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.
Finnish has a phonological contrast between single (/æ e i ø y ɑ o u/) and double (/ææ ee ii øø yy ɑɑ oo uu/) vowels.
For example, in rapid speech the word yläosa ('upper part', from ylä-, 'upper' + osa, 'part') can be pronounced [ˈylæo̯sɑ] (with the diphthong /æo̯/).
The diphthongs [ey̯] and [iy̯] are quite rare and mostly found in derivative words, where a derivational affix starting with /y/ (or properly the vowel harmonic archiphoneme /U/) fuses with the preceding vowel, e.g. pimeys 'darkness' from pimeä 'dark' + /-(U)US/ '-ness' and siistiytyä 'to tidy up oneself' from siisti 'tidy' + /-UTU/ (a kind of middle voice) + /-(d)A/ (infinitive suffix).
Opening diphthongs are in standard Finnish only found in root-initial syllables like in words tietää 'to know', takapyörä 'rear wheel' (from taka- 'back, rear' + pyörä 'wheel'; the latter part is secondarily stressed) or luo 'towards'.
Compare, for example, the following pair of abstract nouns: hallitus 'government' (from hallita, 'to reign') versus terveys 'health' (from terve, healthy).
In standard Finnish, these words are pronounced as they are spelled, but many speakers apply vowel harmony – olumpialaiset, and sekundaarinen or sekyndäärinen.
š or sh [ʃ] appears only in non-native words, sometimes pronounced [s], although most speakers make a distinction between e.g. šakki 'chess' and sakki 'a gang (of people)'.
The failure to use them correctly is often ridiculed in the media,[citation needed] 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.
The status of /d/ is somewhat different from /b/ and /ɡ/, since it also appears in native Finnish words, as a regular 'weak' correspondence of the voiceless /t/ (see Consonant gradation below).
Many of the remaining "irregular" patterns of Finnish noun and verb inflection are explained by a change of a historical *ti to /si/.
The change from *ti to /si/, a type of assibilation, is unconnected to consonant gradation, and dates back as early as Proto-Finnic.
In modern Finnish the alternation is not productive, due to new cases of the sequence /ti/ having been introduced by later sound changes and loanwords, and assibilation therefore occurs only in certain morphologically defined positions.
[citation needed] Words having this particular alternation are still subject to consonant gradation in forms that lack assibilation.
When a vowel other than i occurs, words like vesi inflect just like other nouns with a single t alternating with the consonant gradated d. 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.
Variation appears in particular in past tense verb forms, e.g. kieltää, kielsi ('to deny', 'denied') but säätää, sääti ('to adjust', 'adjusted').
Apparently this was caused by word pairs such as noutaa, nouti ('bring') and nousta, nousi ('rise'), which were felt important enough to keep them contrastive.
Assibilation occurred prior to the change of the original consonants cluster *kt to /ht/, which can be seen in the inflection of the numerals yksi, kaksi and yhden, kahden.
In many recent loanwords, there is vacillation between representing an original voiceless consonant as single or geminate: this is the case for example kalsium (~ kalssium) and kantarelli (~ kanttarelli).
Some example sets of words: A double /h/ is rare in standard Finnish, but possible, e.g. hihhuli, a derogatory term for a religious fanatic.
While /ʋ/ and /j/ may appear as geminates when spoken (e.g. vauva [ʋɑuʋːɑ], raijata [rɑijːɑtɑ]), this distinction is not phonemic, and is not indicated in spelling.
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 kalaa in the quantity-insensitive dialects but kallaa in the quantity-sensitive ones (cf.
Simple phonetic incomplete assimilations include: Gemination of a morpheme-initial consonant occurs when the morpheme preceding it ends in a vowel and belongs to one of certain morphological classes.
In elaborate standard language, the gemination affects even morphemes with a vowel beginning: /otɑ/ + /omenɑ/ → [otɑʔːomenɑ] or [otɑʔomenɑ] ('take an apple!').
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 kolme ('three') should cause a gemination of the following initial consonant or not: [kolmeʋɑristɑ] or [kolmeʋːɑristɑ] ('three crows').
For instance, the modern Finnish word for 'boat' vene used to be veneh (a form still existing in the closely related Karelian language).
Similar remnants of a lost word-final /n/ can be seen in dialects, where e.g. the genitive form of the first singular pronoun is regularly /mu/ (standard language minun): /se/ + /on/ + /mu/ → [seomːu] ('it is mine').
