That's the usage of "Coke" I'm used to, too. Indeed, language is fun. :)
Any time! :) Hmm, how to best explain it... Finnish pronunciation is actually pretty simple if you know how each letter is pronounced; barring very few minor exceptions, there is a strict one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. Also, the stress is always on the first syllable of a word (and not terribly emphatic). (I personally have a hard time pronouncing some English words because of that, and I suppose I'm not the only Finn who does. For example, even after practise, I tend to say the band name as "MEtallica" and not "meTAllica", as it's supposed to be.)
The Finnish "a" is like the "a" in British English "after" or the "o" in American English "hot". "L" is the same as the English "l", only in "allit" there's two of them, so it's longer. The Finnish I is like the "i" in "fit", and "t" is like the English "t", except a bit softer. So I suppose "AH-lit" would be pretty close, only with no audible "h" and a long "l". The long vowels and maybe especially the long consonants are usually a bit tricky for non-natives to produce and interpret. I suspect a foreigner would tend to produce something like "AH-lit", which a Finn would probably write down as "alit".
Any time! :) Hmm, how to best explain it... Finnish pronunciation is actually pretty simple if you know how each letter is pronounced; barring very few minor exceptions, there is a strict one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. Also, the stress is always on the first syllable of a word (and not terribly emphatic). (I personally have a hard time pronouncing some English words because of that, and I suppose I'm not the only Finn who does. For example, even after practise, I tend to say the band name as "MEtallica" and not "meTAllica", as it's supposed to be.)
The Finnish "a" is like the "a" in British English "after" or the "o" in American English "hot". "L" is the same as the English "l", only in "allit" there's two of them, so it's longer. The Finnish I is like the "i" in "fit", and "t" is like the English "t", except a bit softer. So I suppose "AH-lit" would be pretty close, only with no audible "h" and a long "l". The long vowels and maybe especially the long consonants are usually a bit tricky for non-natives to produce and interpret. I suspect a foreigner would tend to produce something like "AH-lit", which a Finn would probably write down as "alit".
In case you're interested, here's one shortish guide to Finnish pronunciation: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/finnish.pronunciation.html . :) I used that to get the descriptions for the different sounds.
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment