Notes

Plosives

Standard Finnish native plosives are unvoiced and unaspirated: /k/, /p/, /t/.

An additional 'native' /d/ can be found as the weak grade of /t/ (under consonant gradation), and thus only occurs between vowels, either independently or as part of /hd/ (thus, native /d/ is never geminated). This originates as a spelling pronunciation by Swedish speakers learning Finnish during the 19th century, as it was spelled ⟨d⟩ (earlier also ⟨dh⟩) in an attempt to represent /ð/, its pronunciation in the Southwest Finnish literary standard at the time. In other dialects, it may be realized as [r], [l], or lost, only leaving behind e.g. a glide. Even in Standard Finnish, the consonant may in rapid speech become an alveolar tap.

Recent borrowings can also contain the phonemes /b/, /d/ and /ɡ/, which are pronounced as voiced plosives, although in monolingual Finnish speech they may only be partially voiced, if at all. However, minimal pairs do exist.

For (potential) glottal stops, see final gemination below.

Fricatives

Native words only have two fricatives: /s/ and /h/. The exact realization of /s/ and /h/ is highly variable.

/s/ is often devoiced and somewhat retracted, but may be voiced between two vowels in fast speech, and may even become a [ʃ] "sh-sound" after rounded vowels.

/h/ is generally realized as a voiced [ɦ] between vowels (especially word-internally). Before a consonant (at the end of a syllable), /h/ is often realized as a velar [x] after a back vowel and as a palatal [ç] after a high front vowel.

Two more fricatives can be found in loanwords: /f/ and /ʃ/ ⟨š⟩. The latter is often pronounced as if it were /s/ if there is no risk of confusion.

Finnish ⟨v⟩ is not a fricative.

Rhotic

The single Finnish rhotic /r/ is a rolled R, but if ungeminated, may be realized as a tap between two vowels in rapid speech.

Lateral

Finnish /l/ is always a bright L, never a dark (velarized) L.

Nasals

Finnish has three nasals: /m/, /n/ and /ŋ/. While the first two are common and can appear in any position, /ŋ/ in native words is only found either as part of /ŋk/ ⟨nk⟩ or /ŋː/ ⟨ng⟩ between two vowels. In loanwords, it may appear as a short /ŋ/ even before other consonants or at the end of a word.

Approximants

/j/ and /ʋ/ are approximants in Finnish. The latter is spelled ⟨v⟩, but is not a fricative.

Final gemination

See also: Finnish phonology § Sandhi on Wikipedia

Some Finnish words or word roots feature final gemination (also called boundary gemination or boundary lengthening, Finnish: rajakahdennus), which is usually marked with /ˣ/ (Finnish: jäännöslopuke; see also the entry for this symbol). This feature (argued to be morphophonetic) originates from the loss of some final consonants (primarily ⟨-k⟩ or ⟨-h⟩) always follows a vowel, and its realization depends on what follows it:

• If /ˣ/ is followed by a consonant, the consonant becomes geminated if it isn't already.
• If /ˣ/ is followed by a vowel or the end of the utterance, it may simply be silent, or manifest as a glottal stop [ʔ], which may or may not be geminated, and may even be completely omitted in rapid speech.

This feature is not indicated in the Finnish orthography, but results in minimal pairs (albeit marginal). Final gemination usually also affects clitics, which means it can in some cases even surface within a word, such as jonnekin /ˈjonːeˣkin/ → /ˈjonːekːin/ (respelled ⟨jonnekkin⟩). Possessive suffixes are however not affected. There are also some cases in which final gemination has in effect become grammaticalized, such as the partitive singular of hame → hametta, in which the geminated consonant is spelled with gemination.

For some speakers, final gemination may be missing within words, such as within compounds or before clitics; this is more common in rapid speech.

In standard Finnish, final gemination occurs primarily in the following cases:

• nominals:
  • (the nominative singular forms of) nominals belonging to type 48 ("hame")
  • allative (-lle) singular and plural forms of nominals
• verbs:
  • first infinitive forms (dictionary forms)^{[† 1]}

    note that the third-person singular present indicative does not have final gemination even if it is a homograph (i.e. spelled identically)

  • connegative forms of verbs (except for conditional)
  • second-person singular imperative forms of verbs (identical with the indicative connegative), except that of the negative verb
• adverbs:
  • the 'adverbial cases' prolative (-itse) and sublative (-nne)
  • adverbs derived with the suffix -sti, as well as the allative suffix -lle
  • certain individual adverbs and adpositions
• the third-person possessive suffix -nsa

The following features may or may not have final gemination depending on the idiolect (speaker and variety):

• nominals:
  • comitative forms of adjectives (i.e. when not followed by a possessive suffix)
• verbs:
  • past passive participles (-ttu)
  • conditional connegative
  • second-person singular imperative forms of the negative verb, i.e. älä
• adverbs:
  • adverbs derived with the suffixes -lti and -ti
• (nominative singular of) the numeral kolme (“three”)
• (nominative singular of) the pronoun itse (“self”)

Furthermore, in some dialects, final gemination is completely absent.

Stress

Stress occurs on the first syllable of any given word. In compounds, secondary stress occurs at the beginning of each component word, which may result in stress falling on consecutive syllables if a component is only a single syllable. Certain other words have phonemic secondary stress as well.

Rhythmic secondary stress, generally taken as weaker than the phonemic secondary stress found in compound words (or some other words), as described above, has been interpreted in different ways. Such stress is not strictly phonemic and can depend on the speaker and context. Songs and poems, in particular, may take significant liberties.

According to the traditional explanation, rhythmic stress also occurs roughly on odd syllables and is assigned left-to-right, with the leftmost syllable in a prosodic foot being stressed, but may skip up to two light syllables if a heavy syllable follows (e.g. ⟨omenanamme⟩ → o.me.na.nam.me). Some suffixes may also incur secondary stress automatically, in which case they may 'steal' it from an immediately preceding syllable. Syllables containing (the start of) certain inflectional suffixes, including possessive suffixes, may also avoid secondary stress, by e.g. shifting it to the preceding syllable, even if it is a light syllable.

An alternative explanation, offered by Karvonen (2005; see Further reading), instead posits that rhythmic stress is predominantly assigned right-to-left, which results in different stresses for words with more than four syllables (e.g. kolesteroli in the traditional explanation is ko.les.te.ro.li, but when assigned right to left, is instead ko.les.te.ro.li). In addition, vowel hiatuses are avoided when assigning stresses (televisio is te.le.vi.si.o, not xte.le.vi.si.o), and syllables may instead stress shift back by one if that syllable has higher priority (is heavy, or contains a long vowel/diphthong).

Final syllables (in words with more than one) are usually not stressed, but if the final syllable is heavy (ends in a consonant or contains a long vowel or diphthong) and the preceding syllable is light (ends in a short vowel) and unstressed, the final syllable may receive stress (e.g. taistelevan becomes tais.te.le.van instead of tais.te.le.van). As can be seen in the example, this may and will cause stress in earlier syllables to shift forwards.