Finnish Language - Orthography

Orthography

Finnish is written with the Swedish variant of the Latin alphabet that includes the distinct characters Ä and Ö, and also several characters (b, c, f, q, w, x, z and å) reserved for words of non-Finnish origin. The Finnish orthography follows the phoneme principle: each phoneme (meaningful sound) of the language corresponds to exactly one grapheme (independent letter), and each grapheme represents almost exactly one phoneme. This enables an easy spelling and facilitates reading and writing acquisition. The rule of thumb for Finnish orthography is: write as you read, read as you write. However, morphemes retain their spelling despite sandhi.

Some orthographical notes:

• Long vowels and consonants are represented by double occurrences of the relevant graphemes. This causes no confusion, and permits these sounds to be written without having to nearly double the size of the alphabet to accommodate separate graphemes for long sounds.
• The grapheme h is sounded slightly harder when placed before a consonant (initially breathy voiced, then voiceless) than before a vowel.
• Sandhi is not transcribed; the spelling of morphemes is immutable, e.g. tulen+pa /tulempa/.
• Some consonants (v, j, d) and all consonant clusters do not have distinctive length, and consequently, their allophonic variation is typically not specified in spelling, e.g. rajaan /rajaan/ (I limit) vs. raijaan /raijjaan/ (I haul).
• Pre-1900s texts and personal names use w for v. Both correspond to the same phoneme, the labiodental approximant /ʋ/, a v without the fricative ("hissing") quality of the English v.
• The letters ä and ö, although written as umlauted a and o, do not represent phonological umlauts, and they are considered independent graphemes; the letter shapes have been copied from Swedish. An appropriate parallel from the Latin alphabet are the characters C and G (uppercase), which historically have a closer kinship than many other characters (G is a derivation of C) but are considered distinct letters, and changing one for the other will change meanings.

Although Finnish is almost completely written as it is spoken, there are a few differences:

• The n in nk is a velar nasal, as in English. As an exception to the phonetic principle, there is no g in ng, which is a long velar nasal as in English singalong.
• Sandhi phenomena such as the gemination between words or the change 'n+k' to is not marked in writing.
• The double consonant in clitic is marked as a single consonant.
• Only comparative and superlative adjectives the letter m is used like in speech in word like parempi, but in other similar cases the letter n is used, like in onpa
• The /j/ after the letter i is very weak or there is no /j/ at all, but in writing it is used; for example: urheilija. Indeed the j is not used in writing words with consonant gradation (like aion and some other (like läksiäiset))
• In speech there is no difference between the use of /i/ in words (like ajoittaa, but ehdottaa), but in writing there are quite simple rules: The i is written in forms derived from words that consist two syllables and end in a or ä (sanoittaa, "to write song-lyrics", from sana, "word"), and in words that are old-stylish (innoittaa). The i is not written in forms derived from words that consist two syllables and end in o or ö (erottaa "to discern, to differentiate" from ero difference), words which do not clearly derive from a single word (hajottaa can be derived either from the stem haja- seen in such adverbs as hajalle, or from the related verb hajota), and in words that are descriptive (häämöttää) or workaday by their style (rehottaa)

Graphemes ä and ö are sometimes converted in two ways, a and o, respectively and, ae and oe respectively. Finnish graphemes ä and ö are not umlauts like in German; conversion to ae and oe in Finnish language is less correct than in German language. Conversion to a and o is more common and almost universally used in email-addresses. Conversion ae and oe is rare but formally used in passports and equivalent situations. Both conversion rules have minimal pairs.

The sounds š and ž are not a part of Finnish language itself and have been introduced artificially by a government regulation. Although they occur in some rare loanwords, their principal use is in the transcription of foreign names. For technical reasons or convenience, the graphemes sh and zh are often used in quickly or less carefully written texts instead of š and ž. This is a deviation from the phonetic principle, and as such is liable to cause confusion, but the damage is minimal as the transcribed words are foreign in any case. Finnish does not use the sounds z, š or ž, but for the sake of exactitude, they can be included in spelling. (The recommendation cites the Russian play Hovanshtshina as an example.) Many speakers pronounce all of them s, or distinguish only between s and š, because Finnish has no voiced sibilants.

The language may be identified by its distinctive lack of the letters b, c, f, q, w, x, z and å.