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.
WrittenStandardColloquialMeaningInflected 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:
  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".
When counting out loud, even shorter forms are used, mostly one-syllable words with long vowels:
  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 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.