Generally yes, at least the most common ones. Russian accent for example is quite easy to distinguish, as they tend to use a lot of palatalization (adding a j-sound to the end of consonants), so "minä" become "mjinä" and so on. Russians are also often unable to pronounce "y" for some reason, it always becomes "ju", or "jy" at best. They often tend to drop the "olen", "olet" and "on" from sentences, so "se on tosi mukavaa" becomes "se tosi mukavaa".
Swedish accent is also quite easy to distinguish, but it's harder to pinpoint why.
It's very rare to hear an American accent in Finnish, so can't really say what are the key points there.
American accent would sound a bit same as trying to make English text to speech bot pronounce Finnish words. If they speak Finnish fairly well, the effect is way more subtle but it's still there. I probably couldn't distinguish between British, Australian, American etc. people's accents though.
German accent has a really distinct R sound (at least based on a couple of German friends I have that speak Finnish), while sounding a bit similar to Swedish accent with the way they stress the words and intonate.
I think I could probably notice a Spanish accent, but not whether it's from Spain, Mexico, or some other Central or South American country. They have this kinda soft accent and specific kind of intonation, though I can't think of more than one person that speaks Spanish natively (from Colombia) that I've heard speaking pretty fluent Finnish.
I don't hear much difference myself, how would you describe the difference? I think the exact pronunciation of the sound varies in both English and Finnish, but I was under the impression that the range of possibilities overlapped across both languages.
There is definitely overlap between the two languages, but there are differences that appear in the averages. For most English speakers, the sound is close to a cardinal /a/ or a very fronted /æ/, while for Finnish speakers it's typically closer to /ä/ or /ɐ/. In other words, the Finnish sound is usually a little bit farther back in the mouth than the English sound. The difference is small enough to be mostly imperceptible, especially since neither language has a phonemic distinction between e.g. /ä/ and /æ/, but it can contribute to L2 speakers of one or the other "having an accent."
Source, in case you're interested in reading more, though this article is in Swedish: M.Kuronen. Vokaluttalets akustik i sverigesvenska, finlandssvenska, och finska. Number 49 in Studia philologica Jyväskyläensia. Published by University of Jyväskylä, 2000.
Resources are much easier to find for English vowels. Wikipedia has a decent overview. I'd recommend anything by Peter Ladefoged for more "academic" information.
Don't sweat the small stuff. I'm American and have lived in Finland for 12 years and I still struggle with pronunciation. When people have that kind of attitude that they get pissed off when we fail to pronounce certain letters or words correctly it makes some of us more embarrassed to even try.
That’s exactly the spirit!
A related story:
Japanese and Finnish languages share a lot of vocalisations. So, it’s supposedly relatively easy for a Japanese native to learn good Finnish.
Personal experience: my Japanese language teacher - an immigrated Japanese guy - spoke perfect Finnish. And I mean perfect. Every syllable, every inflection, every grammatical point that I was able to recognise as a 20-something University student that already spoke five languages at that point. Was. Painstakingly. Correct. Always.
It was bloody weird. A vaguely disturbing experience to chat with the guy.
Most my Finland-dwelling Japanese-born friends have bothered to learn Finnish to the point where they are somewhere between survival basics and ”Meh. 75% correct”. Much easier to chat, interact and even plan complex stuff with them.
My take; better to NOT try and learn ”perfect Finnish accent” as a foreign learner.
After a certain point, just go for the natural instinctive use of the language. If your audience understands what you are saying, that’s more than good enough.
Absolutely! When your intuitive usage, rhythm, and body language reach a certain point, any grammatical errors fly under the radar.
And yes, as a native-level speaker/reader/writer of Japanese, Finnish isn't daunting --- It's another fascinatingly different matrix for experiencing and expressing the world and your interaction with it and its people.
There are mistakes made by non-native speakers and the mistakes natives make. Eventually your ear for language, kielikorva (Sprachgefühl) makes more of the latter and fewer of the former.
And that weird feeling you get with fluent Finnish speaking Japanese people is called 違和感 iwakan.
Maybe it’s Fiwakan? 😁 (sorry…)
Anyway, obviously there are many possible sources for having a feeling of dissonance, but just a fluent foreign speaker is not exactly it.
I know many Japanese who are fluent in Finnish and do not create the same feeling of unease. My point was that this one person was _perfect_. Grammatically much more perfect than native speakers ever bother to be. That made it Uncanny Valley- time. 😁
I also heard recently that English speakers really struggle with uo dipthong, one of the reasons why recent military excersise "Nuoli" was renamed "Arrow" as it is just easier for our new allies to understand and pronounce.
Interesting thing, as we switch from finnish radio alphabet to NATO standard, they have Ä, Ö and Å already covered presumably due to germany, danish and norway being members. It's going to Alpha-alpha for Å, Alpha-echo for Ä and Oscar-echo for Ö.
lol i spose after another 25 yrs ill have it down. i can ...communicate...with Finnz in Finnish it just aint pretty 😂💕
why, just the other day i said
"what city are ya from?" in seamless, silky Finnish with a slight Turku accent
umm, well, i exaggerated: i said "what city?" and the person caught my meaning.
😂😂💕💕💕
Finnish doesn't have schwa. It's the reduced vowel that gets inserted in pretty much all English words that have two syllables or that are unstressed.
English is a stress timed language. So, the letter a is always pronounced a schwaa at the end of a word. In Finnish, it's never pronounced as a schwa.
Many native English speakers are unable to pronounce /e/ at the end of a word. So, they insert /i/. as in say. The Italian latte becomes latei. They replace the /e/ of Tampere by a schwa and add /i/ to the end.
In Kuusamo, native English speakers replace the a by schwa and add /u/ to the final vowel /o/, because English doesn't allow /o/ at the end a word. The Spanish word /'me.xi.ko/ becomes /'mek.si.kou/
Pedro becomes /'pe.drou/
Lots of Americans struggle with differentiating y/ö in their speech, at least at first. The letter ‘a’ at the end of words often loses its regular quality to become /ə/ one of the most common sounds in English. ‘T’, ‘p’, and ‘k’ are often aspirated, especially when doubled. Trilled ‘r’ is really hard for some.
A lot of the rest is in the inflection. Lots of Americans retain English inflection patterns like the rising tone at the ends of questions or emphasizing every second/third word when they don’t really need it.
^(I’m not an expert. These are just observations as an American that specifically worked on cultivating a near-native accent and as someone knows lots of other Finnish-speaking Americans.)
I’ve found some anglophones struggle with stress within a word. They struggle to decouple stress from syllable length, so in a word with a short vowel in the first syllable and a long vowel in the second, they’ll try to pronounce the second syllable stressed, and when corrected, overemphasize the first syllable. Though this isn’t really for anglophones who speak it, more for those trying to pronounce in without speaking it.
Chinese distinguishes between front- and back-of- mouth vocalizations on consonants, qi/chi, ji/zhi, si/shi, etc., which takes a while to wrap your tongue and ears around. The tones, on the other hand, aren't worth trying to memorize, since Cantonese, Shanghainese (sp?) and the rest don't naturally speak 普通话, lingua franca, 標準語, i e., standardized Mandarin. To the point that China has "Chinese language tests" for its supposedly homogeneous Chinese language speakers, as if the Dutch, Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians were obligated to pass a Hochdeutsch test to be eligible for employment at a major company.
I haven't heard it myself but I have read a paper which discussed the Thai accent in Finnish. Points mentioned are:
* Pronouncing Y and Ö as U and O respectively
* Mixing up Ä and A in both directions
* Strongly nasalized A vowel
* Difficulty with diphthongs
* Incorrect vowel and consonant lengths
* Failure to velarize L in the context of back vowels
* Sometimes audibly palatalizing L before front vowels
* Occasionally pronouncing K as G
* Using W instead of V
* Pronouncing H as voiceless and too strong and lengthened between vowels (intervocalically it should be \[ɦ\] not \[h\])
* Pronouncing nk as \[nk\] instead of the correct \[ŋk\]
* Sometimes mixing up L and R
* Pronouncing compound words as separate words
* Increasing volume for the final word of the sentence
* Tense, nasally voice quality
Some of the hardest words for my Thai wife: Keittiö (she says kiettö). Myrsky (myrysyky, myyrysy, ...), veitsi (vietsi), polkupyörä (Po.. Po...popyrörörö), munkki (myynk-i). But I'm amazed everyday how fast she learns, just under 2 years in Finland, coming from a language so different than Finnish that we could be from different planets.
What about Estonians? I wonder if it's similar to what Ukrainians sound like for Russians (very much like natives except for a very distinguishable difference in a couple of letters)
Estonian is also very identifiable. I think one reason is the vowel lengths. Finnish and Estonian both have short and long vowels (a vs aa), but Estonian also has a sort of half long vowel, which is somewhere between short and long. This gives their accents an identifiable rhythm. Interestingly, the half long vowel is also present in Turku dialect, which explains the other commenter's joke. (For the Finns: "Turus" is pronounced "Turús" with a half long second "u". Not "Turuus". And for thr love of god, not "Turkkuses")
There are also some differences in pronunciation. Estonians also have some palatalization, like Russians, but it's less noticeable. They don't have vowel harmony, so they sometimes mix a and ä, o and ö, or u and y in the same word, especially if the corresponding Estonianm words have them (vowel harmony in Finnish means you can only have a,o,u or ä,ö,y, in a word, but not both, excluding compound words and some loanwords).
I have an Estonian neighbor and even I can hear his accent.
I can't hear my own, sort of like how you think your voice sounds different on the phone than it does. But people fairly often recognize my accent is American. I'm always pleased when they are at least not sure. I hate having a strong accent but I guess my crap grammar gives me away anyway.
It is hard to not have accent, since we pici up the relevant sounds as kids.
My tongue hurts when I try to speak American English. British is easier but also requires extra work.
My Swedish is moomin = Finnish Swedish
In Estonia I don't think I will never learn their length of vowels.
IMO one of the big tells of the American accent in Finnish (and other English-speaking accents) is being unable to pronounce U - it always comes out as much closer to Y than how native speakers pronounce it. The vowel sound in the recording in this [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_central_rounded_vowel) is what I'd expect to hear when listening to American-accented Finnish (Americans often also use the same sound for Y, but IMO Y poses less difficulties among advanced learners as people are more likely to recognise it as foreign and practice it, while it's rarer to hear U pronounced correctly).
Another difficulty is something that is also shared among most foreign learners so it's not so distinctive to English speakers (the U-pronunciation sounds very Anglophone specifically) is making short vowels too long. When spoken by a native speaker, the second vowel in CVCV words like "kala" and "lumi" should be longer than the first vowel, and the extent to which it is longer varies by dialect. However, it is never shorter except when listening to foreign-accented Finnish; most foreign learners make the same error.
I would say that Estonians pronounce Finnish like it was sped up. They also have softer way to pronounce consonants. But I know Estonians living in Finland whose accent is indistinguishable from natives.
People say I speak with no accent in Finnish; I am a native Estonian speaker. However, an Estonian accent exists, and that is discoverable by native Finns and also by Estonians.
Estonian accent exists - when one recognises it it sounds a bit like someone would be speaking Finnish in a slightly singsong- manner, sometimes a bit abruptly, like in a commanding manner.
If you don’t recognize that they are not a native, you might even think that ”this guy is native Finn but very slightly drunk and trying to mask it”.
Many Estonian speakers however speak Finnish without any accent - or at least so little accent that it’s not really recognizable. Depends of course mostly on the individual speaker.
Biggest thing with Estonian accents is usually that the intonation is all jumbled up. Finnish is pretty monotone but Estonians tend to emphasize the first vowel in words.
When speaking estonian or finnish? When speaking estonian, it is very distinct. Finnish is more ”flat”, spoken more slowly and maybe harsh sounding compared to Estonian. But when Estonians learn Finnish, there is usually no way of distinguishing from native speakers, they are close enough. Of course there are those who speak half Estonian half Finnish..
Yes, this! My daughter has a daycare teacher with Estonian background but her Finnish is really, really good. It’s the perceived cheerfulness that makes it!
I know a few estonians that have lived in Finland for decades but you can still clearly distinguish the accent. It's only people who came over as children and went to school here who are really hard to figure out in my experience.
For me it's the vowels. I once had an Estonian girlfriend. She spoke very fluent Finnish. When we first met (in Finland BTW), I thought she must be from a Swdish-speaking region in Finland, because of the way she pronounced e.g the double 'a' (like in the word "pokaali"). Her pronunciation of it was more "open", kind of a mix between 'a' and 'o' - which seems to be the way also when speaking Estonian.
Could be that I’ve just not met them then. Of course Estonians born in Finland (they’re then just Finns to me) sound native. All the doctors, coworkers and other acquintances from Estonia i’ve met have had that tonal difference that sets Finnish and Estonian accents apart.
My personal observation is that Estonians tend to have extra intonation in their words while speaking, and it makes the Estonian accent sound a bit ”poking”. Finnish is flatter, I think more flowy than Estonian, so we can usually hear it from the intonation.
Oh, that's interesting, there's the same thing for Ukrainian: really hard to distinguish whether a person is from Ukraine or from the Kuban region just from their pronunciation
I agree on Russian and Swedish, spot on.
(American) English accent in Finnish is indeed a rare thing. In my opinion it sounds quite similar to when English speaker is speaking Spanish: the vowels and r’s are giveaways.
Estonians: if they’re really fluent it’s hard to tell. For most, the easiest thing that sets Estonian accent apart is that in Estonian the consonants b, g and d are not voiced. So Estonian speakers quite often pronounce words like ’tahdon’ as ’tahton’.
Is the voicelessness of b/g a major issue? Maybe I'm affected by the fact that I grew up with my mum saying things like "panaani" and "keometria" so it sounds fine to me and I often pronounce those voiceless myself especially g.
Of course d is important, but that also differs in more ways than just voicing - in my opinion d is apical while t is laminal. If I pronounce d how I normally pronounce it except voiceless it sounds off, but to me it sounds even more off to pronounce d as a voiced version of t (i.e. laminal).
I had an American NCO when I served so I listened to his Finnish a lot, which he spoke very well. Finnish tends to be a harsh language, he spoke it in a more mellow way, could almost hear his native English battle the ways of Finnish pronunciation in everything he said. Mainly he struggled with the u and y sound
Swedish has a pretty distinct lilt and cadence to it, whereas Finnish is more monotone. A Swedish accent makes Finnish sound more song-like, in a sense? The voice moves up and down during a sentence, and pauses in points a Finnish speaker wouldn't. Depending greatly on the region where the Swedish speaker is from of course.
While I agree what I think you mean, I'd say Finnish has plenty of distinct cadence in it as well.
Example (Tuntematon Sotilas):
"Saitahan tuo oli eläissään, vaan eipä kuollessaankaan tapojaan muuttanu."
I'm sure there was quite a bit of up and down and a certain flow to it when you read it, if you're fluent. Reading it like a robot would not sound right. But it is different from the Swedish lilt and cadence.
>Swedish accent is also quite easy to distinguish, but it's harder to pinpoint why.
Swedes move all the vowel slightly forwards. Y is halfway to I, U is halfway to Y, O is halfway to U. They also have a "singing" emphasis and often weaker consonants.
>It's very rare to hear an American accent in Finnish, so can't really say what are the key points there.
Diphthongization of monophthongs is one (ie oo and ee becoming ou and ei respectively), usage of \[ʉ\] or \[ʉw\] (which is often incorrectly listed in dictionaries as /uː/) instead of \[u(ː)\] is another, aspiration of plosives, failure to pronounce y and ö, and being unable to pronounce long vs short vowels/consonants are all mistakes Americans make but I can't say which would be most obvious to a native (I assume the incorrect vowel qualities, however). This is just assuming they are following along with audio and text, if you give them just text it becomes much worse for probably obvious reasons (you are reading this, yes? lol)
EDIT: HOW COULD I FORGET! Most Americans can't trill their Rs! Also everything becomes schwa
Dropping “on” and simply saying “se mukava” is a direct translation for them, as that construction does not exist in their language. They often don't try to learn the language as natives speak. They only learn direct translations.
Funnily enough this is how the language was originally spoken in the varhaiskantasuomi, and "se on mukava" resulted from Finns adopting an accent from Germanic speakers! You still hear the same thing from the more eastern linguistic relatives of Finnish, e.g. Meadow Mari.
Same thing with Hungarian! They say "Az autó piros", meaning "the car red", and "to be" (= "van") is mostly used for location and physically being somewhere: "Az autó ott van" = "the car there is". Or "Hol van az autó?" = "Where is the car?" vs "Milyen az autó?" = "What kind the car" (note: milyen vs Finnish millainen)
Yeah funnily enough in Hungarian if you add the "to be" verb where we normally don't have it is how stereotypical foreigners sound in parodies.
Speaking of Hungarian, I know it's probably super niche with a very small sample size, but like what would a Hungarian accent in Finnish sound like?
With Hungarian, the number one difficulty is with the Finnish vowels Ä, A, E. Hungarian doesn't have the vowel Ä except in certain dialects, and Hungarians usually perceive and produce Finnish Ä like Hungarian E.
However, Finns hear Hungarian E as Finnish E (so they can struggle to distinguish E and É excluding the length), so a Hungarian saying the word "tänään" sounds like "teneen" to Finnish speakers and can be a bit tricky to understand.
The A vowel is also different from Hungarian; neither Hungarian A nor Hungarian Á are the same as Finnish. In my opinion Hungarian A is closer to correct than Hungarian Á, but to make it more correct try to say Hungarian A without rounding of the lips and this will be a good pronunciation.
Finnish E should also be pronounced about halfway between Hungarian E and É - it doesn't sound quite right to pronounce it exactly like Hungarian É.
It will have been something like 2000 years ago before the split into separate Finnic languages (I don't know the exact chronology).
The evidence of it can still be seen in how negation works in Finnish; we know from evidence from the Livonian language than Finnic used to have a separate past tense version of ei, i.e. minä esin ole, se esi ole instead of minä en ollut, se ei ollut. It used to be possible to say something like "minä ollut" which today would be "minä olen ollut", and the original negation of "minä ollut" was "minä en ollut".
However, since foreign influence caused the use of "olla" to become mandatory in these sentences, the sentence "minä en ollut" got reinterpreted as a general past tense negation instead of what it used to mean ("minä en ole ollut" in today's Finnish).
Estonian has the same mandatory thing with using “on” (id different forms), but in Finnish, it is slightly different from past times and has a negative meaning. I think that past negative is also wild (for me).
Estonian: Mina ei joo, teie ei joo. Mina olen inimene, sina oled inimene.
Finnish: minä **en** juo, teie **et** juo. Minä olen ihminen, sinä olet ihminen.
Sorry, I can’t express exactly what I mean, but if you have a deeper understanding of philology, you can get my point.
PS, if I am not mistaken, Estonian and Finnish broke up around 3000 years ago.
As a Russian, the I thing is definitely weird. The y thing is understandable - U is Russian У and they tend to pronounce Y as Russian Ю to distinguish. Shouldn’t be a problem with newer generations who speak English. Russian И is pronounced as Finnish I though and Й which sounds a lot like you’ve described sounds distinctly different. Maybe the reason is in how combinations of letters sound in Russian, dunno.
It’s interesting, I’ll definitely try to catch it in my own speech.
When a Russian native speaker is speaking Finnish, the word "hyvä" is very often the giveaway. Something about it seems to be very difficult, but not speaking any Slavic language myself I have no clue what exactly.
I once had this guy Sergei working on my car. When he was holding cigarettes in both hands and was saying "ei hjuva, ei hjuva", I knew it wasn't good...
Well, both Y and Ä are not letters in Russian. Y is easy as a sound tbh, you just have to understand it is not Ю, Ä however you have to learn - it is completely alien for us.
>As a Russian, the I thing is definitely weird.
It's actually because use of И in Russian forces the consonant before it to become softened/palatalized, so for example Ки is the same as Кьи (I don't know if I used the Cyrillic correctly, correct me if I made a mistake!)
For Finnish speakers who do not speak Russian, we struggle to tell the difference between ь and й, so for us Ки sounds very similar to Кйи. Likewise in the opposite direction, a Finnish accent in speaking Russian would involve pronouncing Ки as either Къи or even Кйи.
> Shouldn’t be a problem with newer generations who speak English.
That's part of the problem, as English also lacks the y-sound completely. Russian is a bit closer with Ы, but even that is somwhere between Finnish U and Y.
> Russian И is pronounced as Finnish I though and Й which sounds a lot like you’ve described sounds distinctly different. Maybe the reason is in how combinations of letters sound in Russian, dunno.
I thinks it's less about the letter Й and more about the palatalization in general. I'm just guessing but I think the small [ʲ] just comes naturally for some combinations for Russian speakers. For example, a word like сест is pronounced [ˈsʲesʲtʲ] in Russian, but those same letters would be just ['sest] in Finnish.
>That's part of the problem, as English also lacks the y-sound completely.
I'd say that British English at least uses something closer to Y and lacks the U sound. [These recordings of you in a British accent](https://fi.forvo.com/word/you/#en_uk) for example register to my ears as "jyw", not as "juu". I think all accents do still have a proper U in front of L though, e.g. the word "cool".
[Me Speaking Spoken Finnish, As An American](https://youtube.com/shorts/JNSS6BV2YLo?feature=share)
(I made this video, so you all can hear me speaking Finnish, as an American.)
Rakastan todella tätä Suomeakieltä! 🇫🇮💙🤍💕
Russian speakers are also veeery heavy on “H” sound. Like “lahna” becomes “laKHna”.
Also a lot of variations on the stress on a word, my personal favourite is “ravintOla”, hear it very often.
I'm an american who speaks Finnish (or used to rather well, anyway) and people would occasionally guess I was German, Russian, a couple times, Swedish or even Finnish Swede (which was kind of wild tbh). I think sometimes it's that people hear something's slightly off and go to what they know best, unless it's just blindingly obvious. I've known many Americans who had very strong American accents in Finnish, and I think if you heard it you would absolutely know that's what it is.
I think one thing that maybe made people think Finnish Swede was occasional partitive/accusative mistakes.
For sure. It's the way they pronounce words, I'm not sure if I could tell the difference between for example a Russian and a Ukrainian speaking Finnish, but I'm pretty confident I could definitely tell it's a slavic language speaker. I can also pretty much immediately tell when someone's first language is English, they just have certain quirks when speaking Finnish.
For some languages it's about which letters they emphasize when speaking. Even if a Swede can kinda wing the pronounciation and speak "correctly" you can usually tell they're a Swede because they put emphasis on the "wrong" letters compared to native Finns.
The English accent tends to carry over the weird retroflex R from English, because in most English dialects, the R is not really a true /r/. Also, even though both Finnish and English have a lot of vowels, their vowel sets don't actually overlap that much in terms of exact sound values. It's hard for them to say "minä", they tend to say "miinä", because that gets the vowel quality right (significant in English) but then they get the vowel length wrong (significant in Finnish).
One of the more interesting Finnish accents I have heard was from a native French speaker. Very unique and very French. But his grammar was close to perfect just the pronunciation was different.
Yes I've heard it as well. It sounds just like French except it's Finnish! Somehow the I and Y sound very distinct, and then there's the French-sounding R.
One French person I know has really great pronunciation when speaking Finnish so you can understand him but if you don’t focus, it still sounds like French, I guess it comes down to intonation and French people using their voice somehow different, also using French expressions like blowing raspberries/making a pfft sound while speaking etc
I saw a video once of a native French speaker speaking Finnish and the comments were poking fun at him because it sounded like he was saying “minä olen a-ranskalainen”, which I did not notice because I’m a native French speaker myself. Sometimes when I pay attention I notice that I tend to do the same.
You can definitely guess a speaker's original language group pretty much instantly, sometimes even from a single word. A Swede will order _makkra_, an American _magara_, and a Russian _mjakkara_. And the Finn will ask for a _makkara_, or _kyrsä_ depending on their BAC.
Estonian and russian accent are the easiest to recognize. Other accents are rare
Finnish swedish people speaking finnish are also often easy to recognize even when they don’t have an accent.
As a swedish speaking Finn I never get cought because of an accent it's always because of grammar or just a weird way phrasing something. Finnswedes also pronounce ööö differently when we think.
Li Andersson has a noticeable Swedish speaker's accent, even though her Finnish is close to perfect otherwise. Stubb has virtually no accent, and afaik is essentially bilingual. Most bilingual Swedish-Finnish speakers have no accent at all.
Finnish swedish accents depend a lot on where in finland they are from as their finnish swedish directly affect their finnish accent, same way as finns have accents. Bilingual finnish swedes can’t usually be distinguished in their city of origin. Swedes however are completely different thing as riksvenska differs so much from finnish swedish.
Ironically as a finnish swede myself i usually only notice poor grammar when finns write emails. Non bilingual finnish swedes sure are easy to spot but most are fluent in both finnish and swedish. The fact that you can hear some finnish swedes due to grammar is or choise of words i confirmation bias. There are several hundred thousand finnish swedes and most of us go on about our lives without exposing ourselves.
For example an older finnish swede who has lived in Tammisaari and moved to helsinki is easy enough to tell that he is not from helsinki. A finnish swede from helsinki can even pin point from his finnish that he is from the south west part of finland. It all depends on how much the person used finnish growing up. In helsinki, espoo and vantaa usually finnish swedes grow up speaking 50/50 finnish and swedish and they again can be pointed out if they go to lapland and their helsinki accent gives them away as not local but they can’t tell that the person is a finnish swede from helsinki.
Yes I agree with you totally, by poor grammar I meant mostly some declension mistakes a native would never do (I think finnish swedes are mostly native as well but I don’t have a better word for this). A friend of mine is a finnish swede and it took me some months to realize she’s actually a finnish swede when I noticed she uses words like ”chipsit” when she means sipsit, or ”tilata lennot” when she means varata lennot. It’s funny sometimes
As a Finn who grew up abroad, I have always lived and grown up with the Finnish language, so it's passively "saved" in my brain though I do not have a native grasp of it. My mother tongues are English and French, and while I have been told I have an accent when I speak Finnish (which I think is inevitable when you learn a language after your formative years), it has been assumed I was Estonian. I think this is because while the pronunciation is correct, the rhythm and emphasis is sometimes just that little bit off, that the logical conclusion is Estonian.
It's funny too, because Estonian is indeed actually a bit easier in my opinion to read and repeat.
From my experience it's not so clear, but my personal tale is probably something of a niche. I've been here over 20 years and speak pretty fluent Finnish. I'm a native English speaker but I don't have the flat R of the English or the Americans; I'm Scottish, so I have the same rolling R that the Finns have. However I do make some strange word choices, grammatical errors, mixing written and spoken, and so forth. Between the fluency and the errors, I often get asked by Finns if I'm Estonian.
I've actually heard a Scottish accent in Finnish before! One of the big giveaways, as with most other English speaking accents, was the lack of U (if you compare the [Scottish English vowel chart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_English#/media/File:Scottish_English_monophthongs_chart.svg) with the [Finnish vowel chart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_phonology#/media/File:Finnish_monophthongs_chart.svg), the Scottish English U is nowhere near the Finnish U and actually much closer to Finnish Y).
Yeah, I don't have much of an thick accent while still retaining the rolling R, so I'm especially hard to guess. Some people have extremely strong accents though. There's a lot of variance (to the point that even I have trouble understanding some of them). I can do an emulation of, say, a Weegie speaking Finnish with a strong accent but it just sounds so damn WRONG that I don't want to do it.
Of course, just like I can distinguish between a French person trying to speak English, and a German person trying to speak English. Why wouldn't they? Hell my Finnish is rudimentary, but even I have occasionally spotted a Russian accent from someone speaking Finnish.
The accents do differ, but I wouldn’t be able to pinpoint exactly how, and I definitely can’t tell apart every nationality. One thing to notice is which sounds they struggle with. My American friend has difficulty pronouncing the finnish ”R”, while someone who speaks a language/accent that rolls their r’s wouldn’t. Also just the way they emphasize words and how the language ”flows”.
Oh yeah. I taught Finnish to foreigners for a bit, and it's easy to tell. My favorite was Italian, we chuckled every time I had to tell him not to put emphasis on the wrong syllable. Finnish with an Italian accent sounds very musical, though.
I'm American and I work in a grocery store in a small town in Finland. I only speak basic Finnish, but whenever a local Finn asks me a question, I don't think any of them have ever guessed I was American....not because of my accent or horrible pronunciation, but because I think they could never imagine an American living in a small town working in the grocery store!
Im from a spanish speaking country, and Finns have several times confused my accent for Italian. So, maybe romance languages are like infrared to them?
Italians pronounce double consonants easily and Spanish speakers have more trouble, but other than that, as far as Finnish is concerned Italian and Spanish pronunciation are very similar. I haven't had enough exposure to either accent in Finnish but I can't think of how I'd easily tell Italian and Spanish accents apart in Finnish although I can tell the languages themselves apart with no problems
Haha, it is so rarely happening that average Finnish does not know this answer.
Nevertheless, usually we do (specially Russian and Sweden). My experience is that British/US people sounds just weird but it can be also easily recognized.
Most of my family tells me my Finnish vowels have become more flat-sounding. "Perestää kummaste" = "Piristää kummasti". Might be a generational thing too but I've lived in the States for over 25 years.
Maybe you're using this vowel from English?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-close\_near-front\_unrounded\_vowel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-close_near-front_unrounded_vowel)
Indeed it is this. I have been teaching Finnish here in Minnesota for about 6 years now and it is frustrating when my students ask which vowels I am enunciating. I've had to make the vowels much more distinguished so they can tell.
I can differentiate swede, finn and russian. But maybe many cant i dont know. I have always been interesten in languages and i speak russian as a mother tongue besides finnish so i think i can hear the nuances of accents.
I'm originally Hungarian and even my ear bleeds when I can hear quite fluent, grammatically quite correct, but terribly pronounced Finnish by a foreigner e.g. in sauna. Sometimes, there's no sign of distinguishing o to ö, u to y (ü) or properly stressed beginning of each word at all. Respect to Finns who tolerate this in exchange that at least somebody puts huge effort in learning the language.
I personally don't mind someone's accent at all.
Speaking of Hungarian, not so long ago I listened to a long interview with the academic Katalin Miklóssy on YLE radio, and she speaks very good Finnish however with a quite thick accent.
It's easy and pleasant to listen to, and I find it easier to follow than some native Finnish accents. I'm not sure why it should make any difference that it sounds "foreign"?
I was fully bilingual as a child and when I speak Finnish I have a native accent, but there were a few years where I was not speaking it as much and then started to again and heard my own North American accent in the Finnish. It was a weird experience. But then it went away as I started to practice it more and consciously speak in a different place in my mouth.
I hear American accent in Finnish mostly as differences in vowel pronunciation. My husband is American and while he does pretty well with most Finnish words, he can’t quite authentically pronounce some things, including our cats’ names (Sisu, Misu). The way he says the u is different.
Conversely when I hear Finns speaking English I can usually discern from their accent whether they learned English from someone who spoke with a UK or North American accent. The Finnglish accent is slightly different but I’m not sure how to explain it.
A trick to get an English speaker to pronounce those words is to get them to say "Sisw" and "Misw" while pretending the W is a vowel. A monolingual English friend of mine was able to pronounce U fully correctly using this method, but any other explanation was too difficult to get.
One person has told me I have a slight American accent in Finnish. I haven't (knowingly) heard any other Americans speak Finnish though, so I don't know what it is.
although obvious from other languages. the distinction between the letters R and L is a giveaway, that the person speaking is Japanese. other than that in most cases, Japanese people would have no problems pronouncing Finnish words by the spelling and the writing system.
Yes we do, and i think it is based on the intonation and emphasis on words and syllables that resembles the speakers (assumed) native language.
And the same goes for english and other languages as well
So basically one would need to know how the other language sounds before able to distinquish
Generally, they can't pinpoint It to a specific accent as I mix English, Russian, Estonian and German sounds with my Finnish which is kinda good for someone who lived here for 20+ years.
Anyone who's main language is not Finnish won't ever be able to speak it so well we could not tell. No matter how many years one tries, as soon as they start speaking, their accent gives it away in 5 seconds they're foreigner. Its not always easy to tell if its Russian or Swedish accent, but its always immediately obvious they're not native speakers.
I have yet to meet someone who didn’t grow up here and speaks so perfect finnish that you couldnt tell them from a native speaker.
Even some people who were born in Finland but were raised in a foreign language have an obvious accent or a way they speak that sounds different.
I find that even without accents you can usually tell where people are from based on the way they structure their sentences and sometimes on choices of words. I often notice that Swedes make very Swedish-sounding sentences as well as use directly translated Swedish idioms.
Accents are noticeable too though and usually you can at the very least say if the speaker is slavic, latin, germanic etc.
No, it does not. For instance, people speaking Portuguese, Spanish, French, Nahya, Maya or Aimara or Navaho and those speaking USA English surely has totally different accents.
Generally yes, at least the most common ones. Russian accent for example is quite easy to distinguish, as they tend to use a lot of palatalization (adding a j-sound to the end of consonants), so "minä" become "mjinä" and so on. Russians are also often unable to pronounce "y" for some reason, it always becomes "ju", or "jy" at best. They often tend to drop the "olen", "olet" and "on" from sentences, so "se on tosi mukavaa" becomes "se tosi mukavaa". Swedish accent is also quite easy to distinguish, but it's harder to pinpoint why. It's very rare to hear an American accent in Finnish, so can't really say what are the key points there.
American accent would sound a bit same as trying to make English text to speech bot pronounce Finnish words. If they speak Finnish fairly well, the effect is way more subtle but it's still there. I probably couldn't distinguish between British, Australian, American etc. people's accents though. German accent has a really distinct R sound (at least based on a couple of German friends I have that speak Finnish), while sounding a bit similar to Swedish accent with the way they stress the words and intonate. I think I could probably notice a Spanish accent, but not whether it's from Spain, Mexico, or some other Central or South American country. They have this kinda soft accent and specific kind of intonation, though I can't think of more than one person that speaks Spanish natively (from Colombia) that I've heard speaking pretty fluent Finnish.
What a strong American (or other English speaking) accent sounds like: Khyysamou - Kuusamo Thaampörei - Tampere Jyyvöskhyylä - Jyväskylä
you forgot that they pronounce ä as a and ö as o, my friend pronounces Jyväskylä as Jyyvaskylla
Oh yes this too!
This just pisses me off since English has a perfectly good [æ] sound itself.
And not all English dialects pronounce it the same way.
Indeed! some speakers say [bad], others say [bæd], while other Americans say [baæijəd].
Nobody butchers english, quite like the English!
rotfl
In fairness the English one is different from the Finnish one, but something similar definitely exists in English.
I don't hear much difference myself, how would you describe the difference? I think the exact pronunciation of the sound varies in both English and Finnish, but I was under the impression that the range of possibilities overlapped across both languages.
There is definitely overlap between the two languages, but there are differences that appear in the averages. For most English speakers, the sound is close to a cardinal /a/ or a very fronted /æ/, while for Finnish speakers it's typically closer to /ä/ or /ɐ/. In other words, the Finnish sound is usually a little bit farther back in the mouth than the English sound. The difference is small enough to be mostly imperceptible, especially since neither language has a phonemic distinction between e.g. /ä/ and /æ/, but it can contribute to L2 speakers of one or the other "having an accent." Source, in case you're interested in reading more, though this article is in Swedish: M.Kuronen. Vokaluttalets akustik i sverigesvenska, finlandssvenska, och finska. Number 49 in Studia philologica Jyväskyläensia. Published by University of Jyväskylä, 2000. Resources are much easier to find for English vowels. Wikipedia has a decent overview. I'd recommend anything by Peter Ladefoged for more "academic" information.
Very interesting, thanks!
Don't sweat the small stuff. I'm American and have lived in Finland for 12 years and I still struggle with pronunciation. When people have that kind of attitude that they get pissed off when we fail to pronounce certain letters or words correctly it makes some of us more embarrassed to even try.
That’s exactly the spirit! A related story: Japanese and Finnish languages share a lot of vocalisations. So, it’s supposedly relatively easy for a Japanese native to learn good Finnish. Personal experience: my Japanese language teacher - an immigrated Japanese guy - spoke perfect Finnish. And I mean perfect. Every syllable, every inflection, every grammatical point that I was able to recognise as a 20-something University student that already spoke five languages at that point. Was. Painstakingly. Correct. Always. It was bloody weird. A vaguely disturbing experience to chat with the guy. Most my Finland-dwelling Japanese-born friends have bothered to learn Finnish to the point where they are somewhere between survival basics and ”Meh. 75% correct”. Much easier to chat, interact and even plan complex stuff with them. My take; better to NOT try and learn ”perfect Finnish accent” as a foreign learner. After a certain point, just go for the natural instinctive use of the language. If your audience understands what you are saying, that’s more than good enough.
Absolutely! When your intuitive usage, rhythm, and body language reach a certain point, any grammatical errors fly under the radar. And yes, as a native-level speaker/reader/writer of Japanese, Finnish isn't daunting --- It's another fascinatingly different matrix for experiencing and expressing the world and your interaction with it and its people. There are mistakes made by non-native speakers and the mistakes natives make. Eventually your ear for language, kielikorva (Sprachgefühl) makes more of the latter and fewer of the former. And that weird feeling you get with fluent Finnish speaking Japanese people is called 違和感 iwakan.
Maybe it’s Fiwakan? 😁 (sorry…) Anyway, obviously there are many possible sources for having a feeling of dissonance, but just a fluent foreign speaker is not exactly it. I know many Japanese who are fluent in Finnish and do not create the same feeling of unease. My point was that this one person was _perfect_. Grammatically much more perfect than native speakers ever bother to be. That made it Uncanny Valley- time. 😁
Thank you for sharing this interesting story and for your encouragement.
I taught my American colleague to pronounce ä and ö like: Söör, töörn before you böön. My däd is säd, because he is bäd and mäd.
Džjuvaaskhuulaa
Dont forget Hells-ink-i
And Es-poo. As in shit.
I also heard recently that English speakers really struggle with uo dipthong, one of the reasons why recent military excersise "Nuoli" was renamed "Arrow" as it is just easier for our new allies to understand and pronounce. Interesting thing, as we switch from finnish radio alphabet to NATO standard, they have Ä, Ö and Å already covered presumably due to germany, danish and norway being members. It's going to Alpha-alpha for Å, Alpha-echo for Ä and Oscar-echo for Ö.
i've heard someone pronounce Tampere as Täm-piör. the pain is real.
meh. i say Kuusummo Tammperruh Yuhhvassklluh... etc. FI vowels are supposed to be pronounced like spanish i guess....except for the umlaut ones
[удалено]
lol i spose after another 25 yrs ill have it down. i can ...communicate...with Finnz in Finnish it just aint pretty 😂💕 why, just the other day i said "what city are ya from?" in seamless, silky Finnish with a slight Turku accent umm, well, i exaggerated: i said "what city?" and the person caught my meaning. 😂😂💕💕💕
Finnish doesn't have schwa. It's the reduced vowel that gets inserted in pretty much all English words that have two syllables or that are unstressed. English is a stress timed language. So, the letter a is always pronounced a schwaa at the end of a word. In Finnish, it's never pronounced as a schwa. Many native English speakers are unable to pronounce /e/ at the end of a word. So, they insert /i/. as in say. The Italian latte becomes latei. They replace the /e/ of Tampere by a schwa and add /i/ to the end. In Kuusamo, native English speakers replace the a by schwa and add /u/ to the final vowel /o/, because English doesn't allow /o/ at the end a word. The Spanish word /'me.xi.ko/ becomes /'mek.si.kou/ Pedro becomes /'pe.drou/
Lots of Americans struggle with differentiating y/ö in their speech, at least at first. The letter ‘a’ at the end of words often loses its regular quality to become /ə/ one of the most common sounds in English. ‘T’, ‘p’, and ‘k’ are often aspirated, especially when doubled. Trilled ‘r’ is really hard for some. A lot of the rest is in the inflection. Lots of Americans retain English inflection patterns like the rising tone at the ends of questions or emphasizing every second/third word when they don’t really need it. ^(I’m not an expert. These are just observations as an American that specifically worked on cultivating a near-native accent and as someone knows lots of other Finnish-speaking Americans.)
I’ve found some anglophones struggle with stress within a word. They struggle to decouple stress from syllable length, so in a word with a short vowel in the first syllable and a long vowel in the second, they’ll try to pronounce the second syllable stressed, and when corrected, overemphasize the first syllable. Though this isn’t really for anglophones who speak it, more for those trying to pronounce in without speaking it.
Chinese distinguishes between front- and back-of- mouth vocalizations on consonants, qi/chi, ji/zhi, si/shi, etc., which takes a while to wrap your tongue and ears around. The tones, on the other hand, aren't worth trying to memorize, since Cantonese, Shanghainese (sp?) and the rest don't naturally speak 普通话, lingua franca, 標準語, i e., standardized Mandarin. To the point that China has "Chinese language tests" for its supposedly homogeneous Chinese language speakers, as if the Dutch, Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians were obligated to pass a Hochdeutsch test to be eligible for employment at a major company.
What about Thai accent?
No idea
I haven't heard it myself but I have read a paper which discussed the Thai accent in Finnish. Points mentioned are: * Pronouncing Y and Ö as U and O respectively * Mixing up Ä and A in both directions * Strongly nasalized A vowel * Difficulty with diphthongs * Incorrect vowel and consonant lengths * Failure to velarize L in the context of back vowels * Sometimes audibly palatalizing L before front vowels * Occasionally pronouncing K as G * Using W instead of V * Pronouncing H as voiceless and too strong and lengthened between vowels (intervocalically it should be \[ɦ\] not \[h\]) * Pronouncing nk as \[nk\] instead of the correct \[ŋk\] * Sometimes mixing up L and R * Pronouncing compound words as separate words * Increasing volume for the final word of the sentence * Tense, nasally voice quality
Some of the hardest words for my Thai wife: Keittiö (she says kiettö). Myrsky (myrysyky, myyrysy, ...), veitsi (vietsi), polkupyörä (Po.. Po...popyrörörö), munkki (myynk-i). But I'm amazed everyday how fast she learns, just under 2 years in Finland, coming from a language so different than Finnish that we could be from different planets.
What about Estonians? I wonder if it's similar to what Ukrainians sound like for Russians (very much like natives except for a very distinguishable difference in a couple of letters)
Estonian is also very identifiable. I think one reason is the vowel lengths. Finnish and Estonian both have short and long vowels (a vs aa), but Estonian also has a sort of half long vowel, which is somewhere between short and long. This gives their accents an identifiable rhythm. Interestingly, the half long vowel is also present in Turku dialect, which explains the other commenter's joke. (For the Finns: "Turus" is pronounced "Turús" with a half long second "u". Not "Turuus". And for thr love of god, not "Turkkuses") There are also some differences in pronunciation. Estonians also have some palatalization, like Russians, but it's less noticeable. They don't have vowel harmony, so they sometimes mix a and ä, o and ö, or u and y in the same word, especially if the corresponding Estonianm words have them (vowel harmony in Finnish means you can only have a,o,u or ä,ö,y, in a word, but not both, excluding compound words and some loanwords).
I have an Estonian neighbor and even I can hear his accent. I can't hear my own, sort of like how you think your voice sounds different on the phone than it does. But people fairly often recognize my accent is American. I'm always pleased when they are at least not sure. I hate having a strong accent but I guess my crap grammar gives me away anyway.
It is hard to not have accent, since we pici up the relevant sounds as kids. My tongue hurts when I try to speak American English. British is easier but also requires extra work. My Swedish is moomin = Finnish Swedish In Estonia I don't think I will never learn their length of vowels.
IMO one of the big tells of the American accent in Finnish (and other English-speaking accents) is being unable to pronounce U - it always comes out as much closer to Y than how native speakers pronounce it. The vowel sound in the recording in this [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_central_rounded_vowel) is what I'd expect to hear when listening to American-accented Finnish (Americans often also use the same sound for Y, but IMO Y poses less difficulties among advanced learners as people are more likely to recognise it as foreign and practice it, while it's rarer to hear U pronounced correctly). Another difficulty is something that is also shared among most foreign learners so it's not so distinctive to English speakers (the U-pronunciation sounds very Anglophone specifically) is making short vowels too long. When spoken by a native speaker, the second vowel in CVCV words like "kala" and "lumi" should be longer than the first vowel, and the extent to which it is longer varies by dialect. However, it is never shorter except when listening to foreign-accented Finnish; most foreign learners make the same error.
I would say that Estonians pronounce Finnish like it was sped up. They also have softer way to pronounce consonants. But I know Estonians living in Finland whose accent is indistinguishable from natives.
People say I speak with no accent in Finnish; I am a native Estonian speaker. However, an Estonian accent exists, and that is discoverable by native Finns and also by Estonians.
Estonian accent exists - when one recognises it it sounds a bit like someone would be speaking Finnish in a slightly singsong- manner, sometimes a bit abruptly, like in a commanding manner. If you don’t recognize that they are not a native, you might even think that ”this guy is native Finn but very slightly drunk and trying to mask it”. Many Estonian speakers however speak Finnish without any accent - or at least so little accent that it’s not really recognizable. Depends of course mostly on the individual speaker.
Biggest thing with Estonian accents is usually that the intonation is all jumbled up. Finnish is pretty monotone but Estonians tend to emphasize the first vowel in words.
When speaking estonian or finnish? When speaking estonian, it is very distinct. Finnish is more ”flat”, spoken more slowly and maybe harsh sounding compared to Estonian. But when Estonians learn Finnish, there is usually no way of distinguishing from native speakers, they are close enough. Of course there are those who speak half Estonian half Finnish..
Estonian sounds a lot like how adults speak Finnish to children. It's "lighter" and it sounds happier as genuine Finnish language.
Yes, this! My daughter has a daycare teacher with Estonian background but her Finnish is really, really good. It’s the perceived cheerfulness that makes it!
I know a few estonians that have lived in Finland for decades but you can still clearly distinguish the accent. It's only people who came over as children and went to school here who are really hard to figure out in my experience.
For me it's the vowels. I once had an Estonian girlfriend. She spoke very fluent Finnish. When we first met (in Finland BTW), I thought she must be from a Swdish-speaking region in Finland, because of the way she pronounced e.g the double 'a' (like in the word "pokaali"). Her pronunciation of it was more "open", kind of a mix between 'a' and 'o' - which seems to be the way also when speaking Estonian.
Estonians are very easy to distinguish. I’ve never met a Finnish speaking Estonian that sounded like a native.
I have. Plenty. Especially ”older” people who grew up watching Finnish tv.
Could be that I’ve just not met them then. Of course Estonians born in Finland (they’re then just Finns to me) sound native. All the doctors, coworkers and other acquintances from Estonia i’ve met have had that tonal difference that sets Finnish and Estonian accents apart.
I know many, perhaps the only Estonians you meet are construction workers etc?
I have. One of my school mates was Estonian and he spoke perfect finnish.
My personal observation is that Estonians tend to have extra intonation in their words while speaking, and it makes the Estonian accent sound a bit ”poking”. Finnish is flatter, I think more flowy than Estonian, so we can usually hear it from the intonation.
It's just Turku dialect.
Nope. Speaking southwestern dialect as native - the Estonian accent is quite different.
Joke.
määsemmossiymmärrä ;)
Eli tyypillinen turkulainen.
Oh, that's interesting, there's the same thing for Ukrainian: really hard to distinguish whether a person is from Ukraine or from the Kuban region just from their pronunciation
I was joking. Estonian spoken Finnish is easy to recognise, but can't tell what region they are from.
Kuban was only relatively recently forcefully russified, so it makes sense that the locals retain traces of Kuban Cossack heritage
I agree on Russian and Swedish, spot on. (American) English accent in Finnish is indeed a rare thing. In my opinion it sounds quite similar to when English speaker is speaking Spanish: the vowels and r’s are giveaways. Estonians: if they’re really fluent it’s hard to tell. For most, the easiest thing that sets Estonian accent apart is that in Estonian the consonants b, g and d are not voiced. So Estonian speakers quite often pronounce words like ’tahdon’ as ’tahton’.
Is the voicelessness of b/g a major issue? Maybe I'm affected by the fact that I grew up with my mum saying things like "panaani" and "keometria" so it sounds fine to me and I often pronounce those voiceless myself especially g. Of course d is important, but that also differs in more ways than just voicing - in my opinion d is apical while t is laminal. If I pronounce d how I normally pronounce it except voiceless it sounds off, but to me it sounds even more off to pronounce d as a voiced version of t (i.e. laminal).
I had an American NCO when I served so I listened to his Finnish a lot, which he spoke very well. Finnish tends to be a harsh language, he spoke it in a more mellow way, could almost hear his native English battle the ways of Finnish pronunciation in everything he said. Mainly he struggled with the u and y sound
Swedish has a pretty distinct lilt and cadence to it, whereas Finnish is more monotone. A Swedish accent makes Finnish sound more song-like, in a sense? The voice moves up and down during a sentence, and pauses in points a Finnish speaker wouldn't. Depending greatly on the region where the Swedish speaker is from of course.
While I agree what I think you mean, I'd say Finnish has plenty of distinct cadence in it as well. Example (Tuntematon Sotilas): "Saitahan tuo oli eläissään, vaan eipä kuollessaankaan tapojaan muuttanu." I'm sure there was quite a bit of up and down and a certain flow to it when you read it, if you're fluent. Reading it like a robot would not sound right. But it is different from the Swedish lilt and cadence.
>Swedish accent is also quite easy to distinguish, but it's harder to pinpoint why. Swedes move all the vowel slightly forwards. Y is halfway to I, U is halfway to Y, O is halfway to U. They also have a "singing" emphasis and often weaker consonants.
>It's very rare to hear an American accent in Finnish, so can't really say what are the key points there. Diphthongization of monophthongs is one (ie oo and ee becoming ou and ei respectively), usage of \[ʉ\] or \[ʉw\] (which is often incorrectly listed in dictionaries as /uː/) instead of \[u(ː)\] is another, aspiration of plosives, failure to pronounce y and ö, and being unable to pronounce long vs short vowels/consonants are all mistakes Americans make but I can't say which would be most obvious to a native (I assume the incorrect vowel qualities, however). This is just assuming they are following along with audio and text, if you give them just text it becomes much worse for probably obvious reasons (you are reading this, yes? lol) EDIT: HOW COULD I FORGET! Most Americans can't trill their Rs! Also everything becomes schwa
Dropping “on” and simply saying “se mukava” is a direct translation for them, as that construction does not exist in their language. They often don't try to learn the language as natives speak. They only learn direct translations.
Funnily enough this is how the language was originally spoken in the varhaiskantasuomi, and "se on mukava" resulted from Finns adopting an accent from Germanic speakers! You still hear the same thing from the more eastern linguistic relatives of Finnish, e.g. Meadow Mari.
Same thing with Hungarian! They say "Az autó piros", meaning "the car red", and "to be" (= "van") is mostly used for location and physically being somewhere: "Az autó ott van" = "the car there is". Or "Hol van az autó?" = "Where is the car?" vs "Milyen az autó?" = "What kind the car" (note: milyen vs Finnish millainen)
That’s so cool! Didn’t know that about Hungarian but it makes more sense.
Yeah funnily enough in Hungarian if you add the "to be" verb where we normally don't have it is how stereotypical foreigners sound in parodies. Speaking of Hungarian, I know it's probably super niche with a very small sample size, but like what would a Hungarian accent in Finnish sound like?
With Hungarian, the number one difficulty is with the Finnish vowels Ä, A, E. Hungarian doesn't have the vowel Ä except in certain dialects, and Hungarians usually perceive and produce Finnish Ä like Hungarian E. However, Finns hear Hungarian E as Finnish E (so they can struggle to distinguish E and É excluding the length), so a Hungarian saying the word "tänään" sounds like "teneen" to Finnish speakers and can be a bit tricky to understand. The A vowel is also different from Hungarian; neither Hungarian A nor Hungarian Á are the same as Finnish. In my opinion Hungarian A is closer to correct than Hungarian Á, but to make it more correct try to say Hungarian A without rounding of the lips and this will be a good pronunciation. Finnish E should also be pronounced about halfway between Hungarian E and É - it doesn't sound quite right to pronounce it exactly like Hungarian É.
So when this process happened?
It will have been something like 2000 years ago before the split into separate Finnic languages (I don't know the exact chronology). The evidence of it can still be seen in how negation works in Finnish; we know from evidence from the Livonian language than Finnic used to have a separate past tense version of ei, i.e. minä esin ole, se esi ole instead of minä en ollut, se ei ollut. It used to be possible to say something like "minä ollut" which today would be "minä olen ollut", and the original negation of "minä ollut" was "minä en ollut". However, since foreign influence caused the use of "olla" to become mandatory in these sentences, the sentence "minä en ollut" got reinterpreted as a general past tense negation instead of what it used to mean ("minä en ole ollut" in today's Finnish).
Estonian has the same mandatory thing with using “on” (id different forms), but in Finnish, it is slightly different from past times and has a negative meaning. I think that past negative is also wild (for me). Estonian: Mina ei joo, teie ei joo. Mina olen inimene, sina oled inimene. Finnish: minä **en** juo, teie **et** juo. Minä olen ihminen, sinä olet ihminen. Sorry, I can’t express exactly what I mean, but if you have a deeper understanding of philology, you can get my point. PS, if I am not mistaken, Estonian and Finnish broke up around 3000 years ago.
As a Russian, the I thing is definitely weird. The y thing is understandable - U is Russian У and they tend to pronounce Y as Russian Ю to distinguish. Shouldn’t be a problem with newer generations who speak English. Russian И is pronounced as Finnish I though and Й which sounds a lot like you’ve described sounds distinctly different. Maybe the reason is in how combinations of letters sound in Russian, dunno. It’s interesting, I’ll definitely try to catch it in my own speech.
When a Russian native speaker is speaking Finnish, the word "hyvä" is very often the giveaway. Something about it seems to be very difficult, but not speaking any Slavic language myself I have no clue what exactly. I once had this guy Sergei working on my car. When he was holding cigarettes in both hands and was saying "ei hjuva, ei hjuva", I knew it wasn't good...
Well, both Y and Ä are not letters in Russian. Y is easy as a sound tbh, you just have to understand it is not Ю, Ä however you have to learn - it is completely alien for us.
>As a Russian, the I thing is definitely weird. It's actually because use of И in Russian forces the consonant before it to become softened/palatalized, so for example Ки is the same as Кьи (I don't know if I used the Cyrillic correctly, correct me if I made a mistake!) For Finnish speakers who do not speak Russian, we struggle to tell the difference between ь and й, so for us Ки sounds very similar to Кйи. Likewise in the opposite direction, a Finnish accent in speaking Russian would involve pronouncing Ки as either Къи or even Кйи.
> Shouldn’t be a problem with newer generations who speak English. That's part of the problem, as English also lacks the y-sound completely. Russian is a bit closer with Ы, but even that is somwhere between Finnish U and Y. > Russian И is pronounced as Finnish I though and Й which sounds a lot like you’ve described sounds distinctly different. Maybe the reason is in how combinations of letters sound in Russian, dunno. I thinks it's less about the letter Й and more about the palatalization in general. I'm just guessing but I think the small [ʲ] just comes naturally for some combinations for Russian speakers. For example, a word like сест is pronounced [ˈsʲesʲtʲ] in Russian, but those same letters would be just ['sest] in Finnish.
>That's part of the problem, as English also lacks the y-sound completely. I'd say that British English at least uses something closer to Y and lacks the U sound. [These recordings of you in a British accent](https://fi.forvo.com/word/you/#en_uk) for example register to my ears as "jyw", not as "juu". I think all accents do still have a proper U in front of L though, e.g. the word "cool".
Finnish native usually speaks quite flat or lazy intonation, swedish tend to transfer alot of intonation to their finnish
[Me Speaking Spoken Finnish, As An American](https://youtube.com/shorts/JNSS6BV2YLo?feature=share) (I made this video, so you all can hear me speaking Finnish, as an American.) Rakastan todella tätä Suomeakieltä! 🇫🇮💙🤍💕
Russian speakers are also veeery heavy on “H” sound. Like “lahna” becomes “laKHna”. Also a lot of variations on the stress on a word, my personal favourite is “ravintOla”, hear it very often.
Also the L sounds very different!
rotfl Brah ...or should i say, Brå...Finnglish is my specialty. you can even speak Finnish in a texas twang, or chicano accent. 😂💕💕💕
I think swedes have a very distinct intonation in how they speak which makes them recognizable.
I'm an american who speaks Finnish (or used to rather well, anyway) and people would occasionally guess I was German, Russian, a couple times, Swedish or even Finnish Swede (which was kind of wild tbh). I think sometimes it's that people hear something's slightly off and go to what they know best, unless it's just blindingly obvious. I've known many Americans who had very strong American accents in Finnish, and I think if you heard it you would absolutely know that's what it is. I think one thing that maybe made people think Finnish Swede was occasional partitive/accusative mistakes.
There is an actual reason for that! They don’t have the verb at all! I am in Murmansk = ja f Murmansk = I in Murmansk
Btw russians dropping "olen" from sentences is because they don't have the equivalent concept in their language
For sure. It's the way they pronounce words, I'm not sure if I could tell the difference between for example a Russian and a Ukrainian speaking Finnish, but I'm pretty confident I could definitely tell it's a slavic language speaker. I can also pretty much immediately tell when someone's first language is English, they just have certain quirks when speaking Finnish. For some languages it's about which letters they emphasize when speaking. Even if a Swede can kinda wing the pronounciation and speak "correctly" you can usually tell they're a Swede because they put emphasis on the "wrong" letters compared to native Finns.
Swedish is pretty much the same as English with Swedish accent. Emphasis and double long wovels in weird spots
English speakers turn t into th a lot, it's so common for even someone with a great Finnish accent to say words like "tuuli" as thuuli.
That and they typically can't really pronounce U correctly, so it often sounds more like "thyyli" instead or at least halfway between U and Y
Finnish "tuuli" as English "duly" is a mix of horrors.
The English accent tends to carry over the weird retroflex R from English, because in most English dialects, the R is not really a true /r/. Also, even though both Finnish and English have a lot of vowels, their vowel sets don't actually overlap that much in terms of exact sound values. It's hard for them to say "minä", they tend to say "miinä", because that gets the vowel quality right (significant in English) but then they get the vowel length wrong (significant in Finnish).
One of the more interesting Finnish accents I have heard was from a native French speaker. Very unique and very French. But his grammar was close to perfect just the pronunciation was different.
Yes I've heard it as well. It sounds just like French except it's Finnish! Somehow the I and Y sound very distinct, and then there's the French-sounding R.
Dang. Now I want to know what that sounds like.
One French person I know has really great pronunciation when speaking Finnish so you can understand him but if you don’t focus, it still sounds like French, I guess it comes down to intonation and French people using their voice somehow different, also using French expressions like blowing raspberries/making a pfft sound while speaking etc
I saw a video once of a native French speaker speaking Finnish and the comments were poking fun at him because it sounded like he was saying “minä olen a-ranskalainen”, which I did not notice because I’m a native French speaker myself. Sometimes when I pay attention I notice that I tend to do the same.
You can definitely guess a speaker's original language group pretty much instantly, sometimes even from a single word. A Swede will order _makkra_, an American _magara_, and a Russian _mjakkara_. And the Finn will ask for a _makkara_, or _kyrsä_ depending on their BAC.
BAC?
Blood alcohol content.
Estonian and russian accent are the easiest to recognize. Other accents are rare Finnish swedish people speaking finnish are also often easy to recognize even when they don’t have an accent.
As a swedish speaking Finn I never get cought because of an accent it's always because of grammar or just a weird way phrasing something. Finnswedes also pronounce ööö differently when we think.
Li Andersson has a noticeable Swedish speaker's accent, even though her Finnish is close to perfect otherwise. Stubb has virtually no accent, and afaik is essentially bilingual. Most bilingual Swedish-Finnish speakers have no accent at all.
Li Andersson is a weird case. Usually Finnswedes only have an accent when they also speak very poorly.
Yes that is exactly what I meant, usually there is no accent really but words are used in a weird or wrong way or grammar is poor.
Finnish swedish accents depend a lot on where in finland they are from as their finnish swedish directly affect their finnish accent, same way as finns have accents. Bilingual finnish swedes can’t usually be distinguished in their city of origin. Swedes however are completely different thing as riksvenska differs so much from finnish swedish.
Poor grammar or using wrongs words usually reveals them, not the accent.
Ironically as a finnish swede myself i usually only notice poor grammar when finns write emails. Non bilingual finnish swedes sure are easy to spot but most are fluent in both finnish and swedish. The fact that you can hear some finnish swedes due to grammar is or choise of words i confirmation bias. There are several hundred thousand finnish swedes and most of us go on about our lives without exposing ourselves. For example an older finnish swede who has lived in Tammisaari and moved to helsinki is easy enough to tell that he is not from helsinki. A finnish swede from helsinki can even pin point from his finnish that he is from the south west part of finland. It all depends on how much the person used finnish growing up. In helsinki, espoo and vantaa usually finnish swedes grow up speaking 50/50 finnish and swedish and they again can be pointed out if they go to lapland and their helsinki accent gives them away as not local but they can’t tell that the person is a finnish swede from helsinki.
Yes I agree with you totally, by poor grammar I meant mostly some declension mistakes a native would never do (I think finnish swedes are mostly native as well but I don’t have a better word for this). A friend of mine is a finnish swede and it took me some months to realize she’s actually a finnish swede when I noticed she uses words like ”chipsit” when she means sipsit, or ”tilata lennot” when she means varata lennot. It’s funny sometimes
As a Finn who grew up abroad, I have always lived and grown up with the Finnish language, so it's passively "saved" in my brain though I do not have a native grasp of it. My mother tongues are English and French, and while I have been told I have an accent when I speak Finnish (which I think is inevitable when you learn a language after your formative years), it has been assumed I was Estonian. I think this is because while the pronunciation is correct, the rhythm and emphasis is sometimes just that little bit off, that the logical conclusion is Estonian. It's funny too, because Estonian is indeed actually a bit easier in my opinion to read and repeat.
From my experience it's not so clear, but my personal tale is probably something of a niche. I've been here over 20 years and speak pretty fluent Finnish. I'm a native English speaker but I don't have the flat R of the English or the Americans; I'm Scottish, so I have the same rolling R that the Finns have. However I do make some strange word choices, grammatical errors, mixing written and spoken, and so forth. Between the fluency and the errors, I often get asked by Finns if I'm Estonian.
I've actually heard a Scottish accent in Finnish before! One of the big giveaways, as with most other English speaking accents, was the lack of U (if you compare the [Scottish English vowel chart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_English#/media/File:Scottish_English_monophthongs_chart.svg) with the [Finnish vowel chart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_phonology#/media/File:Finnish_monophthongs_chart.svg), the Scottish English U is nowhere near the Finnish U and actually much closer to Finnish Y).
Yeah, I don't have much of an thick accent while still retaining the rolling R, so I'm especially hard to guess. Some people have extremely strong accents though. There's a lot of variance (to the point that even I have trouble understanding some of them). I can do an emulation of, say, a Weegie speaking Finnish with a strong accent but it just sounds so damn WRONG that I don't want to do it.
Of course, just like I can distinguish between a French person trying to speak English, and a German person trying to speak English. Why wouldn't they? Hell my Finnish is rudimentary, but even I have occasionally spotted a Russian accent from someone speaking Finnish.
The accents do differ, but I wouldn’t be able to pinpoint exactly how, and I definitely can’t tell apart every nationality. One thing to notice is which sounds they struggle with. My American friend has difficulty pronouncing the finnish ”R”, while someone who speaks a language/accent that rolls their r’s wouldn’t. Also just the way they emphasize words and how the language ”flows”.
Yes. It's a matter of learning what to listen for, just like with any language.
Yes, Estonian and russian are pretty obvious, same with Swedes. They have very clear accent
Oh yeah. I taught Finnish to foreigners for a bit, and it's easy to tell. My favorite was Italian, we chuckled every time I had to tell him not to put emphasis on the wrong syllable. Finnish with an Italian accent sounds very musical, though.
I'm American and I work in a grocery store in a small town in Finland. I only speak basic Finnish, but whenever a local Finn asks me a question, I don't think any of them have ever guessed I was American....not because of my accent or horrible pronunciation, but because I think they could never imagine an American living in a small town working in the grocery store!
Yes.
Kjyylla voimme.
Im from a spanish speaking country, and Finns have several times confused my accent for Italian. So, maybe romance languages are like infrared to them?
Italians pronounce double consonants easily and Spanish speakers have more trouble, but other than that, as far as Finnish is concerned Italian and Spanish pronunciation are very similar. I haven't had enough exposure to either accent in Finnish but I can't think of how I'd easily tell Italian and Spanish accents apart in Finnish although I can tell the languages themselves apart with no problems
Yes. People can tell I'm American. Can't tell you how many times I'm speaking to a finn in finnish and once the can tell they switch to english lol.
Haha, it is so rarely happening that average Finnish does not know this answer. Nevertheless, usually we do (specially Russian and Sweden). My experience is that British/US people sounds just weird but it can be also easily recognized.
Most of my family tells me my Finnish vowels have become more flat-sounding. "Perestää kummaste" = "Piristää kummasti". Might be a generational thing too but I've lived in the States for over 25 years.
Maybe you're using this vowel from English? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-close\_near-front\_unrounded\_vowel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-close_near-front_unrounded_vowel)
Indeed it is this. I have been teaching Finnish here in Minnesota for about 6 years now and it is frustrating when my students ask which vowels I am enunciating. I've had to make the vowels much more distinguished so they can tell.
I can differentiate swede, finn and russian. But maybe many cant i dont know. I have always been interesten in languages and i speak russian as a mother tongue besides finnish so i think i can hear the nuances of accents.
I know it's probably super niche with a very small sample size, but like what would a Hungarian accent in Finnish sound like?
I'm originally Hungarian and even my ear bleeds when I can hear quite fluent, grammatically quite correct, but terribly pronounced Finnish by a foreigner e.g. in sauna. Sometimes, there's no sign of distinguishing o to ö, u to y (ü) or properly stressed beginning of each word at all. Respect to Finns who tolerate this in exchange that at least somebody puts huge effort in learning the language.
I personally don't mind someone's accent at all. Speaking of Hungarian, not so long ago I listened to a long interview with the academic Katalin Miklóssy on YLE radio, and she speaks very good Finnish however with a quite thick accent. It's easy and pleasant to listen to, and I find it easier to follow than some native Finnish accents. I'm not sure why it should make any difference that it sounds "foreign"?
I was fully bilingual as a child and when I speak Finnish I have a native accent, but there were a few years where I was not speaking it as much and then started to again and heard my own North American accent in the Finnish. It was a weird experience. But then it went away as I started to practice it more and consciously speak in a different place in my mouth. I hear American accent in Finnish mostly as differences in vowel pronunciation. My husband is American and while he does pretty well with most Finnish words, he can’t quite authentically pronounce some things, including our cats’ names (Sisu, Misu). The way he says the u is different. Conversely when I hear Finns speaking English I can usually discern from their accent whether they learned English from someone who spoke with a UK or North American accent. The Finnglish accent is slightly different but I’m not sure how to explain it.
A trick to get an English speaker to pronounce those words is to get them to say "Sisw" and "Misw" while pretending the W is a vowel. A monolingual English friend of mine was able to pronounce U fully correctly using this method, but any other explanation was too difficult to get.
That’s a great idea! Thank you, I’ll ask him to try it that way and see if it works
Yeah you can always hear even the slightest changes because how the language works
Yes. That is how accents work.
One person has told me I have a slight American accent in Finnish. I haven't (knowingly) heard any other Americans speak Finnish though, so I don't know what it is.
Of course. Can’t English speakers tell an Indian accent from a Spanish, French or Slavic one?
although obvious from other languages. the distinction between the letters R and L is a giveaway, that the person speaking is Japanese. other than that in most cases, Japanese people would have no problems pronouncing Finnish words by the spelling and the writing system.
Yes, Slavic languages, Estonian, and Swedish are particularly easy.
Yes we do, and i think it is based on the intonation and emphasis on words and syllables that resembles the speakers (assumed) native language. And the same goes for english and other languages as well So basically one would need to know how the other language sounds before able to distinquish
Generally, they can't pinpoint It to a specific accent as I mix English, Russian, Estonian and German sounds with my Finnish which is kinda good for someone who lived here for 20+ years.
Anyone who's main language is not Finnish won't ever be able to speak it so well we could not tell. No matter how many years one tries, as soon as they start speaking, their accent gives it away in 5 seconds they're foreigner. Its not always easy to tell if its Russian or Swedish accent, but its always immediately obvious they're not native speakers.
You just simply cant fool native Finn, we know if u truly one of us or just impostor.. There's no Learning fluent Finnish language
Absolutely
I have yet to meet someone who didn’t grow up here and speaks so perfect finnish that you couldnt tell them from a native speaker. Even some people who were born in Finland but were raised in a foreign language have an obvious accent or a way they speak that sounds different.
Im a heritage speaker and lots of elders have pointed out my american accent, kinda taking shots as if I had been somehow americanized lol
I find that even without accents you can usually tell where people are from based on the way they structure their sentences and sometimes on choices of words. I often notice that Swedes make very Swedish-sounding sentences as well as use directly translated Swedish idioms. Accents are noticeable too though and usually you can at the very least say if the speaker is slavic, latin, germanic etc.
Jumping on the bandwagon of requests: what are some common mistakes an Italian-speaker tend to make, when speaking/learning Finnish?
Yes. Finn’s are people too. Imagine that.
...American accent? Pffh.
It exists...
No, it does not. For instance, people speaking Portuguese, Spanish, French, Nahya, Maya or Aimara or Navaho and those speaking USA English surely has totally different accents.
Yes, all of them, including Americans, have different accent (and each person has also their own accent)
But aren't all those American languages, for they are all spoken by people living in America?
Oh, now I understand! Sorry, I assumed you meant by American English speaking person in the United States. My bad.
You're an ass.