4 ms·

Well I believe finnish is not as defined as german, what's up with all these random 'ä'? When you say "kyntillä" out loud, the last character sounds more like a

• villesundberg 12y ago
  In Finnish, the letter 'ä' denotes the vowel [æ], which is close to the vowel you'd use in the words 'cat' or 'hat' in English. This sound, to my knowledge, doesn't exist in Standard German.
• kiiski 12y ago
  If the word (I think you mean "kynttilä=candle"?) is pronounced correctly, the last character sounds like an "ä", which is a completely seperate character from "a". In fact, you can't even have an "a" in the same word with a "y" due to the vowel harmony rules. The thing that makes Finnish alphabet very easy, is that every character corresponds to one sound (with the exception of "c", which can be either "k" or "s", but it isn't actually used in Finnish (it just exists for legacy and compatibility with Swedish)) and vice versa (with the exceptions of "w=v" and "å=o", but, again, they're not used in Finnish) That is, a character will always sound the same, regardless of what is around it. There are no silent letters. No things like "ea -> ee" or "ph -> f" (if you write two different characters, you also pronounce two different sounds). No single vowels that randomly became long vowels (like English "ski -> skee" rather than "sky").