Finnish has short and long vowels. Unlike in many languages, however, Finnish does not use accent marks to indicate long vowels. It simply uses two letters for long vowels, and only one letter for short ones.
All Finnish vowels can be short or long. Short and long vowels can appear in any syllable of the word. The difference between short and long vowels is quantitative. The vowel quality does not change.
A famous pair that illustrates the difference between short and long vowels in Finnish is tuli/tuuli. The word tuli means fire and tuuli means wind. Another example is te/tee. The word te means you (plural) and tee means tea.
Long vowels appear in the words viisi (five) and kuusi (six). However, in numbers such as yksi (one) and kaksi (two), only short vowels appear. In the word syyskuu (September), long vowels appear in both syllables.
Sometimes the vowels of nouns double with affixation. For example, I'm flying to Toronto is Minä lennän Torontoon. The word Torontoon means to Toronto. The word Toronton has a different meaning- of Toronto. The phrase museums of Toronto is Toronton museoita in Finnish.
Finnish has vowel length and it is phonemic. In many languages vowel length is qualitative but in Finnish it is quantitative. Vowel length is an important feature of Finnish phonology.
No comments:
Post a Comment