Finnish pronunciation is always the same in every letter no matter their position in the word or what ever letters are next to them.
This makes learning a language so much easier. Because when you learn a language and, say, "e" or "a" is pronounced differently things get tricky! (For example, a weird rule in Afrikaans is that a double and single consonant determines the length/sound of the pronunciation of the preceding vocal. "Water" (H2O) with a single -t- produces a long -a- (e.g. waaaater) and "watter" (which) with a double -tt- produces a short -a- (e.g. watttter).
R like English speakers do, it doesn't change the meaning of the word
Same in Afrikaans. There is no meaning change with the way you pronounce the R, but this is one of the regional or "dialect" differences in Afrikaans. I place dialect in quotes as some people feel that it is a differenct langauge and not a variant of Afrikaans. People in the Western Cape region talk "Kaaps Afrikaans" (I will add a video so you can hear the difference). Sometimes speakers of so-called "Standard Afrikaans" (very political issue haha) cannot always understand "Kaaps Afrikaans" and recently a lot of poets and writers have embraced "Kaaps Afrikaans" as their own language and stunning published works have followed.
This poem for example by Nathan Trantraal:
Ammel het hystoe gegaan
Hulle na hulle hyse langsie sea
ôs na ôs shacks
langs poeletjies stagnant water
waa die gif in vergifnis
ôs ammel
siek gemaak het.
Writing in, again, so called "Standard Afrikaans" it would have looked like:
Almal het huistoe gegaan
hulle na hulle huise langs die see
ons na ons shacks
langs poeletjies stagnerede water
waar die gif in vergifnis
ons almal
siek gemaak het.
Here is a video of him reading some of this work:
Some of the politics if you fancy that:
sound that I think you make in the back of your throat
I think we have it! Not necessarily something that carries meaning but we do make the sound in some situations.
So this song would be written phonetically to a Finn like this
Wow, this is actually fascinating!! I did not know this could be a thing. Again, in Afrikaans, we have so many weird spelling and pronunciation rules that make Afrikaans a very very bad phonetic language. I wonder how a phonetic attempt would look like because we do not have any standard way of writing and speaking the words/letters! And we have regional differences (not full dialects). Some people pronounce the word "ek" with a long e- (people from north in SA) and some people pronounce it with a very short e- that sounds almost like the dutch "ik" (people from west in SA). I find the singer/drummer's phonetic approach so fascinating. Thanks for that! And thanks for yet another wonderful comment.
RE: The Untranslatability of Ideas: Reading a Poem in Afrikaans and Reflections on Translation