Finnish orthography

Finnish orthography is based on the Latin script, and uses an alphabet derived from the Swedish alphabet, officially comprising twenty-nine letters but also including two additional letters found in some loanwords. The Finnish orthography strives to represent all morphemes phonologically and, roughly speaking, the sound value of each letter tends to correspond with its value in the International Phonetic Alphabet – although some discrepancies do exist.

Alphabet

The following table describes how each letter in the Finnish alphabet is spelled and pronounced separately. If the name of a consonant begins with a vowel, it can be pronounced and spelled either as a monosyllabic or bisyllabic word. In practice, the names of the letters are rarely spelled, as people usually just type the glyph when they want to refer to a particular letter.
The pronunciation instructions enclosed in slashes are broad transcriptions based on the IPA system. In notes, more narrow transcriptions are enclosed in square brackets.

Glyphs	Name	Name pronunciation	Notes on usage
A, a	aa
B, b	bee		Occurs in relatively new loanwords, such as banaani 'banana' and bussi 'bus'. Typically represents or.
C, c	see		Occurs in unestablished loanwords, such as curry and cesium. Typically represents or.
D, d	dee		In present standard language, stands for, but the pronunciation in dialects varies greatly.
E, e	ee		The precise pronunciation tends to be between and.
F, f	äf, äffä	,, occasionally	Occurs in relatively new loanwords, such as asfaltti 'asphalt' or uniformu 'uniform'. Historically and in dialectal pronunciation, is typically replaced with or medially . Even newer loanwords may have an alternative spelling where has replaced . Note that the names of the country, language, and nationality beginning with F are non-native, the native ones being Suomi, suomi, and suomalainen.
G, g	gee		Occurs natively in the digraph , which marks the long velar nasal . Otherwise only occurs in relatively new loanwords, such as gaala 'gala' and geeni 'gene'. Typically represents or .
H, h	hoo		Normally a voiceless fricative, but the precise pronunciation depends on the preceding vowel; between two vowels may be pronounced as breathy-voiced.
I, i	ii
J, j	jii		Without exception, as in German and Swedish, never fricative or affricate as in French or English.
K, k	koo
L, l	äl, ällä	,, occasionally
M, m	äm, ämmä	,, occasionally
N, n	än, ännä	,, occasionally
O, o	oo		The precise pronunciation tends to be between and.
P, p	pee
Q, q	kuu		Mainly occurs in foreign proper names. Typically represents, though some speakers pronounce it as.
R, r	är, ärrä	,, occasionally
S, s	äs, ässä	,, occasionally
T, t	tee		The precise pronunciation tends to be dental rather than alveolar.
U, u	uu		The precise pronunciation tends to be between and.
V, v	vee		Typically represents approximant rather than fricative.
W, w	kaksoisvee tuplavee	, ,	The "double-v" may occur natively as an archaic variant of, but otherwise in unestablished loanwords and foreign proper names only. It occurs in some rare surnames such as Waltari or in some rare first names such as Werner. In collation the letter was treated like before 2022. Typically represents.
X, x	äks, äksä	, , occasionally	Occurs in unestablished loanwords, such as taxi or fax, but there is often a preferred alternative where has been replaced with digraph . Typically represents.
Y, y	yy		The precise pronunciation tends to be between and.
Z, z	tset, tseta	,	Occurs in unestablished loanwords, such as zeniitti 'zenith' or pizza, but there may be an alternative spelling with . Typically represents, but sometimes or.
Å, å	ruotsalainen oo	,	The "Swedish ", carried over from the Swedish alphabet and redundant in Finnish; retained especially for writing Finland-Swedish proper names. All Finnish words containing are proper names and their derivatives ; there it represents . The spelling spåra sometimes occurs in practice, but the standard spelling is spora.
Ä, ä	ää
Ö, ö	öö		The precise pronunciation tends to be between and.

The letters and are variants of and, but they are often overlooked, as they are only used in some relatively new loanwords and foreign names, and may be replaced with and, respectively, if it is technically impossible to reproduce and. The Finnish keyboard layout on Microsoft Windows does not include or ; thus, in practice, only highly formal sources such as official texts, encyclopedias or Helsingin Sanomat use them.

Glyphs	Name	Name pronunciation	Notes on usage
Š, š	hattu-äs, hattu-ässä; suhu-äs, suhu-ässä	, ; ,	The " with caron" is a rare variant of. It occurred in some relatively new loanwords, such as šakki 'chess' and šillinki 'shilling', but is often replaced with digraph or, in more established loanwords, with plain . In theory it represents but actual pronunciation may vary.
Ž, ž	hattu-tset, hattu-tseta	,	The " with caron" is a rare variant of. It occurs in some unestablished loanwords, such as džonkki 'junk', and foreign proper names, but is often replaced with digraph. In theory represents but the actual pronunciation may vary.

The extra letters and

Image:Mynamaki bus station sign.jpg|thumb|right|The sign at the bus station of the Finnish municipality Mynämäki, illustrating a stylized variation of ⟨ä⟩.
The main peculiarities in the Finnish alphabet are the two extra vowels ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ö⟩. In Finnish, these extra letters are collectively called ääkköset when they need to be distinguished from the ISO basic Latin alphabet; the word is a somewhat playful modification of aakkoset, which is Finnish for "alphabet". Another informal term is skandit or skandimerkit, short for skandinaaviset merkit "Scandinavian characters".
In Finnish, ⟨ä⟩, ⟨ö⟩ and ⟨y⟩ are the "front vowel" counterparts to the "back vowels" ⟨a⟩, ⟨o⟩ and ⟨u⟩; grammatical endings and suffixes using these letters, use either the front or back form depending on the vowel harmony of the word. The glyphs for ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ö⟩ are derived from the similar-looking German umlauted letters, but as with ⟨y⟩ versus ⟨u⟩, they are considered letters in their own right and thus alphabetized separately.
The Germanic umlaut or convention of considering digraph ⟨ae⟩ equivalent to ⟨ä⟩, and ⟨oe⟩ equivalent to ⟨ö⟩ is inapplicable in Finnish. Moreover, in Finnish, both ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩ are vowel sequences, not single letters, and they have independent meanings.
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 wavy line resembling a tilde. In practice, almost any diacritic situated above the base glyph would probably be interpreted as a carelessly written pair of dots. However, in computerized character sets, these alternatives are incorrect. The front-vowel counterpart of ⟨u⟩ using ⟨y⟩ rather than ⟨ü⟩ is carried over from Swedish, and also avoids confusion in cursive script with ⟨ii⟩, which is common in Finnish.

Non-native letters in the Finnish alphabet

In the Finnish writing system, some basic Latin letters are considered redundant, and other letters generally represent sounds that 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 interlingual compatibility. The pronunciation of these letters varies quite a lot.

The redundant letters are often replaced with more common alternatives in Finnish, except in proper names. They include,, and . In addition, the Swedish is redundant from the Finnish point of view, as its pronunciation is more or less equivalent to the Finnish way of pronouncing. It is officially included in the Finnish alphabet so that keyboards etc. would be compatible with Swedish, which is one of the two official languages in Finland, as well as for the reproduction of Swedish proper names, which are quite common in Finland, even as surnames of monolingual speakers of Finnish.
The letters representing foreign sounds can be found in relatively new loanwords, but in more established loanwords they have been replaced with alternatives that better reflect the typical Finnish pronunciation, e.g. kahvi 'coffee', parta 'beard'. The letters include,, and . From a historical point of view, even could be said to belong to this group, but the sound has long been an established part of standard language.
The letters and could be classified into both of the aforementioned groups. The sound is not regarded as a phoneme in Finnish, but historically was used to mark, as in Dutch, German or Polish. Although this is today considered archaic and is used instead, may still occur in some old surnames as a variant of. Occasionally this can also be applied for faux-archaic effect, as in Wanha Satama "Ye Olde Harbour". Likewise, the is not native to Finnish, but was formerly used to denote . It is still often represents, but its pronunciation varies greatly: some speakers may pronounce it, or sometimes. The Finnish academic dictionary Kielitoimiston sanakirja prescribes pronunciations,, and .
The letters and are officially recommended instead of and for transliteration from another alphabet, although in practice, and are often used. For example, Russian Бре́жнев is transliterated Brežnev. However, these sounds are foreign to the Finnish language, the letters do not appear on Finnish keyboards and their pronunciation is not consistent. The sound is familiar to most Finnish speakers and quite commonly used in many loanwords, e.g. šakki 'chess', shampoo, but is restricted to foreign words only.

Collation order

In Finnish, words are ordered alphabetically according to the collation rules specified in the official standard SFS 4600. There are a few cases where Finnish collation is different from the rules applied in English:

, and are regarded as distinct letters and collated after
Before 2022, was regarded as equivalent to . Since 2022, the standard sorting is after .

Diacritics are never added to letters in native Finnish words. Generally, diacritics are retained in foreign-language proper names, e.g. Vilén, if possible, but when arranging words alphabetically, diacritics are usually ignored. There are, however, some exceptions:

German and Turkish and Hungarian are alphabetized as, not as
Danish and Norwegian, Estonian and Hungarian are alphabetized as, not as.

The standard does not specify how one should alphabetize the letter when used in other languages than German, but at least as regards the Estonian or Hungarian, it seems consistent to treat it as equivalent to . It would seem problematic, however, to apply the same principle to e.g. as used in Spanish or as used in Portuguese, as these letters represent quite different orthographic traditions.
Other special cases:

Sami is alphabetized as
Sami and Icelandic are alphabetized as
Icelandic is alphabetized as
Polish is alphabetized as.

Ligatures are alphabetized as two individual letters:

is alphabetized as
is alphabetized as
is alphabetized as.

Letters and characters taken from other alphabets or writing systems are collated after Latin letters.

Orthographic principles

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 a single morpheme. The most notable exception to this rule is the velar nasal, which does not have an allotted letter.

Short and long sounds

In Finnish, both vowels and consonants may be either short or long. A short sound is written with a single letter, and a long sound is written with a double letter. It is necessary to recognize the difference between such words as tuli 'fire', tuuli 'wind' and tulli 'customs'. However, long consonants are sometimes written as short consonants in morpheme boundaries, thus, is written as hakelava "open-box bed for wood chips" instead of expected *hakellava, and is tule tänne "come here" instead of *tule ttänne or *tulet tänne.
In syllabification, a long consonant is always regarded as having a syllable break in the middle, but a long vowel is regarded as a single unit that functions as the nucleus of a syllable. Either a long or short vowel may occur in a stressed as well as unstressed syllable. The phonetic quality of a vowel remains the same regardless of whether the vowel is long or short, or whether it is stressed or unstressed.

Velar nasal

The velar nasal does not have a letter of its own. Natively, a short only occurs before, and it is simply written with, as in kenkä 'shoe'. Since the alveolar nasal can not occur in such a position, can be seen as an allophone of. However, if the is weakened, the result is a long, or geminated, velar nasal that is written with digraph, as in kengät 'shoes'. The geminated is not an allophone of geminated, since minimal pairs do exist: kangas 'textile' vs. kannas 'isthmus'.
The treatment of the velar nasal in loanwords is highly inconsistent, often mixing the original spelling of the word with an applied Finnish pronunciation pattern. Englanti "England" is pronounced, and even magneetti "magnet" is pronounced – cf. a more specialized term diagnoosi 'diagnosis', and in a word-initial position gnuu "gnu". Following the typical Finnish pronunciation pattern, kongestio "congestion" is often pronounced, but may also occur.

Voiced plosives

Traditionally, and are not counted as Finnish phonemes, since they only appear in loanwords. However, these borrowings being relatively common, they are nowadays considered part of the educated norm. The failure to use them correctly is sometimes ridiculed, e.g. if a news reporter or a high official consistently and publicly pronounces Belgia 'Belgium' as. Even many educated speakers, however, still make no distinction between voiced and voiceless plosives in regular speech, although minimal pairs exist: 'bus' vs. 'bag', 'gorilla' vs. 'with/at a basket'.
The status of is somewhat different from and, since it appears in native Finnish words, too, as a regular "weak" correspondence of the voiceless, and even in the infinitives of many verbs, such as syödä, "to eat". At the time when Mikael Agricola, the "father" of literary Finnish, devised a system for writing the language, this sound still had the value of the voiced dental fricative, as in English "then". Since neither Swedish nor German of that time had a separate sign for this sound, Agricola chose to mark it with or.
Later on, the sound developed in a variety of ways in different Finnish dialects: it was deleted, or became a hiatus, a flap consonant, or any of,,,. For example, historical and rare dialectal meiðän, käðen "our", "hand" could be:

meijän, käen/käjen
meirän, kären
meilän, kälen
meidän, käden

In the middle of the 19th century, a significant portion of the Swedish-speaking upper class in Finland decided that Finnish had to be made equal in usage to Swedish. They even started using Finnish as their home language, even while very few of them really mastered it well. Since the historical no more had a common way of pronunciation between different Finnish dialects and since it was usually written as, many started using the Swedish pronunciation, which eventually became the educated norm.
Initially, few native speakers of Finnish acquired the foreign plosive realisation of the native phoneme. Still some decades ago it was not entirely exceptional to hear loanwords like deodorantti 'deodorant' pronounced as, while native Finnish words with a were pronounced in the usual dialectal way. Nowadays, the Finnish language spoken by native Swedish speakers is not anymore considered paradigmatic, but as a result of their long-lasting prestige, many people particularly in the capital district acquired the new sound. Due to diffusion of the standard language through mass media and basic education, and due to the dialectal prestige of the capital area, the plosive can now be heard in all parts of the country, at least in loanwords and in formal speech. Nowadays replacing with a is considered rustic, for example instead of 'now we could use a new directive'.
In Helsinki slang, the slang used by some, more rarely nowadays, in Helsinki, the voiced stops are found in native words even in positions which are not the result of consonant gradation, e.g. 's/he walked', 'to understand'. In the Southwestern dialects of Rauma-Eurajoki-Laitila area,, and are commonplace, since the voicing of nasals spread to phonemes, and, making them half-voiced, e.g. ← sentään or ← niin kuin. They are also found in those coastal areas where Swedish influenced the speech.