4 ms·
Except that written Finnish represents, well, written Finnish, which is an artificial standard frozen centuries ago that no one actually speaks outside a few fo
by OfSanguineFire 3y ago
Except that written Finnish represents, well, written Finnish, which is an artificial standard frozen centuries ago that no one actually speaks outside a few formal contexts. The country has diglossia like, for example, Greece up to the 1970s. When Finns speak, they use puhekieli, spoken Finnish, and there are differing ways to represent spoken Finnish in writing, and different readings for that written representation depending on the person's native dialect.
- Sharlin 3y agoThat's quite correct, of course. Still, you can write puhekieli (as most of us do daily in informal textual communication such as IMs) and it's still very close to phonetic, although there are individual differences in how "spoken" and dialectical their written puhekieli is. Some common puhekieli traits like the widening of the diphtongs "uo" and "yö" to /ua/ and /yä/ are more rarely reflected in informal writing unless one wants to specifically underline or exaggerate the pronunciation (eg. for comedic effect, or in written fiction featuring persons speaking a dialect).