Colloquial Finnish - Introduction

Introduction

As in any language, the spoken version(s) of Finnish often vary from the written form. Some of its constructs are either too arbitrary (e.g. "soft d", cf. Finnish phonology), or too dialectal, e.g. hän (see below), for use in the spoken language. Furthermore, some very common and "accentless" sound changes are not reflected in the standard language, particularly fusion, liaison and some diphthong reductions.

There is also the problem that purists want to avoid irregularity regardless of actual usage. This has left some sound changes common in spoken language out from the standard language. There is a tendency to favor "more logical" constructs over easily pronounceable ones. This ideal does reflect spoken Finnish usage to a degree, as Finnish is demonstrably a conservative language with few reduction processes, but it is not entirely accurate. The problem of avoiding "irregularity" is most pronounced in spelling, where internal sandhi is not transcribed, because there is the idea that morphemes should be immutable. For example, the "correct" spelling is syönpä ("I'll eat"), even though the pronunciation is usually syömpä. The explanation is that -n- and -pä are in different morphemes just like the explanation that English boys is not spelled with a z is that they are in different morphemes.

There are also a number of grammatical forms which are used in written Finnish, but only very rarely in spoken. For example, there are a number of constructions using participles which are usually rendered analytically in speech. Some cases and moods are rarely constructive in spoken Finnish, e.g. the instructive and comitative cases and the potential mood. Some survive only in expressions.

On the other hand, spoken language has its own features rarely or never found in formal language. Most importantly, there is very common external sandhi, and some assimilatory sound changes. (On the contrary, there is no vowel reduction.) In some variants (e.g. Vaasa, Kymenlaakso) of spoken Finnish -n kanssa is abbreviated into a clitic that is effectively a comitative case, e.g. -nkans or -nkaa.