h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't quite agree about 'a' being pronounced like the wovel sound in 'heart' - how about 'hut'?

I don't agree with 'ö' as in 'hut' either - I think 'hurt' would be better - or maybe that's what you intended but lost the 'r'?

Just curious - is the letter 'x' really in the Finnish alphabet? I can't remember ever seeing a Finnish word including the letter x - but then, I don't do much reading in Finnish...

I agree with Titania about those two.

Yes, the x is in the alphabet, though I can't think of any Finnish words that has it, if any even exist. I suppose it's a "leftover" from Swedish, our another official language.

There is one exception (that I can remember right away) to the letter g, the äng-sound, the ng-combination where the g is not hard but the same as in the word kangaroo.

An idea: to emphasize the fact that each letter is pronounced separately, mention that there are no 'sh' or 'ch' sounds in the Finnish language

By the way, does any Finnish word contain the letter 'c'? I don't really see any use for it, considering that you'll use either 's' or 'k' instead.

And we have c and q also in the alphabet. C is mostly seen in loan words like cd-soitin (cd player), charmikas (charming), cembalo, cocktail, college (sweatshirt)) and is pronounced like a "c" or a "k".

Q, on the other hand, I have no idea what to do with.

Oops. I meant to say that the "c" is pronounced like an "s" or a "k".

Oh! You've said all I wanted to say already.
Usually I think 'bird' is the best example for 'ö' but I guess 'hurt' is just as good.

Thanks for all your suggestions!

It'll take me a while to digest them all, but I wanted to address the 'u' = 'ö' thing first.

Pronouncing words like 'cut' and 'country' with an 'a' sound is not standard in British RP, and specifically a feature of American-sounding English.
Ideally the article should refer to both, but since I'm no expert on American pronunciation I've had to give that a miss.
But in RP at least, 'hut' sounds not the least bit like 'hat' and has a vowel sound much closer to the 'ö' sound in 'bird', albeit shorter. I'm not sure how to represent those sounds more internationally. English has that inherent drawback of having so many variations worldwide.

I do like the suggestion for using 'bird' however.

And I'll bow to Rupert's expert knowledge on the letters existing in the Finnish alphabet. I had also been under the understanding that there are lots of letters inherited from Swedish which aren't actually used. I believe I mention that too... somewhere?
maybe not.

Anyway... I think that covers it all for now. Anything I've missed?

About the 'a' sound - I still insist that it doesn't sound like the wovel sound in 'heart' - how about but, butt or button? And I thought that the wovel in 'hut' was pronounced the same way as in 'but'?

In RP the sound in 'but', 'butt' and 'hut' is the same as 'ö'.
Only in American English are those pronounced with an 'a' sound.

How about 'cart' or 'car' for the 'a'?

No, to me the 'a' sound in 'car' and 'cart' is definitely not the same as the Finnish 'a'

Odd - I thought I knew English, but I must admit to never having heard anyone pronounce 'but' or 'butt' with an 'ö' sound...

The Finnish 'a' is, IMHO, pronounced like the phonetic symbol that looks like an upside down V - like the 'u' in button

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=10564&dict=CALD

Hmm...

Convincing evidence you have there.

I guess the confusion has come from all the 'pure theory' Finnish lessons I've had. It wouldn't be the first time people haven't been taught a convincing written language.

I really thought the Finnish 'a' was much more like the long English 'a' and not the lazy half-vowel of 'button', but I'll concede that in real life it is more of an 'uh'...

And perhaps the 'ö' dips a lot lower than 'u' ever does too.
I never knew this could be so hard!

'a' is short, but I think 'aa' sounds quite like the vowel in heart. The different pronounciation in British English and American English is really a problem, I think many Finns know American pronounciation better because we get more american tv-shows than british ones.

'guard' and 'garden' have nice 'a' too, methinks.

A is roughly the same sound as in German or French; thus AA is pronounced roughly as A in AFTER (in British pronunciation); short A resembles u in British English "cup" or o in American English "hot"

from
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/finnish.pronunciation.html

A is pronounced as u in 'uncivilized' according to
http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Finnish:Alphabet_and_pronunciation

Here we have yet another problem, which means I've probably shot myself in the foot by chossing RP:

RP is based on southern English pronunciation, which isn't used by any Americans or even about half of the Brits. So while the south of Britain are pronouncing their 'after' and 'laughter' with a long 'a', the rest of us are making a much more 'ä'-like sound there.

But let's go with the 'cup' version.

Oh, and I forgot to put Hati's 'bird' in too!

"Finnish lacks some of the voiced consonants of the Roman alphabet".

I find the phrase a bit troubling. I mean, we do have them in the alphabet, even if they are rarely used. Though the only letters missing from the list are c and q. I've mentioned c on a previous post and q is often replaced by k. The only use of q I know of is in names of Swedish origin.

Ah, sorry. Good point.
What I meant was 'spoken Finnish lacks some of the consonantal sounds'

Does that sound fair?

I think that's more true.