Appendix:Finnish alphabet

The Finnish language is written using the Latin alphabet with three extra letters also used in Swedish, for a total of 28 letters.

Å, Ä and Ö are derived from A, A and O respectively by adding a diacritic, but are considered independent letters; in Finnish, A and Ä (as well as O and Ö) are as distinct from each other as U and Y.

Letters considered to only appear in loanwords are B, C, F, G (except for ng; see below), Q, W (also an archaic variant for V), X, Z and Å (appears only in Swedish names and recent borrowings). D is sometimes included as well, as in native words, the letter can only appear in specific environments.

W (kaksoisvee, tuplavee, ) is recognized as part of the Finnish orthography, but not the alphabet; it is considered a variant of V.

Š (hattu-s, suhu-s, ) and Ž (hattu-z, ) appear in loanwords and are recognized as part of the Finnish orthography. They are, however, not considered letters of the Finnish alphabet. They are often replaced with the digraphs sh and zh for technical reasons.

Finnish has high phonemic correspondence: spelling of words is, for the most part, simply the pronunciation of the individual letters one after each other. Notable exceptions are the velar nasal, usual pronunciation of np as , gemination of h and v after certain diphthongs and the presence of a glottal stop after certain words, such as infinitives of verbs.

The velar nasal (äng-äänne) appears in certain letter combinations: ng is pronounced as rather than and nk as rather than .

Vowel length and gemination are both phonemic in Finnish. Long vowels and geminated consonants are represented by doubling the vowel or consonant letter. For example, a represents but aa represents , and k represents but kk represents .

Å, Ä and Ö are treated as independent letters and are collated after Z in their respective order. In the older collation order, W was considered a variant of V and collated after V only when the words would otherwise be equal (va, wa, ve, we). However, in more recent practice, W is sorted after V like in English. Some modified letters have specific sorting rules:

Other letters with diacritics are alphabetized as their non-diacritic counterparts (including those of Š and Ž, which are treated as S and Z respectively), coming after only in case there is no other difference.

Most punctuation marks are ignored during collation, such as hyphens and apostrophes.

• Finnish orthography on Wikipedia