Unless otherwise noted, statements in this article refer to Standard
Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
, which is based on the
dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...
spoken in the former
Häme Province
The Province of Häme ( fi, Hämeen lääni, sv, Tavastehus län) was a province of Finland from 1831 to 1997.
In 1997 the southern parts with Kanta-Häme, Päijät-Häme was merged with the province of Uusimaa and Kymi into the new Province ...
in central south
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
. Standard Finnish is used by professional speakers, such as reporters and news presenters on television.
Vowels
![Finnish monophthongs chart](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Finnish_monophthongs_chart.svg)
* The close vowels are similar to the corresponding
cardinal vowel
Cardinal vowels are a set of reference vowels used by phoneticians in describing the sounds of languages. They are classified depending on the position of the tongue relative to the roof of the mouth, how far forward or back is the highest po ...
s .
* The mid vowels are phonetically mid .
* The open front unrounded vowel is phonetically near-open .
* The unrounded open vowel transcribed in IPA with has been variously described as near-open back
and open central .
Finnish has a phonological contrast between single () and doubled () vowels.
Phonetically the doubled vowels are single continuous sounds () where the extra duration of the hold phase of the vowel signals that they count as two successive vowel phonemes rather than one. The doubled mid vowels are more common in unstressed syllables.
Diphthongs
The table below lists the conventionally recognized
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
s in Finnish. In speech (i.e. phonetically speaking) a diphthong does not sound like a sequence of two different vowels; instead, the sound of the first vowel gradually glides into the sound of the second one with full vocalization lasting through the whole sound. That is to say, the two portions of the diphthong are not broken by a pause or stress pattern. In Finnish, diphthongs are considered phonemic units, contrasting with both doubled vowels and with single vowels. Phonologically, however, Finnish diphthongs usually ''are'' analyzed as sequences (this in contrast to languages like
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
, where the diphthongs are best analyzed as independent phonemes).
Diphthongs ending in can occur in any syllable, but those ending in rounded vowels usually occur only in initial syllables, and rising diphthongs are confined to that syllable. It is usually taught that diphthongization occurs only with the combinations listed. However, there are recognized situations in which other vowel pairs diphthongize. For example, in rapid speech the word ('upper part', from , 'upper' + , 'part') can be pronounced (with the diphthong ). The usual pronunciation is (with those vowels belonging to separate syllables).
The diphthongs and are quite rare and mostly found in
derivative words, where a derivational affix starting with (or properly the vowel harmonic
archiphoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-w ...
) fuses with the preceding vowel, e.g. 'darkness' from 'dark' + '-ness' and 'to tidy up oneself' from 'tidy' + (a kind of
middle voice
In grammar, the voice of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments (subject, object, etc.). When the subject is the agent or doer of the action, the ...
) + (infinitive suffix). Older and in initial syllables have been shifted to and .
Opening diphthongs are in standard Finnish only found in root-initial syllables like in words 'to know', 'rear wheel' (from 'back, rear' + 'wheel'; the latter part is secondarily stressed) or 'towards'. This might make them easier to pronounce as true opening diphthongs (in some accents even wider opening ) and not as centering diphthongs , which are more common in the world's languages. The opening diphthongs come from earlier doubled mid vowels: . Since that time new doubled mid vowels have come to the language from various sources.
Among the phonological processes operating in Finnish dialects are diphthongization and diphthong reduction. For example,
Savo Finnish
The Savonian dialects (also called Savo Finnish)( fi, Savolaismurteet) are forms of the Finnish language spoken in Savonia and other parts of Eastern Finland. Finnish dialects are grouped broadly into Eastern and Western varieties; Savonian diale ...
has the phonemic contrast of vs. vs. instead of standard language contrast of vs. vs. .
Vowel harmony
![Finnish vowel harmony Venn diagram](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Finnish_vowel_harmony_Venn_diagram.svg)
Finnish, like many other
Uralic languages
The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...
, has the phenomenon called
vowel harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is an Assimilation (linguistics), assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is t ...
, which restricts the cooccurrence in a word of vowels belonging to different articulatory subgroups. Vowels within a word "harmonize" to be either all front or all back. In particular, no native noncompound word can contain vowels from the group together with vowels from the group . Vowel harmony affects inflectional
suffixes
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the Stem (linguistics), stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the Grammatical conjugation ...
and derivational suffixes, which have two forms, one for use with back vowels, and the other with front vowels. Compare, for example, the following pair of abstract nouns: 'government' (from , 'to reign') versus 'health' (from , healthy).
There are exceptions to the constraint of vowel harmony. For one, there are two front vowels that lack back counterparts: and . Therefore, words like 'clock' (with a front vowel in a non-final syllable) and 'wind' (with a front vowel in the final syllable), which contain or together with a back vowel, count as back vowel words; and are effectively neutral in regard to vowel harmony in such words. and yield the inflectional forms 'in a clock' and 'in a wind'. In words containing only neutral vowels, front vowel harmony is used, e.g. – ('road' – 'on the road'). For another, compound words do not have vowel harmony across the compound boundary; e.g. 'wall clock' (from , 'wall' and , 'clock') has back cooccurring with front . In the case of compound words, the choice between back and front suffix alternants is determined by the immediately-preceding element of the compound; e.g. 'in a wall clock' is , not .
A particular exception appears in a standard Finnish word, ('this kind of'). Although by definition a singular word, it was originally a compound word that transitioned over time to a more compact and easier form: (from , 'of this' and , 'kind') → → , and further to for some non-standard speech.
New loan words may exhibit vowel disharmony; for example, ('Olympic games') and ('secondary') have both front and back vowels. In standard Finnish, these words are pronounced as they are spelled, but many speakers apply vowel harmony – , and or .
Consonants
* For most speakers, is dental , whereas and are alveolar.
* may sometimes be closer to a
flap
Flap may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* ''Flap'' (film), a 1970 American film
* Flap, a boss character in the arcade game ''Gaiapolis''
* Flap, a minor character in the film '' Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland''
Biology and he ...
or tap than a true plosive , and the dialectal realization varies widely; it is increasingly common to pronounce it as a true plosive, however. See the
section below. In native vocabulary it is the equivalent of under weakening
consonant gradation
Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation (mostly lenition but also assimilation) found in some Uralic languages, more specifically in the Finnic, Samic and Samoyedic branches. It originally arose as an allophonic alternation bet ...
, and thus it occurs only word-medially, either by itself (e.g. 'rain'; cf. 'to rain') or in the cluster (e.g. 'fountain, spring, source'; cf. 'to depart'). In recent loanwords and technical vocabulary the sound can occur somewhat freely (e.g. , , , , , , ), likewise in slang vocabulary (e.g. 'idiot', 'condition').
* is frequently retracted alveolar .
* A
glottal stop
The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
can appear at certain morpheme boundaries, the same ones as the gemination described
further down as a result of certain sandhi phenomena, and it is not normally indicated in spelling at the end of a word: e.g. 'let it be', orthographically . Moreover, this sound is not used in all dialects. However, word-internally, it can be indicated by an apostrophe, which can occur when a is lost between similar vowels, e.g. 'scales' → 'scales (nom.pl.)'.
* The velar nasal is also heavily limited in occurrence in native vocabulary: it is found only word-medially, either in the consonant cluster (written ), or as geminate (written ), the latter being the counterpart of the former under
consonant gradation
Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation (mostly lenition but also assimilation) found in some Uralic languages, more specifically in the Finnic, Samic and Samoyedic branches. It originally arose as an allophonic alternation bet ...
(type of
lenition
In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters consonants, making them more sonority hierarchy, sonorous. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronic analysis, s ...
). In recent loanwords may also occur in other environments; e.g. , .
* "is often accompanied by a somewhat ballistic lower-lip gesture, producing something like a
labiodental flap
In phonetics, the voiced labiodental flap is a speech sound found primarily in languages of Central Africa, such as Kera and Mangbetu. It has also been reported in the Austronesian language Sika. It is one of the few non- rhotic flaps. The ...
."
appears in native words only in the Southwestern dialects, but is reliably distinguished by Finnish speakers. Other foreign fricatives are not. or appears only in non-native words, sometimes pronounced , although most speakers make a distinction between e.g. 'chess' and 'a gang (of people)'. The orthography also includes the letters and , although their use is marginal, and they have no phonemic status. For example, and may be pronounced and without fear of confusion. The letter , found mostly in foreign words and names such as
Zulu, may also be pronounced as following the influence of
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
, thus .
*The phoneme has glottal and fricative allophones. In general, at the end of a syllable it is pronounced as a fricative whose place of articulation is similar to the preceding vowel:
velar
Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (known also as the velum).
Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive an ...
after a back vowel (),
palatal
The palate () is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity.
A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly separ ...
after a high front vowel (). Between vowels a breathy or
murmured
Breathy voice (also called murmured voice, whispery voice, soughing and susurration) is a phonation in which the vocal folds vibrate, as they do in normal (modal) voicing, but are adjusted to let more air escape which produces a sighing-like ...
can occur:
** ,
** , ,
**
Voiced plosives
Traditionally, and were not counted as Finnish phonemes, since they appear only in loanwords. However, these borrowings being relatively common, they are nowadays considered part of the educated norm. The failure to use them correctly is often ridiculed in the media, e.g. if a news reporter or a high official consistently and publicly realises ('Belgium') as . Even many educated speakers, however, still make no distinction between voiced and voiceless plosives in regular speech if there is no fear of confusion. Minimal pairs do exist: 'a bus' vs. 'a bag', 'a gorilla' vs. 'on a basket'.
The status of is somewhat different from and , since it also appears in native Finnish words, as a regular 'weak' correspondence of the voiceless (see Consonant gradation below). Historically, this sound was a fricative, (''th'' as in English ''the''), varyingly spelled as or in Old Literary Finnish. Its realization as a plosive originated as a
spelling pronunciation
A spelling pronunciation is the pronunciation of a word according to its spelling when this differs from a longstanding standard or traditional pronunciation. Words that are spelled with letters that were never pronounced or that were not pronounc ...
, in part because when mass elementary education was instituted in Finland, the spelling in Finnish texts was mispronounced as a plosive, under the influence of how Swedish speakers would pronounce this letter. (In the close to seven centuries during which Finland was under first Swedish, then Russian rule, Swedish speakers dominated the government and economy.) Initially, few native speakers of Finnish acquired the foreign plosive realisation of the native phoneme. As for loanwords, was often assimilated to . Even well into the 20th century it was not entirely exceptional to hear loanwords like ('a deodorant') pronounced as , while native Finnish words with a were pronounced in the usual dialectal way. Due to diffusion of the standard language through mass media and basic education, and due to the dialectal prestige of the capital area, the plosive can now be heard in all parts of the country, at least in loanwords and in formal speech.
Consonant gradation
"Consonant gradation" is the term used for a set of alternations which pervade the language, between a "strong grade" and a "weak grade". These alternations are always conditioned by both phonology and morphosyntax. The phonological factor which triggers the weak grade is the syllable structure of closed syllable. However, there are contexts where weak grade fails to occur in a closed syllable, and there are contexts where the weak grade occurs in an open syllable. Morphosyntactically, the weak grade occurs in nominals (nouns, pronouns, adjectives) usually only before case suffixes, and in verbs usually only before person agreement suffixes.
The following is a general list of strong–weak correspondences.
:
Other consonant alternations
Many of the remaining "irregular" patterns of Finnish noun and verb inflection are explained by a change of a historical to . The change from to , a type of
assibilation
In linguistics, assibilation is a sound change resulting in a sibilant consonant. It is a form of spirantization and is commonly the final phase of palatalization.
Arabic
A characteristic of Mashreqi varieties of Arabic (particularly Levantine ...
, is unconnected to consonant gradation, and dates back as early as
Proto-Finnic
Proto-Finnic or Proto-Baltic-Finnic is the common ancestor of the Finnic languages, which include the national languages Finnish and Estonian. Proto-Finnic is not attested in any texts, but has been reconstructed by linguists. Proto-Finnic is i ...
. In modern Finnish the alternation is not productive, due to new cases of the sequence having been introduced by later sound changes and loanwords, and assibilation therefore occurs only in certain morphologically defined positions.
Words having this particular
alternation are still subject to consonant gradation in forms that lack assibilation. Thus Finnish nouns of this type could be seen as having up to five distinct stems: a word such as 'water (sg. nom.)' has the forms (sg. gen.), (sg. part.), (sg. ill.) (pl. part.); as can be seen from the examples the change from to has only occurred in front of . When a vowel other than occurs, words like inflect just like other nouns with a single alternating with the consonant gradated . Alternatively, Kiparsky proposes that all Finnish stems must end in a vowel, which in the case of polysyllabic stems may then be deleted when adding certain affixes and certain other conditions are fulfilled. For he proposes the stem /vete/ (with stem final -e), which when combined with the partitive singular affix -tä/-ta drops the -e to become (sg. part.).
This pattern has, however, been reverted in some cases. Variation appears in particular in past tense verb forms, e.g. , ('to deny', 'denied') but , ('to adjust', 'adjusted'). Both alternate forms ( and ) can also be found in dialects. Apparently this was caused by word pairs such as , ('bring') and , ('rise'), which were felt important enough to keep them contrastive.
Assibilation occurred prior to the change of the original consonants cluster to , which can be seen in the inflection of the numerals , and , .
In many recent loanwords, there is vacillation between representing an original voiceless consonant as single or geminate: this is the case for example (~ ) and (~ ). The orthography generally favors the single form, if it exists. (More completely assimilated loans such as , , generally have settled on geminates.)
Length
All phonemes (including and , see below) can occur doubled phonemically as a phonetic increase in length. Consonant doubling always occurs at the boundary of a syllable in accordance with the rules of Finnish syllable structure.
Some example sets of words:
: 'fire'/'s/he came', 'wind', 'customs'
: 'mud', 'other' (partitive sg.), 'but', 'to change' or 'to move'
A double is rare in standard Finnish, but possible, e.g. , a derogatory term for a religious fanatic. In some dialects, e.g. Savo, it is common: , or standard Finnish 'money' (in the partitive case). The distinction between and is found only in foreign words; natively 'd' occurs only in the short form. While and may appear as geminates when spoken (e.g. , ), this distinction is not phonemic, and is not indicated in spelling.
In dialects or in
colloquial Finnish
Colloquial or spoken Finnish () refers to the unstandardized spoken variety of the Finnish language, in contrast with the standardized form of the language (). It is used primarily in personal communication and varies somewhat between the differen ...
, , , and can have distinctive length, especially due to
sandhi
Sandhi ( sa, सन्धि ' , "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on near ...
or
compensatory lengthening
Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda, or of a vowel in an adjacent syllable. Lengthening triggered ...
, e.g. (), (), (), ().
Phonotactics
The phonemic template of a syllable in Finnish is CVC, in which C can be an
obstruent
An obstruent () is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well as ...
or a
liquid consonant
In phonetics, liquids are a class of consonants consisting of voiced lateral approximants like together with rhotics like .
Etymology
The grammarian Dionysius Thrax used the Ancient Greek word (, ) to describe the sonorant consonants () of cl ...
. V can be realized as a doubled vowel or a
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
. A final consonant of a Finnish word, though not a syllable, must be a
coronal one.
Originally Finnish syllables could not start with two consonants but many loans containing these have added this to the inventory. This is observable in older loans such as < Swedish ('French') contrasting newer loans < Swedish ('president'). In past decades, it was common to hear these clusters simplified in speech (), particularly, though not exclusively, by either rural Finns or Finns who knew little or no Swedish or English. Even then, the Southwestern dialects formed an exception: consonant clusters, especially those with plosives, trills or nasals, are common: examples include place names and near the town
Pori
)
, website www.pori.fi
Pori (; sv, Björneborg ) is a city and municipality on the west coast of Finland. The city is located some from the Gulf of Bothnia, on the estuary of the Kokemäki River, west of Tampere, north of Turku and north-w ...
, or town ('
Kristinestad
Kristinestad (, Sweden ; fi, Kristiinankaupunki ; la, Christinea) is a town and a municipality in Finland. It is located in the western part of Finland on the shore of the Bothnian Sea. The population of Kristinestad is () and the municipality ...
'). Nowadays the overwhelming majority of Finns have adopted initial consonant clusters in their speech.
Consonant phonotactics
Consonant phonotactics are as follows.
Word-final consonants
* Only .
* Glottal stop occurs almost exclusively at word boundaries, replacing what used to be word-final consonants and .
Word-initial consonants
* All consonants may occur word initially, except and (although an initial may be found in loan words).
Word-initial consonant clusters
* No consonant clusters in native words, various consonant clusters in modern loanwords (e.g. = 'clinic', = 'psychology', = 'statistics', , = 'strategy').
Word-final consonant clusters
* None, except in dialects via vowel dropping.
Word-medial consonant clusters
* The following clusters are not possible:
** any exceeding 3 consonants (except in loan words)
** stop + nasal
** labial stop + non-labial stop
** non-dental stop + semivowel
** nasal + non-homorganic obstruent (except )
** nasal + sonorant
** liquid + liquid
** semivowel + consonant
Vowel phonotactics
Vowel phonotactics are as follows.
Word-final and word-initial vowels
* Any of the vowels can be found in this position.
Vowel sequences
* Doubled vowels
** Usually only the vowels are doubled.
** Sometimes the mid vowels can be doubled in cases of contraction.
* Diphthongs
** Of the 18 diphthongs, 15 are formed from any vowel followed by a close vowel. The 3 exceptions are .
* Vowel combinations
** Approximately 20 combinations, always at syllable boundaries.
** Unlike diphthongs, the second vowel is longer, as is expected, and it can be open or .
** Sometimes 3–4 vowels can occur in a sequence if a medial consonant has disappeared.
Prosody
Stress
Stress
Stress may refer to:
Science and medicine
* Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition
* Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
in Finnish is non-phonemic. Like
Hungarian and
Icelandic, Finnish always places the primary stress on the first
syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
of a word.
Secondary stress normally falls on odd-numbered syllables. Contrary to primary stress, Finnish secondary stress is quantity sensitive. Thus, if secondary stress would normally fall on a light (CV.) syllable but this is followed by a heavy syllable (CVV. or CVC.), the secondary stress moves one syllable further ("to the right") and the preceding foot (syllable group) therefore contains three syllables. Thus, ("as my apple") contains light syllables only and has primary stress on the first syllable and secondary on the third, as expected: ''ómenànani''. On the other hand, ('as our apple') has a light third syllable () and a heavy fourth syllable (), so secondary stress falls on the fourth syllable: ''ómenanàmme''.
Certain Finnish dialects also have quantity-sensitive main stress pattern, but instead of moving the initial stress, they geminate the consonant, so that e.g. light-heavy CV.CVV becomes heavy-heavy CVCCVV, e.g. the partitive form of "fish" is pronounced in the quantity-insensitive dialects but in the quantity-sensitive ones (cf. also the examples under the "Length" section).
Secondary stress falls on the first syllable of non-initial parts of compounds, for example the compound , meaning "wooden face" (from , 'tree' and , 'face'), is pronounced but , meaning "which was cleaned" (preceded by an agent in the genitive, "by someone"), is pronounced .
Timing
Finnish is not really
isochronic at any level. For example, ('shouting') and ('flushing') are distinct words, where the initial syllables and are of different length. Additionally, acoustic measurements show that the first syllable of a word is longer in duration than other syllables, in addition to its phonological doubling.
Sandhi
Finnish
sandhi
Sandhi ( sa, सन्धि ' , "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on near ...
is extremely frequent, appearing between many words and morphemes, in formal standard language and in everyday spoken language. In most registers, it is never written down; only dialectal transcriptions preserve it, the rest settling for a
morphemic
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology.
In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone are ...
notation. There are two processes. The first is simple
assimilation with respect to place of articulation (e.g. > ). The second is predictive
gemination
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...
of initial consonants on morpheme boundaries.
Simple phonetic incomplete assimilations include:
* ,
velarization
Velarization is a secondary articulation of consonants by which the back of the tongue is raised toward the velum during the articulation of the consonant.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, velarization is transcribed by one of four dia ...
due to 'k', e.g.
* ,
labialization
Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve ...
due to 'p' e.g.
* ,
dissimilation
In phonology, particularly within historical linguistics, dissimilation is a phenomenon whereby similar consonants or vowels in a word become less similar. In English, dissimilation is particularly common with liquid consonants such as /r/ and ...
of a sequence of individual vowels (compared to diphthongs) by adding a
glottal stop
The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
, e.g. (not obligatory)
Gemination
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...
of a morpheme-initial consonant occurs when the morpheme preceding it ends in a vowel and belongs to one of certain morphological classes. Gemination or a tendency of a morpheme to cause gemination is sometimes indicated with an apostrophe or a superscripted "x", e.g. . Examples of gemination:
* most nouns ending in (apart from some new loanwords),
specifically those with the singular partitive ending in
:: e.g. ('open-box bed for wood chips')
* imperatives and connegative imperatives of the second-person singular, as well as the connegative form of the present indicative (these three are always similar to each other)
:: e.g. ('buy a boat')
* connegative imperatives of the third-person singular, first-person plural, second-person plural, third-person plural
and passive
:: ('actually, don't do it')
* connegative forms of present passive indicative verbs
:: ('it will not be taken after all', colloquially 'we won't take it after all')
* connegative forms of present potential verbs (including passive)
:: ('I probably will not do it (after all)', formal or poetic speech)
* first infinitives (the dictionary form)
:: e.g.
* noun cases in : allative as well as the more marginal sublative (as in ) and prolative (as in ); not the comitative, though
* adverbs ending in ,
and
* the possessive suffix of the third person /
* some other words such as ('to, towards
person or place), , , ,
'probably', 'or', (only for some speakers) 'self'
The gemination can occur between morphemes of a single word as in + → ('to me too'; orthographically ), between parts of a compound word as in + → ('family meeting'; orthographically ), or between separate words as in + → ('come here!'). In elaborate standard language, the gemination affects even morphemes with a vowel beginning: + → or ('take an apple!'). In casual speech, this is however often rendered as without a glottal stop.
These rules are generally valid for the standard language, although many Southwestern dialects, for instance, do not recognise the phenomenon at all. Even in the standard language there is idiolectal variation (disagreement between different speakers); e.g. whether ('three') should cause a gemination of the following initial consonant or not: or ('three crows'). Both forms occur and neither one of them is standardised, since in any case it does not affect writing. In some dictionaries compiled for foreigners or linguists, however, the tendency of geminating the following consonant is marked by a superscript as in .
Historically, morpheme-boundary gemination is the result of regressive assimilation. The preceding word originally ended in or . For instance, the modern Finnish word for 'boat' used to be (a form still existing in the closely related
Karelian language
Karelian (North Karelian and Livvi Karelian: ; Ludic: ; Tver Karelian: ) is a Finnic language spoken mainly in the Russian Republic of Karelia. Linguistically, Karelian is closely related to the Finnish dialects spoken in eastern Finland, and so ...
). At some point in time, these and s were assimilated by the initial consonant of a following word, e.g. ' ('the boat is moving'). Here we get the modern Finnish form (orthographically ), even though the independent form has no sign of the old final consonant .
In many Finnish dialects, including that of Helsinki, the gemination at morpheme boundaries has become more widespread due to the loss of additional final consonants, which appear only as gemination of the following consonant, cf.
French liaison
In French, liaison () is the pronunciation of a linking consonant between two words in an appropriate phonetic and syntactic context. For example, the word ''les'' ('the') is pronounced , the word ''amis'' ('friends') is pronounced , but the ...
. For example, the standard word for 'now' has lost its and become in Helsinki speech. However, + ('now it
oes something) is pronounced and not (although the latter would be permissible in the dialect of Turku).
Similar remnants of a lost word-final can be seen in dialects, where e.g. the genitive form of the first singular pronoun is regularly (standard language ): + + → ('it is mine'). Preceding an approximant, the is completely assimilated: ('my wife'). Preceding a vowel, however, the however appears in a different form: + → or even ('my own').
See also
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Finnish orthography
Finnish orthography is based on the Latin script, and uses an alphabet derived from the Swedish alphabet, officially comprising twenty-nine letters but also including two additional letters found in some loanwords. The Finnish orthography striv ...
Notes
References
Works cited
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{{Language phonologies
Finnish language
Uralic phonologies