Finnish Phonology - Consonants

Consonants

1. /d/ is the equivalent of /t/ under weakening consonant gradation, and thus occurs only medially, in the infinitives of the verbs nähdä (to see) and tehdä (to do), or in non-native words; it is actually more of an alveolar tap rather than a true voiced plosive, and the dialectal realization varies widely; see main article.
2. The glottal stop can only appear at word boundaries as a result of certain sandhi phenomena, and it is not indicated in spelling: e.g. /annaʔːolla/ 'let it be', orthographically anna olla. Moreover, this sound is not used in all dialects.
3. The short velar nasal is an allophone of /n/ before /k/, and the long velar nasal /ŋː/, written ng, is the equivalent of /ŋk/ under weakening consonant gradation (type of lenition) and thus occurs only medially.

appears in native words only in the Southwestern dialects, but is reliably distinguished by Finnish speakers. The rest of the foreign fricatives are not. 'š' or 'sh' appears only in non-native words, often pronounced 's', although some educated speakers make a distinction between e.g. šakki 'chess' and sakki 'a gang (of people)'. The orthography also includes the letters 'z' and 'ž', although their use is marginal, and they have no true phonemic status. For example, azeri and džonkki may be pronounced aseri and tsonkki without fear of confusion. The letter 'z', found mostly foreign words and names such as Zimbabwe, may also be pronounced as as in German.

With the phoneme /h/, speakers add weak frication consistent with the vowel, producing a voiceless fricative /h̝/. Friction tends to be strongest when the phoneme occurs between a vowel and a consonant, e.g. mahti, 'might'. The friction is pharyngeal next to /ɑ/, labiovelar next to /u/, palatal next to /i/ and with intermediate quality next to other vowels. Additionally, between vowels a breathy or murmured can occur. For example, mahti can be pronounced while maha ('stomach') is .