The Finnish alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, and especially its Swedish extension. Officially it comprises 28 letters:

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, X, Y, Z, Å, Ä, Ö

In addition, W is traditionally listed after V, although officially it is merely a variant of the letter^[1].

[edit] Summary of the main characteristics

The following table describes how each letter in the Finnish alphabet is spelled and pronounced separately. In practice, the names of the letters are rarely spelled, as people usually just type the (uppercase or lowercase) glyph when then want to refer to a particular letter. The pronunciation instructions enclosed in slashes are broad transcriptions based on the IPA system (in notes, more narrow transcriptions are enclosed in square brackets).

[edit] Writing Finnish

The Finnish orthography strives to represent all morphemes phonologically and, roughly speaking, the sound value of each letter tends to correspond with its value in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) – although some discrepancies do exist (see below). When writing Finnish, the foundational principle is that each letter stands for one sound and each sound is always represented by the same letter, within the bounds of a single morpheme. The most notable exception to this rule is the velar nasal [ŋ], which does not have an allotted letter; instead, it is written with the digraph ng when geminated, and otherwise with N that is followed by K.

In Finnish, the vowels and consonants may be short or long, and the difference is significant. A short sound is written with a single letter and a long sound is written with a double letter. It is necessary to recognize the difference between such words as tuli (/tuli/, fire), tuuli (/tuːli/, wind) and tulli (/tulːi/, customs) or tapaan (/tɑpɑːn/, I meet) and tapan (/tɑpɑn/, I kill).

[edit] Velar nasal

The velar nasal /ŋ/ (äng-äänne) does not have its own letter. A single velar nasal is written nk, as in kenkä /keŋkæ/, while the doubled velar nasal is written ng, as in kengän /keŋŋæn/. The treatment of the velar nasal in loanwords is highly inconsistent, following the original spelling of the word more than the proper Finnish spelling. /eŋlɑnti/ is written englanti, /mɑŋneetti/ is written magneetti (cf. gnu), /koŋɡestio/ is written kongestio, etc. (Note that most Finns would pronounce a word written like kongestio as [koŋŋestio] as it is not widely known that a /g/ sound should be heard.)

[edit] Voiced plosives

Traditionally, /b/ and /ɡ/ are 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 Belgia ('Belgium') as Pelkia. 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: /bussi/ 'a bus' vs. /pussi/ 'a bag', /ɡorillɑ/ 'a gorilla' vs. /kori+llɑ/ 'with a basket'.

The status of /d/ is somewhat different from /b/ and /ɡ/, since it appears in native Finnish words, too, as a regular 'weak' correspondence of the voiceless /t/ (see Consonant gradation below). At the time when Mikael Agricola, the 'father' of literary Finnish, devised a system for writing the language, this sound still had the value of the voiced dental fricative /ð/, as in English then. Since neither Swedish nor German of that time had a separate sign for this sound, Agricola chose to mark it with d or dh.

Later on, the */ð/ sound developed in a variety of ways in different Finnish dialects: it was deleted, or became a hiatus, a flap consonant, or any of t, r, l, j, jj, th. For example, of your (pl.) water could be:

• teiän veen
• tei'än ve'en
• teiä vede
• teirän veren
• teilän velen
• teijjän vejen
• teidän veden
• teitän veten
• teiðän veðen
• teidhän vethen

In the middle of the 19th century, a significant portion of the Swedish-speaking upper class in Finland decided that Finnish had to be made equal in usage to Swedish. They even started using Finnish as their home language, even while very few of them really mastered it well. Since the historical */ð/ no more had a common way of pronunciation between different Finnish dialects and since it was usually written as "d", many started using the Swedish pronunciation [d], which eventually became the educated norm.

Initially, few native speakers of Finnish acquired the foreign plosive realisation of the native phoneme. Still some decades ago it was not entirely exceptional to hear borrowings like deodorantti ('a deodorant') pronounced as teotorantti, while native Finnish words with a /d/ were pronounced in the usual dialectal way. Nowadays, the Finnish language spoken by native Swedish speakers is not anymore considered "proper", but as a result of their long-lasting prestige, many people particularly in the capital district acquired the new [d] sound. 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 [d] can now be heard in all parts of the country, at least in loanwords and in formal speech. Nowadays replacing /d/ with a /t/ is considered rustic, for example "Nyt tarvittais uutta tirektiiviä" instead of "Nyt tarvittaisiin uutta direktiiviä" ("Now we could use a new directive").

Väinö Linna uses the plosive d as a hallmark of unpleasant command language in the novel The Unknown Soldier. Lieutenant Lammio was a native Helsinkian, and his language was considered haughty upper-class speech. On the other hand, private Asumaniemi's (another native Helsinkian) plosive d raised no irritation, as he spoke Helsinki slang as his everyday speech.

In Helsinki slang, the slang used by some, more rarely nowadays, in Helsinki, the voiced stops are found in native words even in positions which are not the result of consonant gradation, e. g. dallas "s/he walked" (< native verb root talla-), bonjata "to understand" (< Russian /ponʲiˈmatʲ/ понимать). In the Southwestern dialects of Rauma-Eurajoki-Laitila area, b, d and g are commonplace, since the voicing of nasals spread to phonemes /p/, /t/ and /k/, making them half-voiced, e.g. sendä ← sentään or ningo ← niin kuin. They are also found in those coastal areas where Swedish influenced the speech.

[edit] The extra letters Ä and Ö

The sign at the bus station of the Finnish town Mynämäki, illustrating a variation of the letter Ä.

The two extra vowel letters Ä and Ö (accompanied by the Swedish Å, which is actually not needed for writing Finnish) are the main peculiarities in the Finnish alphabet. In Finnish, these extra letters are collectively referred to as the ääkköset (a somewhat playful modification of aakkoset, which is the Finnish word for the alphabet as a whole) when they need to be distinguished from the basic Latin alphabet.

Although the glyphs of the ääkköset are derived from the similar looking German umlauted letters, they are considered letters in their own right and thus alphabetized separately (after Z). The dots on the base glyph are not modifications but essential parts of each letter, much like the hook in Q distinguishes Q from O. As Finnish is unrelated to Germanic languages, the Germanic umlaut or convention of considering AE equivalent to Ä, and OE equivalent to Ö is inapplicable in Finnish. Moreover, in Finnish, both AE and OE are vowel sequences, not single letters, and have independent meanings, e.g. haen (I seek) vs. hän (he, she). When Ä and Ö are not available, they are replaced by A and O.

In handwritten text, the actual form of the extra marking may vary from a pair of dots to a pair of short vertical bars, to a single horizontal bar, or to a wavy line resembling a tilde (in practice, almost any diacritic mark situated above the base glyph would probably be interpreted as a carelessly written pair of dots), but in computerized character sets, these alternatives are incorrect.

[edit] Non-native letters in the Finnish alphabet

The Bank of Åland uses a stylized letter Å in its logotype.

In the Finnish writing system, some basic Latin letters are considered redundant, and other letters generally represent sounds that are not inherent in the Finnish language. Thus, they are not used in established Finnish words, but they may occur in newer loanwords as well as in foreign proper names, and they are included in the Finnish alphabet in order to maintain interlingual compatibility. The pronunciation of these letters varies quite a lot.

• The redundant letters are often replaced with more common alternatives in Finnish, except in proper names. They include C (which may be replaced with either K or S), Q (which is usually replaced with K or KV), and X (which is replaced with KS). In addition, the Swedish Å is redundant from the Finnish point of view, as its pronunciation is more or less equivalent to the Finnish way of pronouncing O. It is officially included in the Finnish alphabet so that keyboards etc. would be compatible with Swedish, which is one of the two official languages in Finland, as well as for the reproduction of Swedish proper names, which are quite common in Finland, even as surnames of monolingual speakers of Finnish.
• The letters representing foreign sounds can be found in relatively new loanwords, but in more established loanwords they have been replaced with alternatives that better reflect the typical Finnish pronunciation, eg. kahvi "coffee", parta "beard". The letters include B, F, and G (which is also used to mark the inherent velar nasal [ŋ], however). From a historical point of view, even D could be said to belong to this group, but the [d] sound has long been an established part of standard language.
• W and Z could be classified into both of the aforementioned groups. The [w] sound is foreign to Finnish, but historically W was used to mark [v] or, rather, [ʋ] sound, as in German or Polish. Although this is today considered archaic and V is used instead, W may still occur in some old surnames as a variant of V, as well as being often used for faux-archaic effect (rather similarly to English "ye olde"). Likewise, the [z] sound is not native to Finnish, but Z (or TZ) was formerly used to denote [ts] (as in German). It is still often pronounced as [ts], but its pronunciation varies greatly: some speakers may pronounce it as [s], or sometimes [tʃ].
• The letters Š [ʃ] and Ž [ʒ] (S and Z with carons) are officially recommended instead of 'SH' and 'ZH' for transcription from another alphabet. For example, Russian Бре́жнев (transcribed Brezhnev in English) is transcribed Brežnev. However, these sounds are foreign to the Finnish language, the letters do not appear on Finnish keyboards and their pronunciation is not consistent. The [ʃ] sound is familiar to most Finnish speakers and quite commonly used in many loanwords, eg. šakki "chess", shampoo, but [ʒ] is restricted to foreign words only.

Diacritical or accent marks are never added to letters in Finnish words (the dots above the Finnish graphemes Ä and Ö are not considered diacritics). Generally, diacritics are retained in foreign-language proper names, e.g. Vilén, if possible, but when arranging words alphabetically, diacritics are usually ignored. A few foreign characters or glyphs may need closer scrutiny:

• Œ is alphabetized as OE, not as Ö.
• Æ may sometimes be replaced with Ä, but when retained, Æ is alphabetized as AE, not as Ä.
• Ø may sometimes be replaced with Ö, but even if it is retained, these two glyphs are considered equivalent to each other.
• Estonian Õ and Hungarian Ő are alphabetized as Ö, not as O; the Portuguese Õ, on the other hand, is alphabetized as O.
• Ü and Ű are alphabetized as Y, not as U.
• ß is alphabetized as (and should be replaced with) ss.
• Ð is alphabetized as (and usually replaced with) D.
• Þ is alphabetized as (and usually replaced with) TH.

[edit] References

1. ^ http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/abc.html

[edit] See also

• Finnish phonology
• Estonian alphabet
• Latin alphabet
• Swedish alphabet
• Norwegian alphabet
• Letter Å, Letter Ä, Letter Ö

[edit] External links

• Omniglot: writing systems and languages of the world: Finnish
• Aakkostus Suomessa (the standard for Finnish alphabet, SFS 4600, explained in Finnish)
• Letters in Finnish
• Finnish orthography and the characters š and ž (official recommendation)
• Pronunciation of Finnish (with sound files)
• Finnish pronunciation (compared to English, IPA available)