ä ö å
the three additions to the latin set
ä Ä
U+00E4 / U+00C4
front a — mouth moves forward, lips spread
ö Ö
U+00F6 / U+00D6
front o — lips pursed, tongue forward
å Å
U+00E5 / U+00C5
Swedish legacy — rare in core Finnish
There is also y — already in your alphabet, but Finnish uses it as
a front vowel. Lips forward, like French u. It appears in
tyhjyys (emptiness), yö (night),
kymmenen (ten).
vowel harmony
the rule that explains the code
a word uses one register or the other — never both.
suffixes follow: talossa
(in the house) vs
metsässä
(in the forest). same grammar, different vowel.
This is why Finnish looks like a cipher to new eyes. The diacritics are not
decorations — they mark which half of the vowel axis the word lives in. Once you see the
register, the pattern becomes legible.
kaamos vocabulary
register marked
kaamospolar night
hiljaisuussilence
pohjafloor / north
taivassky / heaven
solmuknot
vaaradanger
väyläpassage
hämärätwilight
tyhjyysemptiness
hehkuglow
äänistösonic lexicon
kevätspring
■ back register
■ front register
how to type them
quick reference
mac
ä — ⌥ U then a
ö — ⌥ U then o
å — ⌥ a
windows
install WinCompose (github.com/samhocevar/wincompose)
sets a compose key identical to Linux — right Alt by default
ä — Compose " a
ö — Compose " o
practical shortcut — all platforms
text replacement: ae → ä oe → ö
mac: System Settings → Keyboard → Text Replacements
ios / android: keyboard settings → text replacement
napit — full typing manual →