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.
1 comment:
Hi again! I'm wondering about the difference in Finnish pronunciation between y and u ? Also, the Swedish a ? In American English, the a's in "car" and "cat" are distinct, and the distinction is exactly the same as the "a" versus umlauted "a" in Finnish...
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