This is a question that came up from noticing how Finns pronounce the name of my friend Raquel. It should be read as Rakel since the U is silent here in Spanish
But the point is that although most people say Rakuel, many others say Raguel. (EDIT: if the U is silent or not is irrelevant to the question, just K vs G)
And this sparked the debate of reading Q letter as Guu instead of Kuu. So some people would say tequila as tegila instead of tekila, which would be the correct way.
Even Yle did a survey about it at some point.
Out of curiosity, I would like to learn how you pronounce it and if you want to mention also which area of Finland are you from.
Could this be a regional thing? What do you think is the reason for these differences?
by Purple_Moomin
11 comments
I pronounce it as quu 🙁
>It should be read as Rakel since the U is silent here in Spanish.
Indigenous Spanish name, I presume.
Q is pronounced as Kuu, in Finnish language every letter is pronounced, except if the person pronouncing it knows the it pronounced as Rakel.
Maybe some natives will correct me, but some dialects pronounce k as g for some reasons. I saw some memes where the k is turned into g. I don’t know why.
Kuu is the only correct way. Anyone else deserves a holiday at the secret finnish gulags.
Kuu. And G is pronounced gee. Not guu and kee.
Q is not native to Finnish language, so people try to guess how the name should be pronounced.
I think this “guu” is an example of [hypercorrection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection): as Q is a foreign letter, some of us assume that it should be pronounced with a foreign sound.
Its rather more quu than kuu or guu.
The finnish K might be confusing to foreigners since i think it’s pronounced “quicker” than in indo european languages so it might sound like a G. Rakkel would be almost how you’d type it in Finnish so it would sound more like how you mean
Q is a letter that is present in the Finnish alphabet as a courtesy. G is much the same. Most people would read the name as Rakel or Raakel. The k probably sounds like g to you, assuming you’re spanish too?
Finn’s tend to not get a strong feel for aspiration of letters since it is not really a feature of the language.
You definitely hear people say “guestion” and write “I quess” a lot, so people making these mistakes are just not very exposed to or aware of the difference.
Personally I try to pronounce people’s names based on how they say their name is pronounced.