About a pronunciation of /t/ and /d/.

[weijie]

When I learned suomea in the very beginning, I found /t/ and /d/ sound, such as in word 'ladata', no difference. I kinda use same pronunciation for both of them.
Later on my teacher told me that they are very different, a native Finn can tell immediately which sound I am producing.
Now I can pronounce /t/ right with very slight asparation, but I have difficuty in producing /d/ sound. For me, it is very hard to differentiat whether a Finn is producing t or d sound. Is there any tricks or rule that I should know to fix it?

[Jukka Aho]

Now I can pronounce /t/ right with very slight asparation, but I have difficuty in producing /d/ sound. For me, it is very hard to differentiat whether a Finn is producing t or d sound. Is there any tricks or rule that I should know to fix it?

Hard to say how to fix the hearing problem, except by listening to minimal pairs pronounced by a native speaker. But as for the pronunciation itself, when you pronounce the Finnish /t/, the tip of your tongue touches the back(/tip) of your upper front teeth. When you pronounce the Finnish /d/, you curl the tip of the tongue a bit backwards from that position and touch the soft gums behind the upper front teeth, instead.

[Pursuivant]

And it also depends on the dialect area, as in some places they only have t and in some a lot of d (dough dats also a speech fauld), and in north ostrobothnia the d can turn to an R...

[MarkP]

Positioning of the tongue is important, but the key difference between t and d in Finnish and in English is between a voiced and unvoiced sound - with t there is no voice in the throat until you get to the vowel that follows, with d there is voice in the throat already when you say the d sound.

In English, t and d are more seperate than in Finnish. In English, the tip of the tongue touches the palate behind the teeth, while in Finnish, the end of the tongue is flatter when it touches the top of the plalate and therefore reaches to behind the teeth. Also, the plosive sound (a bit like the spitting sound of t) that comes with the t in English is a little stronger, longer and more open sound. When the t sound is less plosive, it is also shorter, meaning that you reach the voicing of the next vowel quicker and so it is easier to think there was no voicing, when there was. The end result is that t and d sound much closer together in Finnish than in English. The t sound is therefore more different between the English and Finnish than the d sound, and therefore the one you should probably practice on.

To practice, use the sounds te and de.

With de, start the sound in your throat first and sometimes, make the sound in your throat, but don't actually seperate your tongue from the top of your mouth (just behind your teeth).

With te, don't start the sound with your voice in your throat. Also, you can practice just making the t with no voicing at all, in other words, don't put the vowel sound afterwards. Then put the vowel in, for te and practice making the t sound not so explosive or long.

A good word to practice the correct sound of t is with is tehtävä. You can also say dehdävä, which doesn't mean anything in Finnish, but you should start to feel and hear the difference.

Another good word is tehdä, because it has both the sounds in it. You can also practice trying to say tehdä, dehdä, tehtä, and dehtä. Only the first word means anything in Finnish, but if you can make the difference, you will hear the difference more easily as well.

[kalmisto]

weijie

Listen to a Finnish speech synthesizer say "En tiedä mitä tehdä." ( I do not know what to do )! :
http://tinyurl.com/6ad4ksp

[scarlett45]

Hey there, I'm interested in learning Finnish (after a very hard toss up between that and Norwegian and probably a few other things as well) but I have absolutely no idea where to start.

What textbook would you recommend? I've been looking at "Complete Finnish" (Sorry, it deleted the amazon link) book as I saw it in Waterstones today, but I have my reservations about it. Is there anything better out there? I'd love something with a CD though, which draws me to that.

[Upphew]

Hey there, I'm interested in learning Finnish (after a very hard toss up between that and Norwegian and probably a few other things as well) but I have absolutely no idea where to start.

What textbook would you recommend? I've been looking at "Complete Finnish" (Sorry, it deleted the amazon link) book as I saw it in Waterstones today, but I have my reservations about it. Is there anything better out there? I'd love something with a CD though, which draws me to that.

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