--- title: "Ä and Ö are letters. Drop the dots, change the word" description: "In Finland these two letters sort after Z. In the European standard they sort with A and O, so one name list comes out in two different orders depending on the machine." type: "article" category: "listening" url: "https://finnishirl.com/blog/finnish-a-and-o-with-dots" canonical: "https://finnishirl.com/blog/finnish-a-and-o-with-dots" published: "2026-10-06" updated: "2026-10-06" author: "Andrey the Nomad" site: "Finnish IRL" license: "https://finnishirl.com/terms#ip" --- # Ä and Ö are letters. Drop the dots, change the word URL: https://finnishirl.com/blog/finnish-a-and-o-with-dots Date: 2026-10-06 Updated: 2026-10-06 Category: listening Keywords: how to pronounce a with dots in finnish, finnish a with two dots, ä ö finnish letters, finnish alphabet order, umlaut finnish, finnish letters after z Summary: In Finland these two letters sort after Z. In the European standard they sort with A and O, so one name list comes out in two different orders depending on the machine. Quick answer: - Ä and Ö are letters in their own right, not A and O carrying an accent. They have their own place at the end of the Finnish alphabet, after Z and Å. - The dots change the word. Ranta is a shore and räntä is sleet; kansa is a people and känsä is a callus; lehti is a leaf and lähti means left. - Vowel harmony usually means you cannot change one dot on its own. In ranta and räntä every A moves at once, because a Finnish word is front or back and not both. - Finland sorts Ä and Ö last. The European sorting standard files them with A and O, so the same list comes out in two different orders depending on which one your software follows. What you'll learn: - Eight everyday word pairs where the dots are the only difference - When one dot moves alone and when all of them have to move together - Why a Finnish name list and a European one sort into different orders - What a system with no dots does to your name, and which spelling is the one that counts Body: Ranta is a shore. Räntä is sleet. The two words share every letter position and differ in four dots, and a Finn reading them does not experience a family resemblance between them at all. They are as unrelated as *shore* and *sleet* are in English. That is the fact the two dots carry, and it survives almost no journey out of Finland. Booking systems delete them, spreadsheets sort them as if they were not there, and half the internet calls them umlauts. ![A metro platform sign reading Kulosaari and Brändö in red and white, above blue exit signs](/images/words/optimized/blog-finnish-a-and-o-with-dots-1-5fa1174b21-1080.webp "Kulosaari and Brändö. One island, two languages, and Ö is a letter in both of them") ## Eight pairs, and the dots are the whole difference Before the pairs, the sound, because that is what most people came for. Ä is the vowel in English *cat*, held steady rather than glided. Ö has no English equivalent: make the *e* of *bed* and round your lips as if for *o* without moving your tongue. Both are single pure vowels, and both are held for exactly as long as the spelling says. | A word {fi} | Its twin {fi} | What the pair means | | --- | --- | --- | | ranta | räntä | shore / sleet | | kansa | känsä | a people / a callus | | karsia | kärsiä | to prune / to suffer | | tarina | tärinä | a story / a vibration | | haka | häkä | a pasture / carbon monoxide | | nakki | näkki | a frankfurter / a water sprite | | veli | väli | a brother / a gap | | lehti | lähti | a leaf / left, as in departed | None of those is a clever edge case. Räntä is in the weather forecast several months a year, häkä is on the alarm in the hallway, and lähti is the past tense of one of the commonest verbs in the language. ## One dot, or all of them The first six pairs and the last two behave differently, and the reason is vowel harmony. A Finnish word is front or back and does not mix. A, o and u are the back vowels; ä, ö and y are their front partners. There is no way to put dots on the first a of ranta and leave the second alone. Both move, or neither does. I and e are neutral and sit happily in either kind of word, which is why veli and väli can differ by exactly one pair of dots and both be perfectly ordinary Finnish. Same for lehti and lähti.
The practical consequence

Harmony reaches the endings too, so the choice of letter decides how the rest of the word will inflect. Talossa but kädessä. Puhun but syön.

A dot is therefore never a local decoration. It is a property of the whole word, and it is the reason a missing one reads to a Finn as a different word instead of as a typing shortcut.

![A blue station name board reading Tapanila Mosabacka above a painted glass shelter on a suburban platform](/images/words/optimized/blog-finnish-a-and-o-with-dots-2-069a7076c9-1080.webp "Tapanila, Mosabacka. A search that folds the dots finds neither name")
![A shuttered R-kioski covered in graffiti, a bicycle leaning against it, and a street plate reading Väinö Auerin katu and Väinö Auers gata](/images/words/optimized/blog-finnish-a-and-o-with-dots-3-5938099d65-1080.webp "Väinö Auerin katu, Väinö Auers gata. Both spellings are on the wall and neither survives a booking form") ## Finland sorts them last. Europe does not The Finnish alphabet runs to the end as v w x y z å ä ö. Å is there because Swedish is a national language of Finland; Finns call it ruotsalainen O, the Swedish O, and it appears in Swedish names, hardly ever in a Finnish word. This is where the two dots stop being a spelling question and become a software question. The European sorting standard EN 13710, built on the international standard ISO/IEC 14651, **equates å and ä with a, and ö with o**, because that is what most European languages do. Finland's national adaptation, SFS-EN 13710, restores the Finnish order and puts the three letters at the end, and the expectation recorded by the Institute for the Languages of Finland is that IT products sold in Finland follow it.[^kielikello] The Unicode collation data says the same thing in more detail. Under the Finnish tailoring the alphabet finishes z, ž, þ, å, ä, æ, ö, ø, while á, à, â and ã all stay filed with plain a.[^cldr] Accented letters sort next to their base letter. Ä and Ö do not, because they are not accented letters. One name list therefore sorts two ways depending on the machine: | Finnish order {fi} | European default {fi} | | --- | --- | | Ahonen | Ahonen | | Virtanen | Äikäs | | Äikäs | Östman | | Östman | Virtanen | There is a nice piece of evidence for the distinction hiding in the Finnish rules for foreign letters. A German ü is alphabetised in Finland as equivalent to y, and š and ž are treated as equivalent to s and z. A French é sorts immediately after a plain e when the words are otherwise identical, so Hoffren comes before Hoffrén.[^ohjepankki] Every borrowed diacritic gets folded onto the letter underneath it. Only Ä and Ö are given a place of their own, because in Finnish there is no letter underneath. ![Mäkelänkatu in autumn, wet pavement and yellow leaves, cars on a wide road lined with apartment blocks](/images/words/optimized/blog-finnish-a-and-o-with-dots-4-91fee53064-1080.webp "Mäkelänkatu carries two of them. Take both away and the word stops being a word") ## What happens to your name when the dots cannot travel Names are registered in the Finnish population information system with their real spelling, and a search for a surname in the national name service is a search for that spelling.[^nimipalvelu] International systems mostly cannot hold it. Yle looked at the travel case in 2015 and found no single rule anywhere. Travel agents recommended writing the ski-results form, in which Ä becomes ae, Ö becomes oe and Å becomes aa, on the grounds that turning Ä into a plain A causes trouble in some countries. Finnair's own system simply dropped the dots. The passport and visa unit of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs told Yle there is no generally applicable instruction.[^yle-aakkoset] What the article does give is the one workable rule, from a travel agent who deals with the consequences: **match the machine-readable name printed at the foot of the passport page, whatever it says.** The strictest destinations reported were the United States and parts of Asia, and for the United States the name on the ESTA authorisation has to match the ticket down to the spelling. The usual penalty for getting it wrong is a queue at a desk instead of an automated check-in, which is a small disaster on a tight connection. Since that reporting is now over a decade old and airline systems change, check the current booking rule with the airline before you fly. The rule that has not changed is the one underneath all of it. Kärkkäinen stripped of its dots is not a shortened Kärkkäinen. It is a string a computer produced, and the person is still called Kärkkäinen. [^kielikello]: [Kirjaimet ja merkit järjestykseen standardin avulla](https://kielikello.fi/kirjaimet-ja-merkit-jarjestykseen-standardin-avulla/) - Kielikello, Institute for the Languages of Finland, on SFS-EN 13710 and its relationship to EN 13710 and ISO/IEC 14651 [^cldr]: [CLDR collation chart: Finnish](https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/collation/fi.html) - Unicode Consortium. The chart illustrates the Finnish collation tailoring and is documentation rather than production data [^ohjepankki]: [Aakkostus: vieraat kirjaimet](https://kielitoimistonohjepankki.fi/ohje/aakkostus-vieraat-kirjaimet-2/) - Kielitoimiston ohjepankki, Institute for the Languages of Finland. The same page records that the 2022 standard alphabetises v and w separately [^nimipalvelu]: [Nimipalvelu, surname search](https://nimipalvelu.dvv.fi/sukunimihaku) - Digital and Population Data Services Agency. The service holds the first names and surnames recorded in Finland's population information system, with data reaching back to the 1800s [^yle-aakkoset]: [Ääkköset nimessä voivat vaikeuttaa matkustamista, yksiselitteistä ohjetta niiden käsittelyyn ei löydy](https://yle.fi/a/3-7734064) - Yle, 2015, quoting Nina Alajoki of Kokkolan Matka Team, Päivyt Tallqvist of Finnair, and the passport and visa unit of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs FAQ: Q: Are Ä and Ö the same as German umlauts? A: They look identical and they are not the same thing. German ü marks a modified u and is alphabetised near it; Finnish Ä and Ö are independent letters with their own place at the end of the alphabet. Finnish sorting rules treat a German ü as equivalent to y, which shows how differently the two systems read the same two dots. Q: Can I write ae and oe instead? A: Not in Finnish. That substitution belongs to German, and in Finnish it produces either a misspelling or a different word. The only place you will see it is in travel bookings, where systems cannot store the letters at all. Q: How do I type Ä and Ö without a Finnish keyboard? A: A Finnish or Swedish keyboard layout gives you both to the right of the L key, and switching layout is faster than any workaround. On a phone, holding down A or O offers them. Q: Does Å appear in Finnish words? A: Effectively never. Å is in the Finnish alphabet because Swedish is a national language of Finland, and it turns up in Swedish names and place names, never in Finnish vocabulary. Finns call it ruotsalainen O, the Swedish O. Q: Is it rude to leave the dots off? A: Not rude, and it does make you hard to read, because the reader has to guess which word you meant. In a name it is closer to a spelling error than to an abbreviation. Q: Why does my Finnish surname sort in the wrong place in a spreadsheet? A: Because sorting follows the software's locale. Under the general European rule Ä counts as A, so Äikäs lands beside Ahonen; under the Finnish rule it drops past Virtanen to the end of the list, ahead of any name beginning with Ö. Q: Do Ä and Ö change how the rest of the word is pronounced? A: They change which endings the word takes, which is vowel harmony. A word containing Ä or Ö takes front endings, so it is talossa but kädessä, and the effect runs through the whole word instead of staying on one letter. Q: What about ä in an email address or a web address? A: Addresses are generally written with the dots removed, and the visible text keeps them. Treat the stripped form as a technical spelling. The name still has its dots. Sources: - Kirjaimet ja merkit järjestykseen standardin avulla: https://kielikello.fi/kirjaimet-ja-merkit-jarjestykseen-standardin-avulla/ - Aakkostus: vieraat kirjaimet: https://kielitoimistonohjepankki.fi/ohje/aakkostus-vieraat-kirjaimet-2/ - CLDR collation chart: Finnish: https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/collation/fi.html - Ääkköset nimessä voivat vaikeuttaa matkustamista: https://yle.fi/a/3-7734064 - Nimipalvelu: surname search in the population information system: https://nimipalvelu.dvv.fi/sukunimihaku - Kielitoimiston sanakirja: räntä: https://www.kielitoimistonsanakirja.fi/#/räntä Related words: mokki, loyly, myotahapea, en-ymmarra