Product Code Database
Finnish orthography is based on the Latin script, and uses an alphabet derived from the Swedish alphabet, officially comprising twenty-nine letters but also including two additional letters found in some loanwords. The Finnish orthography strives to represent all morphemes phonology 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.
The pronunciation instructions enclosed in slashes are broad transcriptions based on the IPA system. In notes, more narrow transcriptions are enclosed in square brackets.
| A, a | aa | ||
| B, b | bee | Occurs in relatively new loanwords, such as banaani 'banana' and bussi 'bus'. Typically represents or . | |
| C, c | see | Occurs in unestablished loanwords, such as curry and cesium. Typically represents or . | |
| D, d | dee | In present standard language, stands for , but the pronunciation in dialects varies greatly. | |
| E, e | ee | The precise pronunciation tends to be between and . | |
| F, f | äf, äffä | , , occasionally | Occurs in relatively new loanwords, such as asfaltti 'Bitumen' or uniformu 'uniform'. Historically and in dialectal pronunciation (apart from some Western dialects), is typically replaced with or medially (e.g. kahvi ← Swedish kaffe 'coffee'). Even newer loanwords may have an alternative spelling where has replaced (asvaltti, univormu). Note that the names of the country, language, and nationality beginning with F (Finland, Finnish, Finn) are non-native, the native ones being Suomi, suomi, and suomalainen. |
| G, g | gee | Occurs natively in the digraph , which marks the long velar nasal (with no sound). Otherwise only occurs in relatively new loanwords, such as gaala 'festival' and geeni 'gene'. Typically represents or . | |
| H, h | hoo | Normally a voiceless fricative, but the precise pronunciation depends on the preceding vowel; between two vowels may be pronounced as breathy voice . | |
| I, i | ii | ||
| J, j | jii | Without exception (English consonant ), as in German and Swedish, never fricative or affricate as in French or English. | |
| K, k | koo | ||
| L, l | äl, ällä | , , occasionally | |
| M, m | äm, ämmä | , , occasionally | |
| N, n | än, ännä | , , occasionally | |
| O, o | oo | The precise pronunciation tends to be between and . | |
| P, p | pee | ||
| Q, q | kuu | Mainly occurs in foreign proper names (in loanwords digraph has often been replaced with , aside from unestablished recent loanwords, such as queer). Typically represents , though some speakers pronounce it as . | |
| R, r | är, ärrä | , , occasionally | |
| S, s | äs, ässä | , , occasionally | |
| T, t | tee | The precise pronunciation tends to be Dental consonant rather than alveolar . | |
| U, u | uu | The precise pronunciation tends to be between and . | |
| V, v | vee | Typically represents approximant rather than fricative . | |
| W, w | kaksoisvee tuplavee | , , | The "double-v" may occur natively as an archaic variant of , but otherwise in unestablished loanwords and foreign proper names only. It occurs in some rare surnames such as Waltari (e.g. Mika Waltari, a world-famous author) or in some rare first names such as Werner (e.g. Sanoma, a well-known publisher). In collation the letter was treated like before 2022. Typically represents . |
| X, x | äks, äksä | , , occasionally | Occurs in unestablished loanwords, such as taxicab or fax, but there is often a preferred alternative where has been replaced with digraph (taksi, faksi). Typically represents . |
| Y, y | yy | The precise pronunciation tends to be between and . | |
| Z, z | tset, tseta | , | Occurs in unestablished loanwords, such as zeniitti 'zenith' or pizza, but there may be an alternative spelling with (e.g. pitsa). Typically represents (like in German), but sometimes or . |
| Å, å | ruotsalainen oo | , | The "Swedish ", carried over from the Swedish alphabet and redundant in Finnish; retained especially for writing Finland-Swedish proper names (such as Ståhlberg). All Finnish words containing are proper names and their derivatives (ångström, åkermaniitti, vårdöläinen); there it represents (identically to ). The spelling spåra ('tram', colloquial, from Swedish spårvagn) sometimes occurs in practice, but the standard spelling is spora. |
| Ä, ä | ää | ||
| Ö, ö | öö | The precise pronunciation tends to be between and . |
The letters and are variants of and , but they are often overlooked, as they are only used in some relatively new loanwords and foreign names, and may be replaced with and , respectively, if it is technically impossible to reproduce and .This rule is stated in the standard SFS 4900 (Transliteration of Cyrillic characters: Slavic languages), p. 7. The Finnish keyboard layout on Microsoft Windows does not include or ; thus, in practice, only highly formal sources such as official texts, encyclopedias or Helsingin Sanomat use them.
| S-caron, š | hattu-äs, hattu-ässä; suhu-äs, suhu-ässä | , ; , | The " with caron" is a rare variant of . It occurred in some relatively new loanwords, such as šakki 'chess' and šillinki 'shilling', but is often replaced with digraph (šampoo → shampoo) or, in more established loanwords, with plain (sampoo). In theory it represents but actual pronunciation may vary. |
| Z-caron, ž | hattu-tset, hattu-tseta | , | The " with caron" is a rare variant of . It occurs in some unestablished loanwords, such as džonkki 'junk', and foreign proper names, but is often replaced with digraph . In theory represents but the actual pronunciation may vary. |
In Finnish, ⟨ä⟩, ⟨ö⟩ and ⟨y⟩ are the "front vowel" counterparts to the "back vowels" ⟨a⟩, ⟨o⟩ and ⟨u⟩; grammatical endings and suffixes using these letters, use either the front or back form depending on the vowel harmony of the word. The for ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ö⟩ are derived from the similar-looking German umlauted letters, but as with ⟨y⟩ versus ⟨u⟩, they are considered letters in their own right and thus separately (after ⟨z⟩).
The Germanic umlaut or convention of considering digraph ⟨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 they have independent meanings (e.g. haen "I seek" vs. hän "he, she").
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 situated above the base glyph (such as, á ā ã) would probably be interpreted as a carelessly written pair of dots (ä). However, in computerized , these alternatives are incorrect. The front-vowel counterpart of ⟨u⟩ using ⟨y⟩ rather than ⟨ü⟩ is carried over from Swedish, and also avoids confusion in cursive script with ⟨ii⟩, which is common in Finnish.
Diacritics are never added to letters in native Finnish words (as the dots above the Finnish graphemes and 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 (this also applies to and , despite them being an officially recognized part of Finnish orthography). There are, however, some exceptions:
The standard does not specify how one should alphabetize the letter when used in other languages than German, but at least as regards the Estonian or Hungarian , it seems consistent to treat it as equivalent to (and even more so, since in Estonian and Hungarian is not considered a mere variant of , as it is in German). It would seem problematic, however, to apply the same principle to e.g. (u-diaeresis) as used in Spanish language or (nasal vowel) as used in Portuguese, as these letters represent quite different orthography traditions.
Other special cases:
Ligatures are alphabetized as two individual letters:
Letters and characters taken from other alphabets (e.g. Sigma 'Greek capital letter sigma') or writing systems are collated after Latin letters.
In syllabification, a long consonant is always regarded as having a syllable break in the middle (as in ), but a long vowel (or a diphthong) is regarded as a single unit that functions as the nucleus of a syllable. Either a long or short vowel may occur in a stressed as well as unstressed syllable. The phonetic quality of a vowel remains the same regardless of whether the vowel is long or short, or whether it is stressed or unstressed.
The treatment of the velar nasal in loanwords is highly inconsistent, often mixing the original spelling of the word with an applied Finnish pronunciation pattern. E nglanti "England" is pronounced (with a short but no ), and even ma gneetti "magnet" is pronounced (with plain being pronounced as when followed by , as in Latin language) – cf. a more specialized term diagnoosi 'diagnosis', and in a word-initial position gnuu "wildebeest". Following the typical Finnish pronunciation pattern, ko ngestio "congestion" is often pronounced , but may also occur.
The status of is somewhat different from and , since it appears in native Finnish words, too, as a regular "weak" correspondence of the voiceless (as a result of consonant gradation), and even in the infinitives of many verbs, such as syödä, "to eat". 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 , as in English "then". Since neither Swedish language nor German language of that time had a separate sign for this sound, Agricola chose to mark it with or .
Later on, the sound developed in a variety of ways in different Finnish dialects: it was deleted, or became a hiatus, a flap consonant, or any of , , , . For example, historical and rare dialectal meiðän, käðen "our" ( gen.), "hand" ( gen.) could be:
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 no more had a common way of pronunciation between different Finnish dialects and since it was usually written as , many started using the Swedish pronunciation , 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 loanwords like deodorantti 'deodorant' pronounced as , while native Finnish words with a were pronounced in the usual dialectal way. Nowadays, the Finnish language spoken by native Swedish speakers is not anymore considered paradigmatic, but as a result of their long-lasting prestige, many people particularly in the capital district acquired the new 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 can now be heard in all parts of the country, at least in loanwords and in formal speech. Nowadays replacing with a is considered rustic, for example instead of 'now we could use a new directive'.
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. 's/he walked' (← native verb root talla-), 'to understand' (← Russian понимать). In the Southwestern dialects of Rauma-Eurajoki-Laitila area, , and are commonplace, since the voicing of nasals spread to phonemes , and , making them half-voiced, e.g. ← sentään or ← niin kuin. They are also found in those coastal areas where Swedish influenced the speech.
| Aarne |
| Bertta |
| Celsius |
| Daavid |
| Eemeli |
| Faarao |
| Gideon |
| Heikki |
| Iivari |
| Jussi |
| Kalle |
| Lauri |
| Matti |
| Niilo |
| Otto |
| Paavo |
| Kuu |
| Risto |
| Sakari |
| Tyyne |
| Urho |
| Vihtori |
| Wiski |
| Äksä |
| Yrjö |
| Tseta |
| Åke |
| Äiti |
| Öljy |
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