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
+ Finnish monophthong phonemes Front Back unrounded rounded Close Mid Open
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 ., cited in
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).
Diphthongs Ending with Ending with Ending with Opening diphthongs Starting with Starting with Starting with Starting with Starting with Starting with Starting with Starting with
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 {a, o, u} together with vowels from the group {ä, ö, y}. 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 in colloquial speech sometimes further to .
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 + Consonant phonemes of Finnish Labial Coronal Dorsal Glottal Nasal Plosive () () () Fricative () () Approximant Trill
For some speakers, can be 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. /n/ however is dental before /t/ 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."York Papers in Linguistics, no. 17 (1996), p. 202 [r] may sometimes be pronounced as a tap or flap [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, usually pronounced , although some 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, is most often pronounced as following the influence of German, thus . The phoneme has glottal (voiceless and voiced) and fricative allophones. At the end of a syllable before a voiceless consonant it may be pronounced as a fricative whose place of articulation is similar to the preceding vowel: velar after a back vowel (), palatal after a high front vowel (). In voiced context, a breathy voiced or murmured usually occur: , or or , , or
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, , varyingly spelled as or in Old Literary Finnish (which is based on southwestern dialects), and realised in native dialects with significantly large allophony of frontal consonants or even completely degraded depending on the dialectal gradation features. Its realization as a plosive originated as a spelling pronunciation, 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. Initially, few native speakers of Finnish acquired the foreign plosive realisation of the native phoneme. As for loanwords, was often assimilated to as a strong grade consonant. 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 in Finnish involves alternations between a "strong grade" and a "weak grade" of consonants, influenced by both phonological and grammatical factors. Historically, a consonant would shift to its weak grade if it was part of a closed syllable. However, due to language evolution, there are now instances where the weak grade may or may not appear regardless of the syllable being open or closed, such as in "Turkuun" where the strong grade appears in a closed syllable. Grammatically, the weak grade typically shows up in nouns, pronouns, and adjectives before case suffixes, and in verbs before person agreement suffixes.
The following is a general list of strong–weak correspondences.
{| class="wikitable" ! Strong !! Weak
Other consonant alternations