Finnish Phonology

Unless otherwise noted, statements in this article refer to Standard Finnish, which is based on the dialect spoken in the former Häme Province in central south Finland. Standard Finnish is used by professional speakers, such as reporters and news presenters on television.

Vowels

* The close vowels are similar to the corresponding cardinal vowels .
* 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 double () vowels. Phonetically long 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. Long mid vowels are more common in unstressed syllables.

Diphthongs

The table below lists the conventionally postulated diphthongs 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 contrast with both long vowels and short vowels. Phonologically, however, Finnish diphthongs are usually analyzed as sequences of two vowels (this in contrast to languages like English, 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 ) fuses with the preceding vowel, e.g. 'darkness' from 'dark' + '-ness' and 'to tidy up oneself' from 'tidy' + (a kind of middle voice) + (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 has the phonemic contrast of vs. vs. instead of standard language contrast of vs. vs. .

Vowel harmony

Finnish, like many other Uralic languages, has the phenomenon called vowel harmony, 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 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. The contrast between /t/ and /d/ is not a voicing distinction, but rather a contrast in place as well as duration of occlusion.
* may sometimes be closer to a flap 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, 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 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 (type of lenition). In recent loanwords may also occur in other environments; e.g. , . Spellings with ''ng'' and ''gn'' do not indicate the presence of the phoneme - instead, they are used because there's no separate letter for .
* "is often accompanied by a somewhat ballistic lower-lip gesture, producing something like a labiodental flap."
* r">Voiced_alveolar_trill.html" ;"title="nowiki/> rmay sometimes be pronounced as a tap or flap [Voiced dental and alveolar taps and flaps">ɾ">Voiced alveolar trill">rmay sometimes be pronounced as a tap or flap [Voiced dental and alveolar taps and flaps">ɾ especially between vowels in rapid speech.
does not appear in native phonology; however, it exists in the variation between foreign-origin geminate and native consonant cluster in many loanwords, retrogradely occurring also in the native word ''ahven'' 'perch' in some southwestern dialects (dialectal as ''ahvena'' ~ ''affena'' ). Generally, is reliably distinguished by Finnish speakers, but 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, 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 after a back vowel (), palatal consonant">palatal after a high front vowel (). Between vowels a breathy or Murmured voice">murmured