Aakkoset

The Finnish word for alphabet is aakkoset, which is the plural of the word aakkonen - letter, or alphabetic character. However, whereas we have 26 letters in the English alphabet, the Finns have 29 letters in theirs. They have three extra characters:

å/Å (which is called ruotsalainen å - the Swedish A)
ä/Ä
ö/Ö

You'll actually find keys for these three letters on the right-hand side of a Finnish keyboard. And this reveals an important fact about Finnish letters - the umlaut is not a diacritial modifier to the underlying letter. It is considered to be an entirely separate letter. So to a Finn ä is as different from a as, say, y is from u. As a result a Finnish dictionary (suomelainen sanakirja) has three extra chapters at the end, for words beginning with å, ä, and ö.

This can cause problems for English speakers, because in England there is no distinction between the ä sound in 'cat' and the a sound in 'car' (if you imagine 'cat' and 'car' pronounced in a BBC news presenter accent). But if you pronounce älä (don't) as ala, a Finn will hear you saying 'area' or 'space'. To them these two words do not sound similar at all.

And no matter how long you argue with them that they are pretty close together, and surely the context makes it clear that you meant "don't" and not "area", you'll never get a Finn to agree - not even grudgingly.

First Small Test

Here's a test for you: the Finnish word for nose is nenä. Using the essive case and the first person posessive ending, can you produce the word that in Finnish means "as my nose"?

Answer: Counting A as 1, B as 2, and so on, the answer is 14,5,14,27,14,27,14,9

Vocab list - the family

Here are some words concerning family:

perhe - family
isä - father
äiti - mother
sisko - sister
veli - brother
täti - aunt
setä - uncle
tytär - daughter
poika - son (also boy)

Interestingly, you put the words for aunt and uncle after the person's name, so Uncle Tomi would be Tomi-setä, for example.