Colloquial or spoken Finnish () is the unstandardized spoken variety of the Finnish language, in contrast with the standardized form of the language (). It is used primarily in personal communication and varies somewhat between the different dialects.
This article focuses on the variety of spoken Finnish that is predominant in the Helsinki metropolitan area and urbanized areas in the Tavastian and Central Finland dialectal areas, such as the cities of Tampere, Jyväskylä, Lahti, Hyvinkää, and Hämeenlinna – as well as in coastal cities such as Vaasa and Porvoo, which have been traditionally Swedish-speaking and have experienced an influx of Finnish speakers from a variety of dialectal areas.
The standard language takes most of its features from these dialects, i.e. most "dialectal" features are reductions with respect to this form of language. The combination of the common spoken Finnish and a dialect gives a regional variant (), which has some local idiosyncrasies but is essentially similar to the common spoken Finnish.
The basics of Finnish needed to fully understand this article can be found in pages about Finnish phonology and Finnish grammar.
Introduction As in any language, the spoken version(s) of Finnish often vary from the written form. Some of the latter's constructs are either too arbitrary (e.g. "soft d", cf. Finnish phonology), or too dialectal, e.g. (see below), for use in the spoken language. Furthermore, some very common and "accentless" sound changes are not reflected in the standard language, particularly fusion, liaison and some diphthong reductions.
There is also the problem that purists want to avoid irregularity regardless of actual usage. This has left some sound changes common in spoken language out from the standard language. There is a tendency to favor "more logical" constructs over easily pronounceable ones. This ideal does reflect spoken Finnish usage to a degree, as Finnish is demonstrably a conservative language with few reduction processes, but it is not entirely accurate. The problem of avoiding "irregularity" is most evident in spelling, where internal sandhi is not transcribed, because there is the idea that morphemes should be immutable. For example, the "correct" spelling is ("I eat" with emphasis), even though the pronunciation is usually . The explanation is that and are in different morphemes just like the explanation that English boys is not spelled with a z is that they are in different morphemes.
There are also a number of grammatical forms which are used in written Finnish, but only very rarely in spoken. For example, there are a number of constructions using participles which are usually rendered analytically in speech. Some cases and moods are rarely constructive in spoken Finnish, e.g. the instructive and comitative cases and the potential mood. Some survive only in expressions.
On the other hand, spoken language has its own features rarely or never found in formal language. Most importantly, there is very common external sandhi, and some assimilatory sound changes. (On the contrary, there is no vowel reduction.) In some variants (e.g. Vaasa, Kymenlaakso) of spoken Finnish ("with [something]") is abbreviated into a clitic that is effectively a comitative case, e.g. or .
Pronunciation
Reflexes of dental fricatives The most common reflexes for old Finnish dental fricatives are for , and or for . For example, or ← "forest, of the forest" and < "ours". Loss of also occurs, e.g. . These are seen as "accent-free" pronunciations. Dialects generally have different reflexes — in fact, the different reflexes are used as a distinguishing feature between different dialects. For more details, see Finnish phonology.
Word-final n One important sound change, which has gone to completion in Estonian but occurs idiosyncratically in Finnish, is mutation of word-final into a glottal stop , orthographically represented by an apostrophe. In some dialects, such as Savo, word-final is systematically replaced by , e.g. ← "father's voice". Both pronunciations can be heard in the Helsinki area. This means that the genitive/accusative form , which is very common in any form of Finnish, is simply noted by a glottal stop. However, this glottal stop undergoes sandhi whenever followed by consonant, or more often than not (see below).
Final vowels Certain wordforms that end in in Standard Finnish occur without the word-final in the spoken language. This includes the base form of certain word stems as well as inflectional endings. In nouns this affects the translative case ending and the 2nd person singular possessive suffix . In verbs, loss of i affects the conditional mood ending and, in certain verb inflection classes where it is preceded by an s, the preterite ending . These endings occur word-finally in 3rd person forms. +Final deletionWrittenStandardColloquialMeaningInflected form of 'sorry, excuse me' –'one' –'two' –'new' –'(s/he) would be' 'to be''your piece”'(s/he) returned' 'piece' 'to return''your head''(s/he) reached, was released' 'head' 'to reach, be released'
In many dialects loss of final i is commonplace not only in these cases but also elsewhere.
Particularly in Helsinki, deletion of or , spelt «ä» and «a», respectively, in highly frequent words is common. This is a feature of Western Finnish dialects, found also in Savonian dialects and Estonian. — 'but' — 'yes' — elative case, 'out of / away from the inside of'
Vowel clusters and diphthongs Word-final vowel clusters ending in or have much variation in dialects of Finnish. Especially in Helsinki they assimilate, where only the resulting chroneme marks the partitive in many words. — "I speak Finnish" — "(some) long (things)"; partitive plural of , long An or cluster also appears in many adjectives: — "dark" In other areas of Finland, these clusters may have a different fate. Another common dialectal variant is the raising of to in the adjectives: . (Partitives are unaffected by this.) Some rarer versions of this suffix include , , and even .
Similar to the diphthongization of older to (unchanged in standard Estonian), many eastern dialects of Finnish diphthongize also the long vowels to . In Savonian dialects, these have shifted further on to .
can become when in contact with another vowel. In many cases this results from colloquial deletion of . For example: for standard "I know" for standard "to take away" for standard "to hit" for standard "to bring"
Sandhi A related phenomenon is the final consonant sandhi. When two words co-occur in the same prosodic unit, the consonant beginning the second word assimilates to the word-final consonant in the first word, creating a long consonant. This is not commonly written down, except in dialectal transcriptions. For example, {| class="wikitable" |+ ! !Writing !Pronunciation !Meaning |- |Standard
| rowspan="2" |“It's coming now” |- |Casual
Personal pronouns Some dialects have the full-length personal pronouns and , but most people use shorter forms, like these found in the Helsinki metropolitan area region: → →
Note: these do differ depending on where the speaker is from. For example can also be , , etc.
The root words are also shorter:
→ , e.g. → "my" → , e.g. → "yours"
The third-person pronouns ('he', 'she', singular 'they') and (plural 'they'), are rarely used in the spoken language outside of Southwestern Finland and are getting rare there, as well. Elsewhere, they are usually replaced by and , which in the standard language do not refer to people.
→ →
For example, the sentence "Did he mistake me for you?" has these forms:
or
Similarly, non-personal demonstrative pronouns are often used in place of or , meaning people may be referred to as 'that' and 'those'. This also does not carry any pejorative meaning. The words are also changed from their written form.
→ → → →
For example, when pointing out a culprit, the sentence "He broke it." has these forms:
or
Numerals Numerals 1–10 in colloquial spoken Finnish: () () () () () () () () () () Numbers 11-19 are formed by appending , which can be shortened to . Numbers 20-90 are formed by appending , which can be shortened to or even . , and can be abbreviated to , and with , but not independently, as in "33" or "74".
When counting out loud, even shorter forms are used, mostly one-syllable words with long vowels:
/
becomes , or even . becomes , with 20-60 typically retaining their longer numeral forms (e.g. rather than for 20). 70 is typically or , while 80 and 90 do with and .
The numerals 1–9 have their own names, different from the cardinal numbers used in counting. Numbers that have longer names are often shortened in speech. This may be problematic for a foreigner to understand, if they have learnt words by book:
(number one) (number two) (number three) (number four) (number five) → , (Helsinki slang) (number six) → (number seven) → / (number eight) → / / (number nine) → / → , (Helsinki slang)
The suffix normally denotes a group of x people, but on 8 and 9, it doubles as a synonym for the numeral's name. is also used to describe a figure eight shape.
The regular / forms can additionally be used of objects with an ID number. For example, bus 107 is called , and a competition winner is an (not or .)
Verbs
Pronoun usage Personal pronouns are used extensively in spoken Finnish whereas in formal forms the pronoun is often optional (indicated in brackets in this article). Furthermore, the pronouns themselves in spoken Finnish are different from those used in formal Finnish.
Personal pronouns and are used extensively in colloquial Finnish in place of and ('I' and singular 'you'). The pronouns and , which in the formal language are used only as non-human personal pronouns meaning ('it' and plural 'they'), are used in the spoken language as personal pronouns (which in the formal language would be ('he', 'she' and singular 'they') and (plural 'they').
See the tables below for examples.
Verb forms One striking difference between colloquial Finnish and formal Finnish is use of the passive form in the first person plural. Thus for example:
(formal language) (colloquial Finnish) We're in Helsinki
Another is that the third person plural suffix or is not used in the spoken language; instead, the third person singular form is used with plural meaning being conveyed by the pronoun ()
Therefore, the full present-tense paradigm of "to speak" in everyday speech is:
(spoken) — (standard) — — — — —
Some e-stem verbs have abbreviated (irregular) oblique forms, where or is elided. This class includes only four frequently used verbs. In Finnish, verbs have an infinitive form, marked with and used in the infinitive, and an oblique form, which is used in personal forms. Consonant gradation and assimilation of the 't' in may be applied. In the standard language, the correspondence between the two is always regular. In spoken language, some verbs have assimilated oblique forms, while retaining the regular infinitive:
engl. I inf. oblique stem irreg. stem be come go put
For example, these forms, as such, are represented by the imperatives: (standard) (word-by-word) "Go or come, but put the door closed and be quiet." To demonstrate the use of the personal form, the reply is: ("I go or come, (I) put the door closed and (I) am quiet"). The infinitives are unchanged, as in: ("To go or to come, to put the door closed and to be quiet"). As are participles, despite their using the oblique stem: ("Going or coming, door closed-putting and quiet-being").
The 't' at the end of participles ending (or etc.) is often dropped when no consonant follows, or replaced by gemination of the following consonant:
(formal) (colloquial) I didn't speak but:
(colloquial) I didn't speak to anyone is actually pronounced as if it were:
(with examples of gemination)