Journal, 27th of April 2026

Photo by Christopher Burns on Unsplash

Å is for Ångström

Ångström (noun) — Unit of measurement equal to 0.1 nanometers

Apparently, “ångström” is one of the only (if not the only) officially recognized word in the Finnish language starting with an Å (which we call the “Swedish O”). I found this pretty interesting since there are other å-words that are more commonly used among Finns, such as Åbo and Åland, but those are admittedly Swedish names for places — therefore not Finnish words per se. Except that Finland has two official languages; Finnish and Swedish. Therefore Åbo and Åland are in fact Finnish words while still not being Finnish words.

Funny how that works.

I doubt very many Finns know what an ångström is. In scientific uses, the denotation of 100 picometers or 0.1 nanometers (both equal to 1 ångström) seem to be the standard (as per the SI system), not to mention that nanometers and picometers are rarely used in daily life. Regardless, it’s interesting to me that the letter “å” is barely utilized in the Finnish language despite still being a part of the modern Finnish alphabet. Sure, it has its roots in our Finnish / Swedish history, and I’m definitely not advocating for it’s removal, but it feels strange to have it when it’s used so little. Ironically enough, Finnish Wikipedia actually states that the Å hasn’t likely been officially used in Finnish since the 1640’s.

This is just another example of things I’ve never really thought about when growing up. I’ve learned the Finnish alphabet with the “Swedish O” included, but haven’t really used it. In general, this little Alphabet experiment of mine has really given me a lot to think about in terms of how our first languages become an unquestioned part of our lives. We have all these different letters but we don’t use most of them in our Finnish language on a daily basis. That’s not to say they’re not useful — especially with how pervasive other languages are in modern society.

And then — on the other hand — we have letters like the “ü” which is not a part of the Finnish alphabet at all, but has become more widely used due to loanwords like über or müsli. Overall, this makes me feel like the distinctions between “official” letters of any given alphabet and what is actually used on a daily basis may vary greatly. I have a hard time believing this would be a thematic that’s exclusive to Finnish.

Well, that’s my rant over for the day. We still have two letters to go until we can wrap up April :)

Part Å of the Alphabet April experiment, where I take one Finnish word a day to use as my journal prompt.