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1. PRONUNCIATION - The Alphabet
2. PRONUNCIATION - Short and Long Sounds
3. GRAMMAR - Vowel Harmony
4. VOCABULARY - Basic Phrases
5. PERSONAL PRONOUNS

COMING SOON
6. VERBS - Conjugation Group I

In Finnish, one letter equals one sound. For example in English the letter O can be pronounced differently in different words (show, shower..). This is something the Finnish language doesn’t have. As said, one letter equals one sound, which means that no matter in which word you use the letter, it will always sound the same. Here’s a list of how the Finnish alphabet are pronounced.

A | aa | like A in WHAT
B | bee | like B in BIG
C | see | Usually pronounced the same way as S but occasionally also pronounced as K
D | dee| The same as the English D
E | ee| like E in BET
F | äf | like F in FOX
G | gee | like G in GIRL
H | hoo | like H in HOME
I | ii | like I in FIT
J | jii | like the letter Y in English
K | koo | A bit softer than the English K
L | äl | The same as the English L
M | äm | The same as the English M
N | än | The same as the English N
O | oo | like O in TOP (British English), or a bit like A in ALL
P | pee | A bit softer than the English P
Q | kuu | A bit of a mix of G and K, followed by the letter U
R | är | A rolling R
S | äs | Like S in SAVE
T | tee | A bit softer than the English T
U | uu | like U in FULL
V | vee | The same as the English V
W | kaksoisvee | The same as V
X | äks | Like X in FIX
Y | yy | I find this the most difficult letter to explain as the English language totally lacks the sound for the Finnish Y. In case you know German of French though, the Finnish Y is the same as Ü (U-umlaut) in German and in French it’s close to the French U.
Z | zet(a) | like TS in BATS
Å | ruotsalainen oo | Is included in the Finnish alphabet but is not actually used in the language at all. It’s only on the list because it’s used in Swedish and Swedish is the other official language of Finland. But as you’re learning Finnish, even though this letter is on the list of alphabets, you can pretty much ignore it. :')
Ä | ää | Similar to the A in HAT
Ö | öö | Also another difficult letter to explain but it’s close to the U in FUR.

The vowels
A E I O U Y Ä Ö

The consonants
B C D F G H J K L M N P Q R S T V W X Z

I’m starting with some fun grammar, oh yes. There are three different types of vowels in the Finnish language – front, back and neutral vowels. The front and back vowels always go in pairs, for example the front vowel Ä is paired with the back vowel A because they are pronounced similarly, but the pronunciation of the letter Ä happens at the front of your mouth whereas the pronunciation of the letter A happens at the back of your mouth. The neutral vowels again are pronounced in the middle.

The front vowels
Y Ö Ä

The back vowels
U O A

The vowel pairs
Y – U
Ö – O
Ä – A

The neutral vowels
I E

The front and back vowels NEVER appear together in the same word. That’s what the whole vowel harmony is all about. You can however combine front vowels and neutral vowels in a word, as well as back vowels and neutral vowels, but never front vowels and back vowels. So if you’ve got for example the word kala (= fish), it has only back vowels in it (A), the word koira (= dog) however has back vowels (O, A) and a neutral vowel (I) in it. The word yö (= night) again has only front vowels in it (Y, Ö) whereas the word päivä (= day) has both front vowels (Ä) and neutral vowels in it (I).

There are really no exceptions in this rule except for foreign words that have been adapted to the Finnish language, such as amatööri (= amateur), but there are very few of them. Also, compound words that actually consist of multiple words, such as työpaikka (työ = work, paikka = place) may have both front and back vowels in them but as they are in separate words (even if it’s within a compound word), they don’t really break the rule of vowel harmony. The word tällainen (= like this) is a bit questionable though. It doesn’t really consist of two separate words but it is a shorten that was was originally made out of the word tämänlainen (tämän lainen, = like this) and therefore the word has both front and back vowels. This is probably the only word in the Finnish language though that in a way breaks the rule of vowel harmony but if you do look at the history of the word, it doesn’t kill the rule all that bad. But as said, it’s probably the only word like this in Finnish so you don’t need to bother yourselves too much with it.

If you ignore the exceptions, the whole vowel harmony is a fairly simple thing, no? It might sound a bit of a useless information for now but once you get further in your Finnish studies, the rules of vowel harmony will become something you should remember well.

Before getting to much anything, teaching the basic personal pronouns of Finnish is a must. The Finnish language is a gender-neutral language, which means that the nouns, including the personal pronouns, are not associated with any gender. Whereas English has the words he and she, which let you know the gender of the person in question, Finnish merely has one word to describe both of them, the neutral hän. Therefore, you can not tell whether it is a woman or a man in question when this word is used.

As already mentioned, I’m mostly going to teach the standard language instead of the spoken one, but as for the personal pronouns, the spoken versions of them are extremely common so I am also going to list those too after the actual personal pronouns, just so you won't get confused when someone uses such instead of the standard ones. The spoken versions I'm listing are the ones used around the capital area and some other parts of the country. In certain other regions different ones are used but they are usually quite similar either to the standard ones or the spoken ones on the list.

I | Minä (Spoken: Mä)
You | Sinä (Spoken: Sä)
He / She | Hän (Spoken: Se, literally means “it”)

We | Me
You (all) | Te
They | He (Spoken: Ne)

Note: Te usually refers to many people but in formal speech, it is used instead of sinä.