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.
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.
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.