Colloquial Finnish

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 of Finnish often vary from the written form. Some of the latter's 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 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. 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

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 -ksi and the 2nd person singular possessive suffix -si. In verbs, loss of i affects the conditional mood ending -isi and, in certain verb inflection classes where it is preceded by an s, the preterite ending -i. These endings occur word-finally in 3rd person forms.

Written	Standard	Colloquial	Meaning	Inflected form of
anteeksi			'sorry, excuse me'	–
yksi			'one'	–
kaksi			'two'	–
uusi			'new'	–
olisi			' would be'	olla 'to be'
palasi			'your piece” ' returned'	pala 'piece' palata 'to return'
pääsi			'your head' ' reached, was released'	pää 'head' päästä '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.

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:

tiiän for standard tiedän "I know"
viiä for standard viedä "to take away"
lyyä for standard lyödä "to hit"
tuua for standard tuoda "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,

Personal pronouns

Some dialects have the full-length personal pronouns minä and sinä, 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 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 se and ne, which in the standard language do not refer to people.
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:

yks
kaks
kolme
neljä
viis
kuus
seittemä
kaheksa
yheksä
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".
When counting out loud, even shorter forms are used, mostly one-syllable words with long vowels:

yy
kaa
koo
nee
vii
kuu
sei / see
kas
ys
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 they have 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 non-human personal pronouns meaning, are used in the spoken language as personal pronouns and he.
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 or 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 stem	irreg. stem
be	olla	ole-	oo-
come	tulla	tule-	tuu-
go	mennä	mene-	mee-
put	panna	pane-	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 their 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. In contrast to the literary language, the suffix 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.

Formal	Spoken	English
taloni	mun talo	my house
talosi	sun talo/talos	your house
talonsa	sen talo/talonsa	his/her house
talomme	meiän talo	our house
talonne	teiän talo	your house
talonsa	niitten/niien talo/talonsa	their house

Here, the pronoun of the literary form is also shown.
Notice that 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 connegative form, which is identical to 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 South Ostrobothnian dialect and Savo dialects: 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 or 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.

Word sillai "in that way", which is usually something else like silleen elsewhere.
Partitive plurals ending -ja/-jä in generic Finnish become -i, and likewise the partitive plural -ia/-iä simplifies to -ii: märkiä takkeja → märkii takkei "wet jackets".
The first infinitive, e.g. juosta "to run", is replaced by the third-person form juoksee "runs" by some speakers. For example, standard Voisitko sinä juosta hakemaan sen becomes Voisitsä juoksee hakeen sen "Could you run to get it". This form is probably historically speaking not the third-person form, but the colloquial, shortened form juokseen of the third infinitive form juoksemaan, which exhibits a tendency to oust the first infinitive even in the formal language, cf. the old dispute, whether alkaa juoksemaan should be allowed in the formal language or not.
Abbreviations are common in Finnish spoken in the Southern coast of Finland. Final syllables in frequently used words may erode, like sitten → sit, mutta → mut. Case endings might be abbreviated, usually by the loss of the final vowel, e.g. siltä → silt.
Helsinki also has a local slang, containing foreign loanwords which may be unintelligible to people from other parts of Finland. Some slang words have spread to the spoken language of youngsters elsewhere in Finland.
Tampere is also in the area of Tavastian dialects.
* Occasional flapping or deletion of intervocalic "L"; the resulting sound is orthographically nil: kyllä siellä olisi → kyä siä ois. This is seen even in the accentless form oisko ← standard olisiko.

North and">North Karelia">North and [South Karelia]

Personal pronouns: minä → mie, sinä → sie, hän → hää, me → myö, te → työ, he → hyö
* Notice: se and ne don't change to syö or nyö respectively and hää and hyö are more commonly used than se and ne unlike in the standard colloquial language where hän and he are replaced with the non-personal equivalents
* The declined forms also vary, for example minua can be minnuu, minuu or miuta depending on the regional dialect
Vowel epenthesis in North Karelia: kolme → kolome, selvä → selevä
In some Karelian dialects the end of participles ending -nut or -nyt and -lut drop the vowel instead of 't': puhunut → puhunt, käynyt → käynt, katsonut → katsont/kattont, mennyt → ment/mänt, ollut → olt, tullut → tult
Some Karelian dialects also use the exessive case: kotoa → kotont, ulkoa → ulkont, siitä → siint
The North Karelian dialect is a subset of the Savonian dialects, while the South Karelian dialect is a unique Finnish dialect.

Southwestern dialects

Abbreviation occurs very often.
In Turku: minä → mää, sinä → sää
A unique characteristic of Turku dialect is the "S" imperfect tense, which has the ending -si instead of -i, e.g., sattusi for sattui.

Savonia

Some difference in pronouns, myö, työ for me, te. Notice that the Savo dialect has complicated differences in grammar, vowels and consonants compared to the standard language, e.g. öylen for eilen, mänj for meni, omaa rataansa → ommoo rattoosa. The Savo dialect is the largest single dialect, and as such, has variants that differ significantly.

Ostrobothnia

Consonant clusters with -j- are not allowed, so that a -i- is pronounced instead, e.g. kirja → kiria. The sound is completely replaced with a rhotic consonant r, either a trill, or a flap, which produces problems such as that there is no or almost no contrast between veden and veren. For speakers with the flap, there remains a small difference, not generally audible for outsiders. Usually context can be relied on to distinguish the word.
Minor vowel changes, for example, taloa → talua. In Southern Ostrobotnia, in unstressed syllables old diphthongs ending in i are reflected as long vowels, e.g. punainen → punaanen. In some words, where the diphthong has been lost from the standard language, this results in seemingly unmotivated long vowels, e.g. iso → isoo.
Vaasa, Ostrobothnia, to an extent generic Finnish, too: Many frequently used expressions become clitics - this is optional, though. E.g. pronouns become clitics for the negative verb ei and for the verb "to be". In this table, the apostrophe is something between a full J and no sound at all.

Written	Spoken	Written example	Spoken example
minä	m'	minä olen, minä en, minä en ole	moon, mäen, mäen o
sinä	s'	sinä olet, sinä et, sinä et ole	soot, säet, säet o
hän	s'	hän on, hän ei, hän ei ole	son, sei, sei'oo
me	m'	me olemme, me emme, me emme ole	mollaan, mei, mei'olla
te	t'	te olette, te ette, te ette ole	tootte, tette, tette oo
he	n'	he ovat, he eivät, he eivät ole	noon, nei, nei'oo

Additionally, in the Southwest, the interrogative pronoun kuka is replaced by its partitive form, ketä, e.g. Ketä siellä oli? Other differences in case for interrogative words are mihinä and mihkä.

Generic

Aila Mielikäinen.
Heikki Paunonen.