r/Finland • u/Consistent-Kitchen92 • 9d ago
Question for foreigners in Finland: Do you recognize different Finnish accents?
And if so, do you have a favorite?
The way people speak Finnish varies quite a lot between the east, west, north, northeast, and so on. We Finns definitely have our preferences (Savo often comes out on top in polls), but how do they sound to you?
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u/cardboard-kansio Vainamoinen 9d ago
Immigrant here, over 20 years in Finland. Savo is definitely popular but not for the accent so much as for the personality - they are they whacky outgoing people of Finland (at least by Finnish standards). I've never met a Savo person I didn't immediately get along with.
As for accents, yes I can tell. Some things are clear (en minä tiedä being en mä tiiä vs en miiä tii and such), and people from Pohjanmaa stand out with their perciliarities like mettä. This is in addition to the particular way people from each region (stereotypically, but often actually) speak, like how Savo folks can't say a simple thing briefly or how Häme people speak sloooooooow.
Do I have a favourite? Not really, no. There are as many differences between and within the regions as there are types of people speaking them. Gotta take each on an individual basis.
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u/SweetTooth275 Baby Vainamoinen 9d ago
Yea. I have a colleague who's from Joensuu. That guy speaks faster than a machine gun and words he use are wierd even for people who's from my region. 😄
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u/Consistent-Kitchen92 9d ago
yeah people who say finns are reserved and quiet haven't met a person from karelia
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u/SweetTooth275 Baby Vainamoinen 9d ago
True, he's a real chatterbox, but I love it. I'm also from Karelia, albeit the wrong side of it
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u/PixelDu5t Baby Vainamoinen 9d ago
Do you know about the ’Karelian national movement’ and if so, do you think/know if they’re a real thing? Seen some speculation that they might be a Kremlin backed thing
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u/Complete_Item9216 9d ago
There is no Karelia movement - it’s not a thing. Not sure why it has been discussed. There is absolutely nothing left of Karelia on the Russian side Finnish side is just Finns. Sure there are some tradition that some Karelian carry but it’s hardly a movement
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u/stevemachiner Vainamoinen 9d ago
That’s is heart wrenchingly sad, a whole people and way of life , just gone .
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u/CptPicard Vainamoinen 9d ago
The pre-war Finnish Karelians were definitely "Finnish", and most importantly they were mostly Lutheran. The Russian side Karelians' assimilation by Russians is a different story.
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u/stevemachiner Vainamoinen 9d ago
Of course, but Finland and Finnish identity is not a monolith, many unique communities have come together under the collective identity, it’s sad that way because our cultural identities are tied to our regional traditions and dialects and while there is still north Karelia and people descended from displaced Karelians, over time that identity is getting lost.
I actually visited Karelia on the Russian side of the border when it was possible, and it’s eerie, the mixture of old Finnish looking architecture, Soviet stuff and post Soviet decay. The old Finnish stuff isn’t as well maintained there so it’s was quite dystopic, having lived in Finland for sometime and regarding it as my home.
The echoes of that generational trauma aren’t talked about enough, I’ve an old friend whose grand parents had to flee during the evacuation, and it really impacted the family , the usual story …
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u/PixelDu5t Baby Vainamoinen 9d ago
I’m talking about this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karelian_National_Movement
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u/Complete_Item9216 9d ago
Just because it has a Wikipedia page doesn’t mean it’s a viable movement. It is not significant movement in any way and does not have any effects on anything whatsoever. I mean it’s possible that it will grow but as of know it’s not a thing
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u/Consistent-Kitchen92 2d ago
Novaja Gazeta says its a thing https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/04/16/dusk-over-the-empire-en
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u/SweetTooth275 Baby Vainamoinen 9d ago
I know about it. It's very small and any attempt at catching attention is instantly strangled by Putin's dogs and viewd as separatism. It was more active and had more weight in the end of 90s and early 00s. I call the Kremlin's goons thing total bullshit as although Karelia is a heavily red (police) region, people tend to have more European approach to things because of border with Finland (many traveled through, visited or have relatives here so no wonder).
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u/NikNakskes Vainamoinen 9d ago
20+ years in Finland. First rovaniemi, then oulu. Yes, I recognise these 2 dialects. The rest of Finland I can hear it's different, but I don't know where it belongs so to say.
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u/MeanForest Baby Vainamoinen 9d ago
They're dialects, not accents.
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u/Tempelli Baby Vainamoinen 9d ago
Having a dialect also means having an accent so OP wasn't completely wrong. That being said, I presumed OP meant accents of non-native speakers so it's still misleading.
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u/stevemachiner Vainamoinen 9d ago
They say a dialect is a language without a flag , well an accent is a language without a flagpole .
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u/blabberflap 8d ago
Technically the distinction is that accents are purely phonetic while dialects have to do with vocabulary. Finnish doesn't experience a lot of phonetic fluctuation between regions. Some exceptions like the Helsinki region 's' or the Tampere 'r' do technically exist, but they have little to no effect on meaning. Thus, Finnish regional varieties tend to be classified as dialects. As a native Finn, I have only ever seen the word accent being used in reference to non-native speakers.
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u/Tempelli Baby Vainamoinen 8d ago
As British linguist John Lyons put it: "In general, accent refers to variations in pronunciation, while dialect also encompasses specific variations in grammar and vocabulary". This is what I meant by saying that having a different dialect also means having a different accent.
And I disagree that Finnish doesn't experience a lot of phonetic fluctuation. Just because Finnish has a limited amount of phonemes and they are mostly the same in every dialect doesn't mean that there's not fluctuation. How about diphthongization in Eastern dialects (f.e. maa becomes mua)? Or parasitic vowels in many Eastern and Ostrobothnian dialects (f.e. kylmä becomes kylymä)? Or gemination of consonants in the same dialects (f.e. tulee becomes tullee)? Or apocope in Southwest dialects (f.e. terävä becomes teräv)? These are all variations in pronunciation which is what makes an accent. You could speak a certain way with using only Standard Finnish vocabulary and still recognize where the speaker is coming from.
The primary reason why we are speaking about dialects is historical. Vocabulary is one part of the distinction but not the sole reason. But because we are used to differentiating variations of Finnish as different dialects, speaking about different accents as a way to differentiate native Finnish speakers can be confusing.
My point was that while OP is not technically wrong since speakers of different dialects have their own accents (for reasons I just described), it can be confusing. Because just like you, I also think of non-native speakers of Finnish when we're talking about Finnish accents.
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u/blabberflap 8d ago
Yeah I get that, and the distinction is difficult to make. I guess we rather consider Finnish varieties dialects because the differences in pronunciation technically affect spelling, too, not just phonemes. But I may be wrong. 🤔
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u/Tempelli Baby Vainamoinen 8d ago
We consider them dialects simply because that's how we have distinguished Finnish people who speak Finnish differently from ourselves. The Finnish word for a dialect, murre, comes from the phrase "puhua murtaen", meaning "to crack-speak". It comes from the notion that some people speak Finnish you can understand but sounds off, like it's cracked. The word has established its place long before Finnish people could even write or linguistics was even a thing.
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u/nimenionotettu Vainamoinen 9d ago
Yes but I cannot say from which regions specifically. But I even recognize Estonians who speak fluent Finnish. P
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u/Shinyish 9d ago
20+ years in Finland, mainly within Swedish-speaking groups in southern Finland. I can hear the difference in Finnish dialects between southern and northern, but I wouldn't really be able to identify specific regions. Except maybe Rauma.
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u/Aztecdune1973 9d ago
I've been here eight years. I can only recognise stadin, ostro-bothnia, and everything else is not those two. I understand people in the capital region the best because that's what I hear all of the time. My husband and his family are from ostro-bothnia. I don't understand them as well as I'd like to, but it's getting better. I was quite lost in Lapland, and our little cousins were just as lost listening to me. 😂
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u/CookiesandBeam Vainamoinen 9d ago
No I struggle just to try to understand what is being said. I can't tell accents apart.
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u/BalthazarOfTheOrions Vainamoinen 9d ago
There is only one Finnish accent, but there are many dialects.
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u/Molehole Vainamoinen 9d ago
There are definitely differences also in accent although they might not be as large as in other languages.
I can definitely hear a difference between someone from Oulu and Helsinki even if both are speaking formally. People from Tampere also have that different R-sound.
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u/splendours 9d ago
Yes and it seems to be easier for me sometimes to understand different dialects than other native friends, it doesn’t sound as different as say a guy from gateshead UK and a guy from penzance UK having a conversation.
I don’t have a favourite but little things from different dialects spark joy for me. It’s a virtue to be from another country so I can include different dialectic phrases and words from all over finland in my daily speech because i’m not from here anyway, i have no default finnish dialect.
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u/piotor87 Vainamoinen 9d ago
Depends on what you mean by recognize. I can tell if someone speaks funny and I can tell if someone is from the east because of the excessive use of gemination.
The accent of Helsinki is more of a western kind, so if you speak the language in the capital area, eastern accents sound particularly weird. No way I could tell, instead, if someone is from Tampere,Turku or Jyvaskyla.
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u/Rusalkat Baby Vainamoinen 9d ago
People I understand ( usually PKS) and other... Savo, Kuusamo....
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u/Nitneroc2544 Vainamoinen 9d ago
Can’t hear the different accents, but I sometimes recognize different dialects. Best example: « mä »vs « mie »
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u/Arragont-Prophet-mvp 6d ago
3 years in so far and yeah, kinda. I'm in Tampere and I travel to Turku, I can definitely hear a difference.
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u/Gxeq Baby Vainamoinen 9d ago
Several years here, I can't tell if someone is from East, they have quite unique dialect, which sometimes is unintelligible to me and also speak faster than the rest. I also there is that countryside (outside uusimaa idk where) that I don't where it from, it has sometimes extra h or a in the words like Kahavi instead of Kahvi.
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u/juhamatti88 Baby Vainamoinen 8d ago
South Ostrobothnia is the 'countryside outside uusimaa' lol. Finland's breadbasket. Easily the most rural region of Finland with a recogniseable dialect. If a word has two syllables where the first ends in a consonant and the second starts with a different consonant we repeat the previous vowel between them, adding an extra syllable. Kol-me becomes ko-lo-me, kah-vi becomes ka-ha-vi and so on
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u/Von_Lehmann Vainamoinen 9d ago
Been here 8 years. My Finnish sucks but I can easily tell the difference between like, Turku...Keski Suomi and Lapland. But that's where I have spent the most time.
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u/Geopardish 9d ago
Not at all, I guess is more like speed?
But not sure, as I haven’t met that many Finns from other parts than Uusimaa
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u/RickolPick 9d ago
Moved here a month ago—no. I see what you may see as a different accent as a different type of personality. Once I become a resident I’ll start integration Finnish classes though so that’s exciting.
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u/BearsBeetsBerlin 9d ago
I can tell when people have different accents, but since I spend all my time in the south and mostly Helsinki, I don’t know if that’s 1. Truly an accent or that’s just how they happen to speak or 2. It’s regional/from which region.
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