Learn the two major Finnish diphthongs, along with the five other Finnish vowels
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| Tiina: Hi everyone, and welcome back to FinnishPod101.com. This is the Pronunciation Series, lesson 2: The Pronunciation of Vowels in Finnish. I’m Tiina. |
| Reeta: And I’m Reeta. Listeners, did you practice the sounds from lesson one? |
| Tiina: We hope so, because we have a few more sounds for you this time! Eight vowels – and the most common diphthongs. |
| Reeta: And these are very easy! |
| Tiina: Yes, they are not that different from English sounds, actually. Okay, shall we get started? |
| Reeta: All right! |
| Tiina: Now, if you’ve got the lesson notes, it’s probably a good idea to read them as you listen so that you can see what sounds we are talking about. |
| Reeta: The first thing to remember is that there are eight different vowels in Finnish. Yes, eight! |
| Tiina: That’s correct. There is also one more vowel in the Finnish alphabet, the å, called the “ruotsalainen o” in Finnish, or the “Swedish o” in English. However, this is used only in Swedish words. Now, let’s focus on the Finnish vowels. Keep in mind that there are some tricky vowels and diphthongs in Finnish. |
| Reeta: So make sure to practice and remember them well! |
| Tiina: What we’ll do is compare them to sounds in English. Okay, the first one is the letter "-A." |
| Reeta: /a/ |
| Tiina: "-A" is pronounced like the [ah] in "father." Some examples are “kaappi”, meaning “closet” in English, or “aika”, meaning “time” in English. Next is the letter "-E." |
| Reeta: /e/ |
| Tiina: "-E" is pronounced like the [eh] in "best." Finnish words like “peli”, meaning “game” in English or “televisio”, meaning “TV” in English have this sound. Ok, next is the letter "-I." |
| Reeta: /i/ |
| Tiina: It’s pronounced like the [i] in "fit." The Finnish words “kiltti”, meaning “nice” in English, and “silittää” meaning “to iron” have th i-sound. Moving on, next is the letter "-O." |
| Reeta: /o/ |
| Tiina: It’s pronounced like the [o] in “soft”. Now, be careful you don’t make a [u] sound here. We just want a round “o”. Sample words with this o sound are “koti”, meaning “home” or “koulu” meaning “school” in English. The next letter is “-U.” |
| Reeta: /u/ |
| Tiina: This is pronounced like the [oo] in "book." It can also be like the [oo] in "look." This is included in words like “tuuli”, meaning “wind” and “lumi”, meaning “snow”. The next letter is “-Y” |
| Reeta: /Y/ |
| Tiina: This is pronounced like the [y] in "syrup." Make this sound a bit stretched. The Y-sound is in words like “kyllä”, meaning “yes” or “tylsä”, meaning “boring”. Let’s go to our next letter. |
| Reeta: Alright, here is where Finnish gets a bit tricky with the letters. There are basically two letters you most likely haven’t encountered before. |
| Tiina: Oh, the “Æ” (ä) and “Ø,” (ö) right? |
| Reeta: Yes, don’t worry though, these sounds do exist in the English language. |
| Tiina: Great! So shall we go on? Our seventh vowel is “-Æ.” |
| Reeta: /æ/ |
| Tiina: This is pronounced like the [a] in "sad," or “band.” Easy right? Finnish sample words are for example “äiti”, meaning “mother”, or “täällä”, meaning “here”. Next letter “-Ø.” |
| Reeta: /ø/ |
| Tiina: This is pronounced like the [u] in "burn," or “sun.” Finnish words that include this are “löyly”, meaning “heat and steam of a sauna”, and “pöllö”, meaning “owl” in English. |
| Reeta: Right. Let’s use another lesson to explain that, now, let’s talk about Finnish diphthongs. What is a "diphthong?" you might be asking. |
| Tiina: Well, a "diphthong" is when you have "two vowel sounds acting as a single vowel." |
| Reeta: And Finnish has many of them. |
| Tiina: Yes, maybe the most common of these are "-ai" and "-au," "-ei," “ou” “oi”, "-yø," Let’s begin with the first one – "-ai." How is this pronounced? |
| Reeta: It’s like the [i] in "like." [Ai]. An example of this is in the word "aita," which means "fence." |
| Tiina: And then "-au." How is this pronounced? |
| Reeta: This is like the [au] as in "sauerkraut" [Au]. An example of this is in the word "auto," which means "car." |
| Tiina: And then “-ei.” Let’s hear how it’s pronounced. |
| Reeta: It sounds almost like the [a] in “wave” [Ei]. As for an example of this in a word... “hei” which means “hello” is a good one. |
| Tiina: Ok, the next one is “ou”. This is a similar sound to (o) in “vowel”. |
| Reeta: Yes, an example with this sound is “outo”, meaning “strange” or “odd”. |
| Tiina: Then we have “oi” which is similar to the ‘oi’ sound in “voice”. |
| Reeta: In Finnish some examples are voida meaning “can” and soida meaning “to ring”. |
| Tiina: And finally we have “-yø.” Let’s hear it. |
| Reeta: Absolutely. It is maybe the only sound that does not really exist in English. A very common Finnish word that contains it is “yø”... Yes the diphthong itself, meaning “night”. Let’s get another sample too, syödä. This means “to eat”. |
| Tiina: Right. I guess this basically covers the most common sounds that exist in Finnish. |
| Reeta: Yes, that’s right, and that’s about all the time we have for this lesson. Thanks for joining us everyone! |
| Tiina: Keep practicing that pronunciation, and we’ll see you next time! |
| Reeta:Nähdään taas~ hei hei! |
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