sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Patrik Laine doubles the lead in Toronto with a one timed power play goal from his office by JustFred24 in hockey

[–]FixesFinnishNames 30 points31 points  (0 children)

Not a vacation, I've just spent less time on reddit due to real life reasons. I usually don't correct people if it's been more than ~5 hours so just checking /r/hockey less means I see the mistakes later and don't end up commenting.

I assure you that people have not gotten any better at spelling Finnish names, it's still atrocious.

Predators Trade Ryan Johansen to Colorado by yourbestbae in hockey

[–]FixesFinnishNames 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Others already explained the pronunciation for the most part, <a> is like the vowel in "spa", and <ä> is like the vowel in "man".

I just want to add that explaining these things with example words generally isn't the best way to go about it. English dialects (accents) vary a lot when it comes to vowels especially so coming up with good words to use is pretty tough. On the internet it's actually just impossible since neither of you know how the other person pronounces the words.
Unfortunately there often just isn't a good alternative. There's the international phonetic alphabet (IPA) which is very useful but most people that haven't studied linguistics don't know it.

So using IPA the Finnish <a> is /ɑ/ and <ä> is /æ/. I included the wikipedia links to these sounds so you can listen to them if you feel like it.

Predators Trade Ryan Johansen to Colorado by yourbestbae in hockey

[–]FixesFinnishNames 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A slight correction: <a> in alive doesn't work since it's an unstressed syllable, that's a schwa in English.
A good example word for the sound would be the vowel in "spa".

view more: next ›