Help talk:IPA/Finnish

The discussions before the split can be found at Help talk:IPA/Estonian and Finnish/Archive 1.

e:

Don't really understand how pay / pair have anything to do with [e:]. Need better examples, if possible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.115.51.24 (talk) 17:47, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

ɦ

Why does this key (and the one for Estonian) use ⟨ɦ⟩ in addition to ⟨h⟩? [ɦ] is indeed often an intervocalic allophone of /h/ in many languages including English, but that is rarely marked in transcriptions of this kind. Nardog (talk) 10:53, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

@Nardog: We also use [ç] and [x] for allophones of /h/, not just those two. So does Help:IPA/Estonian by the way. We might want to consider writing them all with ⟨h⟩. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 18:44, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

I just went ahead and replaced all those allophones of /h/ with ⟨h⟩. There were only a few transcriptions that used them anyway (and the alternation wasn't even consistent!), so restoring them wouldn't be difficult on the off-chance someone makes a strong case for keeping them. Nardog (talk) 18:42, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Rising diftongues

Aren't /yö/, /ie/, /uo/ and maybe also /iu/ rising? I should find Fred Karlsson's book. --Per W (talk) 05:31, 19 February 2020 (UTC) I looked in it, but it does not say anything about /iu/. The other ones are at least classified as starting with a closed vowel and going to a mid one. Per W (talk) 11:00, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

ö and y

According to this page, the letter ö is pronounced as ø. I am pretty sure it's actually pronounced as ɘ in finnish. Also y is pronounced somewhat like the u in cute, and I agree it's somewhat like it, but I think it would be better to use an exact approximation, and i think the y in rhythm is exactly the same. VinsiesPlayer (talk) 08:05, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Every sound has a range of possible realisations, so the phonemic representation is kind of arbitrary but cardinal vowels tend to be used if the language doesn't have finer phonemic distinctions. The convention of using /ø/ and /y/ is based on those being the closest cardinal vowels; there is no phonemic /ɘ/ or /ɨ/ in Finnish to contrast with /ø/ and /y/, so even though /ø/ and /y/ can probably be pronounced as [ɘ] and [ɨ] without any misunderstandings, they are still phonemically front rounded vowels (as the rounded counterparts of /e/ and /i/) even if they might not be phonetically front or rounded 100% of the time.

I do agree that they're not as rounded as /o/ and /u/ or as front as /e/ and /i/ at least in my own speech as well (and the vowel chart on the Finnish phonology article agrees), but it's just a minor phonetic detail. The way I personally pronounce them (and probably most people at least in Helsinki) in normal fast speech is probably closest to [ə̹] and [ʉ̟] in general, as in /ø/ is somewhat less rounded and more central than /y/, but that doesn't mean phonemically describing them as /ə/ and /ʉ/ would make sense since A) the [ə̹] also patterns as a rounded vowel like /o/ and B) the [ʉ̟] patterns as a front vowel like /i/.

Because /ø/ doesn't have any other vowels that it could be confused with, it can come out as anything between [œ] and [ɘ] and be understood, and with /y/ there's also always something to keep it distinct from both /i/ and /u/. That's why /ø/ and /y/ make the most sense as phonemic descriptions, but of course the phonetic details make a big difference in how the language actually sounds.

Describing the phonetic details is kinda hard since that involves making generalisations that don't apply to all speakers with all the variation between dialects and even individuals. To refer to a sound already mentioned on this talk page, a lot of people have [ɦ] as an intervocalic allophone of /h/, while for me it's (at least almost) always voiceless. Also, some people really do have velar [x] as the allophone of /h/ near /ɑ/ and /o/, while for me and I'm pretty sure most it's actually uvular [χ] in those contexts... and they're mutually exclusive, so it easily risks turning into a "my dialect is better than your dialect!" argument with prescriptivism and stuff, like, "it's supposed to be voiced [ɦ] between vowels and velar [x] next to /ɑ/" about /h/ or "it's supposed to be a mid front rounded [ø̞]" about /ø/. It's probably better to keep the descriptions vague enough to apply across dialects than risk being prescriptive. Even more so when it's a quick pronunciation guide.

Also, I think approximating /y/ with English <y> in "rhythm" could be misleading because the similarity comes from the English rhotic consonant /r/ being phonetically rounded (for most speakers of the most widely spoken dialects), something like [ɹ̠ʷ], so if the goal is to describe the sounds of Finnish for English-speakers, that could cause a huge misunderstanding since the phonetic similarity in that context is based on the rounding of the consonant, which isn't perceived as a distinguishing feature. So, saying Finnish <y> is like English <y> in "rhythm" could lead to the impression that Finnish <y> is also like English <i​> in "sit" since those are the same phoneme.

Most dialects of English just don't have the exact same sounds as Finnish <ö> and <y>, so approximating them with English sounds is kinda hard. I guess adding "rhythm" without replacing "cute" could be a solution, demonstrating that it doesn't correspond exactly with any one English sound? Maybe it'd also make sense to add <er> in "under" or something as an approximation of single <ö>, since "nurse" in non-rhotic accents has a long vowel?

Sorry for how long and rambly this reply got...

VHGW (talk) 14:48, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

puu / spool

Since the /p/ in pool is usually aspirated, and Finnish never is, maybe the /p/ in spool could be a better example from English? 2001:999:701:1310:64A6:2438:9E9D:9A20 (talk) 10:18, 7 November 2023 (UTC)