Nominals are nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals, i.e. words like the
following:
Nouns Adjectives Pronouns Numerals
auto car iso big minä I yksi one
katu street kallis expensivehe they kymmenen ten
nainen woman pitkä long tämä this toinen second
hinta price vanha old se it seitsemäs seventh
These four word classes take the same endings, they are inflected in the same
way. In addition to derivational suffixes, Finnish nominals can take four kinds
of endings: number and case endings, possessive suffixes, and enclitic
particles. The main features of all these will be introduced here, and they will
be discussed in more detail in later chapters. For the purpose of
understanding how Finnish words are made up, it is important to get a grasp
of their maximal structure and see how the endings follow one another in a
fixed sequence. Occasionally, there may be even four or five endings
occurring one after another in the same word.
The Finnish number system has two terms: singular and plural. The
singular is never marked by an ending. The plural has two endings: -t in the
nominative or basic form, and -i- in all other cases. The ending -i-sometimes
takes the shape -j-.
Singular Plural
auto car auto/t cars
auto/ssa in the car auto/i/ssa in the cars
auto/sta from the car auto/i/sta from the cars
auto/on into the car auto/i/hin into the cars
auto/lla by (the) car auto/i/lla by (the) cars
pullo bottle pullo/t bottles
pullo/sta out of the bottle pullo/i/sta out of the bottles
pullo/lla with a bottle pullo/i/lla with the bottles
pullo/a bottle (partitive) pullo/j/a some bottles
A survey of word structure 19
Finnish has some 15 cases. The table below shows the grammatical names of
the cases, their endings and basic meanings or functions. The principle of
vowel harmony (§11) determines whether the ending variant contains a front
or a back vowel.
System of cases
Case Endings Function Example Translation 1
Nominative – (pl. -t) (basic form) auto car
Genitive -n; -den, -tten possession auto/n of the car
Accusative -n, -t, – object ending häne/t him, her
Partitive -a ~ -ä; indefinite maito/a (some) milk
-ta ~ -tä; quantity vet/tä (some) water
-tta ~ -ttä perhe/ttä (some) family
Inessive -ssa ~ -ssä inside auto/ssa in the car
Elative -sta ~ -stä out of auto/sta out of the car
Illative -Vn, -hVn, 2 into auto/on into the car
-seen, -siin maa/han into the country
Porvoo/seen to Porvoo
Adessive -lla ~ -llä on; instrument pöydä/llä on the table
Ablative -lta ~ -ltä off pöydä/ltä off the table
Allative -lle onto pöydä/lle onto the table
Essive -na ~ -nä state opettaja/na as a teacher
Translative -ksi change of state opettaja/ksi (become) a
teacher
Comitative -ine- accompanying vaimo/ine/ni with my wife
Instructive -n (idiomatic) jala/n on foot
Listed below are the possessive suffixes; with the exception of the third
person, the endings are different for each person.
1 Translator’s note: With the adessive and translative cases there is often no straightforward
equivalent in English that can be used to gloss examples of isolated words. The meanings of
these cases are explained in the relevant chapters below, but in the tables and short examples
of the book the conventions adopted are as follows. The adessive ending is glossed ‘on’ wher
this could make sense (‘on the table’), ‘with’ wher an instrument interpretation would be
more natural (‘with a hammer’), ‘at’ or ‘in’ for places, and ‘“at”’ for people, etc. since in
these latter contexts the adessive case commonly marks the possessor (minulla on ‘I have’,
glossed literally as ‘“at” me is’). The translative is glossed ‘to (become)+nominal’ in order to
indicate how it would be usually understood in context; thus e.g. punaiseksi would be glossed
‘to (become) red’, since the form would typically occur in such contexts as ‘it became/turned/
changed to red’. The essive is usually glossed ‘as’, although this might not be natural in all
contexts. And the partitive is simply marked ‘partitive’, since it often corresponds to ‘no
article’ in English.
2 The sign -V- indicates a vowel which is the same as the nearest preceding vowel, e.g. Turku/
un ‘to Turku’, Helsinki/in ‘to Helsinki’, maa/han ‘into the country’, tie/hen ‘to the road’.
20 Finnish: An Essential Grammar
Singular
First person (minun) kirja/ni my book
Second person (sinun) kirja/si your book
Third person hänen kirja/nsa his/her book
Plural
First person (meidän) kirja/mme our book
Second person (teidän) kirja/nne your book
Third person heidän kirja/nsa their book
The fourth group of suffixes is that of the enclitic particles; these occur also
with finite and non-finite verb forms. The most common particles are -kin
‘also’, -kaan ~ -kään ‘(not…) either’, -ko ~ -kö ‘interrogative’, -han ~ -hän
‘emphasis’, and -pa ~ -pä ‘emphasis’. 3 Examples:
Sinä/kö tulit? Was it you who came?
Kekkonen/ko lähti Moskovaan? Was it Kekkonen who went to
Moscow?
Sinä/hän tulit. It was you who came.
Sinä/kin tulit. You came too.
Kekkonen/kin tuli. Kekkonen came too.
Sinä/kään et tullut. You did not come either.
Kekkonen/kaan ei tullut. Kekkonen did not come either.
Kekkonen/ko/han lähti Was it really Kekkonen who went
Moskovaan? to Moscow?
Vo/isi/tte/ko tulla? Could you (plural) come?
Vo/isi/tte/ko/han tulla? Could you (plural) come, please?
A Finnish nominal can have endings from all of the above four groups, but
the order in which the endings occur is fixed:
More examples are given in the diagram on the next page. Each column of
endings also shows how many endings there are of that type. Root here
means the basic form of the word, without any ending. Some roots have
different stems depending upon which ending immediately follows. For
example, the root käsi ‘hand’ has the stem käde- if certain case endings
3 Translator’s note: Both -han and -pa are glossed ‘emphasis’ since an idiomatic translation in
English would usually have to be structurally rather different. However, the two particles are not
synonymous. The particle -han often has the sense ‘I assume you know’ (Mutta sehän on kallis
‘But it’s expensive, isn’t it?’), while -pa is closer to surprise or pure emphasis (onpa kallis!
‘That is expensive!’). Furthermore, -han often functions as a politeness marker and corresponds
to the English word ‘please’.
A survey of word structure 21
follow, as in the word käde/ssä ‘in the hand’ (inessive case). Note that if a
word contains derivational suffixes these occur between the root and the
number ending.
