that the impact of English has changed things so that pateettinen now very often means “pathetic”. In the Finnish version of The Lion King on video, Zazu’s words about Simba becoming a pretty pathetic king have been translated as sinusta tulee hyvin pateettinen kuningas. In this context, both interpretations are plausible, and perhaps the translator intentionally created the ambiguity!

A personal note might illustrate some problems with false friends. During my visit to the US in the 1980s, I, being a smoker at that time, was looking for a vending machine to buy some cigarettes. I asked a motel employee whether the motel had a cigarette automaton. This resulted in a rather embarrassing situation. In Finnish, automaatti means a vending machine, or an automatic teller machine, or other “automatic system”, in addition to automata.

“Forbidden” words

Languages generally have words that are part of the vocabulary but are normally avoided at least in educated speech and writing. Curse words are the most obvious example. The Finnish curse word perkele (literally: devil) is known by many foreigners, but it is less known that it might be used as a relatively mild curse word in some circles, yet taken as very offensive by many. Young people often use vittu (cunt) very frequently—like a comma, as they say. People may say jumalauta as a strong curse word, despite its being originally a prayer, a shortened form of Jumala, auta “God, help [me]”. The point is that you need to listen to how people speak and then tune your mind and your usage accordingly. It is seldom a good idea to be the first one, or even the second one, who uses a potentially problematic word in a company.

The word neekeri (negro) is nowadays mostly avoided, and e.g. musta (black) is used instead. There are some other words for ethnicity that are more difficult to avoid without knowing current Finnish practices. Mustalainen used to be a normal word for gypsy; now romani is recommended. Sámi people were long called lappalainen, but now saamelainen is regarded as the correct word. Even ryssä (Russian person) was once a neutral word, in the 19th century, but then it became rather negative; the correct word is now venäläinen.

There are also innocent-looking words that are widely avoided. The verb panna means many things like “to put” or “to lay down”, and it also means having sexual intercourse. The possibility of this association has made people widely avoid the verb. Instead of old-style Panen kirjan pöydälle (I’ll put the book on the table) they say Laitan kirjan pöydälle or Pistän kirjan pöydälle, using the verb laittaa or the verb pistää, which are partly synonymous with panna.

There are words that are taboo to many people, while other people see nothing wrong with them. The noun tukka means hair on the top of the head, and it is still used that way by most people. Yet, young people may avoid it due to assumed association with pubic hair and use hiukset, the plural of hius, instead.

The words sika (swine) and lehmä (cow) are normal when referring to living animals. However, they are often avoided when referring to meat from those animals. The generic word sianliha (pork, literally “swine’s meat”) is neutral, but pork chop is much more often called porsaankyljys than siankyljys. The word porsas : porsaan denotes a young swine (pig) in principle, but any pork when referring to meat. The general word for beef is naudanliha, containing the word nauta : naudan that denotes a bovine in general (cow or bull). In commerce and in restaurants, the word härkä : härän (e.g., in häränliha) is often used instead of nauta, even though härkä in principle means “ox” in standard Finnish. For further confusion, the word sonni (bull) is sometimes used when referring to beef, whether the meat actually comes from a cow or a bull.

Terminology

Forming terms for concepts in administration, law, industry, science, arts, technology, etc. is an essential part of making and keeping a language useable in a modern society in various areas of life. This was a key issue in the 19th and 20th century Finland. Its relative im­por­tance has decreased especially in science, humanities, and technology: nowadays English terms are often adopted as such or as modified somewhat to adapt to the structure of Finnish.

There are many terminology collections that are more or less regularly updated and provide an extensive set of terms, though they are not all widely accepted or used. Some examples of different terminology databases available online:

• Finto, Finnish Ontology and Vocabulary Service.
• TEPA-termipankki. Originally a database of technology terms (tekniikan termipankki), this now contains terms of sciences and other areas as well.

Word derivation

The structure of a derived word

The stem and the suffix

A derived word consists of the stem of a base word and a suffix. For example, the word sanasto (vocabulary) consists of the stem of the base word sana (word) and the suffix sto, which has a collective meaning. Here the stem of the base word is the same as its basic form in dictionaries, the nominative singular.

The base word may itself be a derived word. For example, from sanasto we can derive sanastollinen (lexical).

The Suffix glossary in this book lists the most common suffixes in Finnish, including derivational suffixes. As it shows, the same suffix may appear both as a derivational suffix and as an inflection suffix, though this is relatively rare in Finnish.

Suomen kielen sidonnaiset morfeemit (contains an exhaustive table of suffixes in standard Finnish).

Form of the base word

In most words derived from nouns and adjectives, the stem of the base word is the form used in the genitive singular. For example, adding the general suffix llinen to the word asenne : asenteen (attitude; prejudice) yields asenteellinen (prejudiced; related to attitudes), i.e. the base word stem is here asentee-.

For words derived from verbs, the stem of the base word is mostly the same as in the 1st person singular, indicative present tense. For example, from juosta : juoksen (to run) we can derive the word juoksettaa (to make something/someone run), where the base word stem is juokse and the suffix is ttaa.

The stem of the base word may vary due to consonant gradation and other changes, as described in section Other variation in word stem.

A final short vowel is normally omitted before a suffix that starts with a vowel. For example, when the suffix u is appended to the verb stem juokse- to form a name of action, the e is lost: juoksu (run). This also happens when the final vowel is preceded by another vowel, e.g. urhea (brave) → urhe|illa (to go in for sports) , here causing the stem vowel e and the suffix vowel i to form a diphthong.

A final long vowel is shortened before a vowel, not lost. Example: vene : venee|n (boat) → vane|illä (to boat; to go boating).

Sometimes a derived word concides with an inflected form of the base word. The verb infinitives mentioned above, urheilla and veneillä, are written the same way as the adessive plural forms of urhea and vene. In spoken Finnish, the words differ, since the infinitives end with boundary gemination.

Alterations

Some words have been created by altering another word in different, often irregular ways and possibly adding a suffix. Such creations are very common in slang and jargon. They often produce a more convenient word that can be used instead of a long and complicated word. However, probably a stronger reason for using such words is that they sound informal.

For example, from valkoviini (white wine), itself a normal compond word, the colloquial valkkari has been produced. In it, either ri or ari can be regarded as a suffix, especially since such suffixes are common in Finnish words. The stem valkka or valkk is irregular, however; we can say that it is motivated by the word valkoviini, or its start, rather than just its modified form. Such colloqualisms are often used in different environments in different meanings. For example, among bird hobbyists, valkkari may mean valkoposkihanhi, a bird species (barnacle goose; the Finnish name means “white-cheeked goose”).

It is a matter of definition whether such alterations are called derived words.

Truncations

Omitting the end or the start of a word can be regarded as the simplest form of alteration, a shortened word. It is common in spoken language, but seldom accepted in formal language. For example, ale (genitive: alen) is a truncation of alennusmyynti (sale) and very common in advertisements, but normally not used otherwise in written language. The word info for informaatio is a common colloquialism, whereas ope for opettaja (teacher) is school language.

Some truncations appear only as the first component of a compound word, often imitating similar use in other languages, e.g. digi- (= digitaali-). They can be classified as compositive forms.

Some truncations are abbreviations treated as words. For example, esim. is common abbreviation for esimerkiksi (for example) and is read as that full word in formal language, but informally it can be read as just esim and even written that way, without a period.

A special case is suht. (= suhteellisen, relatively), which is rather rare as an abbreviation in writing, but common as a truncation spoken language. It is often combined with koht. (= kohtuullisen or kohtalaisen, meaning “reasonably” or “moderately”), written varyingly suht. koht. or suht.koht. or suht koht or suhtkoht, meaning “fairly, rather”.

Acronyms

The word “acronym” has several meanings, but here we use it denote a word formed from initial letters of words, such as hetu from henkilötunnus (a compound of henkilö and tunnus). Such words are common in modern Finnish, but usually colloquial. They are used like normal words, but single stops k, p, t do no participate in consonant gradation; e.g. the genitive of hetu is hetun, not hedun.

In a more restricted sense, an “acronym” is formed from first letters of words. Such acronyms are rare in Finnish. They are often loanwords so that the word is not an acronym in Finnish, e.g. rem (rapid eye movement), vip (∼ VIP), Nato (∼ NATO).

New acronyms are often created because a new administrative or other term is an inconveniently long expression like aluehallintovirasto and an abbreviation is like avi (∼ AVI) is defined for it. If the abbreviation is a pronouncible word, it easily becomes an acronym: it is no longer spelled out, except in the most formal contexts.

Many acronyms are used in a restricted way only, at least in formal language: as the first component of a compound word. Such words are often base on a pair of words. They include luki- (from luku ja kirjoitus) in lukihäiriö (dyslexia), hevi- (from hedelmä ja vihannes) in heviosasto (fruit and vegetable department), and sote- (from sosiaali- ja terveydenhuolto) in soteuudistus (social welfare and health care reform). In informal language, however, such words may appear as such, e.g. sote standing for soteuudistus.

Suffixes and language learning

People learn Finnish derivation suffixes as they learn words containing them, rather than by learning the suffixes separately. This applies to learning Finnish as first language (native language) as well as other forms of learning. However, it is possible to assist such natural learning processes by a more systematic study of suffixes.

It is easy to notice similarities in meanings of kirjasto, astiasto, laivasto etc. when you learn such words, and this may make you expect that sto always has a similar meaning as a collective suffix. One day, you might even dare to coin a new word using it, for example kalasto, from kala (fish). That’s normal in Finnish. Some suffixes are so productive that forming a derivation is not a big thing, maybe even just comparable to using two or more words together (an open compound, or a phrase like “set of fish”) in English. But there are some pitfalls. For example, kalasto is an existing word, but it has a specific meaning; it does not mean any set or collective of fish but the totality of all fish in some water area.

Spelling problem -oittaa ∼ -ottaa

Among the problems of spelling related to derivational suffixes, the one that disturbs native speakers most is the issue of -ottaa vs. -oittaa verbs. The official rules are complicated. The base rule is that the suffix is -oittaa if the stem of the base word ends with a. For example, we have haavoittaa (to wound) from haava (wound), but tiedottaa (to inform) from tieto (information). However, there are many exceptions, and it is often not clear what the base word is.

In spoken language, most -oittaa verbs appear without the i, e.g. haavottaa. This makes the issue difficult to native speakers when they try to write correctly or speak formally.

However, in both written and spoken language, the -oittaa form is always used when the base word has three syllables. Example: vahingoittaa (to harm), from vahinko (damage).

Meanings of derivational suffixes

Productivity of suffixes

Some suffixes used for word derivation have a rather fixed meaning: they modify the meaning of the base word in a predictable way. Often such suffixes are productive, which means that they can be attached to almost any word that belongs to a certain type of words. Mostly, but not always, a very productive suffix has a systematic meaning.

For example, from almost any word derived with the llinen suffix, a further derivation ending with llisuus or llisyys can be formed, and such derivations are property names. Thus, from lupa (permission) we have luvallinen (permitted, allowed) and from it luvallisuus (permittedness, the property of being allowed). To take another example, from aine (matter, substance) we can derive the adjective aineellinen (material), from it the active verb aineellistaa (to materialize), from it the passive verb aineellistua (to be materized), from it the negative participle aineellistumaton (unmaterialized), and you could go on.

On the other hand, a derivational suffix may have very varying meanings and the suffix might be restricted to a small set of words. Most derivational suffixes are between the extremes: they have some characteristic meaning, but it is not exact, and the suffix can be used in other meanings, too.

Suomen kielen produktiivisia johtimia.

Collective derivations

A collective derivation often denotes simply a set of things denoted by the base word. For example, tiestö, from tie (road) means “roads” as a collective, perhaps understood as a road network.

A derivation may also refer to the environment of such a set or a place or institution for it. For example, kirjasto, from kirja (book), does not denote a set of books but a library. The word tiedosto, from tieto : tiedon (information; knowledge; data), has a specific meaning, a (computer) file. The word tietue has been formed from the same base to denote a record in a file or otherwise in data processing.

The semantic relationship between a base word and a collective derivation can be different, too. E.g. kolmikko, from kolme (three), means a set of three, a triplet, and there are similar “numerical collectives” formed from other numerals. Some derivations are rather remotely related to the base word; e.g. neuvosto (council; soviet) is based on neuvo (advice).

The following suffixes are used for collective derivations:

• stO is the most common and very productive; the meaning can be concrete, e.g. vuoristo (mountains, mountain range) from vuori (mountain), or abstract, e.g. sanasto (vocabulary) from sana (word)
• kkO is rather common, typically with a concrete meaning, e.g. hyllykkö (set of shelves) from hylly (shelf).
• ue^x : uee- occurs in few words only, e.g. laivue (squadron; flotilla) from laiva (ship)
• isO occurs only in the words alhaiso, nuoriso, yhteisö, yleisö, ylhäisö and, in a non-collective meaning, puoliso (spouse)

In some words these suffixes have no collective meaning. They have just been used to form new words, such as puukko (knife) from puu (tree; wood) and kermakko (creamer) from kerma (cream).

Both the stO suffix and the kkO suffix often occur with the plural suffix i before it, possibly causing changes in the base word ending. Even vuoristo is an example of this, since the base word stem ends with e: vuori : vuoren. For some words, both a derivation without i and one with it are in use, in different meanings, e.g. from puu (tree; wood) we have puusto (tree stand, growing stock) and puisto (park).

Alternative suffixes

As described above, the suffixes stO and kkO are similar in meaning. There is no simple rule that says which of these suffixes (if either) can be used for a word. This partly depends on dialect variation, but in standard language, usually only one alternative is accepted. For example, from the word haapa : haavan “European aspen”, the derivation is haavikko (which thus means “aspen forest, aspen stand”). However, as surnames, both Haavikko and Haavisto are in use. For a few common nouns, both derivations are possible, e.g. kuusikko ∼ kuusisto (clump of spruces) from kuusi (spruce).

Word derivation is not always systematic. For example, a verb that means covering an item with some metal is often derived from the name of the metal, using the suffix -ata : -aan, such as kullata from kulta (gold) and kromata from kromi (chrome). Howeverm this does not apply to metal names longer than two syllables; they take the suffix -OidA, e.g. kuparoida from kupari (copper). There are other specialties, too, like deriving sinkittää from sinkki, apparently because the word sinkata was already in different use.´

Names of properties

For most adjectives, a name of the corresponding property can be derived using the suffix Us : Uden or UUs : UUden, e.g. heikkous : heikkouden (weakness) from heikko (weak) and nuoruus : nuoruuden (youth) from nuori (young).

For nouns, such derivations describe the property of being what the noun expresses or something typical of it. E.g. from ministeri we can derive the noun ministeriys : ministeriyden (being a minister, having a minister’s position). The base word usually means a human being.

Some derivations of these types have a specialized meaning either along with a property meaning or instead of it. For example, uutuus from uusi : uuden : uutena (new) means both “newness” and “novelty, a new product”, whereas teollisuus from teollinen (industrial) means only “industry” (originally referring to physical production only, now broader).

The choice of the suffix Us or UUs depends on the stem as follows:

• For two-syllable stems, Us is used, e.g. ujo → ujo|us, hullu → hullu|us. However, the suffix is UUs, if the inflection stem ends with a short A, e.g. isä → is|yys. The suffix varies by word if the inflection stem ends with a short e, e.g. veli : velje|n→ velje|ys but pieni : piene|n→ pien|uus. For adjectives with an e stem, the suffix is almost always UUs, with the exception of tyyni : tyynen → tyyneys. If the stem ends with ee, the suffix is always Us, e.g, terve : tervee|n→ terveys.
• For longer stems, Us is used if the stem ends with eA or U, e.g. valkea → valke|us, tunnettu → tunnettu|us. The UUs suffix is used if the stem otherwise ends with A, e.g. ihana → ihan|uus, ehdokas : ehdokkaa|n → ehdokk|uus. For other endings, the suffix varies by word, e.g. toveri : toveri|n→ tover|uus, but ministeri : ministeri|n → ministeri|ys. For words ending with inen : ise|n, the suffix is always Uus, e.g. iloinen : iloise|n → ilois|uus.

In some words, the UUs suffix is preceded by is, e.g. kohtelia|is|uus (politeness), from kohtelias : kohteliaa|n (polite). This applies to words ending with liAs, the word äveriäs, some words ending with ilAs (e.g. joutilas), and past participles ending with Ut, e.g. oppinut : oppinee|n → oppine|is|uus.

Present participles ending with vA usually have regular UUs derivations, e.g. näkyvä → näkyvyys. In older language, an is extension was often used, e.g. näkyväisyys. Words such as suvaitsevuus (tolerance) have now largely replaced longer forms like suvaitsevaisuus, even though they are most naturally interpreted as derived from suvaitsevainen (tolerant, as an attitude) rather than directly from the participle suvaitseva (one that tolerates, tolerating).

Changes in the base word before an Us or UUs suffix can be summarized as follows:

• The base word usually has strong grade in consonant gradation, e.g. kaikki : kaike|n : kaikke|a → kaikke|us, following normal rules.
• However, if the base word is a comparative or superlative form of an adjective, the grade is weak, e.g. parempi : paremman → paremmuus, suosituin : suosituimman → suosituimmuus.
• The grade is also weak in the words emännyys and isännyys, derived from emäntä : emännän and isäntä : isännän.
• A final short vowel of the base word is omitted before the UUs suffix, e.g. sama → samuus.
• A long vowel is shortened before the Us suffix, e.g. vapaa → vapaus.
• When a two-syllable stem ends with a short or long i, it is preserved (but long i is shortened) in some words, but changed to e in some words. E.g. paavi : paavius, but siisti : siisteys. For some words, both variants occur, with i being usually more common, e.g. tiivis : tiiviin → tiiviys ∼ tiiveys.
• In longer stems, i is usually preserved before Us, e.g. moderni → modernius. However, when the stem ends with ri, the suffix Uus is often used, causing the i to be omitted, e.g. sankari → sankaruus, less often sankarius. Similar phenomenon occurs in a few other words: aateli → aateluus, kumppani → kumppanuus.
• Adjective stems with three syllables ending with lO or rO take the UUs suffix, losing the O, e.g. höperö → höperyys.

Irregularly derived property names include: autius from autio; autuus from autuas; kookkuus from kookas; laupeus from laupias; lyhyys from lyhyt; maukkuus from maukas; neitsyys from neitsyt; ohuus from ohut; uljuus from uljas; (itse)valtius from (itse)valtias.

Some names of properties are identical with a name of action in the basic form but differ from them in inflection. The word rosvous : rosvouden is a rare derivation of rosvo (robber) and refers to being a robber, living as a robber. The more common word rosvous : rosvouksen is a derivation of the verb rosvota : rosvoan (to rob) and means “robbery, act of robbing”. Due to similarity of meaning and forms, such words are easily confused with each other.

Names of actions

Names of actions (and activities) based on verbs are derived in many different ways, depending on verb. For many verbs, there are alternative names of action.

A simple way is to use the -minen suffix, e.g. puhu|a (to speak) → puhu|minen (speaking). This is possible for all verbs except the negation verb. However, in addition to being relatively long, the -minen derivations denote activities in general rather than specific acts. They are often used where we would use the infinitive in English, e.g. Erehtyminen on inhimillistä (To err is human).

Other derivations are typically used in compounds and in more specialized meanings. For example, puhe means both speaking, especially in compound words (e.g. puhekyky “ability to speak”), and speech as a noun, e.g. an inauguration speech.

Names of actions are formed mainly using the following suffixes:

• -mA, e.g. elämä from elä|ä (to live)
• -nA, e.g. loiskina from loiski|a (to splash)
• -ntA, e.g. valvonta from valvo|a (to live)
• -e^x, e.g. katse from katso|a (to look at)
• -i, e.g. muisti from muista|a (to remember)
• -nti, e.g. syönti from syö|dä (to eat)
• -O, e.g. ajo from aja|a (to drive)
• -Os : -Okse-, e.g. käännös : käännöksen from kääntä|ä : käännä|n (to turn; to translate); this may mean both translation as a process and the result of translation
• -Us : -Ukse-, e.g. huimaus : huimauksen from huimat|a : huima|a (to make dizzy)
• -mUs : -mUkse-, e.g. katumus : katumuksen from katu|a (to repent)
• -U, e.g. juoksu from juos|ta : juokse|n (to run)
• -UU, e.g. paluu from pala|ta (to return)

Many derivations of these types are also used to denote results of action, either as an alternative meaning or as the only meaning. Often an -Us derivation is a name of action, whereas an -Os or -e derivation is a name of result, e.g. väärennys (falsification) vs. väärennös (forgery) from väärentää (to falsify)—though in practice väärennys is often used in both meanings—and tulostus (printing) vs. tuloste (printout), from tulostaa (to print).

Verbi­kantaisten substantiivien tyypit ja piirteet.

There are few general rules that govern the choice of the suffix for a name of action. The names of actions thus mostly need to be learned separately. In dictionaries, they may appear as separate entries, but possibly only under the entry for a verb, as in the following example in Nykysuomen sanakirja: “hyssyt|tää v. -ys teonn.” This says that hyssyttää is a verb and hyssytys is the corresponding name of action (teonnimi). The possibility of deriving another name of action, hyssyttäminen, is regarded as so obvious that it is not mentioned at all.

It is often possible to use either a -minen noun or a noun formed with one of the suffixes listed above, perhaps with just a slight difference in style. For example, maidon juominen (drinking of milk) is a normal expression, but we can also say maidonjuonti, with the same meaning but more as “term-like”. In particular, if we refer to drinking milk as something measurable (such as the amount of milk consumption, e.g. as something that has decreased or increased), maidonjuonti is used.

Moderative adjectives

Among derivational suffixes that produde adjectives, hkO is one of the most productive. It expresses moderate amount of the property, much like English “ish”, except that the Finnish suffix is fully accepted in formal language, too.

For example, suurehko means “largish, moderately large, fairly large”, and helpohko means “moderately easy, fairly easy”. Both Finnish words can be used in any style, though they are not common in spoken language, where we normally use analytic expressions like aika suuri (or aika iso) and melko helppo.

As an alternative, compound words like suurenpuoleinen are used. In them, the latter part is based on the word puoli (half; side). Thus, suurenpuoleinen might be taken as meaning something that is on the larger side.

Adjektiivien -hko-johdosten asema suomen kielen järjestelmässä.

Causative verbs

A causative derivation of a verb is one that means causing the action or the event expressed by the base verb. For example, the causative derivation juo|tta|a of juo|da (to drink) means “to cause drinking”, typically by helping someone to drink. As another example, from puhua (to speak), there is the causative derivation puhuttaa (to make someone speak, to cause discussion). The term factitive verb is also used, especially when the causation is professional, making someone or some company do something for you, as for the verb rakentaa : rakennan (to build): the derivation rakennuttaa : rakennutan means hiring someone to do some building.

Causative derivations are common in Finnish. The derivational suffix is usually ttA- : ta-, as in juo|tta|a : juo|ta|n, or UttA- : UtA-, as in odot|utta|a : odot|uta|n from odotta|a (wait), sometimes UUttA- : UUtA-, as in pel|uutta|a from pelat|a : pelaa|n (play); the last example can be seen as an irregular variant of the less common regular derivation pela|utta|a.

Theoretically, a causative verb can have a causative derivation. Anecdotally, people refer to verb sequences like teh|dä : tee|n (to do), tee|ttä|ä (to have something done), tee|tä|ttä|ä (to make somesome have something done), tee|tä|t|yttä|ä etc. In practice, this is just anecdotal. The verb teetättää is frowned upon by language authorities, but if used, it means the same as teettää. Similarly, the verb viivästää (to delay) has the passive derivation viivästyä (to be delayed), which in turn has the causative derivation viivästyttää, which is really just a synonym for viivästää (and accepted in standard language, somewhat illogically).

In Finnish, many verbs that express human emotions or reactions are causative by their derivation. For example, the expression Minua väsyttää (I’m tired) contains a causative derivation of the verb väsyä (to become tired), so that the expression, with an implied subject, says that there is something (or someone) that causes me to become tired. This, of course, is just the origin of the expression; the verb väsyttää is now regarded simply as meaning to be tired. Similar expressions include Minua nukuttaa (I’m sleepy; literally: some­thing is making me sleep) and Minua suututtaa (I’m angry), with the base verbs nukkua : nukun (to sleep) and suuttua : suutun (to get angry).

On the other hand, e.g. nukuttaa also has a simple causative meaning, and it is used about lulling a baby to sleep and about anesthesizing a patient. (In the latter meaning, it is still used in everyday language, though in medicine, antaa yleisanestesia “to give general anesthesia” is used.)

A causative derivation can be regarded as the active part in a pair of an active and passive verb, as described in section Passive verbs. For example, juoda can be seen as the passive counterpart to juottaa.

In spite of the possibilities for deriving causative verbs, some verbs are often used both for an action and for causing it. For example, the verb tatuoida (to tattoo) has the derivation tatuoittaa (to make someone tattoo), but it is more common to say e.g. Hän tatuoi selkäänsä kotkan than Hän tatuoitti selkäänsä kotkan (he had an eagle tattooed an eagle on his back In contexts like this, it is obvious that the simple verb tatuoi cannot refer to tattooing one’s own back.

Causative verbs have some specialties in syntax, described in section Syntax of causation.

Frequentative verbs

The suffixes ellA : ele- (or for some verbs illA : ile-) and its extended forms skellA : skentele- and skennellA : skele- are used to derive frequentative verbs. They mean performing the action expressed by the base verb frequently or continuously. A simple example is kysellä : kyselen (to ask questions), derived from kysyä : kysyn (to ask); it simply means repeated action of asking. From istua : istun (to sit) we get istuskella : istuskelen (to sit about [frequently in some places]; to sit back [doing something]).

For some verbs, both the ellA ∼ illA suffix and the eskennellA suffix can be used, possibly with no clear difference in meaning. For example, from olla : olen we get both oleilla : oleilen and oleskella : oleskelen, which both mean staying around for some time, though the former might specifically refer to spending one’s time without doing any work. For most verbs, however, just one of these suffixes is in use.

For many verbs, these suffixes also imply reflexive or reciprocal meaning. That is, the action may have its subject as the implied object, or the verb may express mutual action. For example, from harjoittaa (to practice; to exercise) we get harjoitella, which means practicing in some sport or skill, implying both repeated action and practicing oneself.

Many derivations of this type have a more or less specialized meaning and need not have any frequentative or continuative meaning. From rakastaa : rakasta- (to love), the verb rakastella : rakastele- (to make love) has been derived, and it means sexual intercourse that need not be repeated or continued. From vääntää : väännä- (to turn, to wind, to twist), we get väännellä : vääntele-, which may have a concrete meaning (to repeated turn something), but more often it has a figurative meaning, as in Hän väänteli sanojani (He twisted/distorted my words).

There are also verbs that apparently contain one of these suffixes but have no real base word. For example, suudella : suutele- (to kiss) could be analyzed as a derivation of suutaa : suuda- (which would be related to suu “mouth”), but no such verb is known.

Due to the great variation in meanings, verbs of these types need to be learned separately. If you see a word like vastustella and you do not know it, you might guess that it is a derivative of vastustaa : vastusta- (to oppose) and think that it could mean “to oppose repeatedly, to resist”. And here your guess would be right, but it would be better to check it from a dictionary. If you similarly thought that arvostella, being a derivative of arvostaa (to appreciate, to respect), means repeated appreciation, you would guess wrong; it means criticizing, often implying negative (unfavorable) rather than positive criticism. The explanation is that arvostaa, derived from arvo (value), generally means giving some value to something, estimating the value of something.

Derivations of proper names

A few suffixes can be used to derive adjectives and nouns from proper names: lAinen and mAinen.

The lAinen suffix can be used to derive adjectives for inhabitants of an area or a place, but also for more abstract relations, often expressed in English with “-ian” derivations. For example, italialainen, derived from Italia (Italy) means “Italian” and einsteinlainen (∼ einsteinilainen) means “Einsteinian”, i.e. related to Einstein’s theories

However, many words based on proper names have been taken from other languages so that they already include a derivational suffix, e.g. aristoteelinen (from Swedish “aristotelisk”), cf. Aristoteles (Aristotle), and gregoriaaninen (Gregorian), cf. Gregorius (Gregory). Thus, such words are not derivations of proper names from the viewpoint of the Finnish language. However, the adjectives contain the Finnish suffix nen (or inen), which is the inflected part of the word, e.g. aristoteelinen : aristoteelisen. Such words are not capitalized in Finnish, except of course they have been assigned as proper names. Thus, savolainen as an adjective, meaning an inhabitant of the Savo region, is not capitalized, but Savolainen used as a surname is capitalized.

On the other hand, Finnish often uses the genitive of a proper name rather any adjective. For example, “Newtonian mechanics” is Newtonin mekaniikka in Finnish; here Newtonin is just the genitive of the name Newton.

The mAinen suffix indicates similarity. For example, einsteinmainen means “Einstein-like”. A mainen derivation may also have the meaning “typical of...”, “that we can/could expect from...”, so e.g. linnamainen could refer to something that Linna (perhaps Väinö Linna, the author) could have used, but also to something tha resembles Linna in some sense.

Sample derivations

To illustrate word derivation in Finnish, the following list contains direct and indirect derivations of the word äly (brains, intellect, intelligence). The list is not exhaustive. It contains the direct derivations in alphabetic order and then, under each of them, indirect derivations based on it, etc. Normal dictionaries do not contain all of these derivations, but they are all in actual use, though perhaps rare.

• älykkö intellectual person
  • älykkömäinen that looks/is like an intellectual person, intellectual-like
    • älykkömäisyys property of looking/being like an intellectual person
• älykäs intelligent
  • älykkyys intelligence
  • älykkäästi intelligently
• älyllinen intellectual
  • älyllisyys intellectuality
  • älyllistää to intellectualize
    • älyllistyä to be intellectualized
      • älyllistyminen act/process of being intellectualized
    • älyllistäjä a person who intellectualizes
    • älyllistäminen intellectualization
    • älyllistämätön not intellectualized; not intellectualizing
  • älymystö intelligentsia, the highbrown
  • älytä to grasp, to realize, to understand
    • älyäminen act/process of grasping
    • älyämätön that does not grasp
      • älyämättömyys the fact that someone does not grasp
    • älytön senseless, foolish
      • älyttömyys senselessness, foolishness
      • älyttömästi senselessly, foolishly

The word äly has got new meanings in modern times, referring to “intellect” in computers and systems. Thus, e.g. älypuhelin is often used to mean “smart phone”. Such changes have also affected the meanings of derivations. For example, in modern language, one may refer to liikenteen älyllistyminen to express how traffic has been “intellectualized”, made “smarter”, in the sense of being monitored and controlled by more and more advanced automatic systems.