Spoken Finnish

This article deals with features of the spoken Finnish language, specifically how it is spoken in Greater Helsinki capital region. This applies also to other cities, such as Vaasa, where the regional dialect has been supplanted by "generic Finnish" due to large number of people moving in from other regions.

The basics of Finnish needed to fully understand this article can be found in pages about Finnish phonology and Finnish grammar.

Contents

1 Introduction 2 Pronunciation 3 Personal pronouns 4 Numerals 5 Verbs 6 Questions 7 Possessive suffix 8 Omission of the negative verb 9 Important regional variations 10 See also 11 External links

Introduction

As in any language, the spoken version(s) of Finnish vary, sometimes markedly, from the written form. Some of these variations are due to speakers' inexactitude, but some aspects of spoken Finnish have different grammatical properties from written Finnish. The formal language is a constructed language, a fusion of dialects that is no one's mother tongue. Some of its constructs are either too "made up" (e.g. "soft D", cf. Finnish phonology), or too dialectal, e.g. hän (see below), for use in the spoken language.

There is also the problem that purists want to avoid irregularity regardless of actual usage. There is a tendency to favor "more logical" constructs over easily pronounceable ones. For example, ruoka should gradate to ruoan, but it is pronounced ruuan - both spellings are used. The problem of avoiding "irregularity" is most pronounced in spelling, 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 always syömpä. The explanation is that -n- and -pä 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 rare or not found in formal language. 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. Another difference is the more extensive use of modifiers that "soften" imperatives and questions: -s (Could you ..?), -pa/-pä (Will you ..?), -han/-hän (It's certain that ..). This means that the overly harsh imperative väistä! (make way!) becomes friendlier, e.g. väistäs, väistäppä or väistähän.

Pronunciation

Since the stress in Finnish always falls on the first syllable of the word, the ends of words greater than one syllable tend to erode. This is frequently by the loss of a final vowel, or assimilation of a final vowel with a preceding vowel:

'anteeksi!' = 'sorry!' -> 'anteeks!'

'yksi' = 'one' -> 'yks'

'puhun suomea' = 'I speak Finnish' -> 'puhun suomee'

A related phenomenon is the final consonant sandhi, similar to the initial consonant mutation in Welsh. It allows the speech to not to "get stuck" to word boundaries, and because of this, may be heard even in formal language. When a word ends in a stressed mora, which ends in a vowel or an omittable consonant, the consonant beginning the next word is doubled and it connects the words. For example, nyt vaan becomes nyvvaan. The two words end up being pronounced as if they were a compound word, i.e. the auxiliary stress is on the syllables beginning the words. This is virtually never written down, except in dialectal transcriptions. For example, "Now it arrives! You go first":

Nyt se tulee! Mene sinä ensin. (standard)

Ny se tulee! Mee sä ensin. (spoken, usually spelled like this)

Nysse tulee! Meessä ensin. (actual pronunciation)

If the consonant cannot be omitted, this does not happen. For example:

Menetkö sinä ensin?

Meeksä ensin? = "Will you go first?"

The meaning would change, if the consonant was omitted:

Mene sinä ensin.

Meessä ensin. = "You go first."

Generally, you should notice that spoken Finnish is not neatly divided up into words as the spelling would suggest, due to other phonotactical sandhi effects. For example, regardless of word boundaries, np is always mp, nk is always ŋk (where ŋ is a velar nasal). Observe the result, if we denote only an actual break in pronunciation with a space:

Viitsisitsäottaattompois japistääŋoveŋkii?

Viitsisit sä ottaa ton pois ja pistää oven kii? (standard spelling)

Viitsisitkö sinä ottaa tuon pois ja pistää oven kiinni? (formal language)

Personal pronouns

Some dialects have the full-length personal pronouns 'minä' and 'sinä', but most most people use shorter equivalents, like these found in Greater Helsinki region.

minä -> mä

sinä -> sä

The root words are also shorter:

minu- -> mu-

sinu- -> su-

The third person pronouns 'hän', 'he' are commonly used in spoken language only in Southwestern Finland, and increasingly rarely also there. Elsewhere they are usually replaced by their non-personal equivalents - note that there is no pejorative sense in talking about people as 'it', unlike in English.

hän -> se

he -> ne

For example, the sentence "Did he mistake me for you?" has these forms:

Luuliko hän minua sinuksi?

Luuliks se mua suks?

Numerals

Numerals 1-10 in colloquial spoken Finnish:

yks (yksi)

kaks (kaksi)

kolme

neljä

viis (viisi)

kuus (kuusi)

seittemän (seitsemän)

kaheksan (kahdeksan)

yheksän (yhdeksän)

kymmenen

Numbers 1-10 are not only used in counting, they also have their own names which can be different from the numerals used in counting. Numbers that have longer names are often shortened in speech. This may be problematic for foreigner to understand, if she/he has learned words by book:

ykkönen (number one)

kakkonen (number two)

kolmonen (number three)

nelonen: (number four)

viitonen (number five) -> vitonen

kuutonen (number six) -> kutonen

seitsemän (number seven) -> seiska

kahdeksikko (number eight) -> kasi

yhdeksikkö (number nine) -> ysi

kymmenen (number ten) -> kymppi

Verbs

As noted in the Finnish grammar page, the passive form is normally used in speech for first-person plural. This happens in all tenses, and also for the conditional:

'me olemme olleet lomalla' = 'we have been on holiday' -> 'me on oltu lomalla', 'me ollaan oltu lomalla'

In the latter case the 'me' is obligatory, whereas it is not in the 'proper' case since the verb's inflection indicates the person and number. However, 'ollaan oltu lomalla' may be used for example when being asked 'Where have you been?'='Missä te olette olleet?', yet this is very spoken language, and should not be used in written text.

The third-person singular form of the present tense is often used after 'ne' in place of the plural form. The full present-tense paradigm of 'puhua' = 'to speak' in everyday speech is:

mä puhun (minä puhun)

sä puhut (sinä puhut)

se puhuu (hän puhuu)

me puhutaan (me puhumme)

te puhutte (te puhutte)

ne puhuu (he puhuvat)

Some frequently used short verbs have abbreviated (irregular) roots. There is a peculiarity here: in Finnish, the third person imperative is the root (uninflected form) for personal forms. For example, mene! (go!) gives the personal forms menen, menet, menee (I go, you go, he goes, respectively). The first infinitive is mennä "to go", where consonant gradation changes -nn- into -n-, the final -ä is removed and -e- is added: mennä -> mene-. However, the root might change in spoken language, even though the infinitive stays the same.

engl.	I inf.	imp.	irreg. imp.
be	olla	ole	oo
go	mennä	mene	mee
come	tulla	tule	tuu
put	panna	pane	paa

For example, Mene tai tule, mutta pane se ovi kiinni ja ole hiljaa -> Mee tai tuu, mut paa se ovi kii ja oo hiljaa. (word-by-word) "Go or come, but put the door closed and be quiet." The reply might be Meen tai tuun, paan oven kii ja oon hiljaa ("I will go, put it closed and be quiet"). The infinitives are unchanged: Mennä tai tulla, panna ovi kii ja olla hiljaa ("To go or to come, to put it closed and to be quiet").

Questions

In everyday speech, the -ko/kö suffix has the -s clitic added, becoming -kos/kös, which in turn reduces to -ks:

olenko minä hengissä? = 'am I alive?' -> oonksmä hengissä?
puhutko sinä englantia? = 'do you (sg.) speak English?' -> puhutsä englantii? or puhuksä englantii?
tuliko hän jo? = 'did he/she come yet?' -> tulikse jo? (via tuliko se jo?)
tekeekö Pekka jotain järkevääkin? = 'does Pekka do something that makes sense, too?' -> tekeeks Pekka jotain järkevääki?

haluammeko me nyt lähteä? = 'do we want to go now?' -> halutaanksme ny lähtee? (via halutaanko me nyt lähteä?)
odotatteko te tässä hetken? = 'would you (pl.) wait here for a moment?' -> ootattekste täs hetken?
sanoivatko he jotain? = 'did they say something?' -> sanoksne jotain? (via sanoiko ne jotain?)

The clitic -s is also found in imperatives, e.g. menes "(I expect you to) go!"

In e.g. the Helsinki area, the -tkö elides not to -ks, but -t before a 's', e.g. menetkö sä → menet sä. Because this is identical to sä menet except for the word order, question formation by word order is grammaticalized.

Possessive suffix

Spoken language has a different grammar for the possessive suffix. For direct addresses, save for one form it is not used, so that the pronoun cannot be omitted. Even in the second-person singular, the pronoun is virtually never omitted.

Formal	Spoken	English
(minun) taloni	mun talo	my house
(sinun) talosi	(sun) talos	your (sg) house
(hänen) talonsa	sen talo	his/her house
(meidän) talomme	meiän talo	our house
(teidän) talonne	teiän talo	your (pl) house
(heidän) talonsa	niitten talo	their house

Notice one fact: Finnish has no possessive pronouns; these pronouns are formed like "I's house", "you's house", "we's house".

However, the suffices -s, -nsa and -nne are used to avoid repeating a pronoun, e.g. "He took his hat and left" is Se otti lakkinsa ja lähti. (The incorrect word-by-word translation from English *Se otti sen lakin ja lähti would mean "He took the hat and left".)

Omission of the negative verb

When a negative sentence is formed, the main verb goes into the imperative mood and gives all of its inflections to the negative verb ei, e.g. tuemme → emme tue. Usually the word mitään ("anything") and an expletive is added to the sentence. This means that even if the negative verb ei is left out, the meaning is indicated by this context. For example:

Ei se mitään osaa. "He doesn't know anything."

(Vittu) se mitään osaa. "(Fucking) he know anything."

Usually this construction indicates mistrust or frustration. (There is a less than serious text calling this aggressiivi.) However, it can be a neutral negative statement: Tästä artikkelista mitään opi (From this article, you don't learn anything).

Important regional variations

This is a feature of several dialects, such as those of Pohjanmaa and Savo: breaking up consonant clusters on syllable boundaries with an epenthetic vowel. The neutral vowel is the same as the preceding vowel. For example, juhla -> juhula "celebration", salmi -> salami "strait", palvelu -> palavelu "service", halpa -> halapa, äffä -> ähävä (via ähvä) "letter F". All words do not expand, e.g. lapsi, maksu, länsi. It appears that the first consonant determines if the word expands: mutable clusters begin with an L or H, and immutable clusters begin with P, K, T, N, M, R and S. (The remaining consonants D, J, and V do not form clusters in native Finnish.) Likewise, double consonants are immutable.

• Helsinki: Despite this text describing primarily the Helsinki area speech, there are some features that are not found elsewhere.
  • One is the word sillai "in that way", which is usually something else like silleen elsewhere.
  • Partitive plurals ending -ja/-jä in generic Finnish become -i, and likewise the partitive plural -ia/-iä simplifies to -ii: märkiä takkeja -> märkii takkei "wet jackets".
  • The first infinitive, e.g. juosta "to run", is replaced by the third-person form juoksee "runs" by some speakers. For example, standard Voisitko sinä juosta hakemaan sen becomes Voisitsä juoksee hakeen sen "Could you run to get it".
  • Like in the Western dialects, abbreviation occurs. Final syllables in frequently used words may erode, like sitten -> sit, mutta -> mut. Case endings might be abbreviated, usually by the loss of the final vowel, e.g. siltä -> silt. (If a geminate would be "left dangling" at the end of the word, it becomes a single consonant, e.g. talossa -> *taloss -> talos.)
  • Helsinki also has a local slang, containing foreign loanwords which may be unintelligible to people from other parts of Finland.
• Karelia: minä -> mie, sinä -> sie
• Turku (west coast): minä -> mää, sinä -> sää
• Savo: some pronoun changes, me -> myö, and te -> työ. Notice that the Savo dialect has complicated changes in grammar, vowels and consonants compared to the standard language, e.g. eilen -> öylen, meni -> mänj (palatalization), omaa rataansa -> ommoo rattoosa. The Savo dialect is the largest single dialect, and as such, has variants that differ significantly.
• Pohjanmaa: Consonant clusters with -j- are not allowed, so that a -i- is pronounced instead, e.g. kirja -> kiria. Minor vowel changes, for example, taloa -> talua. Particularly, the half-long vowels (found in word-final codaless single-vowel syllables) are lenghtened into full-blown long vowels, as in iso -> isoo. The sound D is completely replaced with R, which produces problems such as that there is no contrast between veden (of water) and veren (of blood).
• Vaasa, Pohjanmaa, to an extent generic Finnish, too: Many frequently used expressions become clitics - this is optional, though. E.g. pronouns become clitics for the negative verb ei and for the verb "to be". In this table, the apostrophe (') is something between a full J and no sound at all.

Written	Spoken	Written example	Spoken example
minä	m'	minä olen, minä en, minä en ole	moon, men, mäen o
sinä	s'	sinä olet, sinä et, sinä et ole	soot, säet, säet o
hän	s'	hän on, hän ei, hän ei ole	son, sei, sei'oo
me	m'	me olemme, me emme, me emme ole	mollaan, mei, mei'olla
te	t'	te olette, te ette, te ette ole	tootte, tette, tette oo
he	n'	he ovat, he eivät, he eivät ole	noon, nei, nei'oo

One small detail, which irritates people from other places to no end, is that the word kuka ("who") is replaced by its partitive form, ketä ("at who"), e.g. Ketä siellä oli? ("Who was there?") Other unusual question pronouns are mihinä (std. missä, "where") and mihkä (std. mihin, "into where"). Here, the word mihinä uses the ancient Finnish locative currently known as the essive case, instead of the standard specialized locative inessive case.

See also

• List of phonetics topics

External links

• Finnish regional dialects (http://www.internetix.fi/opinnot/opintojaksot/8kieletkirjallisuus/aidinkieli/murteet/)
• IsooSormus.net - Sormusten herra Etelä-Pohojammaan murtehella (http://www.isoosormus.net/) - The Lord of the Rings in Southern Pohjanmaa dialect
• Savo kaekuu keskellä mualimoo ja näkkyy Internetissä (http://savo.kolhoos.ee/stories/storyReader$15) - A text about how Savonian people speak, in the respective dialect.
• http://savonsanomat.fi/muljaatin/ Standard Finnish-Savo converter.