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Finnish: Distinguishing a from ä | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Tahl Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4233 days ago 26 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English*, Welsh Studies: Spanish, Finnish | Message 1 of 14 14 August 2013 at 4:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm doing Pimsleur Finnish in preparation for an upcoming vacation there (where I also
have a friend with whom I can speak). I'm at Lesson 7 and very much enjoying the logical structure of the language. However, I'm having problems hearing any significant difference between a and ä in the native speakers' pronunciation. To me, both *usually* sound like mostly like the a in 'cat' in my native American English. Examples; the first syllable of 'haluasin' and 'anteeksi.' But that's the same sound I hear in the last syllable of 'kyllä' and 'minä' and 'missä.' Any suggestions / help? I'm most hoping to be able to pronounce names and words correctly if I see them in writing, so getting a and ä straight seems important! [Edited to fix typo.] Edited by Tahl on 15 August 2013 at 2:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5544 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes  | Message 2 of 14 14 August 2013 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Of course they do not map perfectly, but is non Finnish ä similar to the vowel in trap or bad, but a similar to the vowel in strut or bud. Finnish a is more open than ä, but Finnish ä is still more open than for example the German ä.
PS. I had the same problem to distinguish it, when I listened to my ASSIMIL course, because I expected the ä to be much "broader", i.e. open. Edited by Cabaire on 14 August 2013 at 5:37pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5326 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 3 of 14 14 August 2013 at 6:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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You are right in saying that ä is like English cat (although perhaps a touch more forward in Finnish). [It has nothing to do with German ä]
However, in a word like "anteeksi", you'll find that it's much closer to the English vowel in words like "Under" or "blOnde" -- it's a low back a. Try to say anteeksi with the front vowel in cat, and then say it as if it were English "un"teeksi and you'll be pretty close to the type of distinction you should be hearing (certainly, they shouldn't sound the same to you in English). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4807 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 4 of 14 14 August 2013 at 6:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Try these links:
for ä for a Sometimes it helps to exaggerate the sounds. For example, you can try to pronounce "a" in the very back of your mouth, opening your mouth as much as you can (almost like an "O" but without lip rounding). It might sound funny but as long as you keep the two sounds separate your speech will be understood. Obviously it's very important to NOT diphthongize your vowels (e.g. O should not be ouu). Since you are an English speaker, you should pay attention to that and also to aspirations in the letters T, P and K. I can't tell for sure, but apparently it's something native English speakers have a lot of problems with. Hope that helps, I'm usually not good at explaining these things :) EDIT: And yes, German ä is different. German: ä -> [e] or [ɛ], Finnish: ä -> [æ] Edited by caam_imt on 14 August 2013 at 6:26pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Tahl Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4233 days ago 26 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English*, Welsh Studies: Spanish, Finnish | Message 5 of 14 15 August 2013 at 2:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks -- and thanks particularly for those links, caam_imt. I'll keep working on a
versus ä. I think I've got the O sound down -- it's similar to the Welsh O. What I'm finding trickiest about the unaspirated consonants is distinguishing T from D in what I hear. (P isn't so hard, since there's no B except in loan words.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5544 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 6 of 14 15 August 2013 at 3:43pm | IP Logged | ||
I remember in class when we one again made a mistake in consonant gradation and said for example *äitin rakkaus instead of äidin rakkaus (mother’s love), our teacher would say: Do not worry, many dialects do not distinguish d and t. But in Yleiskieli you have to know this distinction, although they sound similar. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Tahl Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4233 days ago 26 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English*, Welsh Studies: Spanish, Finnish | Message 7 of 14 15 August 2013 at 4:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Welsh too has a system (called "mutation") of consonants turning into other consonants --
including, for instance, T turning into D. The mutation system is partly about sound and partly about signalling what's happening grammatically. Even if you get mutations wrong in Welsh, listeners will generally understand you, and there are some mutations that are dropping out of colloquial spoken usage (e.g., aspirate mutation of T into TH). Hope Finnish is equally forgiving... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4807 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 8 of 14 15 August 2013 at 5:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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D was added to the written language when it was created by Mikael Agricola, so it is
kind of a late comer. It indeed existed in some dialects but not in the majority of them. Even though Finns can produce this sound if they want, you will see that in some eastern dialects it is completely left out by native speakers (tehdä -> tehä); in the case of some western dialects, some other consonant takes its place (tehdä -> tehrä). Perhaps some Finns never got used to it or didn't like the "new" addition to the language, who knows. Again this is hard to explain, but what I do is place the tip of my tongue on the alveolar ridge (I think this makes it bend inwards a little) and do the rest of the process as if it was a "t". When I make a "t" sound, the tip of my tongue is touching my teeth, so there is an obvious difference in the resulting sound. This "d" kind of reminds me of how Hindi speakers sound (for a lack of a better comparison). Yet another thing worth mentioning is that many words that in the written language get a "B" or "D", might be pronounced with a "P" or "T" by some speakers. This might be due to preference or comedic effect. Some natives might also look down upon other Finns who do that, but it varies a lot and I don't think such criticisms apply to foreigners. A similar thing happens the other way around, specially when some Finns see a written word in Estonian, which may be very similar to some Finnish word, but with B's, d's or g's. It's usually amusing to them, even though pronunciation in Estonian is a bit different (but this is another topic already :)) As you can see, Finns can play a little with b's, d's and g's, but I would strongly recommend you to focus on the written language exclusively until you're at some kind of intermediate level. It's really not something to worry about right now. You can spice up a little your speech with some shortened words that are extremely common in the spoken language (yksi -> yks, minä -> mä, olen -> oon, and so on), but when it comes to vocabulary and consonant gradation paradigms, for now, do it by the book :) Edited by caam_imt on 15 August 2013 at 8:01pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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