Monday, January 2, 2023

Finnish Diphthongs

The Finnish language has many diphthongs. Though many Finnish diphthongs also occur in other languages, Finnish also has diphthongs that are not so common in other languages. Here is a list of Finnish words with relatively rare diphthongs:

leyhkä (breeze)
liukas (slippery)
hyi (ugh)
pöytä (table)
ruis (rye)
suo (swamp)
täysin (fully)
yö (night)

The letter ä represents a low front unrounded vowel, and the letter y represents a high front rounded vowel. Unlike in many other languages, Finnish has diphthongs that combine two front rounded vowels in words such as pöytä and yö. None of the diphthongs from the words in the list occur in English.

Diphthongs are common in many languages. However, Finnish has many diphthongs which do not occur in other languages. They also also include front rounded vowels and combinations with front rounded vowels only.

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