Finnish Orthography Books

[srm985]

I know that Finnish pronunciation is pretty much direct...Each letter corresponds to one phoneme and then there are the given diphthongs but I would still like to perhaps find a book that covers Finnish orthography. It seems to be that there are subtle things that I do not realize without seeing an orthographic representation. For example, I studied Spanish for 8,5 years and lived in Spain (and spoke Spanish as my main language) for a year and after returning to the States I took a university course in the orthographics of Spanish and I was amazed to see the little subtleties that I was missing in the pronunciation of the language.

So on that note, if anybody has a recommendation for learning Finnish orthography it'd be great to hear. Of course, I would say that it is better to learn pronunciation naturally by repeating the sounds that you hear but I think that seeing a written pronunciation can really help.

[Upphew]

I know that Finnish pronunciation is pretty much direct...Each letter corresponds to one phoneme and then there are the given diphthongs but I would still like to perhaps find a book that covers Finnish orthography. It seems to be that there are subtle things that I do not realize without seeing an orthographic representation. For example, I studied Spanish for 8,5 years and lived in Spain (and spoke Spanish as my main language) for a year and after returning to the States I took a university course in the orthographics of Spanish and I was amazed to see the little subtleties that I was missing in the pronunciation of the language.

So on that note, if anybody has a recommendation for learning Finnish orthography it'd be great to hear. Of course, I would say that it is better to learn pronunciation naturally by repeating the sounds that you hear but I think that seeing a written pronunciation can really help.

http://www.kotus.fi/index.phtml?C=3109& ... d=58&s=289 ( this might tell you better what that book is: http://www.tuulasiimes.com/uutiset.html?2 )

That book doesn't really care about spelling, but mainly the other stuff:
"An orthography is a standardized system for using a particular writing system (script) to write a particular language. It includes rules of spelling; other elements of written language that may also be considered to be part of orthography include hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation."

edit. pronunciation and written language... most Finns talk in some dialect but write most of the time in standard language, also the day to day speech does break the grammar rules.

[Jukka Aho]

So on that note, if anybody has a recommendation for learning Finnish orthography it'd be great to hear.

For starters, check out Jukka K. Korpela’s website:

• Pronunciation of Finnish in a nutshell (for linguists)
• Pronunciation information
• Onko suomen kirjoitusjärjestelmä ihanteellinen?

He might also be able to give you some recommendations on further material about the subject.

[srm985]

edit. pronunciation and written language... most Finns talk in some dialect but write most of the time in standard language, also the day to day speech does break the grammar rules.

Yea, I guess I should have been more specific. I was more so looking for a book that covered the pronunciation of the spoken language and any pronunciation rules it may stray from in the "formal written" language.


Thanks for all of the links though.

[Upphew]

edit. pronunciation and written language... most Finns talk in some dialect but write most of the time in standard language, also the day to day speech does break the grammar rules.

Yea, I guess I should have been more specific. I was more so looking for a book that covered the pronunciation of the spoken language and any pronunciation rules it may stray from in the "formal written" language.

Ummm...
Nyt minä en oikein ymmärrä mitä sinä haet? <- formal language
Nyt mie e oikee ymmärrä mitä sie meinaat? <- my dialect
Both pronounced as written.

[jahasjahas]

Both pronounced as written.

"Pronounced as written" doesn't really describe the reality of Finnish pronunciation. It only makes sense if you're a native Finnish speaker who automatically applies all the exceptions without thinking. Korpela's "Onko suomen kirjoitusjärjestelmä ihanteellinen?", linked earlier, lists many examples.

And since you brought up dialects: just as the written word "hernekeitto" doesn't tell you that the standard Finnish pronunciation is "hernekkeitto", it doesn't tell you that the Pori dialect pronunciation is "hernekeitto", sans rajageminaatio/loppukahdennus.

[Jukka Aho]

Yea, I guess I should have been more specific. I was more so looking for a book that covered the pronunciation of the spoken language and any pronunciation rules it may stray from in the "formal written" language.

Let’s put it this way:

1. Natural, native spoken Finnish — one’s mother tongue — is typically based on the local dialect (click, click, click, click) spoken by your parents and the local kids in the area where you were born and bred. Linguists usually list seven or eight different major dialect groups for the Finnish language, but in practice, some features may change even from town to town. There’s also a form of street language / alternative vocabulary (for some words) called Stadin slangi, spoken in the Greater Helsinki area, which is sometimes listed as a local dialect and sometimes simply as “slang”. Many Finnish dialects not only use alternative forms of the common words but employ a great amount of indigenous vocabulary not found in other dialects.
2. In addition to the local dialects and slang there’s the common, informal, neutral spoken language — devoid of dialectal vocabulary or other features which would help place it in a certain locality, but also different from the standard, formal written language. The differences lie in that the words are shortened in informal ways, the grammar is relaxed, and the sentences are often simpler in their structure than what you would use in writing. Many speakers of dialect switch to this neutral, informal spoken form of the language when they’re talking to someone who speaks a different dialect. This is also the language you tend to hear on TV and radio in informal contexts.
3. Then there’s the formal spoken language, which more closely follows the rules of the written language (although usually with simpler sentence structures) and avoids colloquial shortenings. This is the language people use in polite formal occasions, such as when being interviewed on TV or giving a formal speech, and when you don’t want to appear too folksy or chatty but retain some dignified distance or matter-of-factness.
4. Finally, you can also read aloud texts written in standard, formal Finnish. Since standard written Finnish may sometimes use rather complicated sentence structures (with lots of non-finite clauses which typically require too much mental effort to construct on the fly for most speakers) and has a tendency to prefer fancy words in place of those which sound “too colloquial”, no-one speaks exactly like that... except when reading aloud texts.

In some ways, you could say the Finnish language exhibits diglossia: there’s the high-prestige, codified standard form which is used in formal occasions and in writing, and a number of “lower-prestige” and local variants for everyday speech. But it should be kept in mind that the “standard” written form of Finnish is an artificial construct devised by linguists — it is something you learn in school and by reading books and magazines, but it is no-one’s mother tongue. The actual “Finnish language” are the dialects which people speak as their mother tongues.

Due to the Finnish orthography approximating a phonetic writing system (to a degree), all variants of the Finnish language can be marked down using it. But if something is pronounced (or meant to be pronounced) in a different way to standard Finnish, it is also spelled in a different way in writing.

Instead of the words being spelled “one true way” and then pronounced in different dialectal ways, you should rather think the dialects as having various alternative (or original!) forms of the “standard” Finnish words whose pronunciation and spelling go in lock-step (as that’s the thing about Finnish orthography), both differing from the standardized form. For instance, whereas the “standard” Finnish has settled on using the pronunciation/spelling kolme for ‘three’, many dialects use the word kolome with the additional vowel and syllable — spelled and pronounced that way.

It is just that dialects are not typically used for literary works (save for some attempts at humor or authenticity) so you rarely see texts written in a dialect. Some magazines and papers occasionally publish columns or tongue-in-cheek letters to the editor written in a dialect, though, and a few years back there was a craze of publishing classic comic book albums (Tintin, Asterix, Donald Duck etc.) in various Finnish dialects just for the novelty value.

Speakers of dialects do not “convert” standard Finnish to a dialect when they’re reading texts aloud — text remains in the form in which it was written, even when read aloud by someone who typically speaks in a different way. It is even quite easy to emulate a speaker of another dialect simply by reading aloud text written in that dialect. This is all due to the near-phonetic writing system which does not really lend itself to the thought that the pronunciation of the words could change without changing the spelling to match, too.

Many speakers of Finnish are quite versatile in using the different forms of the language where appropriate... some less so. Still, even if someone readily switches to the neutral, colloquial Finnish at will, there might be something in their accent, or the style of their preferred shortenings, or the choice of personal pronouns, or some other random little words which can give away where they are from.

[Upphew]

Both pronounced as written.

"Pronounced as written" doesn't really describe the reality of Finnish pronunciation. It only makes sense if you're a native Finnish speaker who automatically applies all the exceptions without thinking. Korpela's "Onko suomen kirjoitusjärjestelmä ihanteellinen?", linked earlier, lists many examples.

And since you brought up dialects: just as the written word "hernekeitto" doesn't tell you that the standard Finnish pronunciation is "hernekkeitto", it doesn't tell you that the Pori dialect pronunciation is "hernekeitto", sans rajageminaatio/loppukahdennus.

Pronounced as written is a good approximation imho.

I did read the linked articles and at least tried to avoid the exceptions and would have written hernekkeitto if I had used that. But if you think I botched up especially the formal one, please correct me. And that was meant without any sarcasm.

[jahasjahas]

Pronounced as written is a good approximation imho.

Given that the OP started his first message with "I know that Finnish pronunciation is pretty much direct...Each letter corresponds to one phoneme and then there are the given diphthongs...", telling them the same thing doesn't really help

I did read the linked articles and at least tried to avoid the exceptions and would have written hernekkeitto if I had used that. But if you think I botched up especially the formal one, please correct me. And that was meant without any sarcasm.

I'm not saying there was anything wrong with your examples. It's just not answering the OP's question.

Fonetiikan ja suomen äänneopin perusteet by Kari Suomi, Juhani Toivanen and Riikka Ylitalo (Gaudeamus, Helsinki, 2006), mentioned in Korpela's first article, sounds like it might be worth a read. (Haven't read it myself, though.)

In addition to the local dialects and slang there’s the common, informal, neutral spoken language

You make it sound like it's not a real dialect, but isn't it simply the dialect used in the Uusimaa region that's spread everywhere through the mass media?

[Jukka Aho]

In addition to the local dialects and slang there’s the common, informal, neutral spoken language

You make it sound like it's not a real dialect, but isn't it simply the dialect used in the Uusimaa region that's spread everywhere through the mass media?

In my opinion, it’s this amorphous blob which has lots of commonality but is still realized in a bit different way for every speaker. For example, people from some regions prefer using mie (for the personal pronoun which in standard formal Finnish is rendered as minä) even in these contexts while others go for (the arguably more common) mä. People from my region (Ostrobothnia) tend to shorten bits such as Oletko sinä as ooksä while those from the south rather use ootsä. Some use nuo and some others noi, and so on, and so forth.

Yet, all this is done in the spirit of avoiding actually using a (rustic-sounding) dialect with its characteristic vowel changes, extra syllables, or obscure local dialectal words — of which the latter I guess must exist in the Uusimaa region dialect as well and which are probably unknown in the other parts of the country, such as the words used in old-timey agrarian contexts and those popping up in the speech of the elderly.

Also note that even the most common Helsinki region urban slang terms (such as dösä, hima, mutsi etc.) or the local habit of using the rather jarring mangled 1st infinitive forms (“älkää koittako ohjaa ja kuvaa samalla”, “ei voi enää huijaa työajoissa”) have not met much adoption outside the region. I guess the local speakers also themselves generally avoid them in contexts where their speech should be informal but neutral (such as when discussing with speakers of other dialects on TV or radio) if they have any sense of register.