Soinnittomat

Soinnittomat is a term used in Finnish linguistics to describe sounds that are produced without vocal fold vibration, i.e., voiceless sounds. The word is formed from sointi, meaning voicing, with the suffix -ttomat to denote the absence of that feature. In Finnish phonology, soinnittomat contrasts with soinnilliset, which are voiced sounds whose vocal cords vibrate during articulation.

In practice, soinnittomat mainly applies to consonants. Common examples include the voiceless bilabial, dental or alveolar plosives and fricatives such as p, t, k, s, f, and h. These sounds are typically articulated with open or constricted air flow without the voicing that characterizes their voiced counterparts (for example b, d, g, v, z in languages that have them). Finnish has a relatively small set of native, clearly voiced obstruents, and many voiced equivalents appear primarily in loanwords or special phonetic contexts.

Phonological behavior of soinnittomat can interact with surrounding sounds. Voicing contrast is a basic feature used to distinguish words in many languages, but in Finnish and other languages, voicing can be influenced by position in the word, by surrounding sounds, or by loanword adaptation. As a result, the distribution of soinnittomat versus soinnilliset is an important topic in descriptive grammars and phonology textbooks.

The term soinnittomat is widely used in Finnish-language linguistic literature as the counterpart to soinnilliset. It provides a clear, language-specific label for the general phonetic distinction between voiceless and voiced sounds, aligning with the broader cross-linguistic concept of voicing in phonology.