Colloquial Finnish


Colloquial Finnish is the standard colloquial dialect of the Finnish language. It is spoken in the Greater Helsinki region, and in urbanized areas in the Tavastian and Central Finland dialectal areas, such as the cities of Tampere, Jyväskylä, Lahti, Hyvinkää, and Hämeenlinna. In addition, this applies also to the 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 of Finnish often vary from the written form. Some of its constructs are either too arbitrary, or too dialectal, e.g. hän, 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 syönpä, even though the pronunciation is usually syömpä. The explanation is that -n- and -pä 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. In some variants of spoken Finnish -n kanssa is abbreviated into a clitic that is effectively a comitative case, e.g. -nkans or -nkaa.

Pronunciation

Reflexes of dental fricatives

The most common reflexes for old Finnish dental fricatives are for, and or for. For example, metsä, metsän or mettä, metän ← meθθä, meθän "forest, of the forest" and meidän < meiðän "ours". Loss of also occurs, e.g. meiän. 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 complicated 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. isä'iän ← isän ääni "father's voice". Both pronunciations can be heard in the Helsinki area. This means that the genitive/accusative form -n, 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.

Final vowels

In standard written Finnish, there are certain words ending with the letter i which, when spoken, end in a consonant with the i appearing only by liaison when case endings are added, but carry the last i in the formal dictionary form.
This does not apply to certain other words ending in i such as tuli, takki, nupi, and taksi, where the final i is always pronounced in colloquial spoken Finnish and the i is thus critical to the meaning.
Also, in standard language, an "I-E mutation" is seen, where is used in the nominative and in some oblique forms. This is "removed" or "added" according to the particular construction, and in spoken Finnish, a variety is seen.
Particularly in Helsinki, the deletion of some, but not all word-final vowels even beyond occurs sometimes especially if no ambiguity results from its disappearance. This is a feature of Western Finnish dialects, found also in Savonian dialects and Estonian.

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.
An or cluster also appears in many adjectives:
In other areas of Finland, these clusters may have a different fate. Another common dialectal variant is the raising of to in the adjectives: pimiä. Some rarer versions of this suffix include -jä / -ja, -ie, and even -ii.
Similar to the diphthongization of older to , 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:
A related phenomenon is the final consonant sandhi. It improves the rhythm of speech and allows the speech to not to "get stuck" to word boundaries, and because of this, may be heard even in formal language. When a word ends in a stressed mora, which ends in a vowel or an omittable consonant, the consonant beginning the next word is doubled and it connects the words. The two words end up being pronounced with auxiliary stress is on the syllables beginning the words. This is virtually never written down, except in dialectal transcriptions. For example, "Now it arrives! You go first":
If the consonant cannot be omitted without ambiguity, this does not happen. For example:
The meaning would change, if the consonant was omitted:
Generally, one should notice that spoken Finnish is not neatly divided up into words as the spelling would suggest, due to other phonotactical sandhi effects. For example, regardless of word boundaries, np is always, nk is always .

Personal pronouns

Some dialects have the full-length personal pronouns minä and sinä, but most people use shorter equivalents, like these found in Greater Helsinki region:
Note: these do differ depending on where the speaker is from. For example minä can also be mie, miä, mää etc.
The root words are also shorter:
The third-person pronouns hän and he, are rarely used in the spoken language outside of Southwestern Finland and are getting rare there, as well. Elsewhere, they are usually replaced by their non-personal equivalents. Unlike in English, there is no pejorative sense in talking about people as 'it'. Animals, however, are always called 'it' even in written Finnish.
For example, the sentence "Did he mistake me for you?" has these forms:
Similarly, non-personal demonstrative pronouns are often used in place of hän or he, 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:

Numerals

Numerals 1-10 in colloquial spoken Finnish:
  1. yks
  2. kaks
  3. kolme
  4. neljä
  5. viis
  6. kuus
  7. seittemä
  8. kaheksa
  9. yheksä
  10. kymmene
Numbers 11-19 are formed by appending -toista, which can be shortened to -toist. Numbers 20-90 are formed by appending -kymmentä, which can be shortened to -kymment or even -kyt. Kolme, neljä and seittemän can be abbreviated to kol-, nel- and seit- with -kytä, but not independently, as in kolkytäkolme "33" or seitkytäneljä "74".
If one is forced to count fast then even shorter forms are used:
  1. yy
  2. kaa
  3. koo
  4. nee
  5. vii
  6. kuu
  7. sei / see
  8. kas
  9. ys
  10. kymp
-toista becomes -toi, -too or even -to. -kymmentä becomes -kyt, with 20-60 typically retaining their longer numeral forms. 70 is typically seitkyt or seiskyt, while 80 and 90 do with kasi- and ysi-.
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 she/he/it has learnt words by book:
The -kko suffix normally denotes a group of x people, but on 8 and 9, it doubles as a synonym for the numeral's name. Kahdeksikko is also used to describe a figure eight shape.
The regular -Onen / -inen forms can additionally be used of objects with an ID number. For example, bus 107 is called sataseiska, and a competition winner is an ykkönen

Verbs

Pronoun usage

Personal pronouns are used extensively in spoken Finnish whereas in formal forms the pronoun is often optional. Furthermore, the pronouns themselves in spoken Finnish are different from those used in formal Finnish.
Personal pronouns mä and sä are used extensively in colloquial Finnish in place of minä and sinä. The pronouns se and ne, which in the formal language are used only as impersonal pronouns meaning are used in the spoken language as personal pronouns.
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
Another is that the third person plural suffix -vat or -vät is not used in the spoken language; instead, the third person singular form is used with plural meaning being conveyed by the pronoun ne
Therefore, the full present-tense paradigm of puhua "to speak" in everyday speech is:
Some e-stem verbs have abbreviated oblique forms, where /n/ or /l/ is elided. This class includes only four frequently used verbs. In Finnish, verbs have an infinitive form, marked with -ta and used in the infinitive, and an oblique form, which is used in personal forms. Consonant gradation and assimilation of the 't' in -ta 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 stemirreg. stem
beollaole-oo-
cometullatule-tuu-
gomennämene-mee-
putpannapane-paa-

For example, these forms, as such, are represented by the imperatives:
To demonstrate the use of the personal form, the reply is:
The infinitives are unchanged, as in:
As are participles, despite them using the oblique stem:
The 't' at the end of participles ending -nut, -rut, -lut, -sut is often dropped when no consonant follows, or replaced by gemination of the following consonant.
but
is actually pronounced as if it were
In the formal language some pronouns are considered optional, but in spoken language the pronoun is usually enunciated but may be optional when answering questions.
In the latter example, dropping me would change the meaning from a statement to a suggestion
Compare the conjugation of OLLA in the formal language and in the spoken or colloquial language. Table 2 shows in highlights the areas where there are differences in the structures between formal and informal. Optional pronouns are in brackets. English equivalent is in Table 3.

Questions

In everyday speech, the -ko/kö suffix has the -s clitic added, becoming -kos/kös, which in turn reduces to -ks:
The choice of morphemes -kos/kös or -ks is not always purely dialectal or accidental. Many Finns regularly use more than one variation in their speech. The choice might depend among others on the rhythm of the sentence or the tempo of the discussion. Sometimes it has other clearly communicational purposes e.g. the longer variation might be used to soften an intruding question.
The clitic -s is also found in imperatives, e.g. mees " go!" It can also be, that the -tkö elides not to -ks, but -t before a 's', e.g. menetkö sä ? meet sä. Because this is identical to sä menet except for the word order, questions are indicated by word order.

Possessive suffix

Spoken language has a different grammar for the possessive suffix. For direct addresses, save for one form it is not used, so that the pronoun cannot be omitted. Even in the second-person singular, the pronoun is virtually never omitted. In contrast, in the literary language, the pronoun is optional and typically omitted. Compare English in which, e.g., "The house to which this door belongs" would be the correct written form even though "the house whose door this is" would be the more common spoken version.
FormalSpokenEnglish
talonimun talomy house
talosisun talo/talosyour house
talonsasen talohis/her house
talommemeiän taloour house
talonneteiän taloyour house
talonsaniitten/niien talotheir house

Here, the pronoun of the literary form is also shown.
Notice one fact: Finnish has no possessive adjectives. The pronouns are regularly inflected, like if "I's house", "you's house", "we's house".
However, the suffixes -s, -nsa and -nne are used to avoid repeating a pronoun, e.g. "He took his hat and left" is Se otti lakkinsa ja lähti.

Omission of the negative verb

When a negative sentence is formed, the main verb goes into the imperative mood and gives all of its inflections to the negative verb ei, e.g. tuemme → emme tue. Usually the word mitään and an expletive is added to the sentence. This means that even if the negative verb ei is left out, the meaning is indicated by this context. For example:
This omission of the negative verb ei is considered one of the most recent changes in Finnish. Usually this construction indicates mistrust or frustration. However, it can be a neutral negative statement: Tästä artikkelista mitään opi.

Regional variation

Linguists such as Mielikäinen argue that the dialects of Finnish have been considerably homogenized by 20th century developments of urbanization and other internal population movements to the point that "pure" dialects have disappeared. "Local spoken languages" have developed from standard Finnish to give variety with essentially standard Finnish structure but with some local features. Considerable stigma has been associated with dialects perceived as rural in the 20th century. People who have moved to the city have adopted a variety resembling standard Finnish, which has been imposed upon dialect speakers by the school, the military and the employers.
Breaking up some consonant clusters on syllable boundaries with an epenthetic vowel is a feature of several dialects, such as those of Ostrobothnia and Savonia: The neutral vowel is the same as the preceding vowel. For example, juhla → juhula "celebration", salmi → salami "strait", palvelu → palavelu "service", halpa → halapa "cheap", äffä → ähävä "letter F". Pairs of dissimilar consonants with /l/ or /h/ as the first consonant are subject to epenthesis; other clusters or geminates are not. However, a strong epenthetic vowel is seen as dialectal, and in Helsinki and urbanized areas, indicates origins "in the countryside".

Tavastian dialects

Tavastian dialects are diverse because other, surrounding dialects have influenced them. The following features are all found in Finnish spoken in Helsinki, and many of them occur also in some other Tavastian dialects.
WrittenSpokenWritten exampleSpoken example
minäm'minä olen, minä en, minä en olemoon, mäen, mäen o
sinäs'sinä olet, sinä et, sinä et olesoot, säet, säet o
häns'hän on, hän ei, hän ei oleson, sei, sei'oo
mem'me olemme, me emme, me emme olemollaan, mei, mei'olla
tet'te olette, te ette, te ette oletootte, tette, tette oo
hen'he ovat, he eivät, he eivät olenoon, nei, nei'oo

  1. Aila Mielikäinen.
  2. Heikki Paunonen.