Dark Specialist D's Note

In the Finnish language, there is a relatively simple phenomenon that has caused much confusion due to inadequate explanations and terms. At boundaries between words, it often happens that the final con­so­nant of the first word is completely assimilated so that it forms a geminate (double con­so­nant) with the initial con­so­nant of the second word. For example, the imperative form of a word that means “go” is (in standard speech) [menek] before a word that begins with k, [menep] before a word that begins with p, etc. Linguistically, this is a very simple example of a sandhi phenomenon. In many situations, the assimilation is so regular that the first word does not appear in unassimilated form at all. Instead, when there is no next consonant to assimilate to, the final consonant is lost, e.g. mene. Moreover, the Finnish orthography does not write the con­so­nant at all, i.e. the written form corresponds to the exceptional form that ends with a vowel, such as mene. This phenomenon has ...

The letters used in Finnish texts can be classified as follows, roughly in descending order by conventionality and familiarity: The letters that are needed for writing purely and originally Finnish words: a, d, e, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, v, y, ä, ö . Among these, d is somewhat special, since it has been intentionally introduced into standard Finnish. There is no acceptable way to dispense with ä and ö in Finnish texts. In particular, the convention (used in German for example) of replacing them by ae and oe is not acceptable for Finnish, although this replacement method is generally known by Finns due to its application in international texts. Letters that appear often in (relatively new) loanwords: b, f . Base letters that are conventionally regarded as part of the Finnish alphabet, yet appear only in words of foreign origin that have exceptionally preserved their original spelling and, naturally, in foreign names, and derivations of such words: c, q, w, x, z, å ...

What "false friends" are? "False friends" (French faux amis ) are pairs of words in two languages so that the words are written or pronounced identically or similarly but differ in meaning. They cause problems especially when you see or hear a word in a foreign language and you assume that it has the same meaning as a similar word in your native language. Often the words have a common origin but the meanings have become different, perhaps very different. See English faux amis for francophones learning English for a more detailed general characterization and for examples on English/French false friends. This document lists some "false friends" in English and Finnish . Section English as 2nd Language at About.com contains an annotated list of links to pages about false friends between English and other languages . The expression false cognates is often used instead of false friends . Perhaps it would be better reserved for a special case of false ...

In Finnish, verbs have basically four modes: indicative (indikatiivi), imperative (imperatiivi), conditional (konditionaali), and potential (potentiaali). The first two correspond to English modes rather well, whereas the conditional somewhat resembles the subjunctive; and the potential, with no direct counterpart in English, is used to express uncertainty in literary language. This document discusses some details of these modes as well as some additional forms that are sometimes presented as modes. Morphology Morphologically, Finnish uses suffixes for forming the modes (Finnish "modus", from Latin, or "tapaluokka"): * indicative: no suffix, e.g. sanon 'I say', sanot 'you say', where sano- is the verb stem and -n is a personal suffix (of the first person singular) * imperative: variant suffixes, -ko-, -kö-, -o-, -ö-, and a consonant (historically -k) that is assimilated according to the initial consonant of the next word or omitted (before a vo...

The Finnish language has about fourteen or fifteen cases for nouns. Most of them correspond to English prepositions roughly as follows: case suffix English prep. sample word form translation of the sample nominatiivi - talo house genetiivi -n of talon of (a) house essiivi -na as talona as a house partitiivi -(t)a - taloa house (as an object) translatiivi -ksi to (role of) taloksi to a house inessiivi -ssa in talossa in (a) house elatiivi -sta from (inside) talosta from (a) house illatiivi -an, -en etc into taloon into (a) house adessiivi -lla at, on talolla at (a) house ablatiivi -lta from talolta from (a) house allatiivi -lle to talolle to (a) house abessiivi -tta without talotta without (a) house komitatiivi -ne- together (with) taloineni with my house(s) instruktiivi -n with (the aid of) (talon) with (a) house Notes 1. nominatiivi (nominative) is the case of a subject and has no ending in the singular; in plural it has t...

Finnish English Some greetings hyvää huomenta good morning hyvää päivää good afternoon (or morning) hyvää iltaa good evening hyvää yötä good night terve! hello! hei! / moi! hi! näkemiin good bye hauska tavata! nice to meet you kiitos thank you olkaa hyvä 1) please (when asking for something, e.g. "olkaa hyvä ja antakaa - -" "please give me - -") 2) here you are (when giving something) kuinka voitte ? how are you kiitos hyvin I'm fine, thank you Some important words kyllä yes ei no minä, sinä, hän I, you, he/she me, te, he we, you, they yksi, kaksi, kolme 1,2,3 neljä, viisi kuusi 4,5,6 seitsemän, kahdeksan 7,8 yhdeksän, kymmenen 9,10 sata, tuhat ...

The following table presents the basic phonetic values of letters in Finnish. Legend: 1. The first column shows a letter. 2. The second column gives the regular pronunciation using an IPA symbol. 3. The third column gives the regular pronunciation using Usenet IPA Ascii symbols, i.e. Ascii characters used as surrogates for IPA characters in contexts where the character repertoire is limited to Ascii. Warning: such notations have not been defined rigorously, so the information in this column is not very reliable. 4. The fourth column contains some notes on the pronunciation, including irregularities. If you are not familiar with IPA notations, please see my description of Finnish pronunciation in plain (?) English. a ɑ A often described as [a] but normally [ɑ], due to opposition with [æ] b b b often close to or identical with [p] c k k [s] before e, i, y; occurs in foreign words only d d d dialects usually don’t have this sound e e e more accurately, [e̞] (lowered [e]) f f f som...

Finnish pronunciation is rather regular as compared with many other languages. Generally, one letter corresponds to one sound in a fixed manner. This document describes the sounds roughly. On a closer look, there are several exceptions, some of which are listed here. This document tries to describe Finnish pronunciation in simple terms. There is also Pronunciation of Finnish in a nutshell (for linguists) , which uses special (IPA) symbols and terms. The Finnish language has very regular pronunciation. There is almost one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. However, some sounds are a bit difficult to produce for foreigners. The phonetic values of letters resemble the original (Latin) ones, not those occurring in English. Both vowels and consonants can be short (written with one letter) or long (written with two letters). The length is distinctive , i.e. there are (a lot of) words differing only in the length of a sound. For instance, you should pronounce "lakki...

How does Finnish relate to other languages? The Finnish language, spoken mainly in Finland but also by people of Finnish origin in Sweden and other countries, belongs to the Fenno-Ugric group of languages , which is a part of the Uralian family of languages. Other Uralian languages include: Estonian , which is rather near to Finnish ; Hungarian , which is very different from Finnish, with a fairly small number of related words ; and several languages spoken in Russia, mostly by small ethnic groups. The Uralian family of languages is possibly related to Indo-European languages (such as English, German, Swedish, Latin, Russian, Hindi, etc), but the relationship is highly debatable. The arguments are based on a few similarities which might, according to other scholars, be based on language universals, loanwords, or pure coincidences. – Note that some similarities in vocabularies are caused by relatively new loanwords which were taken into Finnish from Swedish due to strong cultural...