Eight of Finnish's 29 letters — b, c, f, q, w, x, z, å — write sounds that historical Finnish simply did not have. For most of the language's history these letters were unusable, so when Finnish borrowed a foreign word it rebuilt it out of native letters: Swedish skola became koulu, kaffe became kahvi, bank became pankki. Modern Finnish is more relaxed and keeps some of these letters in newer borrowings, but the underlying instinct never changed — every loan is pronounced with Finnish sounds, whatever letters survive on the page. The English-speaker's mistake is to see a b, w, or z and reach for the English pronunciation, and to assume these letters are freely available for spelling. They are not: they are a small, marked set that flags a word as foreign. (How Finnish reshapes an incoming loan overall is the subject of Spelling Loanwords; their alphabet position is on The Finnish Alphabet.)
How old loans erased the foreign letters
The oldest, best-established borrowings were fully nativised — reshaped until nothing foreign remained. Two forces did the work: Finnish had no b/c/f/g/z sounds, and it did not allow consonant clusters at the start of a word. So an incoming word lost both its alien letters and its initial cluster.
| Source | Finnish | Meaning | What changed |
|---|---|---|---|
| skola (Swe) | koulu | school | initial cluster sk- dropped to k- |
| glas (Swe) | lasi | glass | initial gl- dropped to l- |
| strand (Swe) | ranta | shore, beach | initial str- dropped to r- |
| kaffe (Swe) | kahvi | coffee | f-sound rewritten as v (hv) |
| bank (Swe) | pankki | bank | b rewritten as p |
Join aamulla kupin kahvia ja menin bussilla kouluun.
In the morning I drank a cup of coffee and took the bus to school. — 'kahvi' and 'koulu' are fully nativised loans with no foreign letters left.
How newer loans keep (some of) the letters
Modern Finnish tolerates foreign letters far more readily, especially b and f, which now appear in thousands of everyday words: banaani (banana), bussi (bus), baari (bar), bensiini (petrol), filmi (film), asfaltti (asphalt), festivaali (festival). But even here the pronunciation is Finnish through and through — a native, unaspirated [b], a plain [f] — and the words obey Finnish spelling rules like vowel doubling.
Uusi filmi alkaa kohta, ostetaanko popcornia?
The new film starts soon — shall we buy popcorn? — f survives in 'filmi'; the word still follows Finnish spelling.
The letters c, q, w, x, z are treated much more coldly. In adapted spelling they are usually respelled with native letters:
| Letter | Rewritten as | Example |
|---|---|---|
| x | ks | taxi → taksi, fax → faksi, maximum → maksimi |
| z | ts | pizza → pitsa, tsar → tsaari |
| c | k or s | circus → sirkus, cocoa → kaakao, citron → sitruuna |
| q | kv or k | quarter → kvartaali |
| w | v | kept only in names: Wärtsilä, Waltari |
Otetaanko taksi vai mennäänkö bussilla?
Shall we take a taxi or go by bus? — 'taksi' spells the x-sound as ks, the native way.
Söin eilen pitsaa ja katsoin elokuvan.
Yesterday I ate pizza and watched a film. — 'pitsa' is the adapted spelling; z becomes ts.
Foreign letters, Finnish sounds
The single most important rule on this page: no matter which foreign letter a loan keeps, you pronounce it the Finnish way. English values do not transfer.
- w is always a v-sound. It survives only in surnames and old company names — Wärtsilä, Waltari, von Wright — where it is a historical spelling of v. It is even alphabetised together with v (see the alphabet page).
- z is read as ts, never the buzzing English [z]. Mozart comes out roughly as "Motsart."
- b, g, d in loans are plain, soft, unaspirated stops — nothing like their sometimes-breathy English cousins.
Isoisäni työskenteli aikoinaan Wärtsilässä.
My grandfather once worked at Wärtsilä. — the w is pronounced v; note that ä then pulls the front ending -ssä.
Mozartin musiikki soi radiosta.
Mozart's music is playing on the radio. — Finns read the z as 'ts': 'Motsartin'.
The letter å — the "Swedish o"
Å is the odd one out. It is a genuine letter of the Finnish alphabet, yet it appears in no native Finnish word at all. Finland is officially bilingual, and å exists purely so that Swedish names — of people and places — can be written correctly: the islands of Åland (Finnish Ahvenanmaa), the old Swedish name Åbo for the city of Turku, surnames like Ståhlberg and Åström. It is pronounced like a long Finnish o [oː], and — this is the trap — it is not the same letter as a, ä, or ö. It has its own slot near the end of the alphabet, just before ä.
Åland kuuluu Suomeen, vaikka siellä puhutaan ruotsia.
Åland belongs to Finland, even though Swedish is spoken there. — å appears only in this Swedish name; it sounds like a long o.
Loans can break vowel harmony
Native Finnish words never mix back vowels (a, o, u) with front ones (ä, ö, y) in the same stem — that is vowel harmony. Loanwords, however, are free to violate it. The word olympialaiset ("the Olympics") contains both a back o and a front y; amatööri ("amateur") mixes back a with front ö. These disharmonic words are a real, if limited, exception, and they take their endings according to the last back or front vowel in the stem.
Ensi kesän olympialaiset kiinnostavat koko perhettä.
Next summer's Olympics interest the whole family. — 'olympialaiset' mixes back o with front y, which no native word would do.
These letters never trigger consonant gradation
Consonant gradation — the native alternation of p, t, k (katu → kadun, leipä → leivän, jalka → jalan) — is a purely Finnish system, and the loan-only letters stand entirely outside it. A b or f in a loan never alternates, and many loanwords keep even their k/p/t unchanged, exactly because they are felt to be foreign:
Auton renkaat ovat tyhjät.
The car's tyres are flat. — 'auto' is a loan, so its genitive is 'auton', not the gradated 'audon' a native word would show.
Common Mistakes
❌ Waltari lausutaan englannin 'w':llä.
Incorrect — Finnish w is never the English w; it's a v-sound.
✅ Waltari lausutaan v:llä: 'Valtari'.
Waltari is pronounced with a v: 'Valtari'.
❌ Kirjoitan sen: taxi, pizza.
Incorrect for adapted Finnish — x and z aren't used to build Finnish words.
✅ Kirjoitan sen: taksi, pitsa.
I write it: taksi, pitsa — the native ks and ts spellings.
❌ Å on sama kuin ä.
Incorrect — å is the 'Swedish o' (long o); ä is a separate front vowel.
✅ Å äännetään kuten pitkä o, ja se on vain ruotsalaisissa nimissä.
Å is pronounced like a long o, and appears only in Swedish names.
❌ Zoo lausutaan englannin z:lla.
Incorrect — Finnish z is 'ts', not the buzzing English z.
✅ Pizza-sanan z lausutaan 'ts': pitsa.
The z in 'pizza' is pronounced 'ts': pitsa.
Key Takeaways
- B, c, f, q, w, x, z, å are loan-only letters — the native system does without them.
- Old loans erased them entirely (skola → koulu, kaffe → kahvi, bank → pankki); modern loans keep b and f freely but usually respell c, q, w, x, z as k/s, kv, v, ks, ts.
- Whatever letter survives, the pronunciation is Finnish: w = v, z = ts, b/g/d are plain soft stops.
- Å is the "Swedish o," used only in Swedish names and sounding like a long o — never confuse it with a, ä, or ö.
- Loans may break vowel harmony (olympialaiset, amatööri), and the loan-only letters never take part in consonant gradation.
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Start learning Finnish→Related Topics
- The Finnish AlphabetA1 — The 29 letters of Finnish, their names, which ones are native versus loan-only, and why ä and ö sort at the very end — after z — not beside a and o.
- Spelling Loanwords and Foreign NamesB2 — How Finnish reshapes loans (pizza → pitsa) and glues endings onto foreign names via a colon or apostrophe — harmony set by pronunciation, not spelling.
- One Letter, One Sound: Finnish SpellingA1 — Finnish spelling maps almost perfectly to sound — no silent letters, no reduced vowels, and length shown by doubling — so reading is decoding, not memorising.
- Inflecting Foreign and Loan NounsB2 — How borrowed and foreign nouns decline: settled loans that inflect normally, the -seen illative for -oo names, and the colon and apostrophe for names.
- Vowel Harmony in LoanwordsB2 — Loans that fit one class harmonize normally (miljoona → miljoonassa); disharmonic loans take endings by their LAST non-neutral vowel (olympialaiset).