Vowel harmony in Finnish

(Place the cursor on any Finnish word you don't know and you'll see the English translation.)

Vowel harmony (in Finnish vokaalisointu tai vokaaliharmonia) is a set of rules that makes pronouncing the words easier. Basically it means that the vowels are grouped in three groups: front, back and neutral vowels.


This means that front and back vowels can't occur in same word. Neutral vowels E and I can occur in any word even though they are front vowels. When the word is inflected or conjucated, the proper ending for the word should be choosen considering the vowel harmony.


Vowel harmony applys of course only in native Finnish words, some loan words, like Olympialaiset, do not follow this rule. There are also some compounds, like ruokapöytä or työhuone, that don't follow this rule either.

For learning Finnish Category Uncategorized Level Unspecified Second language English Created Nov 17, 2008 04:59 Views 662 Share:

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