[dijit]

Ä in Swedish is an æ sound.

Ä in Finnish is a pitched A sound, like the A in “cat”.

The pitched “a” in Swedish is the default one.

[lrasinen]

Wikipedia lists both "cat" and the Finnish "mäki" under æ: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-open_front_unrounded_vo...

Do you have some example words that would show the difference?

[dijit]

Well, mostly hearing people say the words will be telling.

Gävle in Sweden: https://forvo.com/word/g%C3%A4vle/

Linnanmäki in Finland: https://forvo.com/word/linnanm%C3%A4ki/

In the Finnish example you can hear both the soft “en” (linnan) and the higher pitched “” (maki) which is triggered with umlauts;

Where the Swedish A is softened by umlauts in the Gävle example.

[3836293648]

That's an american cat then, because that sounds crazy to my ears

[dijit]

(how did I get downvoted for this when I literally lived in both countries)