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In:First Language Acquisition in Finno-Ugric Languages
Edited by Minna Kirjavainen, Ágnes Lukács and Virve-Anneli Vihman
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 33] 2025
► pp. 117–134

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The acquisition of Finnish phonology

 | University of Oulu
 | University of Helsinki
 | University of Eastern Finland
Published online: 13 October 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.33.04kun
Abstract
While each child’s speech acquisition is unique, certain universal and language-specific patterns guide this process. This chapter summarises what we know about the typical phonological development of children acquiring Finnish. Based on the findings presented in this chapter, the following conclusions can be drawn: Finnish children tend to acquire consonants first in the word-medial position, quantity contrast emerges early in production, geminate structures are overrepresented in early word productions, first clusters typically consist of combinations of nasals and stops, and reduction of disyllabic words is very uncommon. In addition, Finnish sounds are acquired cross-linguistically relatively early. The most significant factor influencing phonological skills is the child’s age. Additionally, associations between phonological skills and children’s vocabulary, and later reading abilities have been reported. In the future, it will be important to collect more normative data on typical phonological development, especially from 3 years onwards. There is also a need to examine disordered phonological development more thoroughly, as well as phonological development in multilingual contexts.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • Phonemes
    • Phonotactics
    • Prosody
  • Assessment of phonology in Finnish children
  • Overview of phonological development
    • Typical acquisition of phonemes and phoneme sequences
    • Typical acquisition of quantity distinction
    • Typical acquisition of syllable and word structures
    • Typical phonological patterns
    • Common challenges
    • Phonological awareness
  • Factors associated with phonological skills
  • Summary and future directions
  • References
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Stolt, Suvi
2025. Lexical development in Finnish. In First Language Acquisition in Finno-Ugric Languages [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 33], ► pp. 135 ff. DOI logo

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