Length
All phonemes (including /ʋ/ and /j/, see below) can occur doubled phonemically as a phonetic increase in length. Consonant doubling always occurs at the boundary of a syllable in accordance with the rules of Finnish syllable structure.
Some example sets of words:
- tuli = fire, tuuli = wind, tulli = customs
- muta = mud, muuta = other (partitive sg.), mutta = but, muuttaa = to change or to move
A double /h/ is rare in standard Finnish, but possible, e.g. hihhuli, a derogatory term for a religious fanatic. In some dialects, e.g. Savo, it is common: rahhoo, or standard Finnish rahaa "money" (in the partitive case). The distinction between /d/ and /dː/ is found only in foreign words; natively 'd' occurs only in the short form. While /ʋ/ and /j/ may appear as geminates when spoken (e.g. vauva, raijata ), this distinction is not phonemic, and is not indicated in spelling.
In dialects or in colloquial Finnish, /ʋ/, /d/, and /j/ can have distinctive length, especially due to final consonant mutation, e.g. sevverran (sen verran), kuvvoo (kuvaa), teijjän (teidän).
Read more about this topic: Finnish Phonology
Famous quotes containing the word length:
“To find the length of an object, we have to perform certain
physical operations. The concept of length is therefore fixed when the operations by which length is measured are fixed: that is, the concept of length involves as much as and nothing more than the set of operations by which length is determined.”
—Percy W. Bridgman (1882–1961)
“At length they all to merry London came,
To merry London, my most kindly nurse,
That to me gave this life’s first native source;
Though from another place I take my name,
An house of ancient fame.”
—Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)
“The man who, from the beginning of his life, has been bathed at length in the soft atmosphere of a woman, in the smell of her hands, of her bosom, of her knees, of her hair, of her supple and floating clothes, ... has contracted from this contact a tender skin and a distinct accent, a kind of androgyny without which the harshest and most masculine genius remains, as far as perfection in art is concerned, an incomplete being.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)