Finnish alphabet
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The Finnish alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, and especially its Swedish extension. It comprises 29 letters:
The vowel letter "Å" is carried over from the Swedish alphabet, and is retained only for the purpose of writing Swedish names of persons and places.
The main features of the Finnish alphabet that make it different from the basic Latin alphabet are the two extra vowel letters "Ä" and "Ö" in the end of the list (plus the Swedish "Å"). Unlike the similar looking German umlauted letters (from which the glyphs are derived), they are considered letters in their own right and thus alphabetized separately (after "Z"). The dots above the base glyph are not modifications but essential parts of each letter, much like the hook in "Q" distinguishes "Q" from "O". As Finnish is unrelated to Germanic languages, the Germanic umlaut or convention of considering "Ä" and "AE", and "Ö" and "OE" equivalent is unknown in Finnish. Moreover, in Finnish, both "AE" and "OE" are vowel sequences, not single letters, and have independent meanings, e.g. hän (he, she) vs. haen (I seek).
In handwritten text, the actual form of the extra marking may vary from a pair of dots to a pair of short vertical bars, to a single horizontal bar, or to a figure resembling a tilde (in practice, almost any diacritic mark situated above the base glyph would probably be interpreted as a carelessly written pair of dots), but in computerized character sets, if the correct graphemes are available, these alternatives are incorrect.
If the proper letters are not available, "Ä" and "Ö" must be replaced with "A" and "O", respectively. Although the distinction is phonemic, the resulting graphical shape does not differ greatly from the correct word, and the correct meaning can usually be reconstructed. Nevertheless, there are lots of minimal pairs, e.g. saari (island) vs. sääri (leg), or vaara (danger) vs. väärä (wrong).
[edit] Notes about writing inherent and foreign sounds
The Finnish orthography represents all morphemes phonologically, i.e. a morpheme has always only one representation, as if pronounced in isolation. When writing Finnish, the foundational principle is that each letter stands for one sound and each sound is always represented by the same letter, within the bounds of single morpheme. The most notable exception to this rule is the ng-sound, which do not have an allotted letter (instead, it is written with "NG" when geminated or – when followed directly by "K" – merely with "N").
In the Finnish writing system, some basic Latin letters are considered redundant, and other letters generally represent sounds, which are not inherent in the Finnish language. Thus, they are not used in established Finnish words, but they may occur in newer loanwords as well as in foreign proper names, and they are included in the Finnish alphabet in order to maintain international compatibility. The pronunciation of these letters varies quite a lot.
- The redundant letters are "C" (which is usually replaced with either "K" or "S"), "Q" (which is replaced with "K" or "KV"), and "X" (which is replaced with "KS" /ks/, or even just /s/).
- The letters representing foreign sounds are "B", "F", and "G" (which, however, is also used to mark the inherent ng-sound). From historical point of view, even "D" could be said to belong to this group, but the voiced d-sound is today considered an established part of standard language.
- "W" and "Z" could be classified into both of the aforementioned groups. The English-style w-sound is foreign to Finnish language, but historically "W" was used (as in German) to mark a v-sound. Although this is today considered archaic and "V" is used instead, "W" may still occur in some old surnames as a variant of "V". Likewise, voiced z-sound is not inherent in Finnish language, but "Z" was formerly used to denote /ts/. It is often pronounced /ts/, but some speakers may pronounce it as /s/.
In addition to the alien letters shared with the basic Latin (and Swedish) alphabet, "Š" and "Ž" with special diacritics have been adopted, originally from the Czech alphabet, in order to represent two extra sounds, which are not inherent in Finnish. They may be seen in transcriptions and a few loanwords: Tšekki (Czech), Tšetšenia (Chechnya), Azerbaidžan (Azerbaijan), Tšaikovski (Tchaikovsky), Gorbatšov (Gorbachev), Brežnev (Brezhnev), datša (dacha), šakki (chess), šillinki (shilling). In less careful orthography, they are often replaced with "SH" and "ZH", but this may sometimes cause confusion (for example, pasha – where "S" and "H" are pronounced as two distinct sounds – is a traditional Russian Easter delicacy, while pašša – in English, pasha – is a Turkish rank or honorary title).
Diacritical or accent marks are never added to letters in Finnish words (since the dots above the Finnish graphemes "Ä" and "Ö" are not diacritics). Generally, diacritics are retained in foreign-language proper names, e.g. Häyrén, if possible, but when arranging words alphabetically, diacritics are usually ignored. A few foreign characters or glyphs may need closer scrutiny:
- "Œ" is alphabetized as "OE", not as "Ö".
- "Æ" may sometimes be replaced with "Ä", but when retained, "Æ" is alphabetized as "AE", not as "Ä".
- "Ø" may sometimes be replaced with "Ö", but even if it is retained, these two glyphs are considered equivalent to each other.
- "Õ" and "Ő" are alphabetized as "Ö", not as "O".
- "Ü" and "Ű" are alphabetized as "Y", not as "U".
- "ß" is alphabetized as (and usually replaced with) "ss".
- "Ð" is alphabetized as (and usually replaced with) "D".
- "Þ" is alphabetized as (and usually replaced with) "TH".
