äänisillä

Äänisillä is a term used in Finnish linguistics to refer to voiced consonants. In Finnish phonology, consonants are broadly categorized into voiced and voiceless pairs. Voiced consonants are produced with vibration of the vocal cords, while voiceless consonants are produced without such vibration.

The voiced consonants in Finnish are b, d, g, j, l, m, n, r, and v. These are often contrasted with their voiceless counterparts: p, t, k, s, p, t, k, s, respectively. For example, the voiced stop /b/ corresponds to the voiceless stop /p/, and the voiced fricative /v/ corresponds to the voiceless fricative /f/ (though /f/ is a loanword phoneme and not as central to native Finnish vocabulary). The sounds /j/, /l/, /m/, /n/, and /r/ are voiced sonorants, which also have distinctions from voiceless counterparts in some contexts or loanwords.

The distinction between voiced and voiceless consonants is phonemic in Finnish, meaning it can change the meaning of a word. For instance, the word "pata" (pot) is distinct from "bata" (a less common word, often a dialectal form or borrowed, but illustrates the principle). Similarly, "tuli" (fire) differs from "duli" (a dialectal term, again for illustrative purposes).

Voiced consonants can sometimes undergo changes in pronunciation depending on their position within a word and the surrounding sounds. Gemination, or the doubling of consonants, also occurs in Finnish, affecting both voiced and voiceless consonants. Understanding the properties of äänisillä is fundamental to grasping Finnish phonetics and phonology.