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Finnish pronunciation guide and tips for UTAU users

Notes

- I use IPA in this post: IPA symbols of each sound are in [].

Sounds that are often tricky for foreigners

- vowel y (and sometimes “ä” and “ö” depending on where you’re from)
- r sound

Vowels

Finnish has 8 vowels in total: a, e, i, o, u, y, ä, ö

[ɑ] a - “a” sound like in English “car" (without r)

[e] e - Same than Japanese e/え

[ i ] i - Same than Japanese i/い

[o] o - Same than Japanese o/お

[ u ] u - If you speak Spanish then congratulations: Finnish u sounds exactly same than Spanish u sound!

Not exactly same but English "book" sounds similar to Finnish u.

[y] y - If you speak German or French then congratulations: Finnish y sounds exactly same than German ü or like "u" in French (e.g. "su" in French)! Sadly, there's no English equal for this sound...

If you don’t know how to make "y" sound then do this: your tongue is in shape of “i” but lips are in the same shape than in “u”.

[æ] ä - Like in English “cat”.

[ø] ö - The English vowel “bird” is the closest sound to ö BUT it’s NOT exactly same to that English sound!!!! Your tongue is in shape of “i” but lips are in the same shape than in “o” when you do Finnish “ö” sound.



Consonants

These sounds are same than in English:

b [ b ], d[d], f[f], g[g], h[h], l[l], m[m], n[n], ng[ŋ], s [ s ]

“k”, “t” and “p”:

Do NOT aspirate k/t/p sounds! These are un-aspirated like in “stop” or “spot” in English.

“j” sound:

Finnish pronounces “j” like English y in a word “yes”.

So think that “Finnish j” = “English y”.

“v” sound:

Finnish “v” is labiodental approximant [ʋ].

You can think this to be a sound between English “w” and “v”.

It won’t be very dangerous if you think is that English “v” sound: as long as it does not sound too much like English “w” it will be all right! : )

“š” sound:

š (sometimes written as “sh”) is [ʃ], sounds same to English “sh” like in "ship".

However, this sound only occurs in loan words only and nowadays Finnish people often uses that sound less and less, often replacing š with normal s sound.

It’s 100% fine to skip this sound because you will very VEEEEERY unlikely need this.

“r” sound:

If you speak Spanish (sounds like Spanish “rr”) - or Russian - then you're already familiar with this sound: Yes, It's trilled (rolled) R!

If you don’t, well… you will need to watch some videos named “how to trill/roll r”. Unfortunately, I cannot explain how to do this R sound... ^^;

Recommend Finnish recording lists
  • YukitoYuki's Finnish CV+ and Pika CVVC (and VCV if you can record a lot! I do NOT recommend Finnish VCV for beginners).
  • @Aura Autumnus ' Finnish VCCV (Violet Aura Finnish VCCV)
Recording list and configuring setting notes

YukitoYuki’s list*
*In Finnish VCV version
  • ä is written as “ae” in reclist but in oto.ini alias as “A”.
  • ö is written as “oe” in reclist but in oto.ini alias as “O”.
  • [ŋ] is written as “ng”.
  • š [ʃ] is written as “sh”.
  • In old Finnish VCV reclist, “ks” [ks] sound is named as “x” in reclist/oto’s Alias. (this is because “x” is called as “äks” in Finnish alphabet). But in the newest recording lists, Finnish VCV ver 2 and Pika CVVC /ks/ is aliased a "ks" for clarity.
  • New Finnish VCV and Pika CVVC have an extra consonant "zh" to help to pronounce English and Russian words (this sound is similar to English j like in "jam"). This is completely optional, non-native sound, so this can be completely skipped!
Aura’s VCCV list
  • ä is written as “ae” in reclist but in oto.ini alias as “A”.
  • ö is written as “oe” in reclist but in oto.ini alias as “O”.
  • “ts” [ts] sound is named as “z” in reclist/oto’s Alias. (“z” is called as “tseta” in Finnish alphabet. Finnish pronounces for example pizza as "pitsa", zombi as "tsombi" and so on)
Other tips

Because if Finnish "vowel harmony" system, some vowel+vowel and vowel+consonant+vowel sound combinations are hyper rare (rare because this are tricky to say - even for natives!) and you can see this only occurring in loan and combination words.

Because of the Finnish "vowel harmony" system, some lines drive me almost insane recording a full Finnish VCV: I had, for example, retake "mamämamyma" line like over 5 times for my full Finnish VCV because vowel harmony made be say "y" as "u" and/or "ä" as "a" or "e" if I didn't pay attention and it was really REEEEALLY frustrating.

If you want to get easier with YukitoYuki's OLD Finnish VCV reclist, do NOT record this lines (these lines are located in recording pack's part2 folder if I remember right):

_€a_€ae_€a_€y_€a
_€o_€y_€o_€ae_€o
_€u_€y_€u_€ae_€u
_€oe_€o_€oe_€u_€oe

*replace € mark with a consonant

If won't be dangerous if you skip recordings these vowel+vowel sound combinations, you will not need these combinations frequently - trust me!

a_y
a_ä
a_ö

o_y
o_ä
o_ö

u_y
u_ä
u_ö

y_a
y_o
y_u

ä_a
ä_o
ä_u

ö_a
ö_o
ö_u

I hope that this helped! If you have questions, just ask!
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