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blog/a-guide-to-finnish-vowels-for-swedes-in-english/index #92
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Interesting! Frankly, I didn't suspect Swedes would struggle much with Finnish vowels. Relative to other possible sticking points, of course. Some of this may be due to the fact that I've been exposed more to the Finland-Swedish dialect (finlandssvenska, and yes, it's a real dialect of Swedish — no need to compliment the native speakers for their good Swedish 😂), which certainly sounds a bit more "Finnish" vowel-wise than, say, your standard rikssvenska. To be clear, though, I'm not a native Swedish speaker, so some of these claims are just my impressions.
But generally, I've always thought Swedes would be in a relatively good position here, since AFAIK, their vowel space contains pretty close approximates for every Finnish vowel (with perhaps one slightly more "off" one — except for in finlandssvenska).
Anyway, although the guide seems mostly correct, there were some mappings I got baffled about:
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You're not wrong to equate Fin:Swe E:Ä and Ä:Ä, but it's not that helpful, since E and Ä behave basically in the same way in Swedish, right? That is, they're both usually pronounced like Finnish 'ää' (or like 'a' in Eng. 'bad') when followed by R but otherwise like Finnish 'e' or 'ee'.
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The Fin-Swe mapping U:Y doesn't sound right at all. The Finnish 'u' and 'uu' are much more like or practically the same as 'o' in Swedish 'bot' (long) or 'bott' (short).
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Fin-Swe Y:U is closer but not quite there, and I would rather just use Y:Y, since it's close enough irrespective of your Swedish dialect. Swedish and maybe even more so finlandssv. U has no real counterpart or close approximate in Finnish as it is basically somewhere "in between" the Finnish U and Y. If non-bilingual Finns fail to nail it, they might pronounce it either as Fin. U (= not really trying), or too close to Fin. Y (≈ "trying too hard" although pretty close to the long variant in rikssvenska...). However, the Finnish and finlandssv. Y vowels sound practically identical regardless of length, and it makes perfect sense to use the same letter for them. With rikssvenska, it seems that in comparison (to finlandssv.), their long U ('ful') is slightly more shifted towards Y, while the (long) Y ('syl') is closer to something more I-like, so while the rikssvenska Y is OK for Finnish Y, it's maybe a bit off. With short vowels, there seems to be little to no difference between riks- and finlandssvenska ('full'). So listening to and targeting the finlandssv. Y might be the easiest way to get the Finnish one just right, if desired.
So, a lot of text to basically argue it's simpler than you thought :) Of course, I'd assume a Swede will get deeper in trouble e.g. where Swedish simply doesn't have both the short and long variant of some vowel (short Å, anyone?), or when they can't intuitively tell which vowel combinations are diphthongs and so belonging to the same syllable. But I guess even that's not a huge problem, since identifying diphthongs has little use above flawlessly conforming with the two most important rules of Finnish speech, i.e. NO INTONATION (particularly the profoundly effeminate Swedish kind 😜) EXCEPT for a simple stress ALWAYS ON THE FIRST SYLLABLE.
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Uh, nevermind the part about possible non-existant short/long variants in Swedish. 🤦🏻♂️ Of course, compared to Finnish, there aren't any of those either. And Å has a short variant in O (in some contexts, like 'brott'). I think there's one in your first name, too... The fact that the sounds are not phonetically exactly the same in the short and long variants of some vowels is not that relevant, either.
...aaand one in your last name.
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on Jan 22, 2024
A guide to pronouncing Finnish vowels for Swedes in English
Improve your Finnish vowel pronunciation using Swedish.
https://verifa.io/blog/a-guide-to-finnish-vowels-for-swedes-in-english/index.html