Finland: A land of extremes, at one of the extremes of Europe.
True to form, many people have found the Finnish language extremely difficult to learn.

Finnish pronunciation, however, is a doddle and can be mastered with almost no knowledge of the language whatsoever.

So whether you're up there on a sailing trip, taking in the scenery or visiting that gorgeous au-pair you met last summer, this guide to pronouncing the personal and place names of Finland is for you.

The phonetic system

Every letter in Finnish is pronounced (there are no silent letters), and every letter represents only one sound.

Note that this is a far cry from languages such as English or French, where 'e's can be silent, 'i's can be pronounced as in 'hit', 'hat' or 'height', and that notorious English sound combination 'ough' has no less than seven different pronunciations.

Let's start with the vowels, since Finnish has such a proliferation of them.
(For the sake of some sort of standard, all examples of English words are based on British Received Pronunciation)

The 'a', 'o' and 'u' are called 'back vowels', while 'ä', 'ö', and 'y' are their 'front vowel' (compressed) equivalents. Finnish never combines these sounds in the same word (except in compounds), because they are formed in different parts of the mouth.
This makes correct pronunciation of vowels come very naturally after just a little practice.
The 'e' and 'i' are neutral and can go anywhere.
This wonderful system is known as Vowel harmony

There, since you got the hang of that so easily, let's move on to the consonants.

Spoken finnish lacks some of the voiced consonants of the Roman alphabet, but most Finns can still tell their 'b's from their 'p's, if only so as not to pronounce the Finnish for 'bus' ('bussi') as the word for 'bag' ('pussi').

Diphthongs / Vowel Combinations

The real secret to pronouncing 'sauna'...
As mentioned above, Finns say things as they see them. Vowels may appear in any combination (with respect to the rules of vowel harmony mentioned above), but combinations are simply to be pronounced as the sum of their parts. Some of the more noteworthy examples are explained below.

Stress / emphasis

This is the easiest part of Finnish. You just have to remember it.

Whereas English has words like 'record', meaning an audio recording, and 'record', the verb for saving sound onto a certain format, with no indication in written language as to which was meant, Finnish has no such confusions.


Finnish stress always goes on the first syllable. There is no exception to this. There is normally a secondary stress on the third syllable.


The old joke is therefore: "Helsinki, emphasis on Hell"

Double letters

This can throw people off in the beginning, but it too is very simple.

Again, the basic principle is that every letter is pronounced, so if a letter appears twice then it means that it's pronounced twice.


Let's take the Finnish word for 'tooth': hammas'

There is a kind of pause on double consonants, much as in Swedish, Spanish or Italian, so hammas sounds like "Ham mass".


Double vowels are simply longer versions of the vowel. So whereas the name Kari has the same rythm as the word 'sorry', the word Saari ('island') has the rythm of 'far-ie'.


Compare the following examples:
Tuli (fire) : "To + Lee"
Tuuli (wind): "Tool + E"
Tulli (customs / toll gate): "Short Tool + Lee"

Place names

Great. You've been a good student.

Now let's practise with some of the more significant place names in and around Finland: