Content

Preface

1. The purpose of this book

2. The scope of this book

3. Suggestions to different types of readers

4. The structure of this book

Notations used in this book

Historical and cultural background

5. A short history of Finnish

6. How is Finnish related to other languages?

7. Is Finnish a dif icult language?

8. Where is Finnish spoken?

9. Variants of Finnish

10. Regulation of Finnish

Key features of Finnish

11. Finnish as a suf ix-rich language

Use of suf ixes
Suf ixes as the only form of in lection
 In lection of noun-like words
Word-like suf ixes
Suf ixes in word derivation
Few pre ixes
Order of suf ixes
Few small words
Synthetic language
How suf ix-rich, really?
Lexicalization
Impact of word formation

12. Congruence
The congruence concept
Congruence between adjective and noun
Exceptions to congruence of attributes
Congruence between two nouns
Congruence in number
Congruence of verbs

13. Parts of speech

14. Syllable boundaries

The syllable concept
Open and closed syllables in consonant gradation
Determining syllable boundaries

15. Variation in word stem and in suf ixes

The nature and origin of stem variation
“Basic forms” can be exceptional

16. Consonant gradation

 Consonant gradation in a nutshell
Basic rules of gradation
Gradation in consonant combinations
Gradation and the basic form
Exceptions to grade selection
Words exempted from gradation
Gradation of voiced stops
Summary of consonant gradation
Effects of disappearance of k
Double gradation
Ambiguity caused by gradation

17. Vowel harmony

Basic harmony rules
The neutral vowels e and i
Compound words as exceptions
New loanwords and vowel harmony
Other exceptions to vowel harmony

18. Other variation in word stem

Variation -i : -e-
Vowel changes before an i suf ix
Diphthong variation
Other variation in inal vowel
Variation -nen : -se-
Variation -t- : -s-
Vowel stem vs. consonant stem

19. Articles
Lack of articles
 Article-like use of pronouns and the numeral yksi
Article-like use of adjectives and abbreviations

20. Gender and sex

Lack of gender
The neutral 3rd person pronoun
Indicating natural sex
Female derivational suf ixes
Titles of people and sex

21. Phonetic structure

The phonemes in Finnish
Long vowels
Double consonants
Diphthongs
Restrictions on appearance of consonants
A vowel-rich language

22. Sentences and clauses

The clause concept
Analyzing a sentence
Analyzing a clause
Sample analysis of a sentence

23. Analyzing a word

Working backwards
Analyzer programs
The Oiko ix analyzer
The HFST analyzer
The FINTWOL analyzer
 24. Generating word forms

Pronunciation and writing

25. The alphabet

The traditional Finnish-Swedish alphabet
Names of letters
Finnish additions to the alphabet, Š and Ž
Alphabetic order
Letters used in Finnish
Casual deviating spellings

26. Use of capital letters

Continental usage
Using all-caps
Capitalization of proper names

27. Non-alphabetic characters in words

Hyphen
Apostrophe
Colon

28. The nature of Finnish pronunciation

The phoneme principle
Dif icult sounds?
Pure vowels
Towards native pronunciation

29. Pronunciation of letters

a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
o
p
q
r
s
š
t
u
v
w
x
y
z
ž
å
ä
 ö
The dots in ä and ö
The Scandinavian æ and ø
The eng phoneme
Practicing Finnish pronunciation

30. Transitory sounds

31. Unvoiced and voiced stops

Smaller difference than in English
Lack of aspiration
Background
The story of d
Prestige sounds

32. Long vowels and double consonants

33. Diphthongs
The diphthong concept
Diphthongs in Finnish: traditional view
Variation in irst syllable
Diphthongs in other syllables
Diphthongs in writing
Pronunciation of Finnish diphtongs
Triphthongs and three-vowel combinations

34. Stress
Simple stress on irst syllable
Secondary stress

35. Intonation
36. Boundary gemination and other sandhi phenomena
Boundary gemination and sandhi in a nutshell
Forms with boundary gemination
Conditions for boundary gemination
Variation in boundary gemination
Effect of boundary gemination on consonant gradation
Impact of boundary gemination on understandability
Myths about aspiration and glottal stop
Background of boundary gemination
Notations for boundary gemination
Assimilation phenomena
Legato

37. Assimilation

38. Pronunciation of foreign names and phrases

Between original and adapted
Treatment of words from different languages
Grades of adaptation

39. Deviations from the phoneme principle: a summary

Deviations in new loanwords
Other deviations
Marking stress
Syllable boundaries

40. Finnish pronunciation of English

Introduction
British English as the standard
Dominance of written text
 Common mistakes

41. Punctuation
“Big” punctuation marks
Comma
Dashes
Ellipsis
Quotation marks

42. Notational conventions in Finnish

General
Abbreviations
Comparison of quantities
Centuries and decades
Dates
Durations of time
Footnote references
Lists
Mathematical expressions
Monetary quantities
Numbers
Physical quantities and units
Percentages
Postal addresses
Quotations
Ranges
Special characters
Telephone numbers
Time of the day
 Years

Vocabulary

43. Classi ication of words

44. The original two-syllable word structure

45. Origins of Finnish vocabulary

46. Native words, loanwords, and foreign words

Introduction
Foreign words
In lection of foreign words
Adaptation of loanwords
Loanword verbs
Classi ication

47. New loanwords

Background
š versus s
Loanword adjectives

48. Length of vowels in loanwords

Re lecting source language vowel length
Con lict between written and spoken form
The rules of the “great compromise”
Variation in pronunciation

49. Doubling of consonants in loanwords

Common doubling
Orthographic doubling
The “great compromise” rules for doubling
 Common pronunciation
Doubling of word- inal consonant
Background
Shortening of double consonants

50. International words in Finnish

General
Classical forms
Adaptation of letters
“Own” words instead of international words

51. Foreign names in Finnish

Adapted forms
Geographic names
Place names in Russia
Place names in other neighboring countries
Personal names
Common mistranslations
Requirement on exact spelling
Pronunciation
Transliterations

52. Personal names and addressing people

Names
Addressing people

53. Names of languages, countries, etc.

Names of languages
Country names ending with -maa
Derivations of country names
 Swedish names for places in Finland

54. Different scopes of words

55. Family relationship and relationship by marriage

Family relationships
Marriage
Relationship by marriage
Common-law marriage

56. False friends in Finnish and English

The concept of false friends
Some examples
Specialized meaning
False friendship may depend on the context
Some special false friends

57. “Forbidden” words

58. Terminology

Word derivation

59. The structure of a derived word

The stem and the suf ix
Form of the base
Alterations
Truncations
Acronyms
Suf ixes and language learning
Spelling problem -oittaa ~ -ottaa

60. Meanings of derivational suf ixes

 Productivity of suf ixes
Collective derivations
Alternative suf ixes
Names of properties
Names of actions
Moderative adjectives
Causative verbs
Frequentative verbs
Derivations of proper names

61. Sample derivations

62. Derived vs. compound words

Compound words

63. Principles of word composition

Closed and open compounds
Types of closed compounds
Stress in compounds
Open or closed compound?
Nominative in irst past makes the compound closed
Compound verbs

64. The case form of the irst part

Possible cases
Nominative vs. genitive

65. In lection of compounds

66. Hyphens in compounds

67. Nested compounds

68. Compositive forms
The concept of a compositive form
The change -nen : -s
Use of singular for plural words
Omission of suf ix
Omission of inal sound
Truncation
Variation of inal vowel
Stem choice
Stem extension with -s
Other stem variation
Change of word
Compositives of numerals
Compositives of bahuvrihi type
Nouns used as compositives of adjectives
Compositives of verbs

69. Copulative compounds

The concept
Spelling and pronunciation
Copulative compound as part of a compound

70. Derivation-like compounds

71. Open compound as part of closed compound

72. Contractions
Contractions as fusion words
Common contractions
Special contractions ellei and jollei
 Colloquial contractions

Nouns

73. The roles of cases in Finnish

Varying meanings
Grouping of cases
Frequency of usage
About the dif iculty of learning cases

74. Summary of case forms

75. Plural of nouns

The plural suf ixes
The plural stem
Plural forms of loanwords
Use of plural

76. Locational cases

The system of locational cases
Concrete and abstract locations
Expressing states
Inner vs. outer locational cases
Inner vs. outer cases for place names
“Dynamic” use of locational cases
Locational cases expressing possession
Close contact
Expressions for being covered
Specialized uses of locational cases

77. Case forms used to express time

78. Nominative
Form of the nominative
Use of the nominative
Absolute nominative

79. Genitive
Form of the genitive in singular
The genitive singular as type form
Form of the genitive in plural
Using -ten versus other suf ixes
Using -iden versus -ien or -jen in long words
An overview of the meanings of the genitive
Meanings of genitive attributes
Ambiguous genitive attributes

80. Essive
The essive suf ix nA
Use of the essive

81. Partitive
The partitive suf ixes A and tA
Form of the partitive in singular
Form of the partitive in plural
Use of the partitive
Partitive as grammatically required case

82. Translative
The translatives suf ixes ksi and kse-
Use of the translative
Special usage with tulla and saada
83. Inessive
The inessive suf ix ssA
Meanings of inessive

84. Elative
The elative suf ix stA
Meanings of elative

85. Illative
The illative suf ixes *n, h*n, seen, siin
Choice of suf ix in singular
Choice of suf ix in plural
Illative of words ending with Ut
Illatives of loanwords and foreign words
Specialties in illatives of proper names
Consonant gradation in illative
Meanings of illative

86. Adessive
The adessive suf ix llA
Meanings of the adessive
Adessive corresponding to “with”
Adessive as an attribute
Adessive expressing vehicle
Adessive expressing quantity of change

87. Ablative
The ablative suf ix ltA
Meanings of the ablative

88. Allative
 The allative suf ix llex
Meanings of the allative

89. Abessive
The abessive suf ix ttA
Meanings of the abessive

90. Comitative
The form of the comitative
Meanings of the comitative
Strengthening additions päivineen and kaikkineen
Extended uses of the comitative

91. Instructive
The form of the instructive
Meanings of the instructive

92. Accusative

93. Constructs sometimes regarded as cases

94. Cases of proper names

95. Cases of loanwords and foreign words

In lecting words of foreign origin
Cases of new loanwords
Cases of foreign words

96. Cases of unin lectable expressions

Types of unin lectable expressions
Using supporting nouns

97. In lection types of nouns

 Variation in in lection
Nouns ending with a long vowel
Nouns ending with a diphtong
Nouns ending with short o, u, ö, or y
Nouns ending with short a or ä
Nouns ending with short i
Nouns with -si : -te- : -de- : -t- : -s- variation
Nouns ending with short e
Nouns ending with a consonant

98. Cases in sentence analysis

Possessive suf ixes

99. The concept of possessive suf ix

100. The possessive suf ixes

101. Effects of possessive suf ixes on word stem

102. Use of possessive suf ixes

Standard usage
Third person
Meanings of possessive suf ixes
Rarely with adjectives
Pronouns used with possessive suf ixes
Possessive suf ixes in verb forms
Possessive suf ixes in adverbs
Possessive suf ixes in postpositions
Possessive suf ixes and cases
Special uses of possessive suf ixes
 103. Loss of possessive suf ixes
Colloquial usage
Defaulted person

104. Possessive suf ixes with re lexive meaning

Adjectives

105. In lection

106. Adjectives as attributes of nouns

107. Adjectives as attributes of adjectives and adverbs

Genitive forms as quali iers
Superlative with constraint

108. Comparison
Equality comparison
Comparison forms
Comparison normally with suf ixes only
Comparative suf ix mpi : mpa : mmA
Expressing “than…”
Use of mikä instead of or in addition to kuin
Expressing “more and more…”
Expressiong “the more… the more…”
Superlative suf ix in : impa : immA
Expressing the reference
Strengthening the superlative
Expressing “… ever”
Comparison of compound words
Comparison of words for left and right
 Irregular adjectives
Extended use of comparative
Extended use of superlative
Superlatives in expressing “as … as possible”
Relative superlatives
Comparison of nouns
Comparison of names for points of compass

Adverbs

109. The concept of adverb

110. Derived adverbs

111. Comparison of adverbs

112. Forms of adjectives as adverbs

Instructive forms as adverbs
Adverbs vähän, paljon, and kauan and their comparison forms
Other adverbs
Genitive forms as quali iers
Instructive forms versus -iten derivations
Adverbs with -immiten suf ix

113. Locational adverbs

Similarity with locational cases
Common locational adverbs
Comparison forms for locational adverbs

114. Other use of case forms as adverbs

Case form or adverb?
Use of adessive
 Use of abessive
Plural forms expressing state

115. Expressing “as ... as ...”

Comparisons
Restricted expressions

116. Word-speci ic intensi iers

Pronouns

117. Personal pronouns

Standard and spoken forms
In lection of minä and sinä
In lection of hän
In lection of me, te and he
The 2nd person singular pronouns
The 3rd person pronouns in spoken language
Implications of the lack of he/she distinction
Use of se, joka instead of hän, joka
Use of genitives of personal pronouns
Omission of personal pronouns
Use of sun and mun as adverbs

118. Demonstrative pronouns tämä, tuo, se

Standard and colloquial forms
In lection of demonstrative pronouns
Use of demonstrative pronouns
Use of tämä and nämä as 3rd person pronouns
Demonstrative pronouns as attributes
The pronoun se as a nominalizer
 Derivations of demonstrative pronouns
Compounds of tämä

119. Dual pronouns

120. Interrogative pronouns

Kuka and mikä
Special uses of mikä
Derivations of mikä
The dual kumpi

121. Quantifying pronouns

The concepts of quantifying and inde inite pronouns
Jokin and joku
The permissive addition tahansa, hyvänsä, or vain
Expressions for “one of...”
Eräs and yksi
Muuan
Tietty
Toinen and muu
The dual jompikumpi
The negative-context pronouns mikään, kukaan, and kumpikaan
The dual pronouns kumpikin and molemmat
The inde inite pronouns pari, muutama etc.
Use of monta like a numeral and the double partitive montaa
The universal pronouns jokainen, joka, kaikki, and kukin
The identifying pronoun sama

122. Relative pronouns

The basic relative pronouns joka and mikä
 The in lexion of joka
The in lexion of mikä
Choice of case forms
Choosing between joka and mikä
Sentences that begin with joka
Use of kuka ~ ken as relative pronouns
Adjectives and adverbs used like relative pronouns
Word order in relative clauses
Associating a relative pronoun with an antecedent

123. Re lexive and reciprocal pronouns

The re lexive pronoun itse
Use of itse without possessive suf ix
Use of itse for emphasis
The reciprocal toinen toistaan and toisiaan

124. The pronoun oma (own)

Numerals

125. Numerals, nouns, and adjectives

126. Basic numerals

127. Cardinal numerals

In lection
Use of cardinal numerals

128. Ordinal numerals

129. Names of numbers

130. Names of sets with given number of items

131. Composite numerals
Numerals for 11–19
Multiplicative numerals
Additive numerals
In lection of composite numerals

132. Noun forms used with numerals

The partitive rule
In lected forms
Combination of numeral and symbol
Difference from expressions for “n of…”
The exception: the numeral yksi
Use of the partitive in special contexts
Words used in plural only

133. Old numeral-like nouns

134. Fractions

135. Decimal numbers

136. Adverbs derived from numerals

137. Distributive adverbs and adjectives

138. Approximate numbers

Adverbs expressing approximativeness
Derived words for approximate numbers
The word pari
Approximate description of a person’s age
Expressions for little over or under something
 139. Adverbs expressing repetition

140. Compounds expressing repetition

141. Writing numbers with digits

Grouping digits
Notations for large numbers
Ordinal numerals written with digits
Roman numerals

142. In lection of numerals written with digits

Principle of indicating suf ixes
In lection of cardinal numerals
In lection of ordinal numerals

Singular and plural

143. The concepts singular, plural, and dual

144. Singular and plural of noun-like words

Plural forms
Singular forms in plural meaning
Effect of two singular attributes
Singular vs. plural predicative
Singular vs. plural predicative adverbial
Plural forms in singular meaning (plurale tantum)
Deviations from plurale tantum use
Plural words for mutual relations
Phrasal use of plural
Crop words

145. Singular and plural of verbs

 Congruence with the subject
Singular verb indicating inde initeness

Verbs

146. Overview of verb in lection

Richness of forms
The most common forms
Finite forms, participles, and in initives
Summary of in lected forms of verbs

147. The stems of a verb

The vowel stem and the consonant stem
Forms based of the consonant stem
Types of stem variation

148. Contraction verbs

149. Auxiliary verbs

The verb olla
The verb tulla
The verb tehdä

150. In initives
In initives as verbs and nouns
The ive in initives
Use of in initives
I in initive as the dictionary form

151. I in initive (A in initive)

The simple I in initive
Use of the I in initive short form
 The longer form: the translative

152. II in initive (e in initive)

Form of the II in initive
Inessive of the II in initive (-essA)
Instructive of the II in initive (-en)

153. III in initive (mA in initive)

Form of the III in initive
Cases of the III in initive
Inner locational cases of III in initive
Inessive of III in initive (-mAssA)
Elative of III in initive (-mAstA)
Illative of III in initive (-mAAn)
Adessive of III in initive (-mAllA)
Abessive of III in initive (-mAttA)
Instructive of III in initive (-mAn)
The stem of III in initive as a participle

154. IV in initive (minen in initive)

Derived -minen nouns vs. IV in initive
The two forms of the IV in initive
Uses of the IV in initive
In initive-like use of -minen derivations

155. V in initive (mAisillA- in initive)

156. Participles
Participles as adjectives, nouns, and verb forms
Simple active participles -vA and -nUt
Passive participle as a concept
 Passive participles, past tense
Passive participles as verb forms
Passive participle, present tense, -t(t)AvA
Negative participles
Participles expressing changes

157. Personal forms of verbs

The personal form suf ixes
Personal forms with a multi-part subject
The stems in personal forms
The 3rd person singular suf ix
4th person suf ix
Clashes with in initive forms
The irregular forms of olla
Use of personal pronouns with personal forms
Personal forms vs. personal suf ixes

158. Passive
The general concept of passive
Finite passive forms in Finnish
Equivalents of English passive forms in Finnish

159. The 4th person

The meaning of the 4th person
Translating 4th person forms
Comparison with passive
The suf ixes of 4th person
Using the 4th person form for 1st person plural
Hiding the person
Generic statements
 Personal agent
No “afterthought” agent

160. Passive verbs

Pairs of active and passive verbs
Passive vs. re lexive verbs
In lection of passive verbs
Passive verbs vs. 4th person
Passive counterparts of some common verbs

161. Re lexive forms

162. Simple tenses

The two simple tenses
Present tense forms
Past tense forms
Basic use of simple tenses
Special uses of paste tense

163. Perfect and pluperfect

Use of olla to form perfect and pluperfect
Summary of perfect tense forms
Meanings of perfect and pluperfect
Form of the participle
Perfect and pluperfect vs. a participle as a predicative
Special role of past participle

164. Future tense

Use of present tense for future
Compound future tulen …mAAn
Old-style compound future olen …vA
 Present-and-future olen ...mAssA

165. Moods
The four moods of verbs
The suf ixes of moods
Tenses and moods

166. Indicative mood

167. Conditional mood

The suf ixes in the conditional
Stem changes in the conditional
Meanings of the conditional
Finnish conditional vs. English “would”
Conditional for softening
Conditional mood in conditions
Conditional in wishes
Conditional in expressing the purpose
Past tense of conditional

168. Potential mood

The form of the potential
Rarity of the potential
Literary use
Imperative use
Use in proposals
Use in doubtful questions in old popular language
Expressions for uncertainty
Combined potential and conditional

169. Imperative mood

 The imperative forms
Meanings of the imperative in 2nd person
Softening a request
Use of personal pronouns with the imperative
1st person plural imperative (“let’s …”)
3rd person imperatives
4th person imperative
The -Os optative
The form of the object of an imperative

170. Negation
The negation verb
Summary of negations of a verb
Negation of present tense forms
Negation of past tense forms
Negation of perfect and pluperfect forms
Negation of conditional forms
Negation of potential forms
Negation of expressions with an auxiliary verb
Negation of imperative forms
Negation of in initives
Negation of participles
Negation context
Negation verb combined with other words
Omission of the negation verb
Expressions for nobody, nothing, nowhere etc.
Other negative expressions
Negative adjectives
 171. Clause equivalents
Concept of clause equivalent
Word order in clause equivalents
Use of clause equivalents
Types of clause equivalents
Referative clause equivalent (syövän, syöneen)
Contextual clause equivalent (syöden)
Temporal clause equivalent (syödessä, syötyä)
General clause equivalent (syödä)
Intentional clause equivalent (syödäkseen)
Instrumental clause equivalent (syömällä)
Other case forms of the III in initive as clause equivalents
Relative clause equivalent (syömäni, syömäsi…)
The agent in the genitive
No negation in clause equivalents

172. In lection types of verbs

Particles

173. Prepositions and postpositions

Adpositions: words that can be used as prepositions or as postpositions
Adpositions with possessive suf ixes
The case of the noun associated with an adposition
Adpositions used with partitive
Adpositions in two case forms
Adpositions used with illative or allative
Adpositions used with nominative
Adpositions vailla, vaille, yli
Adpositions normally used as prepositions
 Verb forms as adpositions
Case forms vs. adpositions
The postposition kanssa

174. Conjunctions
Common conjunctions
Contractions with the negation verb
Words for “if”
Words for “and”
Words for “but”
Expressions for “both … and”
The enclitic -kä conjunction
Conjunctions corresponding to “or”
Inclusive and exclusive or
The conjunctions että and jotta
The conjunctions kun and kuin
Multi-word conjunctions with kuin
Dif iculties in choosing between kuin and kun
Ambiguities

175. Affective particles

The concept
Classi ication of affective particles
Interjections
Initial particles
Retraction particles
Response particles
Fill words
Throw-in words
Word-like suf ixes

176. The nature of word-like suf ixes

177. The suf ixes kin and kAAn

Using kin to mean “also”
Using kin as a tone particle
The negative-context kAAn
Words and phrases with kin

178. The connective suf ix kä

Conjunction attached to negation verb
Special use of -kä to refute an alternative
Arguing -kä
Exceptional ja instead of -kä
The “combined conjuction” ei … eikä …
The kA suf ix of pronouns

179. The arguing or emphasizing pA

180. The multiple-use suf ix hAn

181. The softening suf ix s

182. The interrogative suf ix kO

Marking a yes/no question
Answering yes/no questions
Additional suf ixes
Colloquial form ks
Subordinate questions
Mixed question structure

Sentence structure
183. The “free” word order

184. The normal order subject – verb – object

185. Presence clauses

Simple presence clauses
Presence clauses expressing actions
Negations of presence clauses
Coming to presence
Absence clauses
Quantifying presence clauses

186. Expressions requiring a non-SVO order

187. Deviations from normal order for emphasis

188. The “sveticistic” inverted order

189. Order of adverbials

Order of adverbials in a clause
Order of adverbials related to in initives and participles

190. Order of attributes

191. Marking the object

Need for object marking
The four cases for an object
Verbs that require a partitive object
Use of accusative forms
Effect of de initeness
Special differences in meaning
Object in nominative
 Problems with the case of object
Object vs. adverbial

192. Object-like quanti iers

An adverbial in a case form of an object
Quantity expression
Expressing the amount of change

193. Verbs without grammatical object

Verbs that are intransitive by nature
Verbs that do not use a grammatical object to specify the target

194. The predicative

The concept and the cases of the predicative
Genitive predicative
Choice between nominative and partitive

195. Predicative adverbials

196. Syntax of causation

197. Lack of subject

No formal subject
Presence clauses
Generic subject
Causative verbs
Subjects implied by verb forms

198. Cases of the subject

Nominative
Partitive in presence clauses
Genitive in some modal expressions
 199. Expressions for having something
Lack of a verb for “to have”
The X:llä on… construct
Relevance of word order
Use of X:ssä on… versus X:llä on…
Use of locational cases about possession

200. Asking and answering questions

Yes/no questions
Use of kyllä and ei as added adverbs
Use of kyllä, ei, and niin as answers
Negative yes/no questions
Choice requests with vai
Other questions
Connecting questions with entä
Use of suf ixes corresponding to “… isn’t it?”
Questions asking for con irmation

201. Subclauses
The role of a subclause
The need for a special device in Finnish
Use of se, mikä
Other contexts for auxiliary se
Clause equivalents as an alternative
Required and optional use of auxiliary se

Poetic features

202. Alliteration

203. Reduplication
 204. Descriptive words

205. Poetic language

206. Biblical phrases

Spoken Finnish

207. Characteristics of common spoken Finnish

Pronunciation of voiced stops
Shorter forms of words and suf ixes
Simpli ied in initives
Shortened numerals
Variation in the interrogative suf ix kO
Grammatical features
Spoken forms of common words

208. Variation in spoken Finnish

209. Dialects of Finnish

The scope of this presentation
The dialect areas
Eastern vs. Western dialects
Notes on the descriptions
1, 2 Southwestern dialects
3 Tavastian dialects
4 Dialects of Southern Ostrobothnia
5 Dialects of Central and Northern Ostrobothnia
6 Dialects of Northernmost Ostrobothnia
7 Savonian dialects
8 Southeastern dialects
Language technology and Finnish

210. Finnish language and localization: a summary

Character repertoire
Basic units of texts
Word in lection
Word in lection in software
Spelling, grammar, and style checks
Readability measurements
Hyphenation
Impact on searching
Numeric expressions
Word order
Lengths of expressions
Abbreviations
Capitalization
Collation and sorting
Punctuation
Lack of he/she distinction
Titles of people
Localization data

211. Typing Finnish

Keyboards
Alt codes
Special codes in Word
The importance of language settings
The issue with “-” turning to “–” in Word

212. Spelling, grammar, and style checks

 How should checkers be used?
Available checkers
Microsoft Word
Voikko
Oiko ix
Lingsoft checker
Adding words to a custom dictionary
The vague concept oikoluku

213. Typesetting Finnish

Typographic principles
Long words make hyphenation essential
Requirements on fonts
Spacing
A closer look at the use of letters in Finnish texts

214. Hyphenation
The nature of Finnish hyphenation
Basic hyphenation rules
The rule against breaking between vowels
Exceptions in loanwords

215. Speech synthesis and recognition

216. Automatic translation

Dif iculties in translation
Google Translate
The Sunda translator
The Bing Translator
Word-to-word “translators”
 217. Broken Finnish as a compromise

Suf ix glossary

218. Notations used in the glossary

219. Using the suf ix glossary

220. The suf ix glossary, in reverse dictionary order

221. Endings of international words

In lection types

222. In lection types of noun-like words

Singular
Plural
Notes

223. In lection types of verbs

Common forms
Other forms
Notes

Compositive forms of verbs

Proper names

Abbreviations

Style settings for Finnish in Word

224. Proo ing tools in Word

225. The style classes

226. Descriptions of individual settings

References

227. Dictionaries and glossaries

228. Etymological dictionaries

229. Of icial language guides

230. Other material and resources

231. Discussion forums

Finnish grammar terms

Colophon

Index
Preface

1. The purpose of this book

This book is a manual of the Finnish language, describing its features and
dif iculties in addition to the basic grammar, word derivation information,
spelling and style guidance, etc. This is not a textbook but a reference. The
idea is that you can use the book to check speci ic issues in Finnish that are
important to you in some occasion. For example, a reader with limited or
maybe no previous knowledge about Finnish can consult this book to ind
information about a particular phenomenon or language form in Finnish,
about the way to write some notation in Finnish, or about some speci ic
dif iculty in translating into Finnish.
However, the book can also be read systematically to get a more thorough
understanding of Finnish and to ind new interesting possibilities or pitfalls
in the language. For this, you probably need to know Finnish well enough to
read simple newspaper text or to use Finnish in simple everyday
conversation.
In principle, no previous knowledge is assumed, but in practice, most
people would ind this book hard to read if they do not know Finnish at all—
unless they are linguists or polyglots. The problem would be lack of
motivation and general framework. For example, due to the systematic
approach, the book has a long discussion of variation of word stems and
suf ixes before it deals with speci ic suf ixes and their meanings.

2. The scope of this book

The Finnish language described in this book is primarily standard written
Finnish, but common features of spoken Finnish are presented both as a
summary and in the context of normal presentation of the grammar. In
addition, widespread “language errors” (i.e., deviations from language
norms) are discussed, since the purpose is also to help to understand written
and spoken language in the wild.
 The book also covers many topics that most grammars do not deal with,
such as details of pronunciation, adaption of foreign words into Finnish,
various notational conventions that differ from those used in English, and
even dialects and poetic language.
The vocabulary of a language, including information about the in lection
patterns, as well as the use of phrases belongs to dictionaries and phrase
books rather than a manual like this. However, this book contains some
information about vocabulary, including word derivation and composition. It
also describes forms of common words as used in spoken language, since
these are not that well covered in dictionaries. Moreover, meanings of
example words are often given in parentheses, when this seems to be
relevant to understanding the general description. Consulting a good
dictionary is useful, though, especially since the descriptions of meanings in
this book are very brief.

3. Suggestions to different types of readers

Even people who speak Finnish well, perhaps as their native language, may
ind this book interesting. An analysis of a language feature may give you a
deeper understanding of something that you use luently at the practical
level. Moreover, such understanding helps a native speaker of Finnish to
avoid language errors when speaking a foreign language: we all tend to use
features of our native language in other languages, too. This book also
describes features that are not in widespread use in modern language but
help you to understand older texts—and maybe to enrich your own texts
with carefully used “old Finnish”.
In particular, this book documents phenomena that are common in
Finnish but generally not described in textbooks or grammars. For example,
actual pronunciation of foreign names in Finnish often greatly differs from
the instructions given in encyclopedias and other sources.
People learning Finnish at an early phase may ind descriptions in this
book useful for orientation, for explaining background, and especially for
dealing with complicated phenomena, such as word in lection. Language
learning is both cumulative (you just add new words, phrases, etc., to the
repertoire you have) and perceptional (you learn completely new concepts
and ideas). This book mainly helps with the latter, though as an aside, you
will learn new words as well.
 People who know Finnish well can read this book systematically to
improve their command of the language, written and spoken. This is useful
especially to people who have mostly learned the language by the natural
method. This book can be also used as a reference book when you are
uncertain about some features of the language.
Translators, interpreters, and localizers can use this book as a
reference to Finnish grammar, orthography, and to some extent style. This
book discusses both normative rules of Finnish and common usage; the latter
may be relevant e.g. when translating informal material or dialogues.

4. The structure of this book

This book is divided into numbered sections grouped into chapters. Within
each section, and even each subsection, the presentation proceeds from
simple descriptions to iner details and exceptions, if possible. In systematic
reading, if you ind some topic covered in more detail than you care about on
irst reading, just skip to the next section (or subsection).
The overall structure of this book is the following:
First, some general information about Finnish is presented for
orientation, in chapters “Historical and cultural background” and “Key
features of Finnish”. The latter describes principles of using suf ixes,
phenomena like variation in word stem in in lection, and other general
concepts and principles. Many features are described here at the general
level, to be repeated in more concrete forms later.
The chapter “Pronunciation and writing” then describes the rules for
writing and pronunciation, covering differences between them in detail. It
also presents punctuation rules and special writing rules applied in
various notations, such as dates and monetary quantities.
The vocabulary is described next. For practical reasons, this part consists
of three chapters: “Vocabulary”, “Word derivation”, and “Compound
words”.
Then the parts of speech are described, in chapters “Nouns”, “Adjectives”,
“Adverbs”, “Pronouns”, “Numerals”, “Particles”, and “Word-like suf ixes".
The description includes both the formation of inflected forms and their
meanings and use. Intermixed with the presentation of parts of speech,
there are two chapters “Singular and plural” and “Possessive suf ixes”,
which would be differently placed in a purely logical order.
 Higher-level structural issues like word order and subclauses are
discussed in chapter “Sentence structures”. It also includes things like the
choice of the case form of an object, one of the tough parts for advanced
learners.
After this systematic presentation, some additional topics are covered.
First, chapter “Poetic features” describes phenomena like alliteration,
described as something appearing in normal prose, too, rather than as
poetry proper.
Chapter “Spoken Finnish” describes irst common spoken Finnish, a
language form that you normally hear in TV, public discussions, and
everyday language when it lacks speci ic dialect features. Then some key
features of major dialects are described.
The last of the normal chapters, “Language technology and Finnish”
describes technical aspects, such as writing Finnish on a computer,
typesetting Finnish texts, and translation and localization issues speci ic
to Finnish. The chapter starts with an executive summary of the topic,
designed to be readable as standalone, too.
The remaining chapters are appendix-like: “Suf ix glossary”, which is an
index to derivation, in lection, and other suf ixes; “In lection classes”,
which lists the in lection types of noun-like words and verbs;
“Compositive forms of verbs”, which covers a large number of forms of
verbs used in compound words; “Proper names”, which lists Finnish
forms of foreign proper names, with English equivalents and some
explantations; “Abbreviations”, which lists the commonly used (and some
less common) abbreviations; “Style settings for Finnish in Word”, which
has information that is otherwise very dif icult to ind; “References”,
which describes essential reference material on Finnish, mostly in
Finnish, in printed or online form; and “Finnish grammar terms”, which
lists Finnish-language terms used in Finnish grammars, with English
equivalents.

Notations used in this book

talo Finnish words (and foreign words used in Finnish) are
 written in italic in the text.
talo (house) The meaning of a Finnish word is brie ly explained in
English in parentheses, usually very coarsely, with a
single word. Parentheses are also used to make other
parenthetic remarks.
talo “house” The meaning of a Finnish word is given in English in
quotation marks. This is used inside parentheses, to avoid
nested parentheses.
ssa Parts of Finnish words, mainly suf ixes, are written in
italic.
sisä- In this book, a part of a Finnish word may be followed by
a hyphen to emphasize that it only appears at part of a
word at its start (as in sisällä or sisään), not as an
independent word.
talo|ssa Parts of a word (morphemes) may be separated by a
vertical line “|” to indicate the structure. The vertical line
is never used in actual Finnish writing.
tulex A superscript “x” at the end of a Finnish word indicates
boundary gemination (a consonant is pronounced, under
certain conditions, at the end of a word that ends with a
vowel in the spelling). Normal Finnish spelling does not
use a superscript “x” or any other indication in this
context.
tálo An acute accent (´) is occasionally used to indicate main
stress. Not used in actual Finnish writing.
tálossàmme A grave accent (`) is occasionally used to indicate
secondary stress. Not used in actual Finnish writing.
linja-auto A hyphen “-” appearing in a Finnish word, as part of the
word in its normal spelling.
vaa’an An apostrophe (’) appearing in a Finnish word, as part of
the word in its normal spelling.
os.ta.ji.a A period “.” indicates syllable boundary when it is
relevant. Not used in actual Finnish writing.
os·ta·jia A middle dot “·” indicates permitted hyphenation point.
Not used in actual Finnish writing.
ruoan [ruuan] The pronunciation of a Finnish word is given in square
brackets after its spelling, using the Finnish writing
system, in the rare cases where the pronunciation differs
from the spelling.
kenkä [keŋkä] In pronunciation information, “ŋ” indicates the eng sound,
like “n” in English “sink”.
[ə] In pronunciation information about foreign words, “ə”
indicates a neutral vowel as at the start of “about” in
English.
[ð] In pronunciation information about foreign words, “ð”
indicates a “th” sound as in English “this”. In practice,
Finns often pronounce it as unvoiced, as in English
“thing”.
A, O, U Uppercase letters A, O, U are used when describing
suf ixes, so that A corresponds to a or ä, O corresponds to
o or ö, and U corresponds to u or y, according to a
phenomenon called vowel harmony.
C The letter C is used in some patterns to denote any
consonant letter.
V The letter V is used in some patterns to denote any vowel
letter.
Adj The abbreviation Adj is used in some contexts to denote
any adjective.
NP The abbreviation NP is used in some contexts to denote
any noun phrase, i.e. a noun (or adjective used like a
noun, or pronoun, or numeral) optionally preceded by
one or more attributes.
*n An asterisk “*” indicates that a suf ix contains a vowel that
is identical with the last vowel of the base word. For
example, *n appended to talo yields taloon, and appended
 to kissa it yields kissaan. (In many grammars, the letter V
is used instead.)
kala : kalassa A colon “:” is used as a separator when different in lected
forms of a word are shown. Usually, but not necessarily,
the irst of the forms is the base form.
kala → kalaisa An arrow “→” indicates derivation, e.g. the word kalaisa
has been derived from the word kala. (In many grammars,
the greater than sign “>” is used instead.) However, in the
presentation of common spoken language and dialects,
the arrow points from standard Finnish form to a spoken
or dialect form.
töiden ∼ A tilde operator “∼” indicates variation, i.e. alternative
töitten forms. This means that there is no difference in basic
meaning, but there may be a difference in tone or style.
hän (he/she) A slash “/” indicates alternatives with different meanings.

Historical and cultural background

5. A short history of Finnish

Language forms similar to modern Finnish have been spoken in the current
area of Finland and some neighboring areas for a long time, but it is unknown
how long. The oldest written evidence is in a birch bark letter from the 13th
century. These language forms are the origin of what are now regarded as
Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, and some other languages, collectively known as
Finnic (or Fennic or Balto-Fennic) languages. They have been heavily
in luenced by Baltic, Slavic, and Germanic languages, but mostly in
vocabulary only. To some extent, and somewhat debatably, Germanic
languages have also affected some features of grammatical structures.
The Finnish language, in the strict sense of the word, was created in the
16th century when a literary standard form was developed for a Bible
translation and other religious purposes, based mostly in the language form
spoken in the area of Turku (in southwest Finland). It was later developed by
adapting features from other language forms (“dialects”), by adopting a more
uniform orthography, and by extending the vocabulary in a planned manner
especially in the 19th century, for use in administration, science, etc.
For centuries, religious use was the main context of using standard
Finnish, as opposite to the local language forms, or “dialects”. Administration,
education, etc. used Swedish, because Finland was part of Sweden (until
1808–1809). This was not changed by the annexation of Finland to Russia,
though Russian was taken into use in some contexts in administration.
However, later in the 19th century, there were many attempts at establishing
a role for Finnish, the language of the majority of people, and it was
increasingly used in literary form. In the 1860’s, a decision was made to give
Finnish an of icial position along with Swedish.
The use of Finnish in of icial contexts as well as in literature and public
communication increased, through some dif iculties. The language had been
just a spoken language in everyday use by mostly uneducated people, on one
hand, and a standard language in limited use in the church and some other
contexts, on the other hand. The language was developed by introducing a
large number of words in all areas of life, often after systematic design. For
example, Elias Lönnrot, the author of Kalevala, the national epos, also created
a large number of Finnish terms for botany.
The standard variant of Finnish is known as yleiskieli (general/common
language) or, especially in written form, as kirjakieli (book language) in
Finnish. It has been taught at school, and it has been widely adopted.
However, like most standard languages, it is really nobody’s native language.
Radio, tv, and the Internet have made the common spoken language of the
Helsinki area largely known and imitated in other areas, too, so we can say
that in addition to standard literary Finnish and old local language forms,
dialects, there is also a common “standard” spoken language. To many
people, it is their most natural language, which they use in speech and often
in informal writing, too, though they may switch to the standard literary
variant in some contexts (like speaking to someone who does not seem to
speak Finnish luently).
From the late 20th century, the in luence of English has been considerable
especially in technology, science, humanities, and administration. The impact
has mostly been limited to vocabulary and phrases.
6. How is Finnish related to other
languages?
The Finnish language, now spoken by over 5 million people, belongs to the
Fenno-Ugric group of the Uralic languages. Uralic (or Uralian) languages are
called that way because they are spoken both to the west and to the east of
the Ural Mountains and their original area is thought to be somewhere in the
vicinity of those mountains.
Estonian and Karelian are close relatives of Finnish, but mutual
intelligibility is rather limited. Both Estonian and Karelian have considerable
internal variation, and each of them is divided into two or more languages
according to some scholars.
The Sámi languages, spoken in Northern Finland and Scandinavia, are
more remote relatives, Hungarian, the largest of Uralic languages, is very
different from Finnish—linguistic comparisons were needed to establish that
the languages are related at all. Other Uralic languages, such as Mari, are
mostly spoken in various areas in Russia.
The following table of the irst three numerals in some Uralian language
illustrates the similarities and differences.
Language 1 2 3
Finnish yksi kaksi kolme
Estonian üks kaks kolm
Karelian yksi kaksi kolme
Northern Sámi okta guokte golbma
Mari ikte kokyt kumyt
Hungarian egy kettő három

The Uralic family of languages is possibly related to Indo-European languages

(such as English, German, Swedish, Latin, Russian, Hindi, etc), but the
relationship is highly debatable. The arguments are based on a few
similarities which might, according to other scholars, be based on language
universals, loanwords, or pure coincidences. Some similarities in
vocabularies are caused by relatively new loanwords which were taken into
Finnish, largely via Swedish, due to strong cultural contacts (only very few
words have gone in the opposite direction).
There are several structural similarities between Uralian and Turkic
languages (such as Turkish), for example vowel harmony. However, linguists
generally do not regard the undeniable typological similarities as evidence
for common origin.

7. Is Finnish a dif icult language?

It depends on your background and attitude whether Finnish is a dif icult
language. Generally, a person who speaks e.g. English, French, Spanish, or
German as his native language will learn any of the other languages more
easily than Finnish. The reason is that Finnish belongs to an entirely different
group of languages and has both a different structure and its own vocabulary,
where you won’t see many words you know from other languages.
Finnish is a strongly suf ix-oriented language. To English-speaking people,
for example, this poses both a conceptual dif iculty and a practical challenge.
First, you need to get acquainted with the princples of using suf ixes. Second,
you need to learn the actual suf ixes and their use, which is comparable to
learning a large number of prepositions
The dif iculties are often exaggerated, however. Although a Finnish word
can have dozens of inclined forms, many forms are rather rare. For example,
Finnish is conventionally described as having 14 or 15 cases for nouns, but 2
cases (nominative and genitive) cover well over 60% of occurrences. A word
can have a large number of different suf ixes, with no theoretical upper
bound, but dif icult clusters of suf ixes are rare.
The pronunciation is rather regular, with some exceptions like doubling of
consonants at word boundaries under certain conditions. Some sounds or
combinations of sounds can be dif icult to learn; e.g. “ö” and “y” and syllable-
inal “h” (which do not exist in English).
Learning a Finnish word usually means that you also need to learn
something about its in lection, such as a few thematic forms. Learning that
“elk” is hirvi in Finnish is not suf icient for using the word properly; you also
need to know whether its genitive is hirven or hirvin (it’s the former) so that
you can form its different case forms. On the hand, you do not need to learn
the grammatical gender (there is none), and you do not need to learn the
written and spoken form of a word separately.
8. Where is Finnish spoken?
Finnish is spoken mainly in Finland, where it is the native language of about
90% of the population. People with Swedish as their native language
generally speak Finnish well, and many of them are truly bilingual, whereas
other language minorities have rather varying skills in Finnish.
Finnish is also spoken by about 450,000 people in Sweden, though the
estimates on this vary a lot. In other neighboring countries, Finnish-speaking
minorities are much smaller. There are also Finnish-speaking people in the
US, Canada, Australia, etc., but the use of Finnish has decreased there.
Two dialects of Finnish, meänkieli (meidän kieli) and kveeni in Norway,
have been de ined as languages by the national authorities. Of these,
meänkieli, spoken in northern Sweden by about 30,000 people, is relatively
close to standard Finnish, and it is linguistically one of the northern dialects
of Finnish.

9. Variants of Finnish
Like almost any living language, Finnish exists in several different variants.
“Standard Finnish” is what grammars, dictionaries, and textbooks mostly
deal with, and it is taught at schools and used in public presentations and
formal occasions. It is hardly anyone’s native language, though.
In the old days, people learned a local language version, or “dialect”, as
their native language. We will cover some main features of major dialects in
this book. In urban areas, and even more generally, differences between
dialects have partly been leveled down. Especially young and urban people
tend to use “common spoken Finnish”, which differs from standard Finnish in
several ways. It might even be called standard spoken Finnish, even though
it lacks all formal standards.
Later in this book there is a description of basic deviations of standard
spoken Finnish from standard (written) Finnish. Standard spoken Finnish is
what you can expect to hear in informal discussions between people from
different areas of Finland or people living in the Helsinki area, where the use
of dialectal features is uncommon. The language used e.g. in TV and radio
broadcasts tends to be standard spoken Finnish in informal programs,
standard Finnish in news, interviews of of icials, etc., though spoken
language features may be used intentionally or unintentionally in them.
Standard spoken Finnish can be characterized as the common spoken
language in Helsinki, originally re lecting some dialectal features, but now
recognized as rather neutral with respect to dialects. Especially radio, TV, and
to some extent ilms made it known and imitated in other parts of the
country.
In addition, there are local slangs and professional jargons. These
language forms are not discussed much in this book. There is an extensive
site about Helsinki slang (Stadin slangi; in standard Finnish), which includes
glossaries of the slang.

10. Regulation of Finnish

In this book, we refer to standard Finnish as a language form that follows
the norms and conventions de ined for written Finnish. As with other
languages, this is not a matter of standards issued by standards
organizations, except for a few issues. Instead, the rules are set by language
authorities, such as Kielitoimisto (language bureau), which has had different
organization statuses; now it is a department of Kotimaisten kielten keskus,
Kotus (Institute for the Languages of Finland). There is also suomen kielen
lautakunta (Board for the Finnish language), working in cooperation with
Kotus.
The national standard SFS 4175 Numeroiden ja merkkien kirjoittaminen
(with the English title “Typing of numbers, marks and signs”) speci ies
several notational conventions.
The recommendations of the authorities can be characterized as “of icial”,
but they have no legal status. However, they have widely been regarded as
de ining what is correct and what is not. In recent years, the
recommendations have partly been changed to a more liberal direction,
causing protests.
There is a large number of language guides for Finnish in Finnish, mostly
promoting the rules of the language authorities, but partly with some added
principles and intentional or unintentional deviation from the “of icial” rules.
The most extensive online guide is Nykyajan kielenopas, by the author of this
book. Section References lists some of icial printed and onlie materia by
Kotus.
Publishers and educational institutions have their own guides, but they
are mostly limited to presenting special rules only. They typically emphasize
some principles in the of icial rules, present some deviations from them, or
give some added instructions on matters not covered by them. Thus, the
situation is different from the regulation of English, which is largely handled
by major publishers and language guides issued by them.

Key features of Finnish

11. Finnish as a suf ix-rich language

Use of suf ixes
Finnish uses suf ixes—short parts of a word appended to a word—for a wide
range of purposes. Suf ixes are used to form different cases of a noun, largely
for the same purposes as English uses prepositions. In English, we say “at
school”; in Finnish, this is one word, koulussa, consisting of the base koulu
(school) and the case suf ix ssa. Some suf ixes of nouns, conventionally called
possessive suf ixes, are used to express association with a person or a thing:
“my school” is kouluni in Finnish.
Suf ixes of verbs are used to express person, tense, and mood. The verb
from sanoisin means “I would say”, with sano being the verb base, isi being
the suf ix of the conditional mood, and n being the person suf ix for irst
person singular.
To take a more complicated example, juoksentelisinkohan (I wonder if I
should run around aimlessly) is one of the examples often presented about
the complexity of Finnish word forms. Its division into morphemes (parts
that have a meaning of their own) is: juokse|ntel|isi|n|ko|han. It starts with
the verb stem juokse- (to run; in initive: juosta). This is followed by the suf ix
-ntel-, which is one of the variants of a derivational suf ix that indicates
repeated action, often with some other change in meaning, too (hence “to run
around aimlessly”). The -isi- suf ix is the conditional suf ix, -n- is 1st person
singular suf ix, -ko is an interrogative suf ix (turning a the verb to a predicate
of a question), and -han is a suf ix with varying meanings, such as softening a
question or turning it to express doubt (hence “I wonder if”).
Suf ixes as the only form of in lection
Adding suf ixes is the only way of in lecting words in Finnish, though this
may involve changes in word stem. In linguistics (but not in this book), the
in lection of nouns, adjectives, and numerals is often called declension, and
the in lection of verbs is often called conjugation.
To be exact, some in lection of pronouns means using in ixes, something
added inside a word, rather than at the end, e.g. joka : jonka (which : of
which). However, these are formally described in terms of using suf ixes and
an invariable ending like ka.
Some features of Finnish may look like stem in lection in the same sense
as in English use of vowel alteration inside a word, e.g. “sing : sang : sung”.
The words vyössä and vöissä are forms of the Finnish word vyö (belt), in the
inessive case, in singular and plural. So it may look like Finnish formed the
plural by changing the diphthong yö to the diphthong öi. Here the plural
suf ix is i, but it causes changes in the form stem: yö before i is simpli ied to ö.

In lection of noun-like words

Finnish nouns have 14 or 15 case forms, most of which have both a singular
form and a plural form. The plural forms have a plural suf ix before the case
suf ix. Adjectives, pronouns, and numerals have in principle the same case
forms as nouns, but pronouns have many specialties in this respect.

Word-like suf ixes

Some suf ixes, called word-like suf ixes or enclitic particles, are comparable
to independent words in meaning but attached to another word. Many of
them have varying and even idiomatic usage, which is dif icult to master. One
of the simplest suf ix of this kind is kin, which basically corresponds to “also”
or “too”, so that e.g. koulussakin means “at school, too”. Instead of this suf ix,
the separate adverb myös (e.g., myös koulussa) can often be used. However,
the kin suf ix may have a special tone or even special meanings.

Suf ixes in word derivation

Suf ixes are also widely used for word derivation. Words with multiple
derivational suf ixes are common in Finnish. For example, from tila (status,
state, condition), the word tilasto (statistics) has been derived, and from it,
the verb stem tilastoi- (to collect statistics) has been formed—and this can go
on, e.g. tilastointi means the act or process of collecting statistics.

Few pre ixes

Suf ixes and compound words are by far the most important methods of
forming new words in Finnish. Pre ixes are used much less, and all pre ixes
can actually be explained as words used in compounds rather than true
pre ixes. The common negative pre ixes are ei- and epä-, corresponding to
English “non-” or “un-”, but they can be regarded as forms of the negation
verb.

Order of suf ixes

The order of suf ixes is regular: derivational suf ixes come irst, then
in lectional suf ixes, then possessive suf ixes, and inally the word-like
suf ixes. For example, the word tilastoinnissammekin consists of the base
word tila, the derivational suf ixes sto, i-, and nni- (a contextual variant of
nti), the case suf ix ssa, the possessive suf ix mme, and the enclicitic kin. In
English, the corresponding expression is “in our process of collecting
statistics, too”. In in lection of nouns, the plural indicator (i or j) precedes the
case suf ix.
The following igure illustrates the order of suf ixes in an another example,
varastoistasiko (from your stores, with an interrogative suf ix ko; such a form
is used in questions of a particular type).
stem derivational plural case possessive enclitic
vara sto i sta si ko

A word may contain several derivational suf ixes and several enclitic suf ixes.
Only one plural suf ix, one case suf ix, and one possessive suf ix may appear.
As an exception, the word montaa, a double partitive form of moni (many)
with two partitive suf ixes ta and a, is now accepted in standard language.
The words sinällään and sinälleen (as such) have the essive suf ix nä and
another case suf ix (adessive llä or allative lle) are in use, but regarded as
substandard; the simpler sinänsä (or sillään) and silleen are recommended.

Few small words

Due to the extensive use of suf ixes, Finnish has relatively few “small words”.
It has no articles and almost no prepositions. Very short words are usually
conjunctions, common pronouns, interjections, or other affective particles.

Synthetic language
Finnish is often characterized as a “synthetic” language, as opposite to e.g.
English, which is largely “analytic” language. Synthetic languages express
relationships using suf ixes or other in lection of words, whereas analytic
languages use auxiliary words or word order for the same purpose.

How suf ix-rich, really?

Although Finnish uses suf ixes heavily, it is possible to exaggerate this. In
contests for the longest word, you may encounter words like
epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkäänköhän. It is understandable in
principle, but would never be used in practice. There is no theoretical upper
limit on the amount of suf ixes in a word, but at some point, words just
become incomprehensible if they have too many suf ixes.
In spoken language and in informal writing, very long words are rare, and
separate words might be used instead of or in addition suf ixes. For example,
instead of kouluni, common spoken language uses mun kouluni, expressing
the irst person singular in two ways, or simpler mun koulu, using just the
genitive of a personal pronoun (mun is a spoken form of the literary minun).
Similarly, many complicated word forms that you might see mentioned as
good examples of the suf ix-rich, synthetic nature of Finnish are more or less
just literary creations. A word like kirjoitettuasi corresponds to a multi-word
clause in English: “after you have/had written”. However, you rarely hear
such words. Normal spoken language, as well as informal written language,
would use a clause that is structurally close to the English example: kun
olet/olit kirjoittanut.
Considering only in lection, not word derivation or word-like particles
that may be appended to words, Finnish has about 140 forms for a noun and
about 260 forms for a verb.

Lexicalization
In lection suf ixes create new forms of a word, whereas derivational suf ixes
create new words. The difference is conventional and relative, though. In
particular, derived forms often become used as independent words and lose
connection with their base word. This is called lexicalization.
Quite often, a lexicalized form still survives as an in lection form, too. For
example, the postposition jälkeen (after), e.g. tämän jälkeen (after this), is a
lexicalization of the illative form of jälki (track, trace), thus originally
meaning “into the track/trace of…”. It is still possible to use it as a normal
in lected form of jälki, too. This may be confusing, but mostly a lexicalized
form is used primarily in its special meaning; when such an interpretation is
impossible, it is interpreted as an in lected form.

Impact of word formation

Due to extensive use of word derivation and compound words, Finnish words
that are related to the same concept are often related in an apparent way.
This may help in learning new words, and it makes many words easier even
to native speakers to the language. Compare, for example, the English words
“botany” and “phytology”, with no roots in the basic vocabulary of English,
with their Finnish counterpart kasvitiede, formed from the common words
kasvi (plant) and tiede (science).
On the other hand, the repetition of the same base word can be
stylistically disturbing, and Finnish writers and translators often need to take
extra measures to avoid too much repetition. It is easy to construct sentences
that are formally quite correct but ridiculous due to base word repetition, e.g.
Kirjailija kirjoitti kirjeen kirjastossa (An author wrote a letter in a library).
It is easy to present examples of dozens and hundreds of words based on a
single root word. However, such sets of words do not always form a cluster of
interrelated words in the mind of a native speaker. For example, it is easy to
see that järjestelmällinen (systematic) is derived from järjestelmä (system),
but the latter is not intuitively seen as ultimately a derivative of järki (reason,
sense), even though it historically is. Irregular changes in word stem may
hide the relationships. For example, probably only a Finn who has studied the
history of the language recognizes the verbs käydä (to visit etc.) and kävellä
(to walk) as related.

12. Congruence
The congruence concept
As a general concept, congruence means that the grammatical form of a word
is the same as the form of another word, at least in some respect. This need
not mean that the suf ixes are the same. For example, the expression iso kala
(small ish) has the illative form isoon kalaan; the suf ixes here are different,
on and an, but they both are illative suf ixes.
We can express congruence by saying that a word congrues with another
word.
Congruence is sometimes called agreement.

Congruence between adjective and noun

An adjective used as an attribute of a noun congrues with the noun. A simple
example was given above. If a noun has several adjectives as its attributes,
they all congrue with it. For example, uusi punainen auto means “new red
car”, and to express “in a/the new car”, we need to put all the words into the
inessive case (ssA case): uudessa punaisessa autossa.
Congruence may make expressions sound or look funny in their
repetitiveness. On the other hand, it often makes the structure of a sentence
easier to see: you can infer that words probably belong to the same
expression when they are in the same case form.
Many Indo-European language have congruence to some extent, but
English has lost it. Congruence shows little signs of vanishing from Finnish,
except for expressions like trade names in marketing texts. When a large
shopping center was opened with the name Iso omena, “big apple”, the name
was used without congruence, e.g. Iso omenassa, for some time. Due to
people’s protests, normal congruence, e.g. Isossa omenassa, became
dominant. On the other hand, long trade names of products are nowadays
common, and in them, companies tend to in lect only the last word, e.g. Valio
rasvaton maito : Valio rasvaton maitoa (instead of rasvatonta maitoa).
However, such names are not used outside marketing texts.

Exceptions to congruence of attributes

There are some exceptions to congruence, i.e. expressions with incongruence.
A few adjectives such as pikku (little) are always unin lected, i.e. they always
have the same form. For example, we say pikku poika (a little boy), pikku
pojalle, pikku pojan etc.; often compound words like pikkupoika are used
instead of such expressions, with a slight difference in meaning. The most
common unin lected adjectives are: aika, aimo, ensi, eri, joka, kelpo, koko,
melko, pikku, tosi, viime. Some of these are also used as nouns, with in lection
(e.g. aika : ajan : ajat), and tosi is an in lected adjective when used in the
meaning “true”. Colloquially, some nouns are used as unin lected adjectives,
e.g. ihme (meaning “miracle” as a noun, “weird” as an adjective).
There are also several sayings where congruence is broken so that an
adjective and a noun are both in lected, but in different cases. From hyvä
(good) and mieli (mind, state of mind), we can form the expression hyvällä
mielellä (in good mood), but we can alternatively use plural forms, and then
the parts are in different cases: hyvillä mielin (instead of hyvillä mielillä). The
form hyvillä is adessive, the form mielin is instructive plural, having here the
same meaning as the adessive. The noun can also be in the partitive case, e.g.
pitkän aikaa (for a long time).
In some phrases, incongruence is obligatory, but in others, it varies with a
congruent phrase. Additional examples, in alphabetic order by the main word
(the noun): vähän aikaa, vähäksi aikaa, sillä aikaa, tällä erää, tällä haavaa,
näillä keinoin ~ keinoilla, samalla kertaa ~ kerralla, missä kohtaa ~ kohdin ~
kohdassa, näillä main ~ mailla, pahoilla mielin, kaikella muotoa, missä määrin,
näiltä nurkin ~ nurkilta, tältä osin ~ osalta, toiselle puolen ~ puolelle, puolelta
päivin, näillä main ~ mailla, näillä seuduin ~ näillä seuduilla, tällä tapaa ~
tavoin ~ tavalla, tällä tietoa, yksissä tuumin, sillä välin.
Such expressions may have incongruence in number, too. If the main word
is in the instructive, it is plural, as the instructive almost always is, but the
attribute can be singular, e.g. tällä keinoin as an alternative to näillä keinoin
(by this means).

Congruence between two nouns

In Finnish, a noun that is an attribute of another noun is normally in the
genitive, e.g. Helsingin alue (Helsinki area), so there is no question of
congruence. However, a title or a job description of a person may appear
before a name, e.g. tohtori Lehto (doctor Lehto). Although it is somewhat
debatable what the grammatical structure is in such expressions, the
following principles are applied:
A simple title indicating a degree, honorary position, or job title is
unin lected, e.g. tohtori Lehdolle. A title can be regarded as simple even
 though it consists of several words, if it is an established expression with
a ixed meaning, e.g. tekniikan tohtori (PhD in technology).
A description is normally in lected, congruing with the name, e.g.
tuotanto-osaston johtaja tohtori Lehto : tuotanto-osaston johtajalle tohtori
Lehdolle (doctor Lehto, the director of production division).
When it is not clear whether a simple title or a description is present, it
can be in lected or unin lected, but the tendency is to keep it unin lected.
E.g. the word syytetty (the accused) is normally treated like a title, syytetty
Virtanen : syytetty Virtaselle, even though it is not a title but indicates the
role of a person in a certain context. The language standards in this issue
used to be relatively strict but complicated; now it is permitted to keep all
titles unin lected.

A proper name may have a common noun before it, characterizing the type of
thing denoted, e.g. hotelli Adlon (hotel Adlon). When the common noun has
no attributes, it is always unin lected, e.g. hotelli Adlonissa. When it has
attributes, it is in lected, e.g. kaupungin parhaassa hotellissa Adlonissa (in
Adlon, the best hotel in the city).
Personal names are combinations of two or more nouns. In them, only the
last part (surname) is in lected, e.g. Jukka Korpela : Jukka Korpelalle.

Congruence in number
The congruence described above applies also to number, i.e. the use of plural
versus singular. For example, we say iso talo (big house) : isossa talossa (in
a/the big house) : isoissa taloissa (in big houses), where the last two words
both have the plural suf ix i before the case suf ix ssa.
When the noun is plural in its form but singular in meaning (a plurale
tantum word), congruence follows the grammatical form, e.g. kauniit kasvot
(beautiful face).
A predicate and a predicative usually congrue with the subject in number,
e.g. Tämä on hyvä auto (This is a good car) but Nämä ovat hyviä autoja (These
are good cars), where all words are in plural form. This is described in more
detail in chapter Singular and plural.

Congruence of verbs
When the subject of a clause is a personal pronoun, the predicate is in the
corresponding personal form, e.g. minä tiedän (I know), sinä tiedät (you
know). This is an important phenomenon, but it is not congruence in the
sense described above, since the grammatical form is not the same.
It is customary to say that the predicate congrues with the subject in
number, even though the plural of a verb and the plural of a noun are
different concepts. For example, we say ministeri tietää (the minister knows),
but ministerit tietävät (the ministers know). There are some exceptions to
such “congruence” in standard language, and in common spoken language, it
is largely absent—we say ministerit tietää.

13. Parts of speech

Words in Finnish can be divided into the following broad classes:
Name-like words: nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and numerals. There is no
suitable name for this class in common use in English, though the word
“nominals” is sometimes used; the Finnish term is nominit. These words
have in lection in cases and singular/plural distinction.
Verbs. They have in lection in person, tense, and mood. Some in lected
forms of verbs, namely participles and in initives, have dual essence: they
also have properties of name-like words, like case forms.
Particles. This covers all other words: adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions,
postpositions, and interjection. They have no in lection as such, though
many adverbs are originally case forms of nouns, and some words might
be interpreted either as adverbs or as noun forms that have special use.

14. Syllable boundaries

The syllable concept
The division of words to syllables is largely conventional, but it is based on
real phenomena in pronunciation. A syllable break does not break the low of
sounds, but it may affect the relative strengths of sounds. For example, the
Finnish word maanosa is a compound that consists of the parts maan and
osa. This division is also a syllable break, and this means that there is a
secondary stress on the syllable o, giving the vowel higher strength. It is this
stress, rather than any pause, that may create the impression of a two-part
word.
Mostly syllable breaks do not cause any direct audible effect. Syllable
division is, however, important for several reasons:
it affects consonant gradation, described in the next two sections
it affects the placement of secondary stress
in poetry, syllables are used as basic units

Syllable division is not the same thing as hyphenation as used for word
division. Hyphenation is allowed at syllable breaks only, but not every
syllable break is a permitted hyphenation point.

Open and closed syllables in consonant gradation

Syllables are important in Finnish due to their effect on consonant gradation,
which is one form of stem variation. For example, the plural of lakki (cap) is
lakit, where the double kk has turned into a single k.
In consonant gradation, the stem depends on whether a syllable is open or
closed. In this context, the syllable concept is metric, and a syllable is open if
it ends with a vowel (which can be a short vowel or a long vowel or part of a
diphthong) and closed if it ends with a consonant. This can be alternatively
formulated as follows: a syllable is closed if its vowels are followed by a
consonant cluster or a word- inal consonant.

Determining syllable boundaries

To divide a word to syllables, we irst need to split it to component words if it
is a compound word (closed compound).
Otherwise, the syllable concept is de ined so that there is a syllable
boundary within a word before the last consonant of any consonant cluster.
Thus, a single consonant between two vowels starts a syllable, and in when
there are two consonants between two vowels, the syllable boundary is
between the consonants.
There is also a syllable boundary between vowels, too, unless they form a
long vowel or diphthong. In syllables other than the irst one, diphthongs are
possible only with i, u, or y as the second component (with few exceptions). It
is not always possible to infer the location of syllable boundary in a group of
three (or more) vowels without information about words and even their
meanings. For example, the written form hauista can have the syllable
structure hau.is.ta or the structure ha.uis.ta, depending on meaning. This
spelling can be a form of three different words: hauis, hauki, haku. For the
irst two, the form hauista contains the diphthong au; for the third one, it
contains the diphthong ui.
In the following examples, a period “.” is used to indicate syllable
boundary:
ka.la
saa.lis
o.me.na
kau.la
kais.la
kors.ke.a
keit.ti.ö
As the examples show, there can be a syllable consisting of a single short
vowel only at the start or at the end of a word. However, in word division, it is
not permitted to separate such a syllable from the rest of a word, to another
line. Thus, there are three syllables in the word keittiö, but only one
permitted word division point (hyphenation point). The word asioin has
three syllables, a.si.oin, but no good word division point.

15. Variation in word stem and in suf ixes

Finnish has often been characterized as an agglutinative language, in the
typological classi ication of languages. This is misleading, however. A purely
agglutinative language uses af ixes (suf ixes, in ixes, or pre ixes) that are
“glued” to base words so that both the base word and the af ix remain
unchanged. In Finnish, the af ix often varies, and it often causes changes in
word stem.
Word in lection and derivation is partly agglutinative in Finnish; e.g.
kouluni (my school) simply combines an unchanged base word koulu with an
unchanged possessive suf ix ni). Howeverm there is considerable variation
both in stems and suf ixes. The only stems with no variation are those that
end with the short vowel o, u, ö, or y and that vowel is preceded by something
else than a consonant k, p, or t participating in consonant gradiation. To be
exact, there are also some word stems that invariably end with e (e.g. nalle :
nalle|n), but in most stems, a inal e varies with either i or ee (e.g., kivi :
kive|n, aine : ainee|n).
Word stem means the part of a word that does not include suf ixes (or
other af ixes). It is not always the same as the dictionary form, and it may
vary between forms of the word. For example, the dictionary form rikas (rich)
has a stem that differs from most case forms; the stem is rikkaa- in most
singular forms and rikka- in most plural forms.
Most of the stem changes can be described in simple terms, though quite a
few rules are needed to describe all the variation. A very common variation
in the stem is a phenomenon called consonant gradation, e.g. so that the
plural of kauppa (shop; trade) is kaupat, with the double pp turning to the
single p when the plural suf ix t is appended. In these examples, the stem has
two forms, kauppa- and kaupa-; in plural forms, this word has additionally
the stems kauppo- and kaupo-.
The most common variation in suf ixes is vowel variation due to a
principle called vowel harmony. For example, we say kaupassa (in a/the
shop) but metsässä (in a/the forest), i.e. the case suf ix has two forms ssa and
ssä depending on what vowels appear in the base word.
In this book, we describe some of the stem variation by writing different
forms separated by a colon “:”. This a common convention in Finnish
grammars. For example, poika : poja- means that the word poika (boy; son)
appears in in lected forms mostly as poja-, e.g. in the plural form pojat and in
the genitive form pojan.

The nature and origin of stem variation

In addition to consonant gradation and vowel harmony, there is other
variation in word stems in Finnish. A good example is verb in lection like juon
: join (I drink : I drank), which seem to have the tense expressed by vowel
changes in the verb stem, much like in the corresponding English verb.
Similarly, the relationship poika : pojan (boy : boy’s), explained in the
description of consonant gradation, is substantial word stem in lection.
Knowledge about the history of Finnish may help in understanding and
remembering phenomena of the current language. For example, the verb
stem juo- (to drink) is based on the earlier form with a long vowel, joo-,
which is still in use in Estonian. In past tense forms, i was added to the stem,
causing length reduction of the preceding vowel, and a diphthong was born:
joi-. Therefore, the past tense forms did not participate in the change that
produced juo-.

“Basic forms” can be exceptional

By convention, the basic form of a word is
nominative singular for a noun, an adjective, a pronoun, or a numeral
(collectively called noun-like words)
I in initive, short form, for a verb
In Finnish, as in many other languages, the “basic form” (nominative
singular) of a noun is often more or less exceptional and deviates from most
other forms. For example, words that end with s in the “basic form” have
varying types of stems in most other forms, such as tulos : tuloksen (result),
with the stem tulokse-, and vapaus : vapauden (freedom), with the stem
vapaude-. Language learning might be somewhat easier if dictionaries had
the in lectional stem rather than the nominative singular as the key form.
One reason why the basic form is often exceptional is that some phonetic
changes have taken place only at the end of a word. For example, at some
point of language history, a word- inal e was changed to i. Words like kivi
originally ended with e in the basic form, too, and had regular in lection: kive
: kiven : kivessä etc.

16. Consonant gradation

Consonant gradation in a nutshell
Consonant gradation is a speci ic kind of variation inside a word stem. It
means variation between alternatives called strong grade and weak grade
involving a stop (a k, p, or t sound, or rarely a g, b, or d) at least in the strong
grade. The weak grade mostly appears at the start of a closed syllable (i.e., a
syllable ending with a consonant).
In the following examples, the n suf ix makes the last syllable closed,
causing the weak grade: kato : kadon, katto : katon, pelto : pellon. The
examples illustrate gradation of t in different contexts.
Basic rules of gradation
Consonant gradation applies to the voiceless stops k, p, and t when they
appear as the last consonant of a word stem, as follows:
If a word has a double consonant kk, pp, or tt in a “strong” position before
the end of the word stem, they turn to the corresponding single
consonant in a “weak position”. In grammars, this is often called
quantitative gradation.
Single k, p, and t in a strong position similarly turn to –, v, or d. Here the
dash “–” denotes lack of any sound or letter. This is often called
qualitative gradation, since the stop changes to another sound of
vanishes. Instead of d, almost all dialects have some other sound here (or
no sound).

Basically, a position is “strong” if the syllable is open, “weak” otherwise. In

addition to calling the position strong or weak, we can also say that the
consonants are in the strong grade or in the weak grade.
In consonant gradation when a word has boundary gemination at the end,
it is treated as ending in a consonant, corresponding to usual pronunciation.
For this reason, most basic forms of nouns ending with e in spelling have
strong grade, e.g. liike : liikkeen.
Consider the word hattu (hat). The double tt participates in consonant
gradation. In the basic form, the syllable structure is hat.tu, and the open
syllable tu causes the strong grade tt. If the suf ix n is appended, the last
syllable becomes closed, requiring the weak grade t, i.e. hatun (syllable
division: ha.tun). The suf ix ssa has the same effect, hatussa (ha.tus.sa). What
matters here is the syllable tus, since it follows the location where the
gradation takes place.
We can describe this also by saying that evey word where consonant
gradation takes place has two alternative stems, one with strong grade and
one with weak grade, e.g. hattu and hatu. The weak grade is used when a
suf ix is appended so that the syllable containing the last vowel of the stem
becomes closed. Additional examples, with syllable boundaries marked:
hat.tu.a, hat.tu.ja, hat.tu.jen but ha.tul.la, ha.tuil.la, ha.tuk.si.
Thus, for example, when the basic form of a word ends with a vowel,
forming the nominative plural with the t suf ix usually causes consonant
gradation. Examples: lakki : lakit (cap), pappi : papit (priest), matto : matot
(mat); laki : lait (law), lupa : luvat (permission), koti : kodit (home).
 Due to the effects of syllable structure, some consonants that would
otherwise participate in gradation remain invariant. For example, the double
tt in keittiö (kitchen) remains in all forms: keittiön, keittiössä etc. The reason
is that there is a syllable break before the ö in all forms. This word is derived
from the verb keittää (to cook), which has regular gradation, e.g. keitän (I
cook), keitämme (we cook). But the derivational suf ix -iö changes the
situation, since it contains a syllable break.

Gradation in consonant combinations

Consonant gradation takes place when the stop (double or single) is between
vowels or it is part of a combination that starts with h, l, m, n, or r. However,
the hk combination may or may not participate in gradation, depending on
the word and on dialect; if in doubt, it is better to keep hk invariant (e.g. vihko
: vihkon).
In some combinations of consonants with a stop as the second component,
special gradation takes place:
hk, lk, and rk vary with hj, lj, and rj under certain constraints before e and
i, e.g. järki : järjen (reason, as a property of human beings)
nk varies with ng, e.g. kenkä : kengät (shoe)
mp varies with mm, e.g. lampi : lammet (small lake)
lt, nt and rt vary with ll, nn, and rr, e.g. ranta : rannan (shore, beach)
Otherwise, a stop following another consonant does not participate in
gradation, e.g. masto : maston, matka : matkan.

Gradation and the basic form

Since nouns usually end with a vowel in the dictionary form (nominative
singular), that form mostly has strong grade, e.g. kukka : kukan ( lower). If a
noun ends with a consonant in the dictionary form, it has weak grade, e.g.
ommel : ompelen (stitch). Dictionary forms ending with e usually have a inal
consonant in pronunciation (see Boundary gemination) and thus weak grade,
e.g. aie : aikeen (intention), syke : sykkeen (pulsation).
In contrast, the dictionary form of a verb (I in initive) has strong grade,
since such forms normally consist of a stem ending in a vowel and the
in initive suf ix A, tA, or dA. For example, sulkea (to close) consists of the stem
sulke- and the in initive suf ix a. The grade is therefore strong, lk, and in many
other forms, as in suljen (I close), it is replaced by the weak grade lj.
Contraction verbs like kerrata : kertaan are an exception to this, as described
in the next subsection.
Finnish grammars sometimes call gradation “direct”, if the dictionary form
has strong grade, as in kukka : kukan, and “indirect” if it has weak grade, as in
ommel : ompelen and sulkea : suljen. However, dictionary forms have no
special status in gradation.

Exceptions to grade selection

The following exceptions apply to the choice of strong versus weak grade:
Before a long vowel, the grade is always strong. For example, the illative of
kukka ( lower) is kukkaan, event though the word ends with a consonant.
The reason is that the suf ix was earlier han and not an, and in the form
kukkahan (still used in some dialects and in poetry), the double
consonant kk appears before the inal vowel of an open syllable (the
syllables are kuk, ka, han).
In partitive plural forms with a three-syllable stem and tA as case suf ix,
the grade is weak, e.g. lusikka : lusiko|i|ta.
In illative plural forms of many words, the weak grade is possible, as an
alternative to the strong grade, which follows general rules. In some of
these words, the weak grade is more common, e.g. yksikkö : yksiköihin ~
yksikköihin.
In other plural case forms, the grade is strong, if the corresponding
singular form has a vowel lengthening in suf ix (and hence strong grade).
For example, the elative plural of rengas (ring) is renkaista, because the
elative singular is renkaasta. In contrast, the elative plural of lanka
(thread) is langoista, since the elative singular langasta lacks a long
vowel.
The grade is also strong in plural case forms (except the nominative) of
words with s : t variation, e.g. (käsi : kädet : kätenä :) käsillä. In such
forms, the strong grade t has changed to s (before i) during the history of
the language.
Before a possessive suf ix, the grade is always strong. For example, the
word forms kukka, kukat ( lowers), and kukan (of lower) all become
kukkansa, when the 3rd person possessive suf ix nsa is appended.
The basic in initive of a contraction verb has weak grade, e.g. hakata :
hakkaan. The reason why e.g. the 1st person singular form has strong
grade is the long vowel. In other types of verbs, the basic in initive has
 strong grade and the 1st person singular form has weak grade, e.g. rikkoa
: rikon.
Before a 4th person suf ix (called “passive suf ix” in most grammars), the
grade is always weak. For example, the verb rikkoa (to break) has the
strong stem rikko- and the weak stem riko-, e.g. rikkovat (they break),
rikon (I break). In 4th person forms, the weak stem is used: rikotaan,
rikottiin, rikottaisiin etc.
In derived verbs with the derivational suf ix OidA, the grade is weak
before the suf ix, e.g. otsikko → otsikoida, isäntä → isännöidä.
Words that normally participate in boundary gemination are interpreted
as ending with a consonant, even if the actual pronunciation in some
situations lacks a consonant. Thus, the imperative of ottaa (to take) is ota,
with a weak grade as in otan, otat etc., and we have syöte (input), even
though the t is in gradation (the genitive is syötteen etc.).

Words exempted from gradation

Consonant gradation is not applied to the following:
Single stops in
relatively new loanwords, such as auto : autot (car)
many “made-up” new words, such as hetu : hetun (a word formed
as an abbreviation of henkilötunnus, personal number) or laku :
lakun (colloquial for lakritsi “liquorice”)
many irst names, such as Aapo : Aapon; some names have
variation, e.g. Satu : Sadun ∼ Satun
some surnames, especially “made-up” names, such as Arko :
Arkon
Stops in foreign names, such as Atlanta : Atlantassa. In speech, gradation
is often applied to double consonants, but this is not indicated in standard
writing, e.g. Olivetti : Olivettin [olivetin]. Some foreign names have special
Finnish forms, and to them, gradation is usually applied, e.g. Englanti :
Englannissa (England), Riika : Riiassa (Riga).
Some proper names, especially nicknames like Stokka : Stokan (denotes
the Stockmann warehouse), Botta : Botan, Skatta : Skattan. But with
gradation e.g. Nykki : Nykin (nickname for New York).
In Western dialects, double consonants in proper names in general, e.g.
Reetta : Reettan (standard: Reetan). Such usage can sometimes be seen
e.g. in newspapers, too.
 The hk combination in most words, e.g. pahka : pahkan. When there is
gradation, the weak grade is usually hj before e or i (e.g. lahkeet : lahje),
but there are some exceptions (e.g. vihkiä : vihin). However, there are
three words where hk : h gradation is allowed, but not required: h
otherwise (e.g. nahka : nahan), In some words, gradation may or may not
take place (e.g. vihko : vihon ∼ vihkon). This variation is caused by dialect
differences, and some variants, such as nahka : nahkan, though accepted
in standard language, may be recognized as dialectal.

Gradation of voiced stops

Sometimes even a voiced double stop gg, bb, or dd may have consonant
gradation in loanwords, e.g. blogata : bloggaan (two forms of a verb that
means “to blog”). These are exceptions, however, and mostly apply to a few
slang words. For example, tghere is no gradiation in words like rabbi : rabbin.
In the newest dictionary of modern Finnish, Kielitoimiston sanakirja,
gradation of voiced stops is not described as consonant gradation but as a
change in stem that is similar to gradation. According to the grammar guide
Kielitoimiston kielioppiopas, gradations gg : g and bb : b are possible for
contraction verbs such as blogata, dubata, and logata.

Summary of consonant gradation

The following table summarizes the information presented above. The letters
in the irst column refer to the identi iers of classes of gradation types used in
Kielitoimiston sanakirja.
Id Gradation Example Notes
bb : b lobbaan : lobata Sometimes in loanwords
dd : d biddaan : bidata Sometimes in loanwords
gg : g loggaan : logata Sometimes in loanwords
D hk : h vihko : vihkon Also without gradation: vihkon
L hk : hj rohkea : rohjeta Before e, i
F ht : hd lahti : lahden
D k:– sika : sian Special: aika : ajan, poika : pojan.
M k:v suku : suvun Between two u’s or two y’s
 A kk : k lakki : lakin
D lk : l velka : velan
L lk : lj kulkea : kuljen Before e, i
A lkk : lk pilkka : pilkan
E lp : lv kilpa : kilvan
B lpp : lp tulppa : tulpan
I lt : ll silta : sillan
C ltt : lt pultti : pultin
H mp : mn kampa : kamman
B mpp : mp lamppu : lampun
G nk : ng lanka : langan
A nkk : nk pankki : pankin
J nt : nn kanto : kannon
C ntt : nt pantti : pantin
E p:v lupa : luvan
B pp : p kuppi : kupin
D rk : r arka : aran
L rk : rj arki : arjen Before e, i, y
A rkk : rk arkki : arkin
E rp : rv varpu : varvun
B rpp : rp karppi : karpin
K rt : rr parta : parran
C rtt : rt kartta : kartan
F t:d sata : sadan Great variation in dialects
C tt : t matto : maton

Words with a gradation of a single t may also have the t : s variation, e.g. käsi :
käte|nä : käde|n.
Effects of disappearance of k
When an intervocalic k disappeas in gradation, as in pako : paon (escape), a
syllable break may be preserved, so that in the example, there are two
syllables pa and on. In older language, this was often denoted using an
apostrophe, as in pa’on, but this is not standard now and it looks outdated.
Moreover, the syllable break may disappear, so that paon is a single syllable
with a diphthong, though this is somewhat debatable.
Between a diphthong and a vowel that is the same as the second
component of the diphthong, a syllable break is always preserved and it is
indicated with an apostrophe, e.g. ruoko : ruo’on. The apostrophe only
indicates that the two o’s belong to different syllables and do not form a long
vowel.
An apostrophe is also used between a long vowel and the same vowel as
short, e.g. vaaka : vaa’an. Between two identical short vowels, no apostrophe
is used, and they form a long vowel when a k disappears, e.g. haka : haan,
where the latter form is one syllable.
After a vowel ending with i, the general rules apply in principle, e.g. reikä :
reiässä : rei’issä. However, in pronunciation the weak counterpart of k in such
contexts is usually j or even jj, so way say (but should not write) reijässä or
reijjässä, reijissä or reijjissä.
Exceptionally, in some words, the i in a diphtong is changed to the
consonant j, namely in aika : ajan (time) and poika : pojan (son; boy). The
regular forms would be aian and poian, but instead of forming a diphthong,
the i turns to a consonant, causing a different syllable structure, eg. a.jan
instead of ai.an. Other phonetically similar words have regular gradation, e.g.
taika : taian (charm, spell; magic trick).
After a vowel ending with u, the disappearance of k often causes a v-like
consonant to be pronounced, although no letter is written. The consonant
varies: it could be (Finnish) v, or double vv, or a sound like English “w”. For
example, tauon, the genitive of tauko (pause), is pronounced as written or
tauvon or tauvvon or tauwon. When a u follows, as in naukua : nau’un (to
miaow), some v-like sound is more common in pronunciation, e.g. nauwun.

Double gradation
Gradation takes place in the word stem, but a word may still have several
consonants or consonant clusters in gradation. For example, there is normal
gradation in the adjective hoikka : hoikan (slim). The comparative of this
adjective, hoikempi (slimmer) in the basic form, has the weak grade, k. The
comparative can be in lected, and then its mp, now appearing before the last
consonant of the stem of the derived word, participates in the gradation mp :
mm, e.g. hoikempi : hoikemman.
Participles of verbs may have double gradation, too. For example, the verb
tietää (to know) has regular gradation t : d, e.g. tietää : tiedän. Its participle
tiedetty (known) has the weak grade d in all forms, but it has tt : t gradation
later in the word, e.g. tiedetty : tiedetyssä.

Ambiguity caused by gradation

As we can see from the summary table above, there are many word forms
that could contain a weak grade with different strong grades in other forms
of the same word. In a word form like luvun, there is nothing that says
whether the dictionary form is luku or lupu or luvu. It is just a matter of the
vocabulary that luku (number) is a real word and lupu and luvu are not.
It is also possible that a word may be a form of two different words due to
gradation. For example, lavan can be the genitive of lava (platform, stand),
but also the genitive of lapa (shoulder). This seldom causes confusion except
in language learning; usually the context removes the ambiguity. Yet, the
phenomenon constitutes an in inite source of playful intentional
misunderstandings and word jokes.
However, even the sentence context is not suf icient for resolving the
ambiguity of the following text: Ilmoitus teille varatuista ajoista. It means “A
note on times reserved for you”, with ajoista being a form (elative plural) of
aika (time), but ajoista is also the same form of the noun ajo, which means
many things like run (e.g. test run). Only the wider substantial context helps
to make sure which interpretation is correct.
Two verbs may have the same dictionary form (the basic in initive) but
differences in other forms due to gradation. The reason is that the dictionary
form always has the strong grade. For example, the in initive tavata may
mean “to meet” or “to spell, to read by syllables”. These are really two
different verbs, and e.g. the normal indicative forms are tapaan, tapaat, tapaa
etc. versus tavaan, tavaat, tavaa etc.

17. Vowel harmony

Basic harmony rules
Vowel harmony means that a non-compound word contains either back
vowels (a, o, u) or front vowels (ä, ö, y), but the vowels e and i (though
phonetically front vowels) are neutral in the sense that they may appear with
both back and front vowels. For this harmony, any suf ix with a back vowel in
it has a variant with a front vowel. If the base word contains only the neutral
vowels e and i, the suf ix has a front vowel.
Thus, any suf ix with a, o, or u has a variant with ä, ö, or y, respectively.
Examples: talo : talossa – kylä : kylässä (the inessive suf ix ssA), sanoa :
sanonut – kysyä : kysynyt (the past tense participle suf ix nUt), yksi : yksiö –
kaksi : kaksio (the word derivation suf ix O).
In this book, we use the capital letters A, O, and U as above, to refer to a
vowel in a suf ix so that A is realized as a or ä, O is realized as o or ö, and U is
realized as u or y, depending on vowel harmony. This notation is generally
used in modern descriptions of Finnish.
The Finnish vowels can be schematically presented as follows:
Front Neutral Back
y i u
ö e o
ä a

Thus, the dots in ä and ö indicate them as front vowel counterparts of a and
o. It would be logical to use ü rather than y for the front vowel counterpart of
u (as Estonian does), but the Finnish alphabet was adopted from Swedish,
which does not use ü.

The neutral vowels e and i

Although the vowels e and i are treated as neutral with respect to vowel
harmony, their quality depends on the type of the word, but this is not
expressed in writing. For example, the e in kerä (clew) is somewhat different
from the e in kera (with), where it is closer to a back vowel.

Compound words as exceptions

In a compound word, the last part determines the vowels of suf ixes. For
example, kesäaika, a compound of kesä (summer) and aika (time) has back
vowels in suf ixes, as in kesäaikana.
This means that vowel harmony does not apply to a compound word as a
whole.

New loanwords and vowel harmony

New loanwords and foreign words may contain a mix of front and back
vowels, without being compounds. They are handled differently, e.g. analyysi :
analyysissa ∼ analyysissä. The recommendation is that the last non-neutral
vowel is decisive, unless it is y and there is an a, o, or u earlier in the word.
Thus, analyysissa is recommended (though analyysissä is common, too), but
we write miljonääri : miljonäärillä, for example.
In foreign names, “visual vowel harmony” is usually applied: the suf ixes
are selected as if the word were read as is written. This explains in lection
like Mary : Marylla, even though the pronunciation of Mary in Finnish is
normally [meəri] or [meri] and the suf ix lla is here pronounced llä. Such
in lection is allowed and even preferred by the language norms.
Pronunciation-based writing like Maryllä is allowed as an alternative, but
less common.
Loanwords that have four syllables or more are often in lected as if they
were compounds, even though they are not compounds in Finnish or even in
the original language. Such a tendency is strongest in words like barometri :
barometria ∼ barometriä, since it looks like a compound due to may other
words ending with metri. The phenomenon may also affect words like
karamelli : karamellia ∼ karamelliä that are not compounds in any sense.

Other exceptions to vowel harmony

There are a few other exceptions to vowel harmony:
The partitive singular forms merta and verta of meri (sea) and veri
(blood) have back vowel suf ixes. Other forms of these words have
regular suf ixes, e.g. meressä and veressä.
Some derivations of words that have front or neutral vowels in their
stems have a back vowel in the derivational suf ix. For example, from the
stem mene-, in initive mennä (to go), we get the derived noun meno
 (going), and from tietä-, in initive tietää (to know) the noun tieto
(knowledge, information).
Some words that are historically compounds but now generally
understood as indivisible have mixed back and front vowels. For example
tällainen (of this kind) is originally a compound of tän = tämän (of this)
and lainen (of kind); it is often pronounced so that vowel harmony is
applied: tälläinen (or, colloquially, tällänen).
In urban slang, vowel harmony is often violated, e.g. in dösa, Helsinki
slang word for bus (standard Finnish bussi or linja-auto).

18. Other variation in word stem

Variation -i : -e-
Words that end with i in nominative singular very often have e- in in lected
forms, as in kivi : kiven (stone). However, new loanwords normally have an
unchanged i-, as in ilmi : ilmin. Moreover, in many words, i is a derivational
suf ix and is preserved in in lection, as in koti : kodin (home), based on kota
(hut).
This sten variation may make different forms of different words to
coincide. Some forms of the words vuori : vuoren (mountain) and vuori :
vuorin (lining) are shown in the next table.
Nom. : Inessive Inessive Illative Illative
Genit. singular plural singular plural
vuori : vuoressa vuorissa vuoreen vuoriin
vuoren
vuori : vuorissa vuoreissa vuoriin vuoreihin
vuorin

This means that the illative plural of vuori : vuoren is the same as the illative
singular of vuori : vuorin. Other case forms are similarly confusing, but the
illative tends to confuse even native speakers. It is now permitted to in lect
both of these speci ic words as vuori : vuoren, since language authorities
regard the distinction as too dif icult. However, this is not a general rule. For
example, the words laki : lain (law) and laki : laen (top of hill) must be kept as
separate.
Vowel changes before an i suf ix
Some vowel changes take place at the end of a stem that ends with a vowel,
when followed by a suf ix that starts with i. One of the changes is that a inal
long vowel becomes short, e.g. aa changes to a. The suf ixes that cause such
changes are:
the plural suf ix i, e.g. maa : ma|i|ssa (country : in countries)
the superlative suf ix in : imma : impa, e.g. vapaa (free) → vapa|in :
vapa|imma|n : vapa|impa|na (the most free : of the most free : as the most
free)
the past tense suf ix i, e.g. saa|da : sa|i|n (to get : I got)
the conditional mood suf ix isi, e.g. i, e.g. jää|dä : jä|isi|n (to stay : I would
stay)

The changes that may happen are:

1. Shortening of a long vowel, as described above. This includes
changes like kaunis : kaunii|ssa : kauni|i|ssa, where the last form is
plural—identical with the corresponding singular form, but analyzed
differently.
2. Change of ii to e.
3. Loss of the irst component of a diphthong ie, uo, yö.
4. Loss of the i in a diphthong that ends with i. This means that two
successive i’s are not used, and it could also be described so that the
latter i is omitted. It is however better to describe this as stem
variation, especially since the suf ix may consist of i alone.
5. Loss of short e. This relates to words that have e in the normal
in lection stem and i in the dictionary form, e.g. suuri : suure- (large).
6. Change of i to e. This relates to words that otherwise have the i
unchanged, e.g. lasi : lasin, ilmi : ilmin.
7. Loss of i.
8. Loss of a or ä after another vowel.
9. Loss of ä.
10. Change of ä to ö. This happens only for some 3-syllable nouns; it
usually happens in them if the vowel of the 2nd syllable is i or y (e.g.,
kynttilä, päärynä, rähinä, tekijä).
11. Loss of a.
12. Change of a to o.
The changes do not always take place in all of the forms and contexts. The
following table shows the basic rules for this. Each cell there shows an
example; if there is no example in a cell, then the change does not apply.
Plural Superlative Past Conditional
stem tense
1 aa → ai etc. puu : vakaa → vaka|in saa|da : saa|da :
pu|i|ssa sa|i sa|isi
2 ii → e kaunis : kaunii|n
→ kaune|in
3 ie → e etc. tie : te|i|llä vie|dä : vie|dä : ve|isi
ve|i
4 ai → a etc. hai : nai|da : nai|da :
ha|i|lla na|i na|isi
5 Loss of e lapse- : suure- → suur|in mene|n : mene|n :
laps|i|ssa men|i men|i
6 i→e ilmi : kiltti → kilte|in
ilme|i|ssä
7 Loss of i etsi|ä : etsi|ä : ets|isi
ets|i
8 Loss of A kolea :
after vowel kole|i|ssa
9 Loss of ä syvä : syvä → syv|in kestä|ä :
syv|i|ssä kest|i
10 ä → ö tekijä :
(sometimes) tekijö|i|tä
11 Loss of a kova : kova → kov|in osta|a :
kov|i|ssa ost|i
12 a → o (often) vahva : alka|a :
vahvo|i|na alko|i

The changes of a inal A (the last four rows of the table) are subject to
somewhat complicated rules, and even native speakers make mistakes with
them. In two-syllable words, the basic rules are that in plural and past tense
forms,
-a is lost, if the irst vowel is o or u (i.e., a labial vowel), e.g. sola : sol|i|ssa
-a is changed to -o-, if the irst vowel is a, e, or i, e.g. sala : salo|i|ssa, reuna
: reuno|i|ssa
-ä is always lost, e.g. kylä : kyl|i|ssä, määrä : määr|i|ssä
There are some exceptions to these rules, e.g. suola : suolo|i|ssa (salt : in
salts), which avoids clashes with the forms of the word suoli : suol|i|ssa
(intestine : in intestines).
In words longer than two syllables in the base form:
In past tense forms of verbs, -A is always lost before the i, e.g. pitä|ä : pit|i.
In plural forms of nouns, -A is mostly changed to -O- before the i, e.g.
ikkuna : ikkuno|i|lla. However, -A is lost if it is
preceded by m, e.g. satama : satamissa (but in new loanwords,
there are exceptions to this exception, e.g. dioraama :
dioraamoissa)
preceded by v, e.g. kanava : kanavissa
preceded by a consonant
part of jA derivational suf ix preceded by something else than a
consonant and i, e.g. opettaja : opettajilla (but lukija : lukijoilla);
but armeija : armeijoilla, since here jA is not a derivational
suf ix but part of a loanword
In plural forms of adjectives, -A is mostly lost before the i, e.g. kapea :
kape|i|lla. However, -A is changed to -O- in the kkA ending, e.g. rivakka :
rivakoissa. In some words, -O- is possible in older language; e.g.
Nykysuomen sanakirja describes matala : mataloissa along with the more
common matala : matalissa.
Some nouns ending with lA, mA, nA, or rA have two types of plural stems, e.g.
pykälä : pykälissä ∼ pykälöissä. Usually the one without O is more common,
with some exceptions like omena : omenissa (less often omenoissa). A few
adjectives ending with kkä (namely jämäkkä, rämäkkä, and ärhäkkä) have
dual in lection, too, with the one with O being more common, e.g. jämäkkä :
jämäköillä, less often jämäkillä.

Diphthong variation
The variation uo : oi appears when uo would be followed by an i at the start
of a suf ix, e.g. indicating plural for nouns or past tense for verbs: suo : soilla
(swamp : on swamps), tuon : toin (I bring : I brought).
There is similar variation for the corresponding front vowels: yö : öi, eg. yö
→ öinen (night → nocturnal), where the variation is caused by the derivative
suf ix -inen.
The variation ie : ei has similar conditions and origin. Example: tie : teiden
(road : of roads).

Other variation in inal vowel

The inal vowel of a word often changes before a suf ix is different ways, in
addition to the phenomena described above.
In certain verb forms, 4th person forms, a inal vowel a or ä in the verb
stem changes to e, e.g. maksa|a : makse|taan : makse|ttu.
Before a derivational suf ix, the inal vowel of the base word is often lost
when the suf ix starts with a vowel, e.g. kaiva|a (to dig) → kaiv|o. The inal
vowel may also change in irregular ways, e.g. reuna → reunu|s. Such
phenomena could alternatively be described so that the vowel is part of the
suf ix (here us) and the suf ix causes omission of inal vowel: reun|us.
Special changes also sometimes occur at the end of the irst part of a
compound word, in the compositive forms. E.g., the compound of sika and
tauti is sikotauti.

Variation -nen : -se-

Adjectives and nouns that end with nen in nominative singular have se- in
in lected forms, for example punainen : punaisen : punaisessa etc. Before the
partitive suf ix tA and the genitive plural suf ix ten, the e is lost, e.g. punaista,
punaisten. In the plural stem, the e is lost before i, according to general rules,
e.g. punaisissa.

Variation -t- : -s-

In many words, some forms have a t or its consonant gradation counterpart d
before the inal vowel of the stem, whereas some forms have an s there when
an i follows. These words are old and have originally had just t or d, but the t
has changed to s before i under certain conditions. Example: vesi : vete|nä :
vede|n.
Such words have complicated in lection, since it may involve this variation,
consonant gradation, and the variation i : e. The in lection is important
because many words of this type, like vesi (water) and käsi (hand; arm) are
very common.
A further complication is that words of this type have s in plural forms like
vesillä. Such forms are best described so that the -i- is the plural suf ix,
causing the preceding stem vowel to disappear.
Old nouns ending with -si all have this variation. Newer words lack it, e.g.
riisi : riisin (rice).
The variation also appears in verbs, e.g. vastat|a : vasta|s|i.

Vowel stem vs. consonant stem

Many nouns have two different stems across case forms, one ending with a
consonant and another ending with that consonant and the vowel e. An
example is kannel ∼ kantele, the name of a traditional Finnish harp. Note that
the presence of the inal e also affects consonant gradation (here nn ∼ nt).
This word has in principle two series of forms, kannel : kantelen : kannelta :
kantelella etc. versus kantele : kanteleen : kanteletta : kanteleella. The irst
series has the in lection stem kantele-, the other one has kantelee-. In
practice, these series are very often mixed with each other, so that some
forms are taken from one series, others from the other.
For example, the word askel (step) has the variant askele, but it is rarely
used in the nominative form. Instead, some other forms are used, so we can
say e.g. askel askeleelta, mixing the two series (paradigms).
More often, two different stems do not appear as full series but only in
some forms. For example, the word nuori has normally the stem nuore- (e.g.
in the genitive nuoren), but the partitive has the consonant stem nuor-, in
nuorta. Moreover, in the essive, along with the normal form nuorena, the
consonant stem form nuorna has also occurred, though it is now used only in
poetry, if at all.
Some special forms are based on consonant stems. For example, the
normal essive of vuosi (year) with the stems vuote- and vuode- is vuonna,
developed via assimilation from the older consonant stem form vuotna. The
word form vuonna is very common in the meaning “in the year…”, e.g. vuonna
2014 (in 2014).
For verbs, consonant stems are more common than for nouns and have
more variation in the way they differ from the vowel stem. Some in lection
forms of verbs have the consonant stem as their basis, others use the vowel
stem. This explains much of the stem variation in verbs, e.g. juos|ta (to run) :
juokse|n (I run). This is discussed in detail in section The stems of a verb.
Derived words are usually based on the vowel stem of the base word, e.g.
nuore|hko (youngish), juokse|nnella (to run around).
The following types of words have a consonant stem:
Most words with a basic (vowel) stem that ends with a short e, e.g. ääni :
ääne|n : ään|tä. This does not include words that end with e in
nominative, too (e.g. nalle : nalle|n) or words where the e is preceded by k,
p, or v (e.g. kivi : kive|n) or by a consonant combination ending with h, s,
or t (e.g. hanhi : hanhe|n), with a few exceptions (e.g. lapsi : lapse|n :
las|ta)
Most verbs with a basic stem (longer than one syllable) that ends with
two vowels, e.g. (varat|a :) varaa|n : varat|kaa. This does not include
verbs like (luke|a :) lue|n, where the two-vowel combination results from
consonant gradation.

19. Articles
Lack of articles
Finnish has no inde inite or de inite article like the English “a” and “the”. This
may sound uncomfortable if you are accustomed to the article system of
English. However, Finnish, like many other languages, works well without
articles.
For example, in English we might start a story by telling “Yesterday I saw a
fox” and later refer to “the fox”. The articles “a” and “the” are part of English
grammar, but they don’t really have much of a role here. The situation is
usually just as clear, from the context, when we say in Finnish Eilen näin
ketun and later use just the word kettu without an article.

Article-like use of pronouns and the numeral yksi

In spoken Finnish, the numeral yksi (colloquial form: yks) is often used much
like an inde inite article, and the demonstrative pronouns se and tämä
(colloquial form: tää) and sometimes tuo (colloquial toi) are used like a
de inite article. Thus, people might say Eilen mä näin yhden ketun and later
refer to the fox as se kettu or, less often, tää kettu or occasionally toi kettu.
Scholars disagree on the interpretation of the situation. Some say that spoken
Finnish already has articles, others say that there are just signs of increasing
article-like use of words and perhaps a competition between tämä and se on
becoming the de initive article.
Standard Finnish rules do not allow article-like usage of demonstrative
pronouns, but expressions like tämä kettu can be used when there is a
speci ic reason to use a demonstrative pronoun for clari ication. On the other
hand, tämä is often used when there is no such reason. When something has
just been mentioned (e.g, Tuolla on kettu “There is a fox over there”), a noun
(like kettu) can be used as such, since the context establishes a de initive
meaning for it. A typical reason for using tämä as an attribute is that you are
physically pointing at something.
The use of eräs or yksi (yks) is often necessary in a manner that makes
them inde inite articles in a limited sense. The English expression A man gave
me this phone cannot really be translated without using eräs or yksi or some
equivalent expression (such as muuan). So we write Eräs mies antoi minulle
tämän puhelimen and perhaps say Yks mies anto mulle tän puhelimen. If we
started the sentence with mies, it would effectively be de inite, just like the
English expression “the man”.
Article-like use of adjectives and abbreviations
In formal writing, people often use the adjective kyseinen (or the longer
expression kyseessä oleva) or asianomainen or the abbreviation ko. or ao., all
meaning “the one in question”, for indicating something as de inite. This is
not regarded as incorrect, but it is clumsy style.

20. Gender and sex

Lack of gender
Finnish has no grammatical gender and has never had. There is nothing
corresponding to the division of nouns to masculine, feminine, and neuter in
many Indo-European languages.

The neutral 3rd person pronoun

The same 3rd person pronoun hän (plural he) is used for both sexes, i.e. as
corresponding to both “he” and “she” in English. The colloquial 3rd person
pronoun se is also sex-neutral.
There is no way to distinguish between male and female by the choice of a
pronoun. This often causes problems in translation and other contexts. For
example, a person’s name may need to be repeated for clarity, instead of
using a pronoun. Another, usually clumsier method is to use nouns like mies
(man) and nainen (woman).

Indicating natural sex

Although Finnish lacks gender as a grammatical category, it has a few ways to
indicate the natural sex of a person or an animal with the choice of a word. As
in English, many domestic animals have different words for the sexes, such as
härkä (bull) and lehmä (cow). Finnish has such words even for a few wild
animals, though most of them are nowadays little known to most speakers of
the language, such as koppelo (female capercaillie) as opposite to metso
(capercaillie as a species, also used for male capercaillies).
However, in most situations, the sex is indicated using a synthetic
expression involving a word that means male or female. For example, a male
bear is uroskarhu and a female bear is naaraskarhu, if you need to or wish to
make the distinction. The word uros : uroksen simply means a male animal,
and naaras : naaraan means a female animal. Alternatively, such a compound
may have the parts in the opposite order, emphasizing the sex: karhu-uros
and karhunaaras. As a synonym for uros, the word koiras : koiraan is also
used, though usually not about bears or other mammals.
When referring to people, the words mies and nainen are used in a similar
manner to express the sex of a person, if it is relevant. They are normally
used as the irst part of a closed compound, e.g. naisopettaja (female
teacher). For nationalities, a compound with mies or nainen as the second
part is used, e.g. suomalaismies or suomalainen mies.

Female derivational suf ixes

The tAr : ttAre- suf ix can be used to derive words for “female…” or “wife of…”,
e.g. piispatar : piispattaren (bishop’s wife) from piispa (bishop). The old-
fashioned inna suf ix, of Swedish origin, e.g. tohtorinna (doctor’s wife), is
used for the same purpose for some words, and so is the popular language
ska, e.g. Virtaska (Virtanen’s wife). Most of these derivations are now mostly
regarded as outdated or even obsolete. Instead of piispatar, one would
normally say piispan puoliso (bishop’s spouse).
It might still be relevant and accepted in some situations to use the word
laulajatar for a female singer, instead of the sex-neutral laulaja, but this is
due to tradition. An actor is näyttelijä, whereas an actress can be called
näyttelijä or näyttelijätär. A mistress is rakastajatar, not rakastaja, which is
male only (lover). On the other hand, calling a female teacher opettajatar, as
opposite to opettaja, would make you sound very old-fashioned.
Words such as pariisitar (female Parisian) still have some use, and they
can in principle be derived from any country or place name. Such words are
used in some forms of literature and also in sports language, where e.g.
italiatar might be used to refer to a female Italian competitor.
However, the word suometar is not used, except historically as the proper
name of a newspaper.
Some words like kuningatar (queen), derived from kuningas (king) and
denoting both a king’s wife and a ruling queen, are an established part of the
vocabulary.
The suf ix tAr is normally appended to the stem of the base word, using
weak grade in all forms, e.g. englannitar : englannittaren, from Englanti :
Englannin. However, kuningatar, ruhtinatar, and valtiatar have exceptionally
been formed by replacing the inal s of the base word with the tar suf ix.
There are loanwords like prinsessa (princess) containing a foreign
feminine suf ix, but such suf ixes are not used to derive new words.
A rather exceptional word is venakko (female Russian), a colloquial old
word, related to venäläinen (Russian). It is nowadays often misunderstood
and used as denoting a Russian person in general.

Titles of people and sex

As in other languages, some words denoting professions or positions contain
a part that denotes man (or less often woman), e.g. puhemies (chairman),
poliisimies (policeman). There are different opinions and practices on them.
E.g., puhemies is generally used about a female chairman, too, but instead of
poliisimies, one might use poliisinainen when referring to a female policeman.
In of icial contexts, one might use the longer and somewhat clumsy word
poliisivirkailija (police of icer) about a policeman of either sex. Compounds
formed from old compounds by replacing mies with henkilö (person), e.g.
puhehenkilö and poliisihenkilö, are mostly taken as jocular and not as
particularly good jokes.
The word emäntä means originally a housewife and is derived from the
old word emä (mother). Yet, some professional titles ending with emäntä
might nowadays be used about men, too. On the other hand, lentoemäntä
(stewardess) means a female person only; for the male counterpart, the
loanword stuertti (steward) is used.

21. Phonetic structure

The phonemes in Finnish
In linguistics, “phoneme” is a more abstract concept than “sound”. Different
sounds are treated as being appearances of the same phoneme, if their
differences do not make a difference in meaning of words. We can say that
two sounds represent different phonemes if there is a minimal pair of words
that differ only by the difference of those sounds. For example, the minimal
pair of “sip” and “ship” shows that in English, “s” and “sh” represent different
phonemes.
 In standard Finnish words excluding relatively new loanwords, only the
following phonemes appear (indicated here by their letters in normal Finnish
orthography, except for the eng sound ŋ):
vowels a, e, i, o, u, y, ä, ö
consonants d, h, j, k, l, m, n, ŋ, p, r, s, t, v
Of these, almost all dialects lack the d sound. In new loanwords, and in some
Western dialects, the consonants b and g may appear too. Moreover, š may
appear in educated speech, and so may ž in the combination dž. Some
minimal pairs like sakki (gang) – šakki (chess) for making š a distinct
phoneme can be found, but it is questionable whether their difference is
recognized from the difference of s and š sounds or from the context. The
sound ž cannot be classi ied as a phoneme in Finnish, due to its limited
context of use.
The phoneme status of b and g is more debatable. Minimal pairs like
paarit (stretcher) – baarit (bars; cafés) can be recognized, but it is
questionable whether the phonetic difference between p and b really makes
a difference in meaning. This is discussed in more detail in section Unvoiced
and voiced stops.
In foreign names and in newest loanwords, the consonant w (as in
English) and the neutral vowel ə (as “a” in English “about”) as well as some
nasalized vowels may be heard, but they can hardly be said to have phoneme
status.

Long vowels
Vowels appear as short or long. A long vowel is normally written with two
identical letters. The length of a long vowel is about two times the length of a
short vowel in the same position.
The difference between short and long vowels is a phoneme distinction,
i.e. it can make a difference in meaning. E.g. tuli ( ire) and tuuli (wind) are
distinct words, and so are of takka (open ireplace) and taakka (burden).
A long vowel could be described as a separate phoneme or as two identical
phonemes in succession. However, the conventional approach in Finnish
grammar is to treat the length of a vowel as a separate phoneme-like feature.
Thus, a word like tuuli is analyzed as containing four phonemes, with the
second phoneme as long.
In Finnish, long vowels may appear in unstressed syllables. This deviates
from many European languages, where long (or half-long) vowels appear
only in stressed open syllables. In the Finnish word paniikki (panic), the
second syllable is unstressed and closed (ends with a consonant), but the
vowel is still long.
Thus, it is important to make vowel length distinctions; they are not just a
matter of sounding native. It is better to exaggerate the distinction,
pronouncing a long vowel as really long, than make it too short.
When a foreign word contains a half-long (or long) vowel in a stressed
position, Finns tend to interpret it as a long vowel. This is why there are long
vowels, written with two letters, in loanwords such as gaala (gala) and miljöö
(from Swedish “miljö”, which comes from French “milieu”). However, original
spelling is retained in many words, e.g. ameba, commonly pronounced
ameeba; see section Length of vowels in loanwords.

Double consonants
Consonants appear as single or double. A double consonant, normally
written with two identical letters, is conventionally treated as two sounds, in
different syllables. A word such as taakka (burden), with a long vowel and a
double consonant, thus has the syllable structure taak.ka.
The syllable division is partly just conventional, but it may help to
pronounce Finnish better: to produce a double consonant, try to pronounce
irst a syllable ending with a consonant, like taak, then immediately another
syllable starting with the same consonant, like ka. Just remember that there
should be no pause between the syllables. Instead, the consonant sound lasts
longer; its length is typically two times the length of a simple consonant, but
it can be even longer.
The difference between single and double consonants can be the only
difference between two words, e.g. tuli ( ire) and tulli (customs) are distinct
words. Finnish grammars conventionally treat a double consonant as two
phonemes.
According to some descriptions, consonants the d, h, j, and v do not appear
as long. In reality, h, j, and v, can be pronounced (though not written) as long
due to boundary gemination. For d, this is possible only when a new
loanword is involved; it may appear as long in loanwords otherwise, too.
Some interjections and descriptive words have a long h, e.g. hihhuli. Long j
and long v are often pronounced, but not written, after diphthongs that end
with i or u, respectively, e.g. leija [leijja]; see section Transitory sounds.
Diphthongs
Vowels can form diphthongs, such as ai (pronounced like “eye” in English),
but consecutive vowels may also belong to different syllables, like io in radio.
This is described in section Diphthongs.

Restrictions on appearance of consonants

Except for new loanwords and some dialects, a word cannot begin with a
consonant cluster. Old loanwords have adapted to this by losing all but the
last one of the consonants, so that e.g. the word for beach or shore, from
Swedish “strand”, is ranta.
Consonant clusters do not normally appear at the end of a word, except
that some word- inal clusters like ks are common in spoken language. Old
koanwords have usually been adapted to this so that an i has been appended,
e.g. pankki (bank).
Double consonants do not normally appear at the end of a word. A double
consonant at the end of a foreign word is pronounced single, e.g. Mann [man].
However, a inal vowel of a word may be omitted before a word that starts
with a vowel, and in such a legato pronunciation, a double consonent before
the lost vowel is retained. For example, missä on (where is) is often miss on in
speech, pronounced as [mís.són], i.e. phonetically as two words in the sense
that there are two main stresses, but as one word otherwise, with syllable
break inside [ss]. Such a word combination may develop into a contraction
word, such as ettei [ét.tei] from että and ei.
Some colloquial emphatic pronunciations such as toss (for tos, a shortened
form of kiitos, ”thanks”) and jess (re lecting English ”yes”) have a word- inal
long (or even overlong) consonant, and it is shown in some forms of writing.
Even the appearance of a single consonant at the end of a word has
restrictions. In standard language, not counting boundary gemination, word-
inal assimilation, and new loanwords, only l, n, r, s, and t may end a word,
and l and r are rare in that position. Moreover, they rarely appear in the basic
form of a noun, since a inal is has usually been appended, e.g. Yet another
explanation is that loanwords that have ended with a consonant have usually
got a inal i appended, e.g. paneeli (panel), paperi (paperi).

A vowel-rich language
Finnish is rich in vowels, not by the amount of different vowel sounds but by
the frequency of vowels. Finnish has eight simple vowels, which can appear
as short or long and as diphthongs in many combinations. Especially if we
count a long vowel as two vowels, corresponding to the orthography (a long
vowel is written with two letters, like aa), the relative amount of vowels is
larger than in most languages, typically about 50 %. This is one reason why
Finnish somewhat resembles Italian phonetically; another reason is that the
Finnish vowel signs a, e, i, o, and u have phonetic values similar to those of
Italian (rather than English).
The relative amount of vowels is partly explained by the conservative
nature of Finnish. A word like kala ( ish) is, as far as we can know, very
similar to the corresponding word in the Uralic proto-language thousands of
years ago. In other Uralic languages, the inal vowel has often been lost, in
addition to other phonetic changes.
Another reason to the large proportion of vowels is that Finnish has not
been conservative in one respect: it avoids consonant clusters, as described
above.

22. Sentences and clauses

The clause concept
The concept of a sentence is simple, if we only think of the written form of a
language that has a punctuation system roughly similar to that of English. A
sentence normally starts with an uppercase letter and ends with a period “.”, a
question mark “?”, an exclamation mark “!”, or sometimes an ellipsis “…”
indicating premature ending.
A sentence consists of one or more clauses. A clause contains a predicate
verb, i.e. a verb in a inite form, such as “is” or “helps” or “wrote”, as opposite
to forms like “to be” or “being”. The following sentences in English and in
Finnish contain three clauses, with the predicates underlined:
He was thinking what he should do next, and then the phone rang.
Hän mietti, mitä tekisi seuraavaksi, ja sitten puhelin soi.
The example illustrates how Finnish uses commas between clauses more
often than English does. The rules for using the comma are one of the key
reasons why the clause concept is relevant in Finnish grammar.
Analyzing a sentence
Although Finnish often uses commas between clauses, a sentence cannot be
divided into clauses simply by splitting at commas. Commas are also used
also inside clauses, and commas are omitted between clauses in some
contexts.
For adequate analysis of a sentence, we need to recognize the inite forms
of verbs, i.e. predicates, and interpret other words as belonging to the same
clause. Some words, like mitä and ja in the example above, will then be
analyzed as constituting “glue” that joins clauses, such as relative pronouns
and conjunctions.

Analyzing a clause
Analyzing a clause is more dif icult in Finnish than in English, because the
word order varies more freely and because you will not ind most words as
such in dictionaries. A word typically has in lection, which needs to be
recognized before you can look the basic form up in a dictionary. This is made
more complicated by the fact that many suf ixes have multiple uses. If you see
a word like sanomme, you can recognize mme most probably as a suf ix, but
this same suf ix is used both in some verb forms and as attached to nouns.
This means that recognizing predicate verbs requires both knowledge
about verb in lection and dictionary information. The word form sanomme
can be resolved as a verb form, because there is verb with the stem sano- but
no such noun. Sometimes there are complications here. For example, the
word uskomme can be analyzed both as a verb form (we believe) and as a
noun with a possessive suf ix (our faith). The context is needed to distinguish
between them. If there is no other word in the sentence that looks like a verb,
you would analyze that uskomme is probably a verb form.

Sample analysis of a sentence

Here is a complete sentence in Finnish, one that you might encounter when
illing out a form:
Jos haluat, että olemme yhteydessä sinuun, kirjoita puhelinnumerosi
tähän.
It is a long sentence, and you can hardly recognize more than one part of one
word only if you did not learn any Finnish before reading this. However, you
can tentatively divide it into parts by assuming that commas separate
clauses. Here this gives a correct analysis of the overall structure. The
following analyzes each of the words:
jos is simply the word for “if”
haluat means “you wish” or “you want”; so it is a verb form that includes
an indication (the t suf ix) of the agent, corresponding to “you”
että is the Finnish word corresponding to “that” as a conjunction; unlike
English “that”, it is preceded by a comma, which somewhat helps to see
the sentence structure
olemme is a verb form, with the suf ix mme indicating the agent,
corresponding to “we”, and the verb stem ole- means “to be”; thus, the
word may mean “we are” or, like here, “we will be”—Finnish normally
does not distinguish between present and future in verb forms
yhteydessä is a noun form, with the noun stem yhteyde- “contact” (basic
form when no suf ix is used is yhteys) and the suf ix ssä, which often, and
here, corresponds to the English preposition “in”; so the meaning is “in
contact”
sinuun is a form of the personal pronoun sinä (you, when addressing an
individual); this form relates to the preceding word, and it has the same
function as the preposition “with” in the English expression “contact
with you”
kirjoita is yet another verb form, the imperative of a verb that means “to
write” (Finnish in initive: kirjoittaa); here the imperative means an
instruction
puhelinnumerosi consists of three parts: puhelin (telephone), numero
(number), and the si suf ix, which corresponds to the English word
“your”
tähän is an adverb that means “here” or “in(to) this place”; it could
further be analyzed as being originally a case form (illative) of the
pronoun tämä (this)
Thus, a more or less literal translation would be “If you wish that we will be
in contact with you, write your telephone number here.”

23. Analyzing a word

Working backwards
In order to understand a Finnish word, you need to recognize its structure.
Normally you start from the end and try to recognize suf ixes, then see if the
remaining word can be recognized or found in a dictionary. If it is long, it
might be a compound word. So some general knowledge is needed to analyze
e.g. the word form puhelinnumerosi. You would irst recognize si as a possible
possessive suf ix, then notice that there is nothing suf ix-like before it, and
inally try to interpret puhelinnumero as a compound.
The suf ix glossary in this book may be of help in recognizing words as
derived words or as inclined forms.

Analyzer programs
There are various word analyzer programs, which take a word form as input
and display one or more ways to decompose it into components.
It is quite possible that a word form has several interpretations, several
“parse trees”. For example, kannat can be a plural form of the noun kanta
(base) but also a 2nd person singular form of the verb kantaa (to carry).
Analyzers usually show the different interpretations.
On the other hand, a word form might be ambiguous only in a hypothetical
sense. For example, by its form only, ojennat could be a form of the verb
ojentaa (to stretch out), or a form of the noun ojenta or ojenna—but such
nouns do not actually exist. Analyzers normally use a word data base to
exclude possibilities that are not real. This also means that an analyzer may
fail to show an analysis when it involves a word that is not its database due
to being too new, too rare, dialectal, or colloquial.

The Oiko ix analyzer

Oiko ix is a free online service, available at oiko ix.com. It is based on
voluntary work and still under development, but very useful. It can be used
to spellcheck Finnish (or English) text, submitted as plain text or as a web
page, but also to perform morphological analysis.
Oiko ix has alternative user interfaces in Finnish and in English. The
screen shot below is from the English version.
The user interface is somewhat special. Instead of entering text and then
selecting a function, you need to

irst select function on the left

then enter text in the text area

and inally activate the desired action using buttons above the text area.

You select the analysis mode by clicking on the button “Read and analyze
texts” (Lue ja analysoi tekstiä) on the left. Then type or paste text in the large
text area and click on the button “Analyze” (Analysoi teksti), which then
changes to “Continue editing” (Jatka tekstin muokkausta), shown in the
screenshot above. After this, click on any word in your text to get an analysis
of it; the screenshot above shows an analysis of the word haluat.

The HFST analyzer

The HFST analyzer is multilingual word analysis software. It requires a
formal morphological description of a language, and there is such a
description for Finnish as well as for a large number of other languages.
There is an implementation accessible on the web site of the University of
Helsinki at www.ling.helsinki. i/cgi-bin/omor/omordemo.bash. It is an
academic activity rather than a common practical tool, so the user interface is
clumsy.
 To use it, enter the word or text in text area provided, select Finnish from
the language menu, and click on “Process wordform”. There are two
alternative display formats, selectable from a dropdown: “CG/TWOL analysis
sets” (the default) uses a notation like “haluta+V+Act+Ind+Prs+Sg2”, whereas
“Apertium style analyses” uses a notation with “<” and “>” symbols as shown
in the screenshot below. The notations are brie ly explained on the page
www.cs.tut. i/~jkorpela/omor i-en.html.

There is an alternative service based on the same technology, at the

University of Tromsø: giellatekno.uit.no/cgi/d- in.eng.html.

The FINTWOL analyzer

The FINTWOL analyzer is available from Lingsoft as a commercial product.
There was an online free demo available, but it was taken down for technical
reasons. It might be launched as a new, improved version. The following
screenshot was taken from the online demo when it was still available.
The example shows the analysis of the form haluat, in a very compact form,
using the abbreviations V = verb, PRES = present tense, ACT = active, SG2 =
singular, 2nd person. The link under Lisätietoja (more information) referred
to a page that explains the notations used, in English.

24. Generating word forms

Large Finnish dictionaries contain information about word forms, as
numbers referring to in lection patterns (paradigms). Bilingual dictionaries
may lack such information, making things more dif icult. You may therefore
ind the online service Joukahainen at joukahainen.puimula.org useful,
although its user interface is in Finnish and somewhat clumsy. It accepts a
dictionary form of a word as input (use the in initive for a verb) and shows
basic information about the word, including some in lected forms:
These forms show the basic variation in the stem of word and its suf ixes.
They can be used to generate other forms by following general principles,
once you have learned them. For nouns and adjectives, all case forms are
shown on request. The service does not cover pronouns and numerals.
For verbs, there is also Verbix.com, which generates all the normal forms
of a verb.
The of icial Kielitoimiston sanakirja also contains in lection information.
However, the information is largely implicit: it refers to in lection patterns.
For verbs, it contains the same type words as Joukahainen and additionally
the potential form, 3rd person singular (e.g. halunnee). For nouns and
adjectives, eight forms are shown.

Pronunciation and writing

25. The alphabet

The traditional Finnish-Swedish alphabet
The traditional Finnish alphabet, as taught at Finnish schools, is the same as
the basic Latin alphabet with the letters Å, Ä, and Ö added at the end: A B C D
E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V (W) X Y Z Å Ä Ö. It is the same as the
traditional Swedish alphabet, and the letter Å is included only due its use in
Swedish.
The role of the letter W is ambiguous. Historically, it is a variant of the
letter V and appears in some Finnish names, such as the surname Wirtanen, a
rare variant of the very common name Virtanen. Traditionally, W has been
treated as equivalent to V in sorting. On the other hand, W appears in foreign
words such as show and watti (watt), and it is nowadays often treated as a
separate letter in sorting, as in English.

Names of letters
The names of the traditional letters are aa, bee, see, dee, ee, äf, gee, hoo, ii, jii,
koo, äl, äm, än, oo, pee, kuu, är, äs, tee, uu, vee, (kaksoisvee,) yy, tseta,
ruotsalainen oo, ää, öö. When reading an abbreviation by letters, w is usually
read as vee, e.g. WWW as vee vee vee, but kaksoisvee can be used for clarity.
Instead of äf, äl, äm, än, är, äs, the longer forms äffä, ällä, ämmä, ännä,
ärrä, ässä (often shortened to äff, äll etc. before a vowel) can be used, and
these forms must be used as the basis in in lection; e.g., the genitive of äf is
äffän. These names, except är(rä), also appear with e instead of ä, e.g. ef or
effä. The use of the forms with e is often regarded as Swedish in luence, and it
has lost popularity, except in contexts where it is phonetically better due to
vowel harmony, e.g. in reading USA as uu ess aa.
The common spelling alphabet (names used when saying a word letter
by letter) is Aarne, Bertta, Celsius, Daavid, Eemeli, faarao, Gideon, Heikki,
Iivari, Jussi, Kalle, Lauri, Matti, Niilo, Otto, Paavo, kuu, Risto, Sakari, Tyyne,
Urho, Vihtori, wiski, äksä, Yrjö, übel, tseta, Åke, äiti, öljy.

Finnish additions to the alphabet, Š and Ž

According to the of icial orthography, as amended in the early 20th century, Š
and Ž belong to the alphabet, too, but they are treated as S and Z in sorting.
Their Finnish names are hattuässä and hattutseta.

Alphabetic order
Although the basic alphabetic order in Finnish is well-established, except for
the changed status of W, there are many dif iculties in putting expressions in
alphabetic order when foreign letters and non-alphabetic characters are
included.
 There are even several con licting national standards on sorting: SFS 4600,
which is little known and little used and impossible to apply automatically;
SFS 5050 for bibliographic sorting; and SFS-EN 13710, which is based on a
pan-European standard, with some adaptations to Finnish usage.
According to SFS-EN 13170, the basic order of letters A B C D E F G H I J K
L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Þ Å Ä Ö. This means that W is a separate letter,
and the Icelandic letter thorn Þ (þ) is placed after Z. Other added letters, like
the Icelanding eth Ð (ð), are treated as variants of basic letters like D; the
difference is taken into account only in words that are otherwise identical.
Most diacritic marks are ignored, except of course for Å, Ä, and Ö. For
example, É is sorted like E, just so that in otherwise identical words like
Linden and Lindén, the one with the diacritic mark comes later. However, for
historical reasons, SFS-EN 13710 makes the following exceptions from pan-
European rules, re lecting relatively well-established Finnish practices:
Æ (æ) is treated like Ä, due to its use to denote [ä] sound in Danish,
Norwegian, and Icelandic
Ø (ø) is treated like Ö, due to its use to denote [ö] in Danish and
Norwegian
Ü (ü) is treated like Y, due to its use to denote [y] in German and some
other languages
ß, normally used in lowercase only, is treated like SS, following German
practice
Œ (œ) is treated like OE, following French practice
Case of letters is ignored in sorting, except when two strings differ only in
case of some letter(s). In that situation, lower case is sorted before
uppercase. This means that in a glossary, a common name like meri (sea)
should precede an identical proper name, like Meri as a surname.
SFS-EN 13170 sorts data as strings, with no regard to meaning. This
makes it possible to apply it automatically, but it also makes the results
unintuitive in a manner that may require tuning. The overall order of
characters is:
the space
punctuation marks (including e.g. “-”)
special symbols (e.g. “+”)
digits
Latin letters (as described above)
Greek letters
 other letters, in a speci ic order by writing system
This means e.g. that the name Suomen ympäristökeskus appears before
Suomenlinna, since the space is counted as a character and precedes all
letters. Similarly, golf-osake is sorted before gol kenttä. Thus, the placement
of an expression may depend on its spelling as an open compound, a closed
compound, or a hyphenated compound. Some older practices still in use, and
de ined in SFS 4600, try to avoid such problems by ignoring most other
characters than letters and in one mode of sorting, called sanoittainen
lajittelu (sorting by words), even spaces.
When sorting personal names, it is common to ignore prepositions at the
start of surnames, e.g. sorting af Julin as Julin and von Schulz as Schulz.
However, this is not consistent, and SFS 4600 de ines how different
prepositions are handled differently.

Letters used in Finnish

Only the following letters appear in Finnish words, when foreign words
(loanwords that preserve the original spelling) are not considered: A B D E F
G H I J K L M N O P R S Š T U V Y Z Ž Ä Ö. Of these, letters B, F, Š, Z, and Ž
appear in relatively new loanwords only. For more details on the use of
letters in Finnish texts, see section A closer look at the use of letters in
Finnish texts.
The basic phonetic values are described in section Pronunciation of
letters.
Historical note: In a book on Finnish phonetics and orthography, Suomen
kielen äänne- ja oikeinkirjoitusoppi (published in 1949), Aarni Penttilä wrote
about the alphabetic order as consisting of “a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p,
q, r, s, (š), t, u, v, x, y (ü), z, (ž), å, ä, ö (ø), (õ)”. According to him, this list
constitutes suomalais-ruotsalainen aakkosto (Finnish-Swedish alphabet)
when the letters in parentheses are omitted. He described the letter w
essentially as a stylistic variant (allograph) of v and as a holdover from
Fraktur fonts.

Casual deviating spellings

In informal writing, the letter x is sometimes used (irregularly) instead of ks,
e.g. writing colloquial yks (standard Finnish yksi, “one”) as yx. Other casual
playful writing styles include using z for ts, q for kuu (e.g. qkausi for kuukausi,
“month”) and c for see.

26. Use of capital letters

Continental usage
In the use of capital vs. small letters, Finnish mostly follows the continental
European tradition, as in e.g. Spanish and French, rather than English. This
means that capital (uppercase) letters are used much less than in English.
Within a sentence or a heading or title, only the irst word and proper
nouns are capitalized. The same applies to entries in a command menu, for
example (e.g. Avaa tiedosto, cf. English usage “Open File”).

Using all-caps
In older style, headings are often written in capital letters. This is now old-
fashioned and advised against e.g. in the national standard for of ice
documents.
In logos, short menu items, buttons, etc., it is common to use all capitals,
but this is a design issue and not a language rule.
In contract texts, the English style of writing contract terms like
CUSTOMER and PRODUCT in uppercase (or as capitalized, e.g. Customer)
does not match Finnish tradition and rules. It is however nowadays often
used due to requirements imposed by companies.

Capitalization of proper names

In Finnish, proper names are capitalized as in English, but the concept of
proper name is partly different. Names assigned to individual persons,
organizations, places and other geographic entities, or product brands are
treated as proper names, e.g. Charles Darwin, Apple, Helsinki, Windows.
Derivations of proper nouns are written in lowercase, e.g. pariisilainen
(Parisian) from Pariisi (Paris) and darwinismi or darvinismi from Darwin.
However, if the derivation itself is a proper name e.g. as an epithet, it is
capitalized, e.g. Vilhelm Occamilainen (William of Ockham).
 Compounds with a proper name as a component have different spellings,
e.g. ranskanleipä (French white bread), from Ranska (France) and leipä
(bread) but—in a more casual compound—Ranskan-matka (trip to France).
Widely used compounds with specialized meaning are generally written in
lowercase, whereas other compounds usually preserve the spelling of the
proper name and have a hyphen between the parts.
Names of of icials have varying spellings, and the standards for them have
not been quite stable. By current rules, we write e.g. ulkoministeriö (Ministry
of Foreign Affairs) but Viestintävirasto (Finnish Communications Regulations
Authority). The reason is that the latter is a separate bureau. Since this looks
unsystematic, people often capitalize the names of ministries, for example.
Names of companies and associations often have all their words
capitalized, e.g. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. This helps in recognizing
them as proper names, especially when the irst word as such is a proper
name. Although the of icial rules are not clear, it is usually best to use the
same spelling as the organization itself.
Trademarks and company names should normally be capitalized, though
this is debatable for names written differently by the companies themselves,
e.g. iBook and airberlin.
Many names are protected as trademarks in Finland, even though they
might be common names in other countries, e.g. Aspirin. Although forms like
aspiriini are very often used as common names, such use is still less common
than in US English, for example. The legal status of trademarks can be
checked from the of icial trademark databases.
The following table shows, by examples, whether some names are
capitalized or not in Finnish. Proper names of places, people, etc. have been
omitted, since they seldom raise questions about capitalization.

Thing named Finnish exampe English equivalent

administrative unit kunnanhallitus municipal board
building Eduskuntatalo Parliament House
constellation Vesimies Aquarius
court korkein oikeus Supreme Court
day of the week maanantai Monday
deity Jumala God
 epithet Juhana Maaton John Lackland
festivity, yearly pääsiäinen Easter
ideology konservatismi Conservatism
language, computer Java Java
language, human kiina Chinese
law rikoslaki Criminal Code
month tammikuu January
nationality ranskalainen French
period of time keskiaika the Middle Ages
political organ eduskunta Parliament
political party, common kokoomus National Coalition
name Party
political party, of icial Kansallinen National Coalition
name Kokoomus Party
product type feta feta
religion islam Islam
sign of the zodiac vesimies Aquarius
title of person paavi pope
unit of measurement newton newton
war talvisota the Winter War

Deviations from the standard spellings are common, e.g. Paavi, Talvisota, or
(for ideological reasons) jumala.

27. Non-alphabetic characters in words

Hyphen
Within a word, a hyphen (-) may appear between the parts of a compound
word, as in English, but with more complicated rules for its use, described in
section Hyphens in compounds . For example, a hyphen is used when the irst
part ends with a vowel and the second part starts with the same vowel, e.g.
kuorma-auto (truck). A hyphen may also appear at the start of a word,
representing an omitted irst part of a closed compound. For example,
syntymäaika ja -paikka is short for syntymäaika ja syntymäpaikka, and maa-
ja metsätalous is short for maatalous ja metsätalous. Thus, a hyphen at the
start of a word indicates that the word is the second part of a compound,
with two or more preceding words constitutins the irst part of the
compound.
The hyphen should be kept as separate from the en dash (–). When
mistakes are made with this, usually the hyphen is used instead of the en
dash. However, when writing with Microsoft Word, the default settings cause
a word-initial hyphen to turn to an en dash. Incorrect written forms like
syntymäaika ja –paikka are therefore very common. The incorrect change can
be prevented by changing Word settings.

Apostrophe
An apostrophe (’) is used inside words for a few purposes:
to separate a foreign word from a Finnish suf ix under certain conditions
explained below, e.g. show’t (Finnish plural of the English noun show)
to indicate syllable boundary between identical vowels, e.g. rei’issä,
inessive plural of reikä “hole”
rarely otherwise in three-vowel combinations as in ha’uissa
in old poetry and in old written forms of some words, to indicate
omission of a inal vowel or other inal part of a word (including part of a
compound), e.g. voip’ = voipi, jok’ainoa = joka ainoa, Kivikk’aho (a
surname, shortened from Kivikkoaho)

In in lection, an apostrophe is used if the spelling of a foreign word ends with

a consonant but the pronunciation ends with a vowel, as in show [šou].
Additional examples: Bordeaux [bordoo] : Bordeaux’n [bordoon], Kaj [kai] :
Kaj’lla [kailla]. Mistakes are often made with this, either by omitting the
apostrophe when it is required or by using it in words of other types.
However, an apostrophe is in principle permitted whenever it is necessary
to indicate the base form of the word. You might use it e.g. in the word form
Sinise’n to indicate that it is the genitive of the foreign name Sinise and not a
regular genitive of the Finnish word Sininen. Tthis is rare; usually the basic
form of the name is obvious enough from the context or otherwise.
The correct apostrophe character is curly (’), as in English, but a vertical
apostrophe (') is very common, as in English, since it is easier to type.

Colon
When a suf ix is added to a word that is written using digits or special
symbols or an abbreviation, the suf ix is preceded by a colon “:”. Thus, we can
write kolmessa as 3:ssa (the digit stands for the stem of the numeral, kolme)
and ulkoministeriössä (in the Foreign Of ice) as UM:ssä (the abbreviation UM
stands for the base form ulkoministeriö). If an abbreviation is read as a word
and not as spelled out or by pronouncing the names of letters, no colon
should be used. Thus, “in NATO” is written as NATOssa or Natossa.
When the colon is used that way, it is followed by the suf ix only. This is
dif icult even to native speakers, since it requires a grammatical analysis of
the word rather than just naturally learned in lection of words. Therefore,
mistakes are very common in this area. Native speakers may even have
greater dif iculties than people who have learned Finnish as a foreign
language on a more theoretical basis. For example, to write the word
kymmenenteen using digits, you need to recognize that the word has the
ordinal number suf ix nte- and the illative suf ix -en, so that you need to write
10:nteen. The digits 10 here represent the in lectional stem kymmene-.
A binding vowel i that appears in the full form of a word is omitted when
the word is written using an abbreviation or symbol. For example, if the
symbol Å is used for the outdated unit ångström and the genitive form
ångströmin is needed, it is written “Å:n”, not “Å:in”.
Further complications are caused by the additional rule that if a suf ix
starts with a vowel that is pronounced as part of a long vowel, the long vowel
is written in full, with two letters. For example, ulkoministeriöön would be
written as UM:öön, if UM is meant to be read as ulkoministeriö, and as UM:ään
(pronounced uu ämmään), if UM is read by letters, uu ämmä or uu äm.

28. The nature of Finnish pronunciation

The phoneme principle
The original Finnish orthography developed in the 16th century was
unsystematic, and it imitated some of the oddities of Swedish and German
orthography. It was later reformed and became rather systematic, mostly
with one-to-one corresponding between letters and sounds. After this, the
pronunciation has not changed substantially, so the simple correspondence
has been preserved. This is good news to anyone who wants to learn Finnish,
as well as to speech synthesis and speech recognition.
The correspondence is, to be exact, between letters and phonemes. As
mentioned in section The phonemes in Finnish, a phoneme is an abstract
concept in linguistics. For example, the “t” sounds in English “hat” and “tin”
can differ from each other, but they are still recognized as the same;
pronouncing the “t” in “tin” as normally in “hat” might sound a bit odd (the
“t” sounds too weak, so to say), but it would not change the meaning of the
word. Changing the “t” sound in “tin” to the English “th” sound would change
the meaning. In Finnish, too, phonemes vary considerably, especially the “h”
phoneme. For example, the letter h in the words hei, paha, and lyhty are
pronounced very differently, but these sounds still represent the same
phoneme. The differences are determined by the phonetic context, so they
cannot make a difference in meaning.
There are actually several deviations from the one-to-one correspondence
between letters and sounds, although they are small as compared with e.g.
the writing system of English. The deviations, such as boundary gemination,
are discussed in in different sections of this book and summarized in section
Deviations from the phoneme principle: a summary.

Dif icult sounds?

Some of the sounds in Finnish are dif icult, however. This does not mean any
particular physical dif iculty in producing them. Rather, it is a matter of
sounds and phonetic contexts of sounds that are unfamiliar e.g. to many
people who speak English as their native language.
A language learner needs to learn to pronounce unfamiliar sounds such as
y and ö, to pronounce Finnish diphthongs, and to make a distinction between
short and long vowels (even in unstressed syllables) and between single and
double consonants. Some exercise is needed to say taka, takka, takaa,
taakkaa etc. so that the listener knows which word you mean.
Pure vowels
Although unstressed vowels can be somewhat shorter and slightly less clear
than stressed vowels, there is no vowel reduction comparable to, say, how the
irst vowel of the word “about” is pronounced in English. Word- inal vowels
are full vowels, too; the three vowels of the word vasara (hammer) are
basically identical, except that the irst one is stressed. Similarly, the vowels
in the word vene (boat) are identical.
In free speech, some inal vowels are dropped, e.g. yksi (one) often
becomes yks. However, there is usually no partial reduction: either the vowel
is fully pronounced, or it is omitted. Partial reduction may appear in fast
speech and in dialects. Dialects also have reduced (very short) vowels that
may appear between consonants to ease pronunciation. For example, in
Eastern dialects, you may hear kolome, with second o very short, instead of
the standard kolme (three).

Towards native pronunciation

When you can handle the issues described above, you can pronounce Finnish
quite understandably. Some additional effort is needed to produce more
native-like pronunciation. For example, it is a basic requirement to
pronounce the letter r audibly in all contexts, but the exact quality of this
sound is less important for understandability. To produce a native Finnish r,
you need to pronounce it as a fairly strong trill, as in Scottish pronunciation
of English.

29. Pronunciation of letters

The following presentation covers all Finnish letters as well as some “foreign”
letters that may appear in Finnish texts in foreign names and in loanwords
adopted “as such”.

a
Finnish a is similar to the “a” sound in the English word “father” in British
English (Received Pronunciation), except that the Finnish a may be short or
long. The “a” in “father” is between short and long in Finnish terms, usually
closer to long. In US English (General American), the vowel in “top” is close to
Finnish a. Finnish a is similar to the “a” in German, Italian, Spanish, and many
other languages.
Care must be taken to keep a as separate from ä. These sounds are
recognized as distinct by speakers of Finnish, and their difference often
makes a difference in the meaning of a word, i.e. the sounds are distinct
phonemes.

b
Finnish b is nominally similar to English “b”, but it appears only in relatively
new loanwords and is mostly pronounced as “p” or almost as “p”, only partly
voiced. A clearly voiced b appears typically only in educated public speech.
See section Unvoiced and voiced stops.

c
Letter c appears only in foreign words and in a few loanwords. It is in
principle pronounced according to the rules of the original language. In
practice, it is usually pronounced as s before e, i, or y and as k otherwise.

d
In standard Finnish pronunciation, d is similar to English “d”. However, its
role in the language is somewhat arti icial, as described in the The story of d.
When d appears in relatively new loanwords, it is often pronounced as
Finnish t or almost as t by some people, although such pronunciation is often
regarded as vulgar.
On the other hand, d appears as a counterpart of t in consonant gradation,
in normal Finnish words, as in katu : kadut. In such contexts, it is very rare in
dialects; Western dialects typically have r instead of it (e.g. karut), or
sometimes l (kalut), whereas Eastern dialects may have lack of any sound
there (kaut), or v (kavut), or something else. Sometimes t is exempted from
gradation, e.g. the genitive of äiti (mother) can be äitin instead of the
standard äidin.
When speaking standard Finnish, simply pronounce d as in English, but
stay tuned to hearing many other pronunciations.

e
Finnish e is similar to English “e” in “get”, but more closed. The dif iculty is
that in Finnish, the vowel can be long, too, written as ee, and this has no
counterpart in standard forms of English. Finnish does not make a distinction
between open and closed e. The Finnish e tends to be rather closed, to keep it
far enough from ä, and a foreign-language open [e] often sounds like [ä] to a
Finn. The Finnish e resembles the irst component of the diphtong in the
word “ace” in British and US English.

f
Finnish f is similar to English “f”, but it appears only in relatively new
loanwords. It is pronounced as v or (between vowels) as hv by many people.
Such pronunciation is substandard, except in some words like asfaltti
(asphalt), which is normally pronounced (and sometimes written) as asvaltti.
However, the common pronunciation of f is weaker than in English (except
when doubled, ff) and may come close to Finnish v.

g
The letter g has two roles in Finnish. It appears in relatively new loanwords,
and in them, it is typically pronounced as k, except in educated public speech,
where it may be pronounced more or less like “g” in English “get”. See section
Unvoiced and voiced stops. On the other hand, it appears in the combination
ng, which is usually the consonant gradation counterpart of the combination
nk, e.g. Helsinki : Helsingissä, and it is pronounced as a double “eng sound”. In
loanwords, ng may appear otherwise, too, and the gn combination may occur,
too; see The eng phoneme.

h
The letter h denotes a single phoneme in Finnish, but its pronunciation varies
greatly by phonetic context. There are two different positions in a syllable
where h may appear:
At the start of a syllable, as in hän (he/she), raha (money), and vanha
(old). Inside a word, between vowels, h is usually voiced. The vowel after
h strongly affects the quality of the [h] sound.
At the end of a syllable, before a consonant (or at the end of a word), as in
lahti (bay) or lehti (leaf; newspaper). The quality of the sound varies
 according to the preceding vowel. To many people, the main dif iculty
with Finnish h is its appearance in such a context.
The pronunciation of h is greatly affected by the vowel of the syllable that the
h belongs to or, if the syllable has a diphthong, the vowel closest to h. The
main features of the variation are:
a makes h similar to “h” in English “hat”, a pharyngeal or glottal fricative;
this applies e.g. to h in hattu and lahti
e, ä, o, and ö also have a similar effect, but h is weaker with them and is
not pronounced that deep in the throat; this applies e.g. to h in heinä and
lehti
i makes h similar to “ch” in German “ich”, a palatal fricative, produced so
that the tongue is very close to the palate, causing strong friction; this
applies e.g. to h in hiili and pihdit
u and y make h a labial fricative, produced with friction caused by lips
being somewhat close to each other; this applies e.g. to h in huhu and
lyhyt
Finns usually do not realize how much the pronunciation of h varies, since
the same letter is used. They have unconsciously learned to pronounce it
differently according to phonetic context.
The letter h is always pronounced, except that the second h of hiha
(sleeve) is usually mute, especially in in lected words (e.g. hihan is
pronounced [hian]).
The [h] sound does not usually appear as a double consonant, except in
some interjections and descriptive words like huhhei and hihhuli and, in
some pronunciations, due to boundary gemination; e.g. ole hiljaa (be silent)
is mostly pronounced as written, but may also be pronounced oleh hiljaa.
At the end of a word, [h] appears only in interjections such as huh, in
words participating boundary gemination, and in foreign words. Finns tends
to pronounce a word- inal letter h in foreign names where it is used (in the
foreign language) only to indicate the quality or length of the preceding
vowel or just as part of the spelling, e.g. Savannah.

i
The quality of Finnish i similar to English “ea” in “seat”, i.e. more closed than
“i” in “sit”, but as such Finnish i is short. The difference between Finnish i and
ii is primarily in the length, whereas the English sounds differ primarily in
quality. As a foreigner speaking Finnish, just make sure you make the length
distinction clearly—it does not disturb much if the vowels are also
qualitatively more different than in native Finnish speech.

j
Finnish j is pronounced like “y” in English “yes”. Between i and a vowel, j is
pronounced weakly or not at all, e.g. lukija (reader) is typically pronounced
lukia (three syllables: lu, ki, a). After a diphthong ending with i, as in leijona
(lion), the pronunciation varies from inaudible (leiona) to a double j
(leijjona), as described in section Transitory sounds.

k
The letter k stands for the “k” sound, which is always written with k in
Finnish; c and q appear only in foreign words. The Finnish k is not aspirated
at all, so it sounds softer than English “k”. See section Unvoiced and voiced
stops.

l
Finnish l is similar to English “l”, though with less variation by phonetic
context. Compared with the various variants of English “l”, the Finnish l is
more or less average, neutral.

m
Finnish m is similar to English “m”.

n
Pronunciation of n is similar to English “n”, including the special phonetic
value in the nk combination. For the ng combination, see notes on g. Before p,
the letter n is pronounced as m (e.g. olenpa is read as olempa), usually even
across word boundaries (pojan pallo is read as pojam pallo). Other
assimilations occur, too.

o
Finnish o is similar to “o” in British English “hot”, but more closed. When long
(oo), it resembles “aw” in English “hawk”. Finnish does not make a distinction
between open and closed o.
p
Finnish p stands for the “p” sound, which is not aspirated at all in Finnish, so
it sounds softer than English “p”. See section Unvoiced and voiced stops.

q
The letter q appears only in foreign words and is in principle pronounced
according to the rules of the original language. In practice, Finns read it as k,
and a u after q is usually read as v.

r
The letter r is always pronounced and stronger than any variant of “r” in
standard American or British English. Pronounce it irst like word-initial “r”
in English. The important thing is that r is always pronounced, even at the
end of word and before a consonant. Later you can try to imitate the native
Finnish trilling r.

s
Finnish s is basically the unvoiced “s” as in English “sing”. However, since
Finnish lacks a contrast between that sound and the voiced “s” (as in English
“busy”) as well as between “s” and the “sh” sound of English, the Finnish s can
vary a lot and is generally less sharp than English “s”. Different people and
social groups can have varying special versions of s, since Finnish speech
remains quite understandable despite such variation.

š
The letter š appears only in new loanwords and denotes in principle a sound
similar to English “sh”. However, it is generally pronounced more or less the
same as s, though an š sound may be produced to make a word sound more
foreign. The letter is part of the of icial orthography, but it has never become
really popular; even many newspapers use sh instead of š (e.g. sheikki instead
of šeikki). Moreover, of icial rules for using š have varied, replacing š by s in
many words; see section š versus s.
 Sometimes š is also used to write the interjection šš, which asks for
silence; a more common spelling is shh or shhh.
The combination sh may appear in purely Finnish words when the letters
belong to different parts of a compound word, as in naishenkilö, or the h
belongs to the hAn suf ix, e.g. mieshän. In such contexts, the letters s and h are
pronounced separately.

t
The letter t stands for the “t” sound, which is not aspirated at all in Finnish,
so it sounds softer than English “t”. Moreover, it is dental, i.e. the tongue
touches the upper teeth. This is one way of keeping t and d as different in
Finnish.

u
Finnish u is similar in quality to “oo” in British pronunciation of “goose”, but
may appear as short or long. It is thus more closed than English “u” in “put”.
Finnish does not distinguish between different qualities of u; instead, the
difference between Finnish u and uu is primarily in the length, whereas the
English sounds mentioned differ primarily in quality.

v
Finnish v resembles English “v” but is weaker. Phonetically, Finnish v is an
approximant: the lower lip just comes close to the upper teeth or slightly
touches them, whereas English “v” is a fricative, with some sound of friction
produced. Finns generally do not pronounce “v” correctly when speaking
English, since they are unaware of this difference. However, using English “v”
when speaking Finnish does not affect understandability, partly because
Finnish lacks a “w” phoneme.
After a diphthong ending with u, as in vauva (baby), the pronunciation of v
varies from inaudible (vaua) to a double v (vauvva), as described in section
Transitory sounds.

w
The letter w appears mostly in foreign words only and is in principle
pronounced according to the original language. In practice, Finns tend to
pronounce it before a vowel like Finnish v even in words like watti.
In Finnish names where w is used as a holdover from old orthography, as
in the surname Wirta, it is always read as Finnish v.

x
The letter x appears in foreign words only and is in principle pronounced as
in the original language, but normally as ks. Earlier it was used in a few
international words, e.g. xylofoni instead of now standard ksylofoni, and such
usage can still be seen.

y
Finnish y has no counterpart in English; the vowel in some pronunciations of
“new” may come close, and so may the vowel in “dude” (due to the effect of
the d’s). It corresponds to German “ü” and French “u”. You can try to produce
it by saying “u” (as in “put”) but moving your tongue towards the front part of
the mouth. The y sound is the front-vowel counterpart of the back vowel u. It
is important that the lips are rounded.

z
The letter z appears mostly in foreign words only and is in principle
pronounced according to the original language. In practice, it is generally
pronounced as ts, following German orthography. Thus, Tarzan is normally
pronounced Tartsan in Finnish. However, in modern foreign names, like
Zimbabwe, z may be pronounced as in English (voiced s) or as a normal s.

ž
The letter ž is in principle part of Finnish orthography, denoting a sound like
“s” in English “measure”. In practice, it only appears in the combination dž,
e.g. maharadža, and the actual pronunciation of dž is typically dš or, most
often, ds. The letter ž is also used in Finnish transliteration of Russian, e.g.
Žukov (Zhukov).

å
The letter å appears in Finnish texts only in Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian
names and their derivations, like ångström. It is pronounced like o and can be
short or long according to the rules of the Scandinavian languages.

ä
The letter ä is pronounced like “a” in “hat” in most versions of English. It is
the front vowel counterpart of a and very common in Finnish (about 5% of
occurrences of letters). It is essential to keep ä different from a.

ö
Finnish ö has no direct counterpart in English, but it corresponds to German
“ö” and French “eu”. To pronounce it, try saying “aw” (as in “hawk”) but
keeping your tongue in the front part of the mouth. It is the front vowel
counterpart of o and rather rare in Finnish (about 0.5% of occurrences of
letters). Finns often interpret the neutral (schwa) vowel like the initial vowel
of the English word “about” as ö and may (jocularly) write that word as öbaut
in Finnish texts. However, the ö sound is very different from the neutral
vowel; but these vowels might have samewhat similar “dark” feeling around
them in people’s minds.

The dots in ä and ö

The dots in letters ä and ö, called diaeresis or dieresis in character code
standards, are treated as an integral part of the letters, even though they are
called diacritic marks in international terminology. In other words, ä and ö
are treated as basic letters of the alphabet, not e.g. just as “a Umlaut” and “o
Umlaut” as in German. Finnish keyboard have separate keys Ö and Ä (to the
right of J K L).
However, the dots are recognized as visually separate parts of the letters,
called ä:n pisteet (the dots of ä) and ö:n pisteet in Finnish.
In handwriting, and in fonts simulating it, the two dots in ä and ö are
usually written as a wavy line (as in ã) or a short horizontal line (as in ā).

The Scandinavian æ and ø

The letters æ and ø as used in Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese are
recognized as corresponding to ä and ö, respectively, and conventionally
called tanskalainen ä ja ö (Danish ä and ö).
It was previously common even in reference books in Finnish to write
Danish and Norwegian names using ä and ö instead of æ and ø, e.g. writing
Bodö instead of Bodø. However, this is nonstandard: the names should be
written as in the source language, except for established Finnish
replacements, like Tromssa for the Norwegian “Tromsø”.

The eng phoneme

The eng sound, called äng-äänne in Finnish, lacks a letter of its own in the
Finnish writing system. It is pronounced as “n” in English “sink”. Its
appearance in Finnish before k could be described just as a variant of the “n”
phoneme, if Finnish did not have the ng combination, which is pronounced as
a double eng sound. The difference between [n] and the eng sound, denoted
in grammatical descriptions by [ŋ], makes a difference in meaning e.g. for
rannan [rannan] – rangan [raŋŋan], the genitives of ranta and ranka.
In originally Finnish words, and in old loanwords, the eng sound appears
only in the nk [nk] combination and its consonant gradation counterpart ng
[ŋŋ], between vowels, e.g. Helsinki [helsiŋki] : Helsingissä [Helsiŋŋissä]. There
is no “g” sound in the Finnish pronunciation of ng in such contexts.
In loanwords, ng may appear before a consonant or at the end of a word. It
is then pronounced as a single eng sound, e.g. englanti [eŋlanti] (English
language) and pingpong [piŋpoŋ]. The word- inal pronunciation corresponds
to English practice, but pronunciation before a consonant is different, due to
lack of “g” sound in Finnish. When a word ending with ng is in lected, a
double eng sound is pronounced, e.g. pingpongissa [piŋpoŋŋissa].
In a few loanwords, ng is pronounced as [ŋg] or [ng], because the n and
the g are recognized as belonging to different parts of the word, e.g.
pangermanismi, which is read as written, or kongressi, which is read
[koŋressi] or [koŋgressi].
The pronunciation of the gn combination in new loanwords varies
between [gn] and [ŋn]. The latter is normal in common words like magneetti
[maŋneetti], but [g] is used in words like prognoosi. At the start of a word, gn
is always read as written, e.g. gnuu.

Practicing Finnish pronunciation

On a computer with a microphone or on a tablet or a smartphone, you can
test and tune your pronunciation of Finnish words by visiting www.google. i
or translate.google. i on the Chrome browser. Click on the microphone icon,
with the tooltip Puhehaku (Speech search), and see if Google recognizes your
pronunciation of e.g. kala, kylä, köli, työ, and other Finnish words that you can
ind in this book.

30. Transitory sounds

When a diphthong ending with [u] or [i] is followed by a vowel, there is
usually a transitory sound of some kind between them. After [u], it can be [v],
[vv], or even [w], which does not otherwise appear in Finnish. After [i], it is
[j] or [jj]. In some contexts, such transitory sounds appear after [u] or [i]
even when it is not part of a diphthong.
The appearance, quality, and quantity of a transitory sound vary by the
phonetic structure of a word, by language form, by speaker, and by situation.
We can say that word kauan (a long time) may be pronounced as [kauan],
[kauvan], [kauvvan], or [kauwan], but this describes just part of the variation.
The length of the consonant may vary, too: it can be so short that the
pronunciation can be between [kauan] and [kauvan], or it can be between [v]
and [vv], or even longer than [vv].
Transitory sounds are written inconsistently, but according to speci ic
rules. This means that in some words, v or j is written where a transitory
sound may appear, in some words not, according to rules that depend on the
type of word. To some extent, the variation in pronunciation may vary
according to spelling, too; people may pronounce a transitory sound more
clearly in a word like hauva than in a word like kauan.
 The rules are:
A transitory sound is not written when it appears as the weak
counterpart of k in consonant gradation, e.g. kauan, rei’issä [reijissä] ~
[reijjissä]. Note that the adverb kauan is originally a case form of the the
stem kauka-. The apostrophe in rei’issä is just orthographic: it indicates
that the two identical vowels belong to separate syllables.
Otherwise, a transitory sound is usually written as v or j, e.g. hauva, leija.
The letter appears in all forms and derivatives of the word.
As an exception, a transitory sound is not written in some new loanwords
like aioni (eon), with no apparent logic. For example, it is written in
harpyija (harpy).
A transitory sound is not written in the word lauantai (Saturday).

Words where a transitory sound may appear between a non-diphthongal [i]

and a vowel have special rules and special pronunciation. The transitory
sound is never long, and when a [j] appears, it is often very short. However, j
is written when it is part of a -jA suf ix denoting an agent, e.g. kulkija
(wonderer), a derivation of kulkea (to walk). This rule has been set to keep
the suf ix similarly spelled independent of the variation that the j is usually
not pronounced after i. Due to the spelling, people may occasionally
pronounce a full [j] in a word like lukijoissa, a form of the word lukija, to
distinguish them from words like lukioissa (form of the word lukio).
In some dialects, a transitory sound appears e.g. after [u] in a word like
kakkua so that it is pronounced [kakkuva]. When such dialects are written,
the writing usually re lects pronunciation: kakkuva.

31. Unvoiced and voiced stops

Smaller difference than in English
In Finnish, the distinction between voiced and unvoiced stops, i.e. b vs. p, g vs.
k, and d vs. t, is not at all as clear as in English. A Finn very often pronounces
the word bitti (bit) almost as pitti. Such pronunciation is often criticized and
ridiculed when used in public speech, but on the other hand, clearly voiced b
and g are rare except in formal speech. The common pronunciation seldom
causes real confusion. Even though e.g. pitti also exists as colloquial word
(covering a small part of the meaning of English “pit”), the context normally
resolves any ambiguity between bitti and pitti.

Lack of aspiration
In English, the difference between “b” and “p” is partly in the voicedness of
“b”, partly in the aspiration of ”p” in many contexts. In Finnish, b is usually
only mildly (if at all) voiced, and p lacks any aspiration, so the difference is
usually small.
Similar considerations apply to g and k. Although the contrast between d
and t is a different issue, the t sound lacks all aspiration in Finnish.
If you use normal English pronunciation for p, t, and k e.g. at the start of a
word, the aspiration may make them sound almost like ph, th, and kh to a
Finn. In the midst of a word, they may sound like pp, tt, and kk—at least when
a word is pronounced in isolation.

Background
Originally, the Finnish language lacked the [b], [d], and [g] sounds. In
loanwords, they were replaced by [p], [t], and [k], respectively, e.g. pekoni
(bacon), timantti (diamond), kirahvi (giraffe).
Later, it became common to preserve them in newer loanwords in
educated speech. Although this is now the norm, it is followed to a varying
degree, and the pronunciation is seldom completely voiced. Since the sounds
[b] and [g] appear in new loanwords only, they are thus markedly foreign
when pronounced as fully voiced.

The story of d
The sound d was arti icially introduced into Finnish in the 18th century, and
it is now relatively well-established. In standard language, the distinction
between d and t is essential: it often makes a difference in meaning in purely
Finnish words. For example, matot is the plural of matto (mat), madot is the
plural of mato (worm).
When Finnish was formed as a written language, the consonant gradation
counterpart to t was a dental fricative similar to voiced “th” in English. It was
written as dh or d. Later, this sound vanished from most forms of Finnish and
was replaced by different sounds in different dialects. Due to the in luence of
the writing system of Swedish and other languages, people started to read
the letter d and the combination dh as the [d] sound. This became part of the
standard language, and the spelling was uni ied to use d.
However, dialects were not changed. Later, the [d] pronunciation has
become more common even in informal speech and can be regarded as part
of standard spoken Finnish, though it is common to use one’s dialectal
pronunciation instead.
Outside its role as a consonant gradation counterpart to t, the letter d and
the sound [d] are somewhat foreign in Finnish. It is often replaced by [t],
though e.g. pronouncing demokratia as [temokratia] probably sounds
somewhat uneducated or outdated to most Finns nowadays.
In pronunciation, the difference between [d] and [t] in Finnish is not just
in voicedness. Another, usually more important difference is that [t] is dental:
the tongue touches the upper teeth.

Prestige sounds
Since the b and g sounds appear mostly just in formal speech when trying to
pronounce loanwords “right”, they can be regarded as prestige sounds. They
might be used instead of p and k just to sound educated, saying (and writing)
e.g. grooninen instead of krooninen (chronic). This could mean parody or a
simple mistake (hypercorrectism), and it is a common phenomenon in slang
(e.g., biisi comes from English “piece”). Similarly, d may appear instead of t
(e.g., daideilija as a parodic form of taiteilija “artist”), even though d is not as
foreign as b and g.

32. Long vowels and double consonants

As described in section Phonetic structure, Finnish has short and long vowels
and single and double consonants. Normally, a long vowel is written with two
identical vowel letters like aa, and a double consonant is written with two
identical consonant letters like kk.
In loanwords, the spelling may differ from the pronunciation both in vowel
length and in consonant doubling. This is described in section New
loanwords.
In pronunciation information in Finnish dictionaries and other reference
works, there are three common ways to indicate vowel length in foreign (and
occasionally even Finnish) words: doubling as in normal writing, e.g. eaux
[oo]; a colon after the vowel, e.g. eaux [o:]; and a macron (short horizontal
line) above the vowel, e.g. eaux [ō].

33. Diphthongs
The diphthong concept
A diphthong is a combination of two adjacent different vowels in the same
syllable, as ie in the Finnish word tie. If two adjacent vowels do not form a
diphthong, as au do not normally form in the Finnish word vapaus, there
need not be any sound or any pause between them. The pronunciation still
makes the vowels more separate, e.g. so that the tone of voice slightly falls at
the end of a and then raises at the start of u. In contrast, the diphthong au in
in the Finnish word kausi is pronounced so that a smoothly glides to u.
Since the details of pronunciation vary, the diphthong concept is relative
and partly just a matter of conventional syllable division. However, the
syllable division and hence the diphthong concept matters in metric poetry.
In Finnish, it also matters as regards to secondary stress.

Diphthongs in Finnish: traditional view

Diphthongs are very common in Finnish, but only a limited number of
combinations of the eight vowels occur as diphthongs. In standard Finnish,
according to conventional classi ication, the following diphthongs occur:
diphthongs with i as the second vowel: ai, ei, oi, ui, yi, äi, öi
diphthongs with u or y as the second vowel, under the constraints set by
vowel harmony: au, eu, ey, iu, iy, ou, äy, öy
the diphthongs ie, uo, and yö (normally in the irst syllable only)
In dialects, many of these diphthongs have changed to other diphthongs. In
particular, ie, uo, and yö largely appear as ia or iä, ua, and yä in Western
dialects (e.g. hiano suara miäs instead of hieno suora mies), though such
pronunciation is clearly substandard in public speech. The diphthong ai has
changed to ae in Eastern dialects, au to ao in some dialects, etc.

Variation in irst syllable

In reality, there are many other combinations of vowels that are pronounced
more or less as diphthongs in the irst syllable of a word. For example, the
words pian (soon) and luen (I am reading/I will read) are often pronounced
as single syllables. This means that words like piankohan and luentoja have
only three syllables, hence no secondary stress: pían.ko.han, lúen.to.ja;
reading them as pí.an.kò.han and lú.en.tò.ja is less natural.
The above only applies to the irst syllable, including the irst syllable of a
component of a compound word. In other syllables, vowel combinations
other than those listed in the traditional view do not form diphtongs. For
example, the word lukea (to read) consists of three syllables (lu.ke.a).

Diphthongs in other syllables

Two-vowel sequences with i as the latter vowel form a diphthong in any
position within a word, e.g. in kirjoittaisimme (kir.joit.tai.sim.me), unless the i
starts a component of a compound word, as in saunailta (sau.na.il.ta). A few
loanwords have exceptions to this, e.g. ateisti (atheist), where isti is
recognized as a unit and the syllable division is a.te.is.ti.
When the second vowel is u or y, pronunciation varies. The vowels do not
form a diphthong if that would make the word have just two syllables. Thus,
vapaus is pronounced va.pa.us and not va.paus. In longer words, diphthong
pronunciation is common, e.g. vapaudessa is mostly pronounced
va.pau.des.sa, though va.pa.u.des.sa, is possible, too. This variation was
originally a dialect feature, but now varies by speaker, by word, and by
context. The diphthong pronunciation is more common in open syllables
than in closed syllables. In some words, the variation may affect secondary
stress. For example, vapauden has no secondary stress in diphthong
pronunciation, vá.pau.den, but may have it when pronounced as four
syllables: vá.pa.ù.den.
Otherwise, two vowel sequences do not form a diphthong in other
syllables than the irst one. Rare exceptions to this include words ending with
niekka (e.g. vitsiniekka), which could be classi ied as compounds rather than
derivations, and the historical word lampuoti.

Diphthongs in writing
All diphthongs are written according to the general principles of Finnish
orthography: each component is written using the same vowel sign as for the
vowel when occurring alone. This is very different from English, where
pronunciation has often changed after the written form was established. For
example, in Finnish ai is always a combination of a and i, never like the “ai” in
English “nail” in standard British or US pronunciation.

Pronunciation of Finnish diphtongs

If you pronounce, say, suomi (Finnish language) as three syllables (su.o.mi), it
sounds odd, but you will be understood. In native pronunciation, uo is clearly
a diphthong, which means that the u sound smoothly glides to an o sound,
with no break.
All Finnish diphthongs have the irst vowel somewhat more stressed than
the second one. This is different from e.g. Spanish and Italian diphthongs,
where the second vowel is clearly more stressed.

Triphthongs and three-vowel combinations

There are no triphthongs (three consecutive vowels in the same syllable) in
Finnish, except debatably in the interjection miau (miaow).
When there are three vowels in succession, there is a syllable boundary
inside it. If the boundary is between two identical vowels, it is marked with
an apostrophe, e.g. rei’issä. Otherwise, it is normally not marked.
However, it is permitted (though rare) to use an apostrophe to remove
ambiguity in any three-vowel combination, e.g. hau’issa versus ha’uissa
(which are inessive plural forms of hauki and haku, respectively). Usually the
syllable boundary can be inferred from other forms of the word, since the
three-vowel cluster results from the loss of a k in consonant gradation. For
example, the syllables of kiuas are kiu and as, since other forms of the word
have the stem kiukaa-. (Besides, the diphthong ua would be possible only in
the irst syllable of a word.)

34. Stress
Simple stress on irst syllable
The irst syllable of a word takes the main stress. The stress is primarily a
matter of strength of voice, rather than tonal (musical). The simple stress
principle greatly helps in recognizing word boundaries from Finnish speech:
a stressed syllable starts a new word. Very short words that are grammatical
rather than content words (such as on “is”) are often unstressed, however.
The simple stress principle is so strong that it also applies to new
loanwords and usually even to foreign names. In educated speech, foreign
words from some languages, like French, may sometimes take the stress of
the original language. More often, there is “simulated stress”. For example, a
French word like gourmet is pronounced as gurmee (or kurmee), with stress
on the irst syllable, but the vowel of the second syllable (which is stressed in
French, when the word is spoken as isolated) is clearly long. The vowel
length thus somewhat imitates the French stress.
There are a few exceptions to the main stress principle. In some styles of
pronunciation in colloquial language, a word like kiitos (thank you) often has
stress on the second syllable. It might even be pronounced so that the irst
syllable is barely audible or not pronounced at all: tos. A word like aivan
(right so, exactly) might be pronounced with main stress on both syllables
(áiván) or with main stress on the second syllable (aiván). In emphatic
pronunciation, the word todellakin (indeed) may get stressed as todellákin.

Secondary stress
In a compound word (closed compound), the irst syllable of the second part
usually has secondary stress in Finnish. Thus, if we denote primary stress
with the acute accent (´) and secondary stress with the grave accent (`), the
compound aikataulu, from aika (time) and taulu (table), is pronounced
áikatàulu.
No stress marks are ever used in normal Finnish writing. Sometimes a
written word is ambiguous in the sense that it can be a compound or a non-
compound word, and the context is needed to resolve the ambiguity. For
example, piilevä (hidden) is normally a participle of piillä (to be hidden), but
in some contexts, it can be a compound word consisting of pii (silicon) and
levä (alga), thus pronounced píilèvä, meaning a small organism, diatom. It is
in principle permitted, but not common, to use a hyphen in such words for
clarity: pii-levä.
Secondary stress may appear in a non-compound word, too, if it consists
of four syllables or more. The rules are complicated, but the basic rule is that
secondary stress appears on the 3rd, 5th, 7th, etc. syllable, but never on the
last syllable. If a word is longer than four syllables and the 3rd syllable is
short (ends with a short vowel), secondary stress usually moves forward and
thus appears on the 4th, 6th, 8th, etc. syllable.
The following examples illustrate the basic rules:
máa (one syllable, main stress)
máa.ta (two syllables, only main stress)
máa.la.ri (three syllables, only main stress)
máa.la.rèi.ta (four syllables, secondary stress on third syllable)
máa.lauk.sìs.sam.me ( ive syllables, secondary stress on third syllable)
máa.lauk.si.àm.me ( ive syllables, secondary stress on fourth syllable,
since the third syllable is short)
máa.lauk.sèl.li.sùu.des.sà.si (eight syllables, secondary stress on 3rd, 5th,
and 7th syllables)
The main complication to the basic rules is that some relatively long
derivational suf ixes such as lAinen, mAinen and minen have secondary stress
on their irst syllable. In this sense, they are treated as parts of a compound
word. For example, we have áuttamìsella (with helping; in lected form of
auttaminen), even though mi is short, and rómahdusmàinen (crash-like,
catastrophical), even though dus is long.
The secondary stresses create a rhythm into long compound words. For
example, kaupallistuminen (commercialization) is pronounced as
káupallìstumìnen and keskusteluissammekin (in our discussions, too) is
pronounced as késkustelùissammèkin (since the third syllable te is short).

35. Intonation
Intonation in Finnish is generally rather lat. The tone is usually falling even
in questions, and questions are differentiated from statements by
grammatical means (the kO suf ix and the word order) rather than
intonation.
However, there is normally a rise in the tone at the start of a new clause.
This does not always mean the irst word of the clause. For example, in the
sentence Hän sanoi, että tulee huomenna, mutta aika myöhään (He said that
he will come tomorrow, but rather late), the words hän, tulee and mutta are
typically pronounced in a higher tone (and stronger). The connective että
(that), although it starts a clause, is usually pronounced without emphasis
(and often shortened to et in speech).
36. Boundary gemination and other sandhi
phenomena
Boundary gemination and sandhi in a nutshell
Probably the most widely misunderstood and misrepresented feature of
Finnish pronunciation is boundary gemination. It is a relatively simple
phenomenon: there are word forms that end with a consonant, but this
consonant varies by context so that it is the same as the initial consonant of
the next word. This consonant is not expressed in standard writing in any
way. For example, the phrase ota se (take it) is pronounced otas se.
Boundary gemination can be classi ied as a sandhi phenomenon.
Generally, “sandhi” refers to phonetic changes that occur in speech at word
boundaries.

Forms with boundary gemination

Boundary gemination appears most regularly in the following word forms
and endings, where it can be regarded as part of standard pronunciation:
basic in initive form of a verb, such as antaa (to give)
basic imperative form of a verb, such as anna (give!)
negative form of a verb, coinciding with the imperative, such as anna in
en anna (I don’t give)
3rd person possessive suf ix nsa, nsä
allative suf ix lle
adverb derivation suf ix sti, as in kauniisti (beautifully, nicely)
basic form of most nouns ending with e, namely those that have een in
the genitive, e.g. vene (: veneen), but not in nukke (: nuken)
the words kolme (three) and itse (self), even though their genitives are
kolmen and itsen
some adverbs that end with e and indicate movement towards
something, e.g. tänne (here, to this direction), tuonne, minne, taakse,
luokse
some individual words, mostly adverbs, such as kiinni (closed, off).

There are many other situations where boundary gemination may appear in
some language forms. For example, in negative imperative forms like antako,
as in Älkää sanoko (Do not say), it is possible and probably goes unnoticed,
whereas in passive past participle forms like annettu it is clearly a dialectal
feature.

Conditions for boundary gemination

Boundary gemination does not appear when a word is pronounced in
isolation or before a pause, as in the exclamation Anna! But in a normal low
of speech, the word is pronounced (though not written) so that ends with a
consonant that is identical with the initial consonant of the next word. This
means that anna se is pronounced annas se, anna tuo is pronounced annat
tuo, etc. If the next word starts with a vowel, there is usually no boundary
gemination, e.g. anna olla is pronounced as written. Boundary gemination is
rare before h; e.g. anna heti is usually pronounced as written, less often as
annah heti.
Boundary gemination also appears inside a word before a word-like suf ix
such as pa. For example, tulepa is pronounced tuleppa, and talonsakin is
pronounced talonsakkin. It also appears at the junction of the parts of a
compound word. For example, the word itse normally has boundary
gemination, and this often applies to compound words like itsepäinen
(stubborn; literally “self-headed”), which is pronounced itseppäinen.
However, boundary gemination is much less systematic inside compound
words. When the irst part is a noun, lack of boundary gemination is probably
more common, e.g. kirjekuori (envelope) is pronounced as written, rather
than kirjekkuori. Similarly, hernekeitto (pea soup) is usually pronounced as
written, but hernekkeitto is possible, too. This may extend to phrase-like open
compounds like terve tuloa (welcome), which may be pronounced as tervet
tuloa, but it is common to pronounce it as written.

Variation in boundary gemination

The description of boundary gemination above is mostly suf icient for a
language learner. There is much variation in the appearance of boundary
gemination, by dialect, by speaker, and by word type, so stay tuned to hearing
it in many other contexts than those mentioned. Some dialects do not have
boundary gemination at all, though more often it appears to some extent.
Some dialects lack boundary gemination, so lack of it does not necessarily
sound foreign—though somewhat odd outside the areas of those dialects.
Effect of boundary gemination on consonant
gradation
In the context of consonant gradation, a word with boundary gemination is
treated as ending with a consonant, irrespective of its actual pronunciation.
Thus, the word liikex : liikkeen (movement) has weak grade in the nominative;
the syllable ke is treated as closed. Similarly, the 2nd person singular
imperative forms have weak grade, e.g. liikkuu (moves) : ei liikux (does not
move).

Impact of boundary gemination on

understandability
Boundary gemination seldom affects the understandability of speech.
However, many verbs have the in initive and the 3rd person singular written
identically (e.g. ostaa “to buy; buys”) but pronounced differently, because the
in initive has boundary gemination. In rare situations, this might affect the
meaning of a sentence. More often, the gemination just helps the listener to
recognize in initives and therefore understand the sentence structure easier.

Myths about aspiration and glottal stop

Many descriptions of Finnish characterize boundary gemination using words
like “aspiration” or “glottal stop”, which is seriously misleading. No aspiration
is involved, and a glottal stop only occurs in speci ic situations: in some
dialects, boundary gemination appears before a word that starts with a
vowel, causing e.g. anna omena to be pronounced anna? ?omena, where ?
denotes the glottal stop.

Background of boundary gemination

Historically, boundary gemination is caused by the assimilation of a inal
consonant. The imperative form that is now written as anna was earlier
probably pronounced as annak in all contexts. The inal consonant was then
assimilated (adapted) to be same as the initial consonant of the next word or,
under certain conditions, completely omitted.
Such a process has relatively recently taken place in common spoken
Finnish in participle forms ending with nUt, such as sanonut.
Notations for boundary gemination
The assimilated consonant is not written at all in current standard
orthography. In linguistic contexts, it is often marked with a superscript x, e.g.
annax. This notation is used in this book to some extent.
When writing dialogue or other spoken words, whether common spoken
language, a dialect, or a jargon, words are often written as spoken, e.g. Annam
mullet toi kirja (standard Finnish: Anna minulle tuo kirja). However, it is more
common to follow the standard language writing convention of not indicating
boundary gemination, e.g. Anna mulle toi kirja.

Assimilation phenomena
Other sandhi phenomena in Finnish include the following.
Partial or total assimilation of a word- inal consonant according to the
next consonant. E.g. pojan pallo is pronounced pojam pallo (the n sound
becomes m, which is phonetically more similar to p). Assimilation is
described in the next section.
Loss of a inal vowel, especially before a vowel. For example, missä on is
often pronounced as misson (which may be written as miss on when
writing a dialogue).
Loss of a inal consonant. In standard spoken language, this is limited to
verb participles ending with Ut, where the t has no separate meaning, and
to a few other words. In dialects, it is more common; see section Spoken
Finnish.

Legato
The pronunciation misson mentioned above can be classi ied as legato, which
means that successive words are pronounced as one word. Since there is
normally no pause between words, legato means in this case that there is a
double s, as opposite to pronunciation before a consonant, like mis Pekka on.
Legato pronunciation can also be said to change the syllable structure; e.g.
misson has the syllables mis and son. However, syllable division is largely a
matter of convention rather than phonetic reality.
Legato pronunciation may also cause a short consonant to be doubled, e.g.
nyt on may be pronounced as nytton and jos ei as jossei.
Some legato pronunciations have been established as a standard language
words, as contractions, e.g. ettei (että ei), ehkei (ehkä ei), and jollei (jolla ei).
In word division, they may be divided according to structure (ett-ei) or
phonetically (et-tei), though both ways may look somewhat odd to some
people.

37. Assimilation
Assimilation in the general sense means that a sound is changed due to the
effect of a nearby sound so that the sounds become more similar or even
identical. Vowel harmony can be described as a form of remote assimilation.
However, in descriptions of Finnish, assimilation usually means just
assimilation of a consonant due to an effect of another consonant after it.
The most common type is assimilation of [n] so that it becomes
the eng sound [ŋ] before [k] and [g]; this assimilation is not shown in
writing, i.e. [ŋk] is written as nk
the [m] sound before [m], [p], and [b], e.g. olenpa [olempa]
identical with the next sound when it is [j], [l], [r], [s], or [v] e.g. pojan luo
[pojal luo]; these assimilations are not regular; they depend on dialect,
speaker, speed of speech, and other factors
Assimilation of [n] is usually not indicated in writing, except inside a primary
word. By “primary word”, we mean that word-like suf ixes and components
of a compound word are regarded as words in this context. Thus, we write
onpa [ompa], talonpoika [talompoika], and monenmoinen [monemmoinen].
The assimilation is indicated in the word ompi (poetic variant of on), since pi
is an in lection suf ix. As an exception, assimlation is also indicated in
compound words where the irst part is a one-syllable pronoun, e.g. tällainen
(tän + lainen) and sellainen (sen + lainen), but e.g. toisenlainen [toisellainen].
The rules are dif icult to master even to native speakers, so misspellings are
common.
Assimilation of [t] is never indicated in writing; it may occur
frequently in common spoken language in the participle endings -Ut and
in the word nyt; the [t] becomes identical with next consonant, e.g.
ollutkaan [ollukkaan]
often in Western dialects in other word- inal positions when the next
sound is a stop, e.g. standard miehet kantavat may correspond to [miehek
kantaa]; this may also happen before a word-like suf ix, e.g. [miehekkin],
standard Finnish miehetkin
Other assimilations occur within a word before an in lectional suf ix and are
described in sections that deal with each in lection form. A typical example is
assimilation of the [n] consonant in participle endings -nUt so that it
becomes identical with the preceding consonant, e.g. tul- (stem of tulla) + -
nUt = tullut. Such assimilations are always indicated in writing, and they can
alternative be described just as suf ix form variation.

38. Pronunciation of foreign names and

phrases
Between original and adapted
The pronunciation of foreign names varies greatly between two extremes:
imitating the pronunciation of the original language and pronouncing words
“as written”, i.e. using the Finnish phonetic values for letters. This also applies
to proper names that apparently consist of foreign words. For example, the
name of the largest Finnish airline company, Finnair, is very often
pronounced as written, but sometimes an English-like pronunciation is used
(pronouncing “Finn” and “air” more or less as in English, [ ineər]).
Very often, the pronunciation is between the extremes, if the name comes
from a language that is relatively well known in Finland, such as Swedish,
English, German, or French. The original pronunciation is imitated in general,
but in details, it is adapted to Finnish, perhaps strongly. For example, Finns
generally do not pronounce Jamestown is as written; instead, people try to
imitate the English pronunciation the best they can or the best they see it in
Finnish speech, e.g. [dseimstaun].
Thus, the pronunciation varies. To make things worse, companies that
have foreign names for themselves or their products do not usually inform
the public about the intended pronunciation in Finnish.
According to most Finnish language guides, foreign names should be
pronounced just as in the original language. This means a strict division of
names: some widely used names of foreign origin have forms adapted to
Finnish, such as Lontoo for London, but all other foreign names should have
foreign pronunciation. Finnish encyclopedias and other reference books tend
to describe foreign names according to this principle. This means the the
information give is “too good”, i.e. it tries to specify the original pronunciation
even if it is not in actual use in Finnish.
In reality, use of original pronunciation is very rare and sounds odd – it
might be regarded as humoristic or snobbish. The level of adaptation varies
greatly, by language, by word, by speaker, and by context. When a foreign
name is used in isolation, typically as an answer to a question, its
pronunciation may be close to original, but when used in sentence context, it
is adapted in many ways.
The common pronunciation of foreign names in Finnish is generally
something to be learned by listening to people rather than from books. In
fact, this book is probably the irst that tries to describe the pronunciation
realistically.

Treatment of words from different languages

For English and Swedish names, the foreign pronunciation is usually the
starting point, but it is adapted to the system of Finnish. Even people who
speak English well tend to pronounce English names in Finnish speech more
or less “Finnish way”. Moreover, pronunciation of English by Finns varies a
lot, as described in section Finnish pronunciation of English. For Swedish, the
standard pronunciation of Swedish as spoken in Finnish is normally used;
this deviates from Swedish as spoken in Sweden.
For German and French names, people usually try to imitate the foreign
pronunciation but often fail, since they have wrong ideas of the languages.
For example, it is not rare to hear people pronounce Bordeaux as [bordöö]
rather than the more correct [bordoo]. A inal vowel in a French word, unless
it is mute, is usually pronounced long, imitating stress on it. Word- inal
consonants that are mute in French are usually pronounced, e.g. Cannes
[kannes] rather than [kan].
Spanish names are mostly pronounced as written, except that ch is
pronounced [tš] or [ts] and ll usually as [lj], though the name Mallorca is
typically pronounced [majorka]. The letter c is usually pronounced [s] before
e and i, [k] otherwise, and z as [ts], though people who know Spanish may
pronounce [s].
Thus, Kennedy is pronounced [kenedi] and Björn, a Swedish name, is
pronounced [bjöörn], using a long vowel. But the Spanish word paella is
pronounced as written, [páel.la], mostly even by people who know the
Spanish pronunciation [paéjja]. For the French car brand Renault, some
people say [renault], some say [renoo], but using genuinely French
pronunciation would be regarded as snobbery.
Latin names and phrases are usually pronounced by using Finnish values
for letters, except that “ae” and “oe” are read as ee, “ph” as f, and “qu” as kv.
The combinations “ch” and “th” are read either as k and t or as kh and th
(with an h sound). Latin vowel length and stress may be observed depending
on the speaker’s knowledge of Latin and on the context. The pronunciation of
“c” before “e”, “i”, and “y” varies; many people pronounce it as k as in classical
Latin, whereas e.g. in medicine it is pronounced as s, and in some contexts
even the Italian-based tš is used. Duplication of a consonant after a long
vowel often takes place as described in section Doubling of consonants in
loanwords. For example, “Caesar” is pronounced in principle keesar, but
keessar is more often heard.
Russian names are usually pronounced by reading the the transliterated
form according to Finnish rules. The transliteration of Russian used in
Finnish has been designed to roughly re lect the pronunciation, but the result
is actually rather far from genuine Russian. For example, a “y” letter in
transliteration is read like Finnish y, even though it means a “back i” in
Russian. The stress tends to be on the irst syllable, independently of the
stress in Russian. If the irst syllable is open, its vowel is often pronounced as
long or half-long, and the consonant after it may be pronounced as doubled.
For example, the name Putin may be pronounced as written, or as Puutin or
(most often) as Puuttin.
For most other languages, the written form is usually the starting point.
Even people who know the foreign language may use such a pronunciation,
for understandability.

Grades of adaptation
Variation in the pronunciation of foreign words tends to follow certain
principles, even though this is intuitive, and there are no of icial rules. The
following list tries to describe the adaptation process, starting from those
adaptations that are almost universal in Finnish speech and proceeding to
stronger adaptations.
1. Reduced vowels—which are shorter than normal vowels and often of
nondescript quality—are replaced by full vowels, often using the
spelling as the basis. E.g. Boston is pronounced [boston] rather than
[bostən].
 2. The stress is on the irst syllable, e.g. Palermo is pronounced
[pálermo] rather than in Italian style [palérmo]. However, the stress
in the source language may be imitated using both a long vowel and a
doubled consonant after it, e.g. the Latin laudatur is usually
pronounced [láudaattur] rather than the Latin style [laudáatur].
French words are sometimes pronounced with stress on the last
syllable, e.g. Calais as [kalée], but normally only when saying the
word in isolation.
3. The letter s is pronounced as [s] even when it is pronounced as [z] in
the source language, e.g. Basel as [baasel] rather than the more
German-style [baazel].
4. The letter z is pronounced as [ts], though in Spanish names, [s] may
be used, too. Examples: Tarzan [tartsan], Zaragoza [saragosa].
5. Sounds that do not normally appear in Finnish are replaced by their
closest counterparts. For example, French or English “r” is replaced
by Finnish [r], English “w” by Finnish “v”, and Spanish “ñ” is
pronounced [nj] rather than as a palatalized [n]. However, English
“th” is often retained. Nasal vowels, especially in French words, may
be retained, but more often they are pronounced according to
spelling, possibly as long; e.g. chanson may be pronounced [šaanson]
or [šansoon], less often in a more French way [šãsõ] (where ã and õ
denote nasal vowels).
6. A mute “e” at the end of a word e.g. in English and French is
pronounced as [e], e.g. Grenoble [grénoble].
7. Consonant letters that are not pronounced in the source language
are pronounced, especially at the end of a word. For example, even
when otherwise following British English pronunciation, Oxford is
pronounced [oksford], with Finnish [r], and French Orléans is
pronounced [orleaans], even though neither “n” nor “s” is
pronounced in French.
8. The voiced [ž] is replaced by the unvoiced [š] or by a Finnish [s].
9. Some consonant sounds are replaced by more familiar sounds: [b] by
[p], [g] by [k], and sometimes [d] by [t]. This may be regarded as
provincial or even uncivilized.
10. Consonant clusters are simpli ied especially at the start of a word,
e.g. Bretagne pronounced as [retanje]. This clearly sounds provincial
 but may be common in some communities or in some people’s
speech.

39. Deviations from the phoneme

principle: a summary
Deviations in new loanwords
Mainly due to the complicated history of Finnish language spelling standards,
there are many deviations from the phoneme principle in relatively new
loanwords. Many of the items of the following list are described in more
detail in section New loanwords.
Letters b and g are usually pronounced as [p] and [k], respectively. Even
when they are somewhat voiced, this is mostly unsuf icient for making a
phoneme distinction. When spoken, words like paarit and baarit are
distinguished by context, rather than a difference between [p] and [b].
Letter š or its replacement sh is usually pronounced as [s] or almost like
[s]. When spoken, words like šakki and sakki are distinguished by context,
rather than a difference between [š] and [s].
A double consonant before a consonant is often written as in the original
language, even though it is pronounced as single, e.g. attribuutti
[atripuutti] ~ [atribuutti].
In some contexts, a written double consonant between vowels is
commonly pronounced single, e.g. penisilliini [penisiliini], though such
pronunciation is not of icially accepted.
A single consonant is often pronounced as double, e.g. kampanja
[kamppanja] and Internetiin [internettiin] ~ [intternettiin].
A single vowel is pronounced as long in some words either regularly, e.g.
moa [mooa], or as a very common pronunciation, e.g. bonus [poonus] ~
[boonus]. This also applies to many given names; e.g. Pia and Piia are both
pronounced [piia].
Many common loanwords have preserved their original spelling, partly
for prestige reasons, e.g. pizza [pitsa], rock [rok], wok [vok]. There are
also adapted forms spelled phonetically: pitsa, rokki, vokki. The spelling is
sometimes debated heavily. On the other hand, the use of the original
 spelling has not been seriously questioned yet e.g. for lasagne [lasanje],
bridge [pridse] ~ [bridže], show [šou].
Some loanwords have mostly been adapted to the Finnish writing system,
but the letter z, c, or x has been retained, e.g. zootomia [tsootomia], cerium
[kerium] ~ [serium], taxi [taksi], though x can no longer be regarded as
accepted in such words.
Foreign names, words, and phrases are written according to their original
spelling, but pronounced in different ways. If they were always read
according to Finnish values for letters, the phoneme principle would
apply. If they were always read according to original pronunciation, as the
of icial rules say, it would be a rather well-de ined exception to the
principle. In practice, the pronunciation is one of the alternatives or
somewhere between them, e.g. Baker [beikker].
Finnish suf ixes appended to foreign names are often written according to
“visual vowel harmony”, deviating from the pronunciation. Example: Dale
[deil] : Dalea [deiliä]. It is also common, though substandard, to write the
suf ixes according to the written form but to use other forms of the
suf ixes in pronunciation. Example: Bordeaux [bordoo] : Bordeauxiin
[bordoohon]; correct spelling: Bordeaux’hon.
In in lected forms of words ending with a mute -e, the e is written but
instead [i] is pronounced in most words, e.g. Greene [griin] : Greenen
[griinin], but not consistently, e.g. Applen [äplen].

Other deviations
Deviations in originally Finnish words and in old loanwords also re lect the
history of Finnish language standards, in particular attempts at maintaining
regularity in writing. For example, according to general principles of Finnish
in lection, the genitive of the word ruoka is ruoan, because consonant
gradation just makes the k vanish, when the genitive suf ix n is appended.
However, in practice the pronunciation has been simpli ied to ruuan. This
means that to preserve regularity in written form of the language,
irregularity in the correspondence between spelling and pronunciation has
been introduced. Although it is now accepted to write ruuan, this has just
created additional complexity, since the “regular” spelling is still allowed and
often presented or regarded as more correct.
The main deviations are:
 Boundary gemination, which means that in many words, there is a
consonant at the end but this is not re lected in spelling in any way. E.g.,
Anna se! is pronounced [annas se].
The eng sound has no letter of its own. Instead, it is written as n before k
and as ng when doubled, and as n, ng, or g in new loanwords.
Assimilation of n to [m] before p (and b) is not indicated in writing, i.e. np
may also denote [mp], e.g. kunpa [kumpa].
Transitory sounds [j] ~ [jj] and [v] ~ [vv] ~ [w] between vowels are
written inconsistently, e.g. aion [aijon] but leija, kauan [kauvan] but
hauva. In particular, different words like lukijoilla (adessive plural of
lukija “reader”) and lukioilla (adessive plural of lukio, a school form
resembling US high school) are usually pronounced identically.
The j in sija is normally not pronounced, except perhaps as a short
transitory sound. Several grammars say this rather directly in their rules
for using the sija spelling to distinguish the word from in lected forms of
sika : sian.
The weak-grade forms of ruoka and vuoka have uu instead of uo in
pronunciation, e.g. ruuan, but the old and still accepted (and effectively
recommended) spelling e.g. ruoan does not indicate this.
The second h is often not pronounced in the word hiha, at least in some
in lected forms like hihan [hian].
Most in lected forms of sydän have [mm], but the only accepted spelling is
with a single m, e.g. sydämessä [sydämmessä]. This also affects
derivations, e.g. sydämellinen [sydämmellinen].
The word mitali is commonly pronounced [mitalli], though this
pronunciation is not even mentioned in dictionaries.
The word maailma is normally pronounced with a short a and just two
syllables, [mail.ma]. In poetry and in emphatic pronunciation, it may have
three syllables [maa.il.ma], but hardly secondary stress on the il syllable,
even though the word is historically a compound word.

Marking stress
The stress is not a phoneme, but it can be comparable to a phoneme due to
making a distinction in meaning. As described in section Stress, the stress
cannot always be inferred from the written form of a word. The main reason
to this is that compound words are not written systematically so that their
structure is indicated.
 For example, the spelling tangoilta is used both for a compound word
consisting of tango and ilta, with a syllable break between o and i and with
secondary stress on the syllable il tán.go.ìl.ta), and for a form (ablative plural)
of tango, pronounced as three syllables and without a secondary stress
(tán.goil.ta). The same spelling is also used for the ablative plural of tanko
and tanga, but these do not differ in pronunciation from the form of tango.
The spelling piilevä may be a form of the verb piillä or (rarely) a
compound word consisting of the words pii and levä. The syllable division is
the same, but in the latter case, there is a secondary stress, [píilèvä], making
the pronunciations different.

Syllable boundaries
Similarly to stress, syllable boundaries are not phonemes but may act like
phonemes in the sense of making a difference in both pronunciation and
meaning. This happens in non-compound words, too. The spelling hauista
can be elative plural of hauki, the partitive singular of hauis, or the elative
plural of haku. In the irst two cases, the syllable structure is hau.is.ta, but in
the third case it is ha.uis.ta, since a syllable break appears in the place of a
lost k.
In some loanwords, a combination of a vowel and i does not constitute a
diphthong, but this is not indicated in spelling, e.g. ateisti [á.te.ìs.ti], but on
the other hand polyteisti [pó.ly.tèis.ti].
According to language rules, a syllable boundary is indicated when it
appears between identical vowels. It is indicated with a hyphen if the vowels
belong to different parts of a compound, as in linja-auto, and with an
apostrophe otherwise, e.g. ruo’on. Moreover, in new loanwords, this principle
is not always followed; e.g. kooperaatio, admittedly a rare word, is
pronounced [ko.o.pe.raa.ti.o], whereas koordinaatio is pronounced
[koor.di.naa.ti.o].
It is allowed to use an apostrophe to indicate syllable boundary otherwise,
too, e.g. hau’ista and ha’uista, but this is very rare in modern language.

40. Finnish pronunciation of English

Introduction
The ways in which Finns pronounce English is probably interesting as such to
some readers of this book. It is relevant to pronunciation of English names in
Finnish speech, as it may involve deeper adaptation to Finnish in order to the
phenomena described in the preceding section. Moreover, it illustrates some
phonetic features of Finnish as looked from a different perspective.
British English as the standard
English is spoken by Finns mostly according to what people have learned at
school and to some extent from other sources. It generally tries to follow
British English (Received Pronunciation), since this is what has commonly
been regarded as standard in Finland and treated as neutral, as opposite to
American or other accent. For example, a word- inal “r” is usually not
pronounced when speaking English, though it is usually pronounced when
using English words in Finnish. Thus, “Baker” is pronounced [beikə] in
English speech but normally [beikker] in Finnish speech. In in lected forms,
the “r” is pronounced even when otherwise following British English strictly,
e.g. Bakerin [beikərin].

Dominance of written text

Most Finns are more familiar with using English as a written language than in
spoken form. There are many exceptions, of course, and most Finns hear a lot
of English in TV and movies, since they are subtitled, not dubbed (except for
those intended for small children). However, they are more used to reading
and writing than to listening to and speaking.
This means that Finns may get into trouble with using long, complicated,
and unfamiliar words, trying to pronounce them “as written”, i.e. using
Finnish sound values for letters, if they have not learned the word in spoken
form, too. For example, if they are unsure about the pronunciation of the
noun “console”, they might say [konsole] instead of [konsəul], especially since
the Finnish equivalent is konsoli.
As an implication, Finns often mispronounce English words that are in
some way exceptional so that the pronunciation cannot be be inferred from
the spelling by applying simple rules. For example, mispronouncing “swap”
as [swäp] (or [sväp]) instead of [swop] is common, and you might even hear
“header” spoken as [hiidə].

Common mistakes
The following features are common when Finns speak English. They can be
classi ied as errors in such contexts, whereas in pronunciation of English
words in Finnish speech, we may call them just features.
Quality of vowels is not observed. In particular, Finns tend to pronounce
words like “ ill” and “feel” with the same vowel, just short and long,
respectively, [ il] and [ iil]. Using a long vowel does not cause problems,
but using the same quality of vowel, instead of a more open [i], can be a
problem to a listener that primarily observes the quality, not quantity.
The issue is similar with “full” and “fool”.
Contrast between voiced stops [b], [d], [g] and unvoiced stops [p], [t], [k]
tends to be insuf icient: the voiced stops are incompletely voiced or even
unvoiced, and there is no aspiration in unvoiced stop. This may make
“bat” and “pat” sound confusingly similar. As a less problematic feature,
Finnish [t] is dental (the tongue touches upper teeth), hence different
from English “t”.
There tends to be insuf icient contrast between [s], [š], [z], [ž], which
might all be pronounced much a like an [s] sound with some [š] style.
This might make “sip”, “ship”, and “zip” too alike. But Finns have a
tendency to read letter z as [ts], which may help sometimes, or confuse in
a different way.
The English “v” is usually mispronounced as Finnish [v], which is a
different sound and may be confused with the English “w” sound.
The English “w” is often read much the same as [v], sometimes as [u],
which is used even in some old pronunciation instructions: Wallace
[uolis].
No distinction is usully made between voiced and unvoiced “th”, as in
“this” vs. “thing”, and typically an unvoiced “th” is used. The pronunciation
can be even more different from English, for example [t], [th], [d], or even
[r].
The neutral vowel [ə], like initial vowel of “about”, is often pronounced
either as [ö] or according to the spelling, e.g. [öbaut] or [abaut].
The stressed syllable is often not as clearly stressed as it should be, and
the Finnish feature of simulating foreign stress with consonant doubling
is often manifested in English speech, too. E.g. “snooping” might be
pronounced [snuuppiŋ].
Stress can be on a wrong syllable, especially in less common words, e.g.
“equivalent” might be pronounced [ékwivälənt], with stress on the irst
syllable as in Finnish, instead of [ikwívələnt].
41. Punctuation
This section deals with punctuation marks in a strict sense. The hyphen (-)
and the apostrophe (’) were discussed in section Non-alphabetic characters
in words. However, as a character, the apostrophe is identical with the single
quotation mark used in Finnish, as described below.

“Big” punctuation marks

The “big” punctuation marks are the period “.”, the exclamation mark “!”, and
the question mark “?”. They are used at the end of a sentence. Their use does
not differ from English usage.

Comma
The use of the comma is grammatical rather than pause-based in Finnish.
This means that a comma separates clauses of a sentence or other structural
parts. It does not always indicate a pause, and often a pause is not expressed
with a comma. Consider the following sentences:
He said that the man who bought the house was his friend.
Hän sanoi, että mies, joka osti talon, oli hänen ystävänsä.
In the Finnish version, a comma separates the subsidiary clause from the
main clause, and commas are also used around the relative clause joka osti
talon (who bought the house) embedded in another clause.
In iction prose, commas are very often omitted even when required by the
grammar, since many authors and translators prefer such style.
The rules for using the comma, pilkkusäännöt, are complicated, and only
experienced authors master them in all detail. However, the basic rules are
relatively simple:
Use a comma between clauses of a sentence, unless there is a rule that
requires or allows the comma to be omitted. Example: Maija kävi kalassa,
ja Matti odotti kotona.
If parallel clauses share a constituent part, no comma is used between
them. Example: Maija kävi kalassa ja lähti sitten kokoukseen. The clauses
share the subject, Maija.
However, if the latter clause starts with mutta or vaan, which correspond
to “but”, the old practice is to always use a comma before it, even when
 there is a shared constituent. Example: Maija kävi kalassa, mutta lähti
sitten kokoukseen. This is still a permitted alternative and commonly used.
Before kuin (than), no comma is used. The formal rules say that this
applies when kuin expresses comparison, but we can interpret any use of
the word that way.
Within a clause, parallel expressions are separated by commas, unless
there is a conjunction between them. Examples: Maija, Matti ja Ville
lähtivät kalaan. Finnish does not use serial comma, i.e. a comma before a
conjunction in a list (as often used in English: “Maija, Matti, and Ville”).
Consecutive attributes are separated by commas, if they are parallel, not
hierarchic. For example, uusi, punainen auto (new, red car) refers to a car
that is both new and red, whereas uusi punainen auto (new red car) in
principle means a new one among red cars, implying that there is or has
been at least one other red car. In practice, punctuation mistakes are so
common in such issues that you should be careful in drawing conclusions
from commas.
Before an “afterthought” addition, a comma can be used even when it
would violate the other rules. This relates to additions that are
structurally separate from the main content; we can mentally imagine a
phrase like “oh, and by the way…” before them.
Commas are omitted from very short sentences, e.g. Sataa ja tuulee.

Dashes
The en dash “–” is used much like in British English – like this. In older usage,
the em dash “—” was commonly used, but the same way as the en dash now,
with spaces around—unlike in US usage of the em dash.
The en dash, without spaces, is also used in range notations and similar
constructs like 10–20 (from 10 to 20), as in English. However, spaces as used
around the en dash when at least one of the connected expressions consists
of two or more words, e.g. Namika Lahti –Tampereen Pyrintö 77–63, a sports
event result where each team name has two word.
Two consecutive dashes, with spaces between and around (“ – – ”)
indicated omission in quoted text, though nowadays the ellipsis “…” is often
used for the purpose, as in English.
It is very common (as in English) to use the hyphen “-” instead of the en
dash “–”. In situations where the en dash cannot be used, the
recommendation is to use a hyphen with always spaces around, even in range
notations, e.g. 10 - 20.

Ellipsis
In standard usage, the ellipsis “…” indicates omission of some kind, but not
omission in quoted text. For example, in a dialogue, Annas kun mietin… (Let
me think…) indicates the speaker ends a sentence without completing it; this
often re lects a certain intonation.
The ellipsis is also used in range notations like 5…10.
Typographic rules for the ellipsis vary by language: some languages, like
English, favor spaced dots, whereas others use unspaced dots, which are
rather close to each other . At the level of characters, these can be interpreted
as the use of the horizontal ellipsis character (U+2026) versus three normal
periods “.” (full stop, U+002E). Finnish language rules do not explicitly deal
with the issue, but they can be read as preferring the use of horizonal ellipsis
character (…), with three periods (...) as a secondary option.

Quotation marks
The quotation marks are symmetric, i.e. the same character is used at the
start as at the end. The normal quotation mark is the same as American
English closing quotation mark. Compare:
Hän sanoi: ”Tulen huomenna.”
He said: “I’ll come tomorrow.”
American English quotation marks often appear in Finnish texts. This is
unintentional and caused by using Microsoft Word without due consideration
of language settings. When document language is set to English (as it often is
by default), Word turns an input of "abc" (with upright quotation marks) to
“abc”; with proper Finnish settings, it is turned to ”abc”.
Alternatively, we can use double angle quotation mark, also known as
guillemets. The same, right-pointing mark is used at the start and at the end.
This usage is common in printed matter, especially in iction prose, but rare
otherwise.
Hän sanoi: »Tulen huomenna.»
When text inside quotation marks ends with a punctuation mark, as in the
examples above, the punctuation mark is alwys considered as part of the
quoted expression.
When a word is put in quotation marks, the marks enclose the entire
word, including any suf ixes. Similarly, when a word is set in italic, the suf ix
is in italic, too. Deviations from these principles are not uncommon, but they
are substandard.
He puhuivat ”taalasta”. (They talked about “taala”.)
He puhuivat taalasta.
As the examples show, the use of quotation marks in conjunction with other
punctuation is logical rather than typographic in Finnish. In English, a
punctuation mark is often placed before the closing punctuation mark for
better appearance, as in the following: They talked about “taala.” This is not
accepted in Finnish when the punctuation is not part of the quoted text.
Single quotation marks are symmetric, too, e.g. ’hei’. The character used is
the same as the English closing single quotation mark. It is identical with the
apostrophe. Single quotation marks are very often used instead normal
quotation marks, perhaps because on a Finnish keyboard, they can be typed
with a single keypress, whereas double quotes require the Shift key. However,
according to the rules of standard Finnish, single quotation marks should be
used only
for a quotation inside a quotation
for the explanation of the meaning of a word
Examples of nested quotations in Finnish and in American English:
Leena kysyi: ”Sanoiko hän ’Tulen huomenna’?”
Leena asked: “Did he say ‘I’ll come tomorrow’?”
Example of using quotation marks for a word and its meaning:
Vanhan arkikielen sana ”taala” ’dollari’ on peräisin amerikansuomesta.
The example says that the old colloquial word “taala”, which means “dollar”,
comes from American Finnish. It could alternative be written using italic
instead of normal quotation marks:
Vanhan arkikielen sana taala ’dollari’ on peräisin amerikansuomesta.

42. Notational conventions in Finnish

General
There are rules of written language that govern various general and
specialized notations, such as abbreviations, notations of quantities, and
formats of bulleted lists. For many of them, there are international standards,
but the standards are often not followed in practice, and national
conventions and even national standards may differ from them.
This section describes the most common notational conventions in
Finnish, in alphabetic order by topic. The presentation does not cover issues
where there is no signi icant difference between international standards,
rules for English, and rules for Finnish. Additional information is available in
Finnish in the online guide Nykyajan kielenopas, by the author of this book.

Abbreviations
Abbreviations used in Finnish can be classi ied as follows:
Common abbreviations, which are widely used and recognized by
practically all literate speakers of Finnish: esim. = esimerkiksi (for
example), huom. = huomautus ~ huomaa (remark; please note), mm. =
muun muassa, s.o. = se on (that is), ym. = ynnä muut (and other), tms. = tai
muuta sellaista (or things like that), v. = vuonna (in the year), yms. = ynnä
muuta sellaista (and things like that). Even these abbreviations are
avoided in the most formal prose, in iction, and often in journalistic style.
In informal language, some common abbreviations are occasionally
pronounced as words and possibly written without a period (esim, huom,
yms), making them truncated words.
Other general abbreviations, de ined in principle in abbreviation
glossaries such as Lyhenneluettelo by the Institute for the Languages of
Finland. Most of them cannot be expected to be generally known, but
some of them can be expected to be known to some group of readers.
They normally end with a period, e.g. agrol. for agrologi, and they have
most often been formed the same way as temporary abbreviations. In this
book, the appendix-like chapter Abbreviations lists frequently used
general abbreviations (and some other abbreviations).
Temporary abbreviations of words, formed by breaking a word between a
consonant and a vowel and appending a period. For example, opettaja
could be abbreviated as op. or as opett., though the latter saves just two
characters. Such abbreviations often need some context or an explicit
de inition to be understandable.
 Encyclopedic abbreviations, consisting of the irst letter of a word or
phrase and a period. For example, in an article with the title algoritmi, the
abbreviation a. would be used to denote the title word, in one
encyclopedic style.
Initialisms, formed from initial letters of words, e.g. EU for Euroopan
unioni. These are traditionally written in all upper case, without a period.
However, abbreviations that are used as common names rather than
proper names are increasingly written in lower case, e.g. alv = ALV =
arvonlisävero, and this is accepted practice.
Foreign abbreviations, adopted as such from another language, such as
NHL. They are mostly pronounced using the Finnish names for letters, e.g.
[än hoo äl]. For a few abbreviations, foreign pronunciation is in use, e.g.
[bii bii sii] for BBC; for some, like CIA and FBI, the practice varies.
Standardized symbols, such as “m” for meter and “Pt” for plutonium.
These are usually called abbreviations, though they are best classi ied as
identi iers. They are read either using the corresponding Finnish names,
like metri (or metriä) and plutonium, or in some contexts by naming the
letters (e.g. “Pt” as pee tee).
Abbreviations and their use vary by time, since they are mainly used for
expressions that are repeated often, and this may depend on changes in the
society. The same abbreviation may have different meanings in different
areas of life and at different times. Dictionaries generally make heavy use of
abbreviations, including usage where the meanings are specialized; e.g. s.
may stand for substantive (noun) and not any of the common meanings.
For example, the abbreviations for political parties re lect name changes.
For abbreviations at present, consult the recommendation Puolueiden nimet
ja lyhenteet. Currently kd. (often written kd without period) refers to
Christian Democrats; from 1940s to 1980s, it stood for kansandemokraatit, a
left-wing party.
An abbreviation mostly stands for one form of a word only, usually the
basic form. (Exceptionally, the abbreviation v. stands for both vuonna and
vuosi.) If the grammatical context requires another form, the suf ix needs to
be written and separated from the abbreviation with a colon “:”, e.g. EU:ssa =
Euroopan unionissa, except when the abbreviation as such is a pronounced
word (see below). An identi ier of a unit stands for both the basic form and
the partitive, e.g. 1 m = yksi metri, 5 m = viisi metriä; for other case forms, the
suf ix is written, e.g. 1 m:ssä = yhdessä metrissä.
 The use of a period at the end of abbreviations has been debated a lot, but
the rules have remained essentially the same for a long time:
An abbreviation usually ends with a period, if it has been formed by
omitting letters from the end of a word, e.g. s. = sivu, prof. = professori.
However, in dictionaries, abbreviations are often written in italic without
a period, e.g. “hoopo (ark) stupid”, where ark = arkikieltä = colloquialism.
If both parts of a compound word have been abbreviated by omitting
trailing letters, a period is used at the end of each abbreviated part, e.g.
lastent.op. = lastentarhanopettaja.
Initialisms are written without a period, e.g. PRH = Patentti- ja
rekisterihallitus.
However, some common abbreviations such as jne. = ja niin edelleen are
written with a period. They are written in lowercase and spelled out in
reading, as opposite to e.g. abbreviations of organisation names, which
are mostly read by letters, e.g. PRH [pee är hoo]. However, in informal
language, even abbreviations like jne. may be pronounced by letters: jii
änn ee.
Symbols of units never have a period, whether the unit is internationally
standardized or not, e.g. m = metri, prk = purkki (can). The same applies
to other standardized symbols, which are identi iers rather than
abbreviations, e.g. U = uraani (uranium).
In the armed forces, abbreviations are written without periods, e.g. kers for
kersantti (sergeant) instead of kers. as used in standard Finnish.
When a person’s given names are abbreviated, only the irst letter of each
word is included. However, if the name starts with a consonant cluster, all
consonants in it are included (e.g. Fredrik is abbreviated as Fr.). Spaces are
left after each abbreviation, e.g. J. K. Paasikivi, although a thin space may be
used instead of a normal space. It is common to violate this rule (e.g.
J.K.Paasikivi) due to the in luence of English.
In addition to abbreviations proper, there are words that are
abbreviations by origin but used in any way as a normal word, such as
“radar” in English. Some of them, being originally initialisms, are often
written in all upper case, e.g. NATO, but normal spelling like Nato is also
accepted and increasingly common. If such a word is in lected, the suf ixes
are written in lower case (except in all-uppercase text of course), e.g.
NATOssa ~ Natossa.
An abbreviation can be read in three ways:
 By spelling it out, e.g. RUK [reserviupseerikoulu]. This of course requires
that you know what it stands for and are sure of it.
By reading the letters, e.g. RUK [ärr uu koo].
By pronouncing it as a word, e.g. RUK [ruk]. This is of course possible only
for abbreviations that can reasonably be read so.
The intended reading affects the in lection. For example, the illative of RUK is
written and pronounced in one of the following ways:
RUK:uun [reserviupseerikouluun]. This looks rather formal and maybe
even odd.
RUK:hon [ärr uu koohon]. This is suitable for both formal and informal
texts.
RUKiin [rukkiin]. This looks colloquial.

An abbreviation that is read as a word (not as expanded or by saying the

letters) can be regarded as an acronym word. Such words may become
common, normal words so that their origin is no longer relevant or even
known to many people. This applies even stronger to abbreviations turned to
words e.g. by appending a letter (like turning the abbreviation alv to the
colloquial word alvi).

Comparison of quantities
An expression like “ ive times as big as” has a direct structural counterpart in
Finnish: viisi kertaa niin suuri kuin. However, it is much more common to say
viisi kertaa suurempi kuin (literally: ive times greater than). This expression
is well understood and unambiguous, even though there is an opinion that
regularly pops up claiming that it is illogical and wrong. A cautious author
may avoid it for this reason.
Similarly, viisi kertaa pienempi kuin means the same as viisi kertaa niin
pieni kuin ( ive times as small as), i.e. 80% smaller, or 20% of the size.
Percentage comparisons like 300 % suurempi (300% larger) have the
same meaning in both languages. However, in most styles, it is better to write
neljä kertaa suurempi than to use percentages.
Real ambiguities have arisen with expressions like puolet suurempi
(literally: half bigger). Originally, this means the same as kaksi kertaa
suurempi, i.e. twice as big. In modern language, however, it can also mean the
same as 50 % suurempi (50% bigger). Thus, this type of expression is best
avoided, especially since in many contexts, both interpretations are possible.
Centuries and decades
In Finnish, centuries are usually expressed using notations like 1900-luku
(20th century) and 2000-luku (21st century). Expressions like 20. vuosisata
are possible, too, but mostly used with small numerals only, e.g. 5. vuosisata =
400-luku (5th century); for the irst century, this type of expression, 1.
vuosisata, is the only possibility.
Decades are expressed using notations like 1960-luku or, shorter, 60-luku
(1960s). This makes expressions like 1900-luku and 2000-luku ambiguous in
principle.

Dates
Many date notations have been used in Finnish, but nowadays only the
following are in common use and recommended:
15.2.2016 (short all-numeric notation day.month.year)
15. helmikuuta 2016 (longer, with month name)
In the short notation, no spaces are used, though small added spacing (such
as hair spaces in typographic sense) is permitted. Some publications still use
spaces (15. 2. 2016). When reading aloud, the day and month number are
read as ordinal numerals, and the latter in the partitive, e.g. viidestoista toista
kaksituhatta kuusitoista. For clarity, the month number (especially if it is 2)
can also be read as month name, e.g. saying helmikuuta instead of toista.
The longer notation has normal spaces between its three parts. It is read
like the short notation, just using the month name, which appears here in the
partitive: viidestoista helmikuuta kaksituhatta kuusitoista.
The month names are compound words with kuu (month; moon) as the
second part: tammikuu, helmikuu, maaliskuu, huhtikuu, toukokuu, kesäkuu,
heinäkuu, elokuu, syyskuu, lokakuu, marraskuu, joulukuu. There are no
reasonable abbreviations for them in text; using e.g. tammik. is possible, but
rather useless. In computer-generated texts, months may appear as tammi,
helmi etc., but this is inadequate, except in calendars.
Both the short and the long notation are written without leading zeros.
They can both be used without the year number. The short notation retains
both periods (e.g. 15.2.).
The year-month-day notation as de ined in the international standard ISO
8601, e.g. 2016-02-15, is used to some extent, but it is not accepted by
Finnish language authorities for use in texts. Even multilingual documents
published in Finland often use the 15.2.2016 notation.
It is not uncommon to see other date notations displayed by computer
software that has been localized improperly. For example, HelMet, the online
system of public libraries in the Helsinki area, uses partly the 15-02-16
notation (with year as the last component), partly the 15-02-2016 notation.

Durations of time
A duration of time is expressed using a number and a unit of time, possibly
followed by another expressions of the same kind, e.g. kaksi vuotta ja viisi
kuukautta (two years and ive months). The word ja is sometimes omitted.
General rules for noun forms used with numerals are applied, so the unit of
time is normally in the partitive (except when the number is 1).
Abbreviations or identi iers are often used for units of time when numbers
are written with digits, e.g. 2 v 5 kk (always without periods). The following
table summarizes the notations used. The Finnish word is shown in
nominative and partitive. When both an abbreviation and an identi ier are
shown, the abbreviation is recommended by language authorities.
Unit Word Abbr. Id. Note
second sekunti : sekuntia s Old abbreviation “sek.” still in
some use.
minute minuutti : minuuttia min
hour tunti : tuntia t h
day päivä : päivää pv d Identi ier “d” not standard,
rarely used.
day vuorokausi : vrk d More formal than “päivää”.
vuorokautta
week viikko : viikkoa vk Abbreviation “vko” commonly
used.
month kuukausi : kk
kuukautta
year vuosi : vuotta v a Identi ier “a” is not standard.
There is no of icial abbreviation for millions of years (“My” in English), but in
geology, “Ma” is sometimes used.
For relatively short durations, notations similar to those for times of the
day are often used when compactness is needed, e.g. in sports results. For
example, instead of 2 min 30,5 s, one can write 2.30,5 (recommended) or
2:30,5 (commonly used). Such notations are usually read by pronouncing just
the numbers and the comma, e.g. kaksi kolmekymmentä pilkku viisi.

Footnote references
When footnotes are used, they are usually numbered, either consecutively
through a document or a chapter or within a page. The numbers are used as
superscripts to refer to footnotes. When only one or a few footnotes appear
per page, the asterisk “*” may alternatively be used, repeating it when
necessary, using “**” to refer to the second footnote.
It is relatively common to use a right parenthesis, without any matching
left parenthesis, after a footnote reference, e.g. xxx2) instead of xxx2.
Language authorities do no recommend such usage.
The practice of using symbols *, †, ‡, §, **, †† in this order as footnote
references is outdated in Finnish and tends to cause confusion if used.

Lists
Bulleted lists and numbered lists are used much as in English, with the
following differences:
The recommended list marker in unnumbered lists is the en dash “–”
(called ranskalainen viiva, the French dash, in this context), not the bullet
“•”. However, bullet characters or decorative symbolss are generally used
in of ice documents, presentation graphics, etc.
In a numbered list, the number is followed by closing parenthesis rather
than a period, e.g. “1)” instead of “1.”, though there is no strict rule on this.
If a list is part of a sentence that starts before it, the last item of the list
should be terminated by a period (unlike in English).
Example:
Suomessa elää kolme joutsenlajia:
– laulujoutsen
– kyhmyjoutsen
– pikkujoutsen.
Written as a numbered list, the list would be as follows:
Suomessa elää kolme joutsenlajia:
1) laulujoutsen
2) kyhmyjoutsen
3) pikkujoutsen.
A numbered list could also be written as an inline list with the same
structure but with commas between the items. The last comma can be
replaced by the word ja.
Suomessa elää kolme joutsenlajia: 1) laulujoutsen, 2) kyhmyjoutsen,
3) pikkujoutsen.

It is nowadays common to deviate from these principles, largely because

popular word processors and other tools generate different presentations by
default.

Mathematical expressions
Mathematical notations are generally meant to be language-independent, but
in practice there are some cultural differences in writing them. On the other
hand, much of the variation depends on adherence to standards and tradition
rather than language differences.
Finnish practices differ from practices in English texts in a few ways:
Numbers are written using a comma as decimal separator and a space as
a thousands separator, e.g. 4 200,5 instead of 4,200.5.
Spaces are often omitted around the operators “⋅” (multiplication dot)
and “×” (multiplication sign), if the operands are short, e.g. 320×240. A
national standard (SFS 4175) allows this, but an international standard
requires spaces: 320 × 240.
The so-called division sign “÷” is never used to denote division. In some
usage (in commercial contexts) it denotes subtraction.
The book MAOL-taulukot and its precedessors as well as its e-book verson
MAOL-digitaulukot have been very in luential due to use at schools. They
contain several notations of their own, favoring e.g. an italic letter with
overline (ā) for vectors, instead of international standard notations like
boldface italic (a).
Mathematical notations as they are used in Finnish text are described in
detail in the e-book Matemaattisten merkintöjen kirjoittaminen, by the author
of this book. The corresponding book in English, Writing mathematical
expressions, focuses on standards and on practices in texts in English.

Monetary quantities
A monetary quantity is expressed using a number, a space, and a currency
designator. The designator can be a name, a currency symbol, a currency
code, or a currency abbreviation. Examples: 42 euroa = 42 € = 42 EUR = 42 e
and 42 Ruotsin kruunua = 42 kr = 42 SEK = (42 Swedish crowns). In text, the
currency name is preferred, but a currency symbol can be used in tables and
other contexts for brevity. The international currency codes like EUR should
be used only in international banking business and other contexts where
several currencies appear, but it is also used otherwise.
The currency symbols used in Finnish are €, $, and £, very rarely others
like ¥.
The currency abbreviations used are kr = kruunu (crown, for currencies of
Nordic countries), doll = dollari (dollar, rarely used), rpl = rupla (rubel), fr =
frangi (franc), e = euro, snt = sentti (eurocent), mk = markka (mark, former
currency of Finland), and p = penni (one 100th of mark). The abbreviation e
is presented as secondary in recommendations, but many publications use it
instead of €, perhaps for typographic reasons.
According to of icial recommendations, sentti (eurocent) can be
abbreviated snt or c. Such abbreviations are used in some special contexts
like phone charge rates, e.g. puhelut 7 snt/min, and energy rates, e.g. energia
4,73 c/kWh. Otherwise, small amounts are expressed using the word sentti,
e.g. 60 senttiä, or as euros, e.g. 0,60 € rather than 60 snt or 60 c.
If decimals are used in a monetary notations, there are always two digits
to the right of the decimal point, e.g. 42,50 €, though nonstandard notations
like 42,5 € are not rare. An en dash is often used instead of two zeros, e.g. 42,–
€ = 42,00 €. Often the dash is interpreted as meaning a currency notation, so
that e.g. 42,– is used alone.
An expression like 42,50 € can be read as neljäkymmentäkaksi euroa
viisikymmentä senttiä, but usually the currency names are omitted:
neljäkymmentäkaksi viisikymmentä.
There is no accepted abbreviation for thousands of euros, but t€, k€, tEUR,
kEUR are sometimes used. In standard language, one must write e.g. 100 000
€. For millions of euros, M€ is accepted, though not all regard it as good style.
See also Notations for large numbers.
Numbers
Chapter Numerals describes how numbers are written using words or digits.
The differences from English practice when using digits can be summarized
as follows:
The comma is used as the decimal separator, e.g. 3,14 (in English: 3.14).
Groups of digits are separated by spaces, not commas, e.g. 25 000 (in
English: 25,000).
In ordinal numerals, the digits are followed either by a period or by a
colon and a suf ix, e.g. 7. or 7:s (7th), which is read as seitsemäs.
When required by the grammatical context, a numeral written with digits
is followed by a colon and a case suf ix (or a combination of an ordinal
suf ix and a case suf ix), e.g. Määrä pieneni 28:sta 24:ään (The amount
was decreased from 28 to 24).

Physical quantities and units

For physical quantities, the metric system and, more generally, the SI system
of units is used. The main exception is that in information technology, the
inch is used to express some sizes. In aviation, the foot is used, following
international practice.
According to SI principles, a number and an identi ier are separated with a
nonbreaking space, e.g. “42 m”. In engineering, this rule is often violated, e.g.
“42m”.
Note: in this subsection, Finnish expressions appear in quotes, not in italic
as otherwise in this book. The reason is that according to SI principles, SI unit
symbols must never appear in italic.
The principle also applies to percentages, e.g. “15 %” instead of the
English “15%”.
International identi iers are generally used for units and pre ixes. For
example, even though the word for centimeter is written senttimetri, its
symbol is “cm”; the old abbreviation “sm” fell into disuse decades ago.
However, Finnish language authorities recommend that Finnish
abbreviations be used instead of international symbols for two units:
for the hour, Finnish tunti, the abbreviation “t” instead of international “h”
for the metric ton (1,000 kg), Finnish tonni, the abbreviation “tn” instead
of international “t”.
On the other hand, national standards mandate the use of international
symbols for these, too. In practice, you can see both systems in use, e.g. “50
km/t” and “50 km/h”.
When needed by the context, a case suf ix is appended to the unit symbol,
using a colon as separator, e.g. “5 m:iin asti”. In engineering, it is common to
ignore this rule and write e.g. “5 m asti”, though it is still meant to be read
“viiteen metriin asti”.
According to international standards, the symbol for liter is either
lowercase “l” or uppercase “L”. The latter is often used in the US for clarity. In
Finland, “l” has traditionally been used, but “L” is nowadays also common, e.g.
“1 L” instead of “1 l”.
When expressing temperatures, it is common to use the degree sign “°”,
e.g. “20°”, implying the Celsius (centigrade) scale. A space is not used in such
expressions. However, the formally SI symbol for degree Celsius is “°C”. When
using it, it is separated from the number with a space, e.g. “20 °C”. If the unit
is written in letters, the formally correct way is “20 celsiusastetta”, but “20
astetta” is much more common.
Identi iers of quantities are written in italic, when international
standards are applied, as is common in Finnish practice. The identi iers are
conventional and should therefore remain invariant in translation. They are
largely based on English (or Latin) words, e.g. V for voltage, which is jännite
in Finnish. Subscripts used for them are written in normal (non-italic) style,
unless they themselves denote quantities. For example, effective voltage,
tehollinen jännite in Finnish, is written Veff, i.e. with the symbol V and “eff” as
subscript. Here “eff” should be regarded as international and conventional
and kept as-is, though the practice has been inconsistent.

Percentages
The per cent sign “%” is preceded by a space in Finnish, though this rule is
often violated due to the in luence of English. The sign is read prosentti and
in lected according to the rules for nouns associated with numerals, e.g. “10
%” = kymmenen prosenttia, “5 %:ssa” = viidessä prosentissa (in ive per cent).
A colloquial form of prosentti is prossa. The word pinna is even more
colloquial; it also means “point” (e.g. when counting points in a game).
According to language rules, the per cent sign should be used only after a
number written in digits. However, it is often used in abbreviations like til.-%
= tilavuusprosentti; the abbreviation til.pros. would be correct.

Postal addresses
The following exempli ies a Finnish postal address, including recipient name
on the irst line:
Jukka K. Korpela
Päivänsäteenkuja 4 A
02210 ESPOO
The postal rules recommend that the municipality name be written in all
uppercase. It must be preceded by a ive-digit postal code and a space.
Numbering of loors assigns number one to ground loor, which is thus
ensimmäinen kerros, usually abbreviated 1. krs in addresses.

Quotations
Quotations are marked with symmetric quotation marks or with formatting,
such as indentation of a long quotation. Within quoted text, omissions are
indicated with two en dashes “– –” with spaces around and between, though
it is nowadays common to imitate the English practice of using the ellipsis
“…”. Content added for clari ication is placed in brackets “[” and “]”, whether
added as pure insertions or to replace content in the original. Changes of the
case of letters are normally not indicated, except in some modern usage
imitating English practices.
The following example is an actual text taken as such from a law:
Tämän luvun säännökset eivät koske maassa olevien kuivien risujen,
maahan pudonneiden käpyjen tai pähkinöiden taikka luonnonvaraisten
marjojen, sienten, kukkien tai, jäkälää ja sammalta lukuun ottamatta,
muiden sellaisten luonnontuotteiden keräämistä toisen maalta.
The following illustrates how a part of this law text might be quoted, with
some omissions and a change to make it clearer in a particular context:
Marjojen poiminta kuuluu jokamiehen oikeuksiin. Rikoslain 28. luvun
14. §:n mukaan ”tämän luvun [’Varkaudesta, kavalluksesta ja
luvattomasta käytöstä’] säännökset eivät koske – – luonnonvaraisten
marjojen – – keräämistä toisen maalta”.
Ín the example above, the changes are that the title of the chapter has been
inserted to give context and some items have been removed to focus on the
topic being discussed.

Ranges
To express a range like “from 5 to 10”, there are several ways in Finnish:
Spelling out the end points and using the elative and illative case, e.g.
viidestä kymmeneen.
Expressing the same using digits and indicating the in lection of numbers,
e.g. 5:stä 10:een. This is relatively rare and clumsy.
Writing the numbers with digits and using an en dash between them, e.g.
5–10. This can be read as above, viidestä seitsemään, though now it is also
accepted to read them viisi viiva seitsemän, pronouncing the numbers in
base form and the dash as viiva.
As above, but using the ellipsis instead of a dash, e.g. 5…10. This has been
common in science and engineering, and it is now accepted in general
language, too, though perhaps not suitable for formal style.
Using the preposition à [aa], a loanword from French: 5 à 10, read as viisi
aa kymmenen. This is convenient, but not very common.

Special characters
The use of the following characters may differ from English practice:
* asterisk, used (in addition to many other uses) before a year or date to
refer to the birth of a person, e.g. *9.2.1952. Normally no space is used,
and the character can be read syntynyt or syntyi (was born) in this
context.
✓ check mark, traditionally used to mark errors as väärin-merkki at
school and other contexts. It is now widely recognized as a tick mark due
to use in online forms and other technical contexts.
❌ cross mark, traditionally used to select an option in a form on paper;
called e.g. ruksi or rasti in such usage. Probably not generally recognized
as meaning “wrong” or “delete”, unless crossing over something and in
red.
† dagger, used almost exclusively before a year or date to refer to the
death of a person, e.g. †19.2.1856. Normally no space is used, and the
character can be read kuollut or kuoli (died) in this context.
÷ division sign, normally not used in Finnish; use “/” for division instead.
In specialized usage, this character is used, but for subtraction, not
 division!
& ampersand, used in standard language mainly as part of a name or
when listing e.g. authors of a book. Less of icially, used in menus and
other contexts instead of the word ja (and). Read as ja or, more often, as
the Latin word et.
# number sign, traditionally not used in Finnish, but now in some use
due to in luence of English, e.g. vihollinen #1 (enemy #1), more properly
expressed as vihollinen numero 1 or even better pahin vihollinen (worst
enemy).
® registered sign and ™ trade mark sign, used as in English, but
written after the in lected form of a trade mark, e.g. Windowsissa™ (in
Windows™).
§ section sign, used together with a number written with digits, to refer
to a section of law or clause of a contract or minutes. It is used either as in
9. § (read: yhdeksäs pykälä) or as in § 9 (pykälä yhdeksän), though 9 §
without a period is very common in legal contexts; see section Ordinal
numbers written with digits. The paragraph sign ¶ is not used in Finnish.

Several characters (about 1,000 in number) have Finnish names assigned to

them in a recommendation by SFS, the Finnish standards institute:
Eurooppalaisen merkistön merkkien suomenkieliset nimet. The list can be very
useful, but note that it was composed primarily to de ine Finnish equivalents
to the formal Unicode names, and they are partly too theoretical for normal
use.

Telephone numbers
The of icial recommendation was to write telephone numbers as de ined in
the international recommendation ITU-T E.123, but in 2008 it was decided
that the area code is never put in parentheses, e.g. (09) 888 2675 was
changed to 09 888 2675. This re lected the decrease in the use of landline
phones and simpli ied the structure. The recommended format now consists
of
the “+” pre ix followed by country code (358 for Finland) and a space,
when using the international notation
the operator code such as 040 or 050 or the area code such as 09 (for the
Helsinki area), with the leading “0” omitted in the international notation
a space
 the subscriber code, in groups of 3 or 4 digits, with spaces as separators;
usually 3 + 3, 3 + 4, 4 + 4, or 3 + 3 + 3 grouping is used.
Examples: 050 5500 168 in national notation, +358 50 5500 168 in
international notation.
Thus, hyphens or parentheses are not used. In practice, there is still
considerable variation in the writing of phone numbers.
In the EU administration, rules for all languages mandate that phone
numbers be written in international notation and with no space except after
the country code, e.g. +358 505500168.

Time of the day

In formal prose, the time of the day is normally expressed as follows:
24-hour clock is used.
A period is used between hours and minutes (and between minutes and
seconds), e.g. 9.45. However, instead of a period, which is the accepted
separator, a colon is used very often, e.g. 9:45. One reason to this is that
when a period is used, confusion with a date notation is sometimes
possible (e.g. when an expression like 12.10. appears without suf icient
context).
Leading zeros are normally not used for hours. They may sometimes be
used for clarity, i.e. in an attempt to make it clearer what 23–07 refers to.
The time notation is usually preceded by the word kello or its
abbreviation klo, except in tables and other contexts where it is clear that
a time of the day is presented.
Such notations are usually read by pronouncing hours and minutes (and
seconds) separately, but with no word between them, e.g. 9.45 as yhdeksän
neljäkymmentäviisi. However, leading zeros in minutes (and seconds) are
read, too, e.g. 12.05 is read kaksitoista nolla viisi and 15.00 as viisitoista nolla
nolla, unless it is read just as viisitoista.
Notations like 9.45 are also used for durations of time.
It is increasingly common to use the forms described above in speech, too,
since they correspond to the kind of digital display of times that people are
now used to. However, an older system is still in common use, in speech and
in many styles of writing:
12-hour clock is used.
The designation of AM or PM is usually left implicit, but when needed, it
can be expressed using words like yöllä (at night), aamulla (in the
 morning), aamupäivällä (before noon), iltapäivällä (in the afternoon), or
illalla (in the evening), e.g. kello kahdeksalta illalla (8 PM).
Noon is often indicated by the word puoleltapäivin and midnight by
puoleltaöin. These are not normally taken as exact indications of time,
unless preceded by the word tasan.
The word kello is often used before the time denotation for clarity.
The hours are expressed using the ablative case of the numeral, e.g.
viideltä (at 5). Nowadays the nominative, the basic form, is also common,
though colloquial, but then the word kello is needed, e.g. kello viisi. The
word tasan can be used before the expression, e.g. tasan viideltä, to
emphasize that exact hour is meant, as we say “5 o’clock sharp”.
Times exactly between sharp hours are expressed using the word puoli
followed a numeral indicating the next full hour, e.g. puoli kuudelta ~ puoli
kuusi (half past ive).
Other times are expressed as relative to the nearest full hour using
expressions like the following:
kymmentä yli viiden ~ viisi (ten past ive)
kymmentä vaille viiden ~ viisi (ten to ive)
In expressions as the above, the irst numeral is either in the partitive as
in the examples or in the nominative, e.g. kymmenen yli viiden. It may also
be replaced by a fuller expression that explicitly mentions the word for
minutes, e.g. kymmenen minuuttia yli viiden.
In colloquial style, the word vartti (a quarter) is mostly used for 15
minutes, e.g. vartin ~ varttia yli viiden (a quarter past ive) and varttia
vaille kuusi (a quarter to six).

The following table shows examples of formal numeric designations of time,

using 24-hour clock, and corresponding common informal verbal
designations. There are no strict rules for using e.g. yöllä vs. aamuyöllä.
Speci iers written in parentheses are seldom needed and used.
Numeric Verbal
0.00 puoleltaöin ~ keskiyöllä
2.00 kahdelta yöllä
4.00 neljältä aamuyöllä
6.00 kuudelta aamulla
 8.00 kahdeksalta aamulla
10.00 kymmeneltä aamupäivällä
12.00 puoleltapäivän ~ keskipäivällä
14.00 kahdelta (iltapäivällä)
16.00 neljältä (iltapäivällä)
18.00 kuudelta illalla
20.00 kahdeksalta illalla
22.00 kymmeneltä illalla

Years
A year is normally mentioned using the word vuosi : vuoden, e.g. vuosi 1984
(year 1984). When specifying the year of an event in text, the special
consonant-stem essive form vuonna (as opposite to the more regular
vuotena) is used: vuonna 1984 (in 1984). By convention, the abbreviation v.
can be used for vuonna, e.g. v. 1984. In some newspaper style, the year
number is used alone, e.g. Yhtiö perustettiin 1984 instead of the more normal
Yhtiö perustettiin vuonna 1984 (The company was founded in 1984).
Year numbers are mostly read like other numbers, e.g. tuhat
yhdeksänsataakahdeksankymmentäneljä. However, it can also be read so that
hundreds are used like a unit: yhdeksäntoistasataa kahdeksankymmentäneljä,
corresponding to “nineteen hundreds eighty-four).
For eras, the old abbreviations used for AD and BC are jKr. and eKr., read as
jälkeen Kristuksen syntymän and ennen Kristuksen syntymää or, more often,
shorter as jälkeen Kristuksen and ennen Kristusta. The newer abbreviations,
corresponding to CE and BCE, are jaa. = jälkeen ajanlaskun alun and eaa. =
ennen ajanlaskun alkua. They are accepted alternatives. Of icial
recommendations do not specify whether jKr. and eKr. or jaa. and eaa. are
preferred. All these notations are written after the year number, e.g. 1984 eKr.
or 1984 eaa.
Vocabulary

43. Classi ication of words

Words in Finnish can be classi ied structurally as follows:
root words, which are “atomic” in Finnish, though if they are loanwords,
they may have some decomposition in the original language; examples:
talo (house), injektio (injection)
derived words, formed (in Finnish) almost exclusively using suf ixes;
examples: talous (economy), derived from talo, and taloudellinen
(economic), derived from talous
compound words, formed from two or more words; examples: puutalo
(wooden house), from puu (wood; tree) and talo (house), and
kansantalous (national economy).

In this “Vocabulary” part, we discuss root words and some general issues
with the vocabulary. It is followed by parts about derived words and
compounds.

44. The original two-syllable word

structure
According to linguists, there are good reasons to think that in the proto-
Uralic language from which Finnish has evolved, the word stems of “content
words” (nouns, adjectives, numerals, and verbs) had two syllables, whereas
pronouns had one syllable. This structure has largely been preserved in
Finnish, though many common content words now have one syllable only,
e.g. tie (road), due to phonetic changes. There are also many three-syllable
words that may look like base words but are probably derivations of two-
syllable words that have been lost, e.g. pihlaja. Most pronouns have now two
syllables or even more; they have been formed by joining two one-syllable
words or a word and a suf ix. This explains the somewhat odd in lection of
many pronouns, e.g. joku : jonkun : jotakuta, which historically consists of jo
and ku, which are both in lected.
The two-syllable base word structure still affects the way Finns analyze
words. A four-syllable loanword such as arkkitehti (architect) or papukaija
(parrot) is often treated as if it were a compound word. This is re lected in
in lection, e.g. arkkitehdeillä (with the vowel ä selected according to the tehti
part) instead of the regular arkkitehdeilla. Splitting such words into two-
syllable constituents may have other implications, too; e.g., the part kaija has
been treated as a separate word when creating Finnish names for parrot
species.
Made-up new words very often consist of two syllables, such as hetu,
abbreviated from henkilötunnus (personal identity number).
When a word has more than two syllables, it can mostly be decomposed
into smaller meaningful parts, either as a compound word or as a derived
word, mostly with a two-syllable word as the ultimate base. For example,
sanakirja (dictionary) is a compound of sana (word) and kirja (book), and
johtaja (director) is derived from the verb stem johta- (to direct, to lead) with
the suf ix ja. However, there are exceptions: some base words have more than
two syllables for various reasons. In any case, long words are not as dif icult
as they may look like. The word rautatieasema becomes understandable
when you know its constituent words: rauta (iron), tie (road, way), and
asema (station)—so it means railway station. In principle, the word asema is
decomposable into the verb base ase and derivative suf ix ma, but this is not
particularly useful for learning the language, since the verb ase- (to be, to
stay) has as such vanished from the language; it only lives in its derivations.

45. Origins of Finnish vocabulary

Finnish vocabulary uses word derivation and compound words extensively,
but there must be some root words to start from. The Finnish root words can
be roughly classi ied and dated as follows:
Original Uralian words, dating back over 6,000 years ago. These include
words like kala ( ish), lumi (snow), and nähdä : näkee (to see). The
amount of these words is relatively small, but their frequency is often
high.
Descriptive (expressive) words, which have phonetic features that
associate them with sounds, such as humista : humisee (to sigh, referring
to e.g. sounds of trees) and kalske (clang, clash). They are formed rather
freely in Finnish, and they are dif icult to date.
Oldest Indo-European loanwords, possibly about 5,000 years old, such as
sata (hundred, cf. Persian “sad”) and porsas (young pig).
 Baltic loanwords, from language forms related to present-day Lithuanian
and Latvian (which are Indo-European languages), about 4,000 years old,
such as sisar (sister) and kirves (ax).
Old Germanic loanwords, from languages related to present-day German,
English, Swedish, etc., about 2,000 to 3,000 years old, such as kulta (gold),
laina (loan), and airo (oar).
Slavic loanwords, mainly from 9th century AD to present day. Examples
of old words: pappi (priest) and sirppi (sickle). Newer words include
siisti (tidy, clean) and toveri (comrade, pal).
Swedish loanwords, during a long period starting in the 11th century,
such as ankka (duck), kakku (cake), maanantai (Monday), mummo
(grandmother), uuni (oven), and lääke (medicin).
Newer loanwords, from different languages, normally via Swedish, such
as appelsiini (orange, originally from Dutch), kurkku (cucumber, originally
from Czech), and kapteeni (captain, from French via Swedish).
International words, irst adopted usually from Swedish, later also
directly from other European languages such as German, French, and
English. Examples: raketti (rocket) and demokratia (democracy).

46. Native words, loanwords, and foreign

words
Introduction
When you start learning Finnish, you will have dif iculties with the
vocabulary, since few of the common words look familiar at all. After learning
a basic vocabulary, things get easier, partly because you will learn new words
that are derivations or compounds of words that you already know.
Although the core vocabulary is very different from English, there are
many recognizable words in the somewhat less frequent words, such as
prosentti (per cent), sama (same), and viikko (week). You can guess the
meaning of these words on the basis of English, because the words are
ultimately of the same origin. The word sama comes from some Germanic
language form and is thus a relative of the English “same”. The word viikko is
a similar case. These loanwords have been phonetically fully adapted to
Finnish, and they are used just like originally Finnish words. The word
prosentti is a different case. It comes from Swedish procent, and it is an
international word. It is a relatively new loanword in Finnish and has not
been fully adapted: it has the initial consonant cluster pr, which never
appears in originally Finnish words. A more adapted form rosentti appears,
too, but it is regarded as substandard.
Some loanwords can be dif icult to recognize due to the conservative
nature of Finnish. When there has been no phonetic reason to simplify a
word, Finnish has often preserved a word in a rather original form. For
example, Finnish kuningas is very close to the reconstructed proto-Germanic
form “kuningaz” that was once adopted into Finnish, whereas in English it
has been shortened to “king”, in German to “König”, and (as a loanword) in
Russian to “knyaz”.
New loanwords may contain sounds and combinations of sounds that do
not otherwise appear in Finnish. However, they have normally been adapted
to the writing system and to the in lection system.

Foreign words
“Foreign word” is not an exact concept but refers to a word taken from
another language and preserved in its original spelling and pronunciation, in
principle. This includes foreign names, with the exclusion of a small set of old
names that have been adapted to Finnish, such as Lontoo (London) and
Pariisi (Paris). Names like Oxford or Bordeaux are treated as foreign names in
Finnish.
Foreign words other than proper names are typically learned words or
otherwise in special usage, such as chanson, status quo, and bridge (the card
game), and they are often used as such in many languages.
In practice, even foreign words are often adapted to Finnish phonetics to
some extent. Thus, bridge is typically pronounced as if it were written pridse
or bridse. Foreign names are adapted, too. This is described in some detail in
section Foreign names in Finnish.
There are also foreign words that have been partly adapted to Finnish, so
that some part of the the original spelling has been preserved, such as watti
(watt), pronounced [vatti].

In lection of foreign words

Foreign words are in lected as required by their role in a sentence. The
in lection is mostly much simpler than in lection of Finnish words in general,
but it has some specialties.
Case in lection of foreign words is discussed in a separate section.
Verbs are always adapted to Finnish instead of using them as foreign
words, typically using the AtA suf ix, e.g. trimmata (to trim). This applies even
when foreign spelling is retained, e.g. sprayata : sprayaan (to spray).

Adaptation of loanwords
In old loanwords, the following changes have taken place when a foreign
word has been adapted into Finnish.
The spelling is based on the Finnish writing system. In oldest loanwords,
the foreign pronunciation has usually been the starting point, but the
spelling may have had some impact. Example: “taxa” (Swedish for “fare”)
→ taksa.
Vowels are interpreted as long under certain conditions, discussed later
in subsection Length of vowels. Example: “tiger” → tiikeri.
Foreign consonants are replaced: “b” by p, “g” by k, “d” by t, different s-
like sounds like English “sh” and “z” by s, and “f“ by hv or (at the start of a
word) by v. Example: “giraff” → kirahvi.
Consonants are doubled in contexts described later in section Doubling of
consonants. Example: “skåp” → kaappi.
Any consonant cluster at the start of a word is simpli ied so that only the
last consonant is left. Example: “strand” → ranta.
A word ending with a consonant has a vowel appended, e.g. jul (Swedish
for “Christmas”, cf. “Yule”) → joulu. In new loanwords, and in most old
loanwords, the appended vowel is i, e.g. “palats” (Swedish for “palace”) →
palatsi.
In new loanwords, adaptation is much more limited, usually restricted to
spelling adaptation, changes in the ending of the word as described in
subsection Endings of international words, and appending an i after a inal
consonant. However, in colloquial use, even new loanwords may be adapted
more strongly, perhaps jocularly, e.g. iloso i → vilosohvi.

Loanword verbs
Most loanwords are nouns. For verbs, Finnish has a few adaptation methods,
but only two of them are productive:
A verb is itted into the pattern of contraction verbs, e.g. ilmat|a :
ilmaa|n (to ilm). This is common for verbs ending with a consonant in
the original language.
The foreign suf ix is replaces by the -Oi- suf ix, e.g. integroi|da : integroi|n
(to integrate). The corresponding English verb often ends with “-ate”. The
Finnish verbs are usually based on Swedish verbs ending with “-era”, e.g.
“integrera”, and in older language, the -eerata suf ix was used in Finnish.
In modern language, its use is mainly restricted to words where the suf ix
follows a one-syllable base, e.g. noteerata (to quote; to note).

Classi ication
From a practical point of view, especially as regards to writing rules, words of
foreign origin in Finnish can be classi ied as follows:
Old loanwords. They have been completely adapted to the Finnish
phonetic and writing system. In practical use, they are indistinguishable
from originally Finnish words. Example: vasara (hammer).
New loanwords. They may have additional letters like b, and their
phonetic structure may otherwise differ from basic Finnish rules, e.g. so
that a word begins with a consonant cluster. They are in principle read
according to normal Finnish rules, but in practice, there is often some
variation. Examples: baari (bar), trukki (forklift truck), kampanja
[kamppanja] (campaign).
Foreign words. These are written according to the rules of a foreign
language, though they may be in lected by appending Finnish suf ixes.
Pronunciation varies. This includes foreign proper names and words and
phrases taken from another language as such. Examples: Bordeaux, pizza,
status quo.
Most of the problems in writing and pronouncing words of foreign origin are
related to new loanwords, discussed in the next section.
The borders between the classes are not exact. Many loanwords that are
rather new, such as netti (net, Internet) behave like old loanwords. There are
intermediate forms between new loanwords and foreign words, i.e. words
that have partly been adapted, partly retained foreign spelling, e.g. zeoliitti
[tseoliitti](zeolith), which has kept the foreign z but has the ending adapted
to Finnish.
47. New loanwords
Background
This section deals with loanwords that are new in the sense that their form is
not completely adapted to Finnish phonetic and writing system. Their age
varies considerably. Their spelling and pronunciation were mostly
established in the early 20th century, with some later modi ications. The
rules have been taught at Finnish schools and in language guides, but the
situation is still partly unstable. It constitutes an important part of the
differences between spelling and pronunciation in Finnish.
Two major issues with new loanwords are the length of vowels and
doubling of consonants. The rules for them, described in the next two
sections, are somewhat complicated and cause variation in the spelling of
pronunciation of interrelated words, e.g. demokratia (democracy) but
demokraattinen (democratic).
The rules are important to native speakers, since they often learn these
words irst in spoken form and then need to learn the written form. The
formulation of the rules more or less requires some understanding of
Swedish, since the problem often revolves around adapting Swedish words
into Finnish. To a non-native speaker, these rules are less important, since
you can check the spelling from a dictionaries and you can mostly pronounce
these words as written (it is mostly accepted, though not always most
natural).
The presentation of the basic rules in this book is more explicit than
traditional Finnish grammars about the association with Swedish and more
realistic about actual pronunciation. Yet, the presentation is partly
incomplete. The correspondence between written and spoken form is not
always predictable. Glossaries of international words, sivistyssanakirja in
Finnish, may indicate the pronunciation, but often just the normatively
correct one. A small online glossary by the author of this book, Pienehkö
sivistyssanakirja, describes the pronunciations of most common international
words in Finnish.

š versus s
The letter š is a somewhat arti icial addition to the Finnish language,
originally adopted from the Czech language to denote the “sh” sound in
relatively new loanwords, such as šeikki (sheikh). The rules for using it have
been changed a few times, and the rules are often broken. In particular, sh is
very often used instead of š.
In most situations, š (or its replacement sh) is pronounced as [s]. In some
contexts, an [š] sound is used for affective or prestige reasons. This may well
happen even when the of icial spelling is s, if the word is recognized as having
an [š] sound in foreign languages. For example, the recommended spelling
and pronunciation is now samppanja (champagne; also incorrectly used for
sparkling wine in general), but it is often pronounced šamppanja.
Currently the principles of using š in new loanwords are:
š is used as corresponding to an [š] or [ž] sound in the source language,
e.g. paaši (pageboy), šerif i (sherif), šintolaisuus (Shinto), tšekki (Czech
person/language). However, there are so many exceptions to this that it
really applies to a minority of relevant words only.
Original spelling is preserved in some words, including common words
like show. Other examples: cha-cha-cha, chanson, chic, jive, nacho, schäfer,
sherry. Such words are often names for types or brands.
The following word types, which previously had š recommended, are now
written with s, and this rule is mostly well-established:
Words based on Latin words with sc before e or i, e.g.
konvalesentti (convalescent).
Words based on French words ending with age, ege, or ige, e.g.
sabotaasi (sabotage). The word paaši (pageboy) is an
exception.
Words based on French words ending with che, earlier written
with šši ending in Finnish, e.g. fetissi (fetish).
Some other words that were earlier written with šš, e.g. apassi
(apache), borssi, gulassi, tussi.
Some words that earlier began with tš, e.g. tsasouna.
At the start of several other words, largely because they were
regarded as common vocabulary, e.g. sampoo, sortsit, saali,
sakaali, srapnelli, sellakka, sifferi, snitseli as well as sekki
(cheque) and sokki (shock), though especially in these two
words, the change is not well-established.
 In a few words, both š and s are permitted, e.g. šamaani ~
samaani.

According to an old recommendation, š is replaced by sh, if š cannot be

written. Such a replacement, e.g. sherif i, is very common even in situations
where it is possible to write š. This explains why the current of icial
recommendations do not mention the replacement.
In some words, both š and sh are possible: š, if the word is used as
loanword, sh if the word is used as a transliterated or transcribed foreign
word. Examples: geiša ~ geisha, šoguni ~ shogun, suši ~ sushi, šaria ~ sharia.
The form with sh is usually more common.
As a special exception, shakki is allowed as an alternate form of šakki
(chess), as requested by organizations of chess players.

Loanword adjectives
Most new loanword adjectives have been adapted to Finnish by adding the
inen suf ix, which replaces an ending corresponding to English “-ic” or “-ical”,
e.g. klassinen : klassisen (classic). In older usage, the illinen suf ix was used
instead, but since the 1940s, it has mostly fallen into disuse, irst in long
words like romantillinen, now romanttinen (romantic). It is still retained to
some extent in words like teknillinen, which is lagged as outdated in
dictionaries but is still in common use to mean “technological”, as opposite to
tekninen (technical). A few adjectives have kept the longer form, e.g.
kristillinen (Christian).
However, there are many adjectives that have been derived with the llinen
suf ix from loanword nouns, instead of being based on an adjective in
another language. Examples: kemiallinen (chemical) from kemia (chemistry),
historiallinen, persoonallinen.
The nen suf ix appears also after aali, aari, iivi, and some other Finnish
versions of international forms corresponding to “-al”, “-ar”, “-ive”, etc. in
English, e.g. bipolaarinen (bipolar). However, the nen suf ix has often been
omitted when it has no function, e.g. banaali (banal). The nen suf ix remains
in use especially when needed to distinguish an adjective from a noun, e.g.
moraalinen (moral) vs. moraali (morals) and aktiivinen (active) vs. aktiivi
(activist; active voice). In compositive forms, the nen suf ix is omitted, e.g.
aktiivipalvelus (active service).
 Some international adjectives like “civil” do not have a direct counterpart
in Finnish. The word siviili is as such only a noun (civilian). In compounds, it
can be interpreted as having an adjectival meaning, e.g. siviilihallinto (civil
administration).

48. Length of vowels in loanwords

Re lecting source language vowel length
In pronunciation, loanwords originally had a long vowel when the source
language (usually Swedish) had a stressed long or half-long vowel. Thus,
from Swedish “banál” we have banaali, but from Swedish “banalitét” we have
banaliteetti. (Here we indicate the stress in Swedish words with an acute
accent; this does not belong to the Swedish writing system.) Typically, this
happens in words of Latin origin, with the Swedish stress re lecting a long
stressed vowel in a Latin word, in the second last or third last syllable.

Con lict between written and spoken form

In old loanwords, two vowel letters are systematically used to denote a long
vowel. In newer loanwords, often more learned words and often primarily
adopted in written form, the spelling is more complicated. There were
serious debates a hundred years ago about using the spelling of the source
language (and most other languages) versus applying normal Finnish writing
rules. People said banaali, but were used to seeing the spelling banal in other
languages. A compromise was made, mixing the two systems. Thus, we have
banaali, but invalidi, even though the latter has a long vowel in Swedish,
“invalíd”.
Originally, the compromise was meant to be about spelling only. Decades
later, it was decided that the pronunciation should follow the spelling. This
created further complexity. By now, pronunciation like invalidi has become
dominant, but you can still hear invaliidi.

The rules of the “great compromise”

The rules on vowel length in new loanwords are described in the following.
They somewhat deviate from the original rules of the compromise.
A long or half-long stressed vowel in the source language corresponds to
a long vowel in Finnish, e.g. motiivi, from Swedish “motív”, unless some of
the following exceptions applies.
The word endings -oli, -omi, -oni, -ori, -ovi have short o, e.g. ekonomi, even
though Swedish has “ekonóm”. This also applies when that ending is
followed by a Finnish suf ix, e.g. astronominen, or by -o, e.g. observatorio.
Note: old loanwords may deviate from this, e.g. pistooli, from Swedish
“pistól”.
Short vowel is used before the foreign consonants b, d, f, g, if a) the word
has at least three syllables, b) the foreign consonant starts the last
syllable of the word, when Finnish suf ixes and an -o suf ix are not
counted. Examples: ameba, balladi, typogra i, synagoga, topologinen,
gonidio. But the vowel is long (as in Swedish) in graa i, since it has only
two syllables, and in makaaberi, since the b does not start the last syllable.
Note that looginen (logical) has long o, since the part before the Finnish
nen suf ix is just two syllables, whereas longer words have short o before
g, e.g. biologinen.
A short vowel is used in a syllable preceding the ending -ia, even when it
is followed by a Finnish suf ix. This was originally formulated as applying
to geographic names like Australia, later extended to general names like
akasia, araukaria, magia, media. Exception: geographic names ending
with -ia and consisting of three syllables have a long vowel, e.g. Aasia,
Fryygia.
The vowel i is short in a syllable preceding the ending -io (mostly in Latin-
based words), but other vowels are long, e.g. editio but notaatio. This rule
has been set to imitate Latin vowel length rather than Swedish; in
Swedish these words end with “-ión”.
The vowel is short before a consonant cluster, e.g. setri, bulevardi. This is
not included in of icial rules as a principle, but it is applied in the of icial
forms of the few words to which it applies.
Words ending with -ium have short vowel. This includes names of
chemical elements, such as kalium and radium. This is not listed in of icial
rules, but of icial glossaries follow this principle.
Some words have short vowel, with no apparent logic, e.g. alkali, bonus,
evankelinen, farao, kameli, kaneli, laser, paneli, virus. This group includes
many names of nationalities, such as berberi and tamili.
Variation in pronunciation
As mentioned above, pronunciation still varies. For example, agronomi may
be pronounced agronoomi, though this is not as common as it used to be. In
ameba, the e is mostly still pronounced long, and the spelling ameeba is
common.
The vowel length may be somewhat indeterminate, between short and
long, e.g. in many country names like Australia (which may sound almost like
Austraalia).
In some popular irst names, there is variation in vowel length, e.g. Miia ∼
Mia, and even the latter is usually pronounced Miia.

49. Doubling of consonants in loanwords

Common doubling
In loanwords, the stops k, p, and t and less regularly the sounds s and f are
often doubled in Finnish, in situations where the original language has a
single consonant. The word “cent” is sentti in Finnish, even though most
European languages show no sign of doubling the “t” in this word.
There has been and there still is variation in the doubling of consonants in
new loanwords, both in pronunciation and in spelling. Although the rules are
mostly well-de ined and generally followed nowadays, there are words
where a single consonant is read as double or vice versa.

Orthographic doubling
A double consonant written before a consonant is always read as single, as in
English, e.g. attraktio [atraktio] (attraction). Such a double consonant usually
comes from a Latin origin. There is no dif iculty in pronunciation, but if you
know a word in spoken form only, or from another language, the Finnish
spelling cannot always we inferred correctly. For example, adressi (petition;
scroll) is written with one d just because Swedish has “adress”.
The doubling issue discussed here is an opposite phenomenon: only a
single consonant is written and pronounced in the original language, but
Finnish has a double consonant at least in pronunciation.
The “great compromise” rules for doubling
In loanwords, a consonant following a long vowel, a diphthong, a liquid
consonant (l, r), or a nasal consonant (m, n) is usually pronounced doubled.
In old loanwords, this is re lected in spelling, e.g. kaappi (from Swedish
“skåp”), manttaali (from Swedish “mantal”), marssi (from Swedish “marsch”).
In early 20th century, after heavy debate, a different spelling policy was
adopted for newer loanwords. A compromise was made between two logical
solutions.
It was decided to express the doubling when the consonant is followed by
a inal i or a Finnish suf ix or both, but not otherwise. Therefore, the standard
spelling is satraappi (satrap) but kampanja (campaign), even though the
latter is normally pronounced kamppanja and also often written that way.
Often the distinction between old and new loanwords is rather arbitrary; for
example, samppanja (champagne) is the standard spelling. Note that rule
means that the double consonant, if it is a stop, usually participates in
consonant gradation, e.g. satraappi : satraapin.
The compromise has some additional exceptions: before eri, eli, ori the
doubling is standard and expressed in writing: eetteri, tuberkkeli, senaattori.
In some words in these categories, doubling is not common in speech (e.g.
kraatteri, preettori).
The doubling does not apply, in pronunciation or spelling, to stops (p, t, k)
when the original language has a voiced stop (b, g, d). For example, the
ending -lanti in country names comes from Swedish “-land”. In contrast, the
Atlantic Ocean is Atlantti.

Common pronunciation
Common pronunciation often doubles the consonant even when it should be
single according to the rules described above, e.g. beeta [beetta], delta
[deltta], kvartaali [kvarttaali], andante [andantte], though this is far from
systematic. When it happens, there is consonant gradation in pronunciation
but not in spelling, e.g. beeta [beetta] : beetan [beetan].
The compromise was originally made to establish the written form. Only
later was it decided that the pronunciation should follow the spelling. Yet,
after about a hundred years after the compromise, doubling is still normal
pronunciation, under the conditions speci ied above, for the stops k, p, and t.
Examples (with common pronunciation in brackets): sampoo [samppoo],
temperamentti [tempperamentti], internetiin [intternettiin]. Most Finns
probably use such pronunciations without thinking and without realizing the
difference between the spelling and the pronunciation. Yet, spellings that
correspond to such pronunciation are commonly recognized as erroneous.
The situation is somewhat different for s and f: doubling is common, e.g. in
marsilainen [marssilainen] (Martian, from the name Mars) and graa inen
[graaf inen], but less common than for the stops and possibly regarded as
vulgar. However, when f appears after a consonant, doubling is regular.
Of icial spellings are gol in (of golf) and surfata (to surf), but practically
everyone says [golf in] and [surffata]; and now surffata is allowed as an
alternate spelling.
There are many further complications in the phenomenon. In some words,
like alkoholi, doubling, [alkkoholi], may sound odd to many people; in some
words, like beeta, it would probably sound odd not to pronounce [beetta].
The variation is usually not described in dictionaries.
The rules cause dif iculties even to educated native speakers especially in
words that are apparently related, but should be treated differently according
to the rules, e.g. hierarkia (hierarchy) versus hierarkkinen (hierarchic). The
former has single k before the foreign-origin ia ending, whereas the latter has
doubled kk, since it is followed by i and the Finnish suf ix nen.

Doubling of word- inal consonant

Foreign words that end with k, p, or t in the basic form have that consonant
doubled in in lected forms, except that it participates in consonant gradation.
To put this in a perhaps better way, these words are in lected as if their basic
forms ended with kki, ppi, or tti. However, according to the rules, the double
consonant is written with one letter.
For example, pop is in lected as if it were poppi, but written with p instead
of pp: pop : popia [poppia] : popina [poppina] : popiin [poppiin] : popin
[popin] etc. In practice, in singular forms, only the partitive, essive, and
illative cases have a double kk, pp, or tt pronounced in them; in other cases,
consonant gradition makes the stop short. According to language guides, the
doubling described here may or may not take place, but in reality, it is part of
normal pronunciation – [popia] would sound arti icial.
For one-syllable words ending with s, doubling is also common, in all
in lected forms, e.g. is [ is] : isiä [ issiä] : isin [ issin]. However, here it may
actually vary with single-consonant pronunciation, especially when the s
appears after a consonant, e.g. Mars [mars] : Marsin [marssin] ~ [marsin]. In-
between pronunciation, with a half-long consonant, is probably common.
However, abbreviations ending with s and pronounced as one-syllable words
have the [s] sound regularly doubled, e.g. SAS [sas] : SASin [sassin]. Some
abbreviations may be pronounced without doubling when speaking formally,
e.g. HUS [hus] : HUSin [hussin] ~ [husin].
Other consonants may also be doubled after a stressed syllable with a
short vowel, e.g. ROM [rom] : ROMin [rommin] ~ [romin]. This may also
happen in foreign, especially French names, if they are pronounced with
stress on last syllable, e.g. Laval [lavál] : Lavalin [lavállin].
Language rules require that the doubling described here must not be
re lected in writing. However, for some words, doubling is now a permitted
alternative, e.g. pop : popia ~ poppia.

Background
The background is that the doubling described in this section is applied in
Swedish as spoken in Finland, at least in the Helsinki area. When words were
adopted from it into Finnish, it was natural to retain both their pronunciation
and their spelling, even though this deviated from Finnish orthography.
Swedish as spoken Finnish, on the other hand, has been phonetically affected
by Finnish. In Sweden, a word like kantarell is pronounced so that the t
sounds emphatic, mainly due to the phonetic features in the change from n to
t and from t to a. Swedish as spoken in Finland lacks such features and tends
to compensate for this by doubling the t, to keep t suf iciently different from
d.

Shortening of double consonants

An opposite phenomenon is that a written double consonant is often
pronounced as short in words like assistentti [asistentti], penisilliini
[penisiliini], and renessanssi [renesanssi]. In a word like penisilliini, such
pronunciation is regular and can be observed from secondary stress:
[pénisilíini] versus [pénisílliini], which we would have if the ll were
pronounced long.
The reason for the shorttening is that the corresponding Swedish word
has a written double consonant after an unstressed vowel, “assistént”,
“penicillín”, “renässáns”, and in such a context a consonant is pronounced
single in Swedish.

50. International words in Finnish

General
International words are words that occur in many languages, typically in
most European languages, just adjusted in form to each language.
International words such as “panel”, “radio”, and “banana” are usually
recognizable even from texts in a language that you do not know at all. They
may at least give some idea of what the text might be about.
Finnish has a large number of international words, adapted to the
phonetic and writing system, for example paneeli, radio, and banaani.
However, Finnish often uses a different word even when most European
language have an international word, e.g. puhelin (telephone); the word
telefoni is outdated and would be used nowadays only in a jocular meaning.
The preceding sections have described vowel length and consonant
doubling in international words in Finnish. This section discusses other
aspects, such as substitution of letters and adaptation of pronunciation.

Classical forms
Words of Latin or Greek origin typically have a rather “classical” form in
Finnish: their spelling, and largely pronunciation as well, is similar to the
form in the classical languages. For example, in laatio re lects the Latin
nominative form “in latio” (lacking the inal “n” what we have e.g. in English),
and geologia has the same -ia ending as Greek (as opposite to English
“geology”). The appendix-like section Endings of international words
describes such correspondences between English and Finnish in detail.

Adaptation of letters
Some letter combinations in international words are adapted to Finnish as
shown in the following table. It mainly applies to words of Latin or Greek
origin.
English Finnish Sample Sample Note
 English word Finnish word
ae ee anaemic = aneeminen English “ae” mostly
anemic British.
ae e aerobic aerobinen When even US
English has “ae”.
c s cent sentti Before e, i, and
possibly y.
c c cesium cesium In a few words.
c k calligraphy kalligra ia Otherwise (except
ch).
ch k chromatic kromaattinen
oe e oestrogen = estrogeeni When even US
estrogen English has “oe”.
oe oe poetics poetiikka Sometimes.
ph f phobia fobia
qu kv quartal kvartaali
rh r rhinitis riniitti
sc s descendent desendentti Inside a word before
e, i.
sc sk scientism skientismi Otherwise.
th t thesaurus tesaurus
x ks ixation iksaatio
y y cyclic syklinen Pronounced [y], not
[i].
z ts paleozoic paleotsooinen Usually.
z z zootomy zootomia Sometimes.
z s mobilization mobilisaatio When English has s ~
z.
There are some exceptions like using k as a counterpart to “c”even before e, i,
or y, e.g. keraaminen (ceramic) and kyyninen (cynical).

“Own” words instead of international words

Finnish often has its own words, based on old Finnish vocabulary, instead of
international words. For example, in Finnish “electricity” is sähkö (a made-up
word, related to descriptive words describing hissing sound) and “plastic” is
muovi (as a noun) or muovinen (as an adjective), derived from the verb
muovata (to shape, to model). Such words are often much easier to
pronounce and to write to a Finn than the corresponding international words
would be. There has also been intentional linguistic purism, motivated in part
by making the language “more democratic”. International words are easy to
learn and use to people who know foreign languages, but they are more
dif icult to people with less education.
Often there is an international word in Finnish but it is used as a learned
word only, or as sivistyssana, “cultivated word” or “culture word”, as we say in
Finnish. For example, you can use the word struktuuri for structure, and at
least educated Finns will see what you mean, but the normal word for
structure is rakenne, derived from the verb rakentaa (to build).
Many international words are not used in Finnish as such, only as
derivations. For example, the word for national is kansallinen, but
nationalism is usually nationalismi. So if you used a made-up Finnish form of
the word national, nationaali or nationaalinen, you might still be understood.
The situation has changed due to the accelerated adoption of new
concepts and words. In modern times, a new term coined for a technological
innovation or new political or scienti ic concept tends spread very fast,
typically as an English word. There is seldom time for developing, say,
Finnish words for such use before people widely know it by its English name,
or by a loanword taken from English. For example, a tablet, as a device, is
tabletti in Finnish, despite some efforts at inding a “more Finnish” name for
it and coining words like the somewhat clumsy taulutietokone (literally “table
computer”). However, the second part of that word, tietokone, is in actual use,
for a computer; the loanword kompuutteri is just jocular. The components are
tieto (knowledge, information, data) and kone (machine).
Words formed from Finnish ingredients are often in common use in
general texts and public communication but not that much in professional
jargon. In information technology, professionals speak and write about
serveri or systeemi, but they are expected to switch to palvelin and järjestelmä
when addressing a general audience. Similarly, in medicine, suturing a wound
might be referred to with the verb suturoida, but the common language word
is ommella (the same as used for sowing).

51. Foreign names in Finnish

Adapted forms
Names of places, people, etc. often have different forms in different
languages. In English, we say “Venice” when referring to a city in Italy known
as “Venezia” in Italian. In Finnish, the name is close to Italian, just in Finnish
spelling: Venetsia.
There is no of icial list of Finnish names to be used for foreign places,
buildings, people, etc. The most comprehensive general list of them is in the
book Vierasnimikirja, by the author of this book. The list, with some
omissions and some additions, has been included in the appendix-like section
Proper names of this book.

Geographic names
For countries and places that have been known in Finland for a long time, the
name used might have changed a lot from the original, such as Tukholma for
Stockholm or Pietari for St. Petersburg. The name might also be of a
completely different origin: Ruotsi (Sweden), Venäjä (Russia), Viro (Estonia),
Saksa (Germany).
As in English, some parts of geographic names are translated, sometimes
even the entire name, e.g. Tanganjikajärvi (Lake Tanganyika), Alankomaat
(the Netherlands).

Place names in Russia

Many places now located in Russia have Finnish names. For the areas that
were ceded to the Soviet Union in 1940 and again in 1944, it is customary to
use Finnish names like Viipuri (Russian: Vyborg). Finnish names are often
used also for places in East Karelia, e.g. Karhumäki (Russian:
Medvezhyegorsk). Many of these names are really not foreign in Finnish;
instead, the Finnish names are original and Russian names are newer, often
based on the Finnish name.
There is a large compilation of these names and their Russian equivalents
in the online publication Venäjän federaation paikannimiä.

Place names in other neighboring countries

Many places in northern Sweden and Norway have Finnish names given to
them by local Finnish-speaking people, e.g. Jällivaara (Swedish: Gällivare)
and Tromssa (Norwegian: Tromsø). Some of the Finnish names are becoming
less common; e.g. Alattio in Norway is now often called by its Norwegian
name Alta in Finnish texts.
Finnish forms for Estonian names have a different origin. Finnish and
Estonian languages are related, and Estonian names therefore often resemble
Finnish words. They have often been adapted, at least as regards to the
second part of compound word, e.g. Munamäki (Estonian: Munamägi).

Personal names
The names of kings and other monarchs often have rather different form in
Finnish than in English or other languages. For example, the English king
names “James” and “John” are Jaakko and Juhana in Finnish. However,
according to a decision by language authorities in 2002, such adaptations
should not be applied to names of future monarchs. Thus, although the
Philips of Spain (“Felipe” in Spanish) are still called Filip in Finnish up to Filip
V, the present king of Spain should be called Felipe VI as in Spanish; the
Finnish media generally follows the recommendation.
Swedish irst names of notable persons of Finnish history have
traditionally been used in a form adapted to Finnish, e.g. Sakari Topelius
instead of Zacharias Topelius. However, there is now a tendency of using
original names as “more correct”. For example, the national biography
kansallisbiogra ia. i uses them.
Among other personal names, very few have (mildly) adapted forms:
Martti Luther (Martin Luther), Leo Tolstoi (the irst name is Lev in Russian),
Josif Stalin (the irst name is Iosif in Russian).

Common mistranslations
It is not uncommon to see foreign names in English form (say, “Bavaria”) in
news, because the text was translated from English and the translator did not
know that a Finnish form (such as Baijeri) should be used. A similar mistake
is that names used in English-language newsfeed are used as such even
though the local name is different. For example, “Munich” is a grave mistake
in Finnish texts when referring to a city in Germany; the German name
München is used in Finnish.
Requirement on exact spelling
Apart from a limited set of adapted traditional names discussed above,
foreign names should be written Finnish exactly as in the original language,
according to language authorities. This means that all accents and other
diacritic marks as well as foreign letters be retained, e.g. Bárðarbunga (not
Bardarbunga).
In practice, this rule is often not followed, especially in newspapers. For
example, instead of the correct Spanish name Málaga, people often write
simply Malaga, which is common in English too. Even in publications that
generally follow the rule, it is very common to use ss in German names that
have ß in the original (e.g. Hess instead of Heß, Gauss instead of Gauß) and
omit diacritic marks from Vietnamese words (e.g. dong instead of đồng).
Replacing foreign letters, e.g. ð by d and þ by th in Icelandic names, can be a
conscious decision, in fear of alienating effects on the reader.

Pronunciation
The pronunciation of foreign names should follow the original, according to
of icial rules. This is very unrealistic in general, and often names as just “read
as written”, according to Finnish values for letters. See Pronunciation of
foreign names and phrases.

Transliterations
Names written in other writing systems need to be transliterated
(romanized, written in Latin letters), and this often differs from the
transliteration used in English.
There is a Finnish standard for writing Russian names. It gives a relatively
good idea of the original pronunciation, when read according to Finnish
rules. The scope of the standard also covers other Slavic languages written in
Cyrillic letters (e.g. Bulgarian), but it is applied to them much less
consistently. The following table shows the main differences between Finnish
translation and common English transliteration of Russian. The irst column
shows the Cyrillic letter. The notation е- means that this row applies to a
Cyrillic е appearing at the start of a word or after a vowel or the soft sign or
the hard sign; otherwise е is transliterated as e in all systems.
Finnish Engl. Finnish ex. English ex.
 е- je ye Jeltsin Yeltsin
ё jo / o e Fjodor Fedor
ж ž (zh) zh Ždanov Zhdanov
й j/i/– y/i Tolstoi Tolstoy
-ий i y / iy Vasili Vasily
х h kh Mihail Mikhail
ч tš (tsh) ch Tšehov Chekhov
ш š (sh) sh Puškin Pushkin
щ štš (shtsh) shch Hruštšov Khrushchev
ю ju yu Juri Yury / Yuriy
я ja ya Jakutsk Yakutsk

For Japanese names, the modern trend is to use the same transliteration
(Hepburn) as in English. An older system (with tš instead of ch, dž instead of
j, š instead of sh, v instead of w, and j or i instead of y) is still in some use,
especially for some words. This explains variation like Jokohama ~ Yokohama.
For Greek names, the situation is very confused, with different authorities
recommending different transliterations, e.g. Chania vs. the traditional Hania
vs. current Finnish (SFS) standard Haniá. In newspapers, the transliteration
of modern Greek names nowadays usually follows English practice more or
less, e.g. Alexis rather than Aleksis. This generally coincides with the Greek
ELOT 743 standard, which is also the current recommendation of the
Institute for the languages of Finland, although the recommendation
discusses place names only: Kreikan paikannimet.
For Hebrew and Yiddish, there is a Finnish standard, but it is obscure
and not much known. On the other hand, it is close to common English
practices. The main difference is that the Finnish standard (and practice)
allows the use of j instead of y, e.g. Netanjahu ~ Netanyahu.
For other languages, international practices are applied. In particular,
Chinese is commonly written using the pinyin system, though some names
are sometimes still written using an older transcription system (e.g. Mao Tse-
tung instead of the pinyin Mao Zedong).
52. Personal names and addressing people
Names
In Finland, people have up to three given names and a family name. A
married person may use two family names: the maiden name followed by the
spouse’s name. Conventionally, they are written as a copulative compound
using a hyphen “-”. Example: Maija Meikäläinen-Teikäläinen . (The word
Meikäläinen, literally “a person who is one of us”, is not in real use as a proper
name, but it is often used as a dummy surname in examples. Teikäläinen, “one
of you”, is a similar name.) On the other hand, some surnames are normal
compounds with a hyphen, typically with Ala or Ylä as the irst part, e.g. Ala-
Tuuhonen.
Finnish surnames often end with the locational suf ix la or lä, and such
names have originally referred to houses (farms), later changed to surnames.
Another common suf ix is nen. The ten most common surnames, according to
an of icial list, are: Korhonen, Virtanen, Mäkinen, Nieminen, Mäkelä,
Hämäläinen, Laine, Heikkinen, Koskinen, Järvinen.
Finnish given names have multiple origins. Many common names are of
international and often Christian origin, a few are Finnish words, often with a
meaning relating to nature, such as Helmi (from helmi “pearl”), and some
names are just made-up words. The international origin is often dif icult to
recognize due considerable phonetic changes; e.g., Juhani, Juha, Jukka, and
Jussi all have the same origin as the English John.
The most popular irst names are: for men, Juhani, Johannes, Olavi, Antero,
Tapani, Kalevi, Tapio, Matti, Mikael, Ilmari; for women, Maria, Helena,
Johanna, Anneli, Kaarina, Marjatta, Anna, Liisa, Annikki, Hannele. The reason
why many female names end with a is that they are based on international
names that have a inal “a” in the original (e.g., Maria, like English “Mary”,
comes from Latin “Maria”). The ending a is not feminine in Finnish, and some
male names like Juha and Pekka end with a.
In modern literary usage, given names precede the surname, and the given
names are not in licted in this context, e.g. Jukka Korpela : Jukka Korpelalle (to
Jukka Korpela). However, older usage where the surname appears irst, in the
genitive, is still often used in speech. In that style, the given name is in lected:
Korpelan Jukka : Korpelan Jukalle.
Addressing people
In Finnish, we use a person’s irst name when addressing close relatives,
friends, and pals. At work, practices vary: irst name, surname, nickname, or
title might be used. Using surname together with a title is rare and typically
occurs in formal contexts only.
Being on a irst-name basis is coupled with the use of sinä as 2nd person
singular pronoun, as opposite to te, and with the use of corresponding verb
forms and possessive suf ixes, as explained in section Personal pronouns. For
example, in English we can say “Paula, please open this” or “Doctor Smith,
please open this” when addressing Dr. Paula Smith, depending on whether
we are on a irst-name basis or not. In Finnish we would say Paula, avaisitko
tämän or Tohtori, avaisitteko tämän (using just the title tohtori “doctor”).

53. Names of languages, countries, etc.

Names of languages
By convention, names of human languages are written in lowercase in
Finnish: suomi, italia, esperanto. Names of computer “languages” are
capitalized, e.g. C, Perl, Java.
Finnish often has the same name for a language and for country, just with
the spelling difference that that the country name is capitalized, the language
name is not. Examples: suomi – Suomi (Finnish – Finland), ruotsi – Ruotsi
(Swedish – Sweden), italia – Italia (Italian – Italy), englanti – Englanti
(English – England).
When needed, the language name can be clari ied by using it as a genitive
attribute before the noun kieli (language), e.g. suomen kieli. This principle
extends to language names that do not match a country name, e.g. kurdi –
kurdin kieli. Adjectives for languages are based on such longer expressions,
e.g. suomenkielinen (Finnish, Finnish-language).

Country names ending with -maa

A country name can sometimes be clari ied by using a compound where the
irst part is the name in the genitive and the second part is maa (country),
e.g. Suomenmaa = Suomi, Venäjänmaa = Venäjä (Russia), Ranskanmaa =
Ranska (France), Tšekinmaa = Tšekki (Czech). However, such longer names
are somewhat poetic, and they cannot be formed from most names. If really
needed, the corresponding open compound could be used, e.g. Italian maa =
Italia.

Derivations of country names

The suf ix lAinen is used to derive words from country names for use both as
an adjective and as a noun. In noun usage, the word denotes an inhabitant of
the country or a member of the nation. In adjective usage, it means
something belonging to or typical of the country or the nation. Thus, for
example, saksalainen, derived from Saksa (Germany), can mean a German
person (either as “a person living in Germany” or as “a member of the
German nation”) or “German” as an adjective. However, saksalainen does not
normally refer to language; for that, saksankielinen is used, e.g. saksankielinen
kirja (a book in German).
The derivations suomalainen and ruotsalainen have an irregular vowel
change from i to a in the base word. Another irregularity is venäläinen
(Russian) from Venäjä.

Swedish names for places in Finland

Most places in Finland have only a Finnish name, but many places also have a
Swedish name, e.g. “Åbo” for Turku, “Vanda” for Vantaa. In Lapland, places
also have names in Sámi languages.
When referring to places in Finland in foreign-language texts, it can be
dif icult to decide whether Swedish names should be used for places in an
area where the majority speaks Swedish. At least for Åland (Finnish
Ahvenanmaa) and places there, Swedish names can be preferred in languages
other than Finnish, since Swedish is the only of icial language in Åland.

54. Different scopes of words

Quite often, a word of a language has no direct counterpart in another
language but corresponds to two or more different words. This causes
problems in language learning and usage. For example, a Finn might
mistakenly say “I didn’t wait for that” when he means “I didn’t expect that”,
since both “to wait” and “to expect” correspond to the Finnish verb odottaa.
Similarly, the Finnish verb lainata means both “to loan” and “to borrow”, and
vuokrata means both “to rent” and “to rent out”. Thus, halutaan vuokrata
(where halutaan means “one wants to…”) contains in principle an ambiguous
in initive; in language practice, it means that one wants to rent an apartment.
For a person with English as native language, an English word that
corresponds to two or more Finnish words may cause dif iculties in language
learning, but also in usage. You may have understood and learned the
correspondences, but you keep forgetting it, and sometimes you just don’t
know which word to use. For example, the English word “wood” mainly
corresponds to puu in Finnish, but in some contexts, especially in the plural,
it corresponds to metsä (forest). A more dif icult word is the English verb “to
play”: when playing games, it is pelata in Finnish; when playing a record, it is
soittaa; when children play, it is leikkiä; and so on.

55. Family relationship and relationship by

marriage
Family relationships are a good example of different scopes of words
mentioned in the previous section. Such differences may cause dif icult
problems in translation in situations that lack suf icient context.
The English word “uncle” must be translated as eno, if it means “mother’s
brother”, and setä, when it means “father’s brother”. Similarly, the words
“nephew” and “niece” cannot be translated without knowing the relation
more exactly. For example, in early translations of Donald Duck, Aku Ankka in
Finnish, Hewey, Dewey, and Louie—Tupu, Hupu, and Lupu—were called
Donald’s veljenpojat, even though this means “brother’s sons” and they are
actually Donald’s sister’s sons.

Family relationships
The systems of words for relationship by birth are partly different in Finnish
and in English. Both languages use simple words for the very basic
relationships, but they have different approach to referring to grandchildren,
nephews, etc. The following table shows the correspondences in standard
languages. As in most languages, there are many colloquial or dialectal words
especially for the basic relationships, e.g. äitee, äiskä, mutsi for äiti (mother).

English word Finnish word Notes

parent vanhempi : Also an adjective meaning “older”
vanhemman (see below).
mother äiti : äidin Old synonyms emä and emo now in
specialized usage.
father isä : isän
child lapsi : lapsen
daughter tytär : tyttären
son poika : pojan The Finnish word also means “boy”.
grandparent isovanhempi :
isovanhemman
grandmother isoäiti : isoäidin Also mummo or mummu or mummi,
but not in formal style. For maternal
and paternal grandmother, Finnish
often uses äidinäiti and isänäiti.
grandfather isoisä : isoisän Also ukki or vaari, but not in formal
style. For maternal and paternal
grandmother, Finnish often uses
äidinäiti and isänäiti.
grandchild lapsenlapsi :
lapsenlapsen
grandson tyttärenpoika / Finnish is unavoidably more speci ic:
pojanpoika it has different words for daughter’s
son and son’s son.
granddaughter tyttärentytär / Finnish has different words for
pojantytär daughter’s daughter and son’s
daughter.
aunt täti : tädin Also used to refer to a woman in
general; see note after the table.
uncle eno : enon/ setä : Finnish has different words for
sedän mother’s brother, eno, and father’s
brother, setä. However, eno may also
refer to the spouse of mother’s sister.
 See also note after the table about
generalized usage.
sibling sisarus : Sometimes sisares : sisareksen. Mostly
sisaruksen in plural, sisarukset ~ sisarekset.
sister sisar : sisaren Colloquially also sisko : siskon.
brother veli : veljen Colloquially also velipoika : velipojan.
niece sisarentytär / Finnish has different words for
veljentytär sister’s daughter and brother’s
daughter.
nephew sisarenpoika / Finnish has different words for
veljenpoika sister’s son and brother’s son.
cousin serkku : serkun The old synonym orpana is not used
in modern language.
second cousin pikkuserkku
third cousin sokeriserkku Rarely used; may also refer to more
remote relatives. Nowadays kolmas
serkku is sometimes used, imitating
the English expression.
great isoisovanhempi Usually a more speci ic expression
grandparent like isoäidin isä is used instead.
great isoisoäiti Also isomummo, but not in formal
grandmother language. Usually a more a speci ic
expression is used instead.
great isoisoisä Also isovaari or isopappa, but not in
grandfather formal language, and these words may
also refer to grandfather. Usually a
more a speci ic expression is used
instead.
great lapsenlapsenlapsi Often a more speci ic expression like
grandchild tyttärenpojan lapsi is used instead.
The word täti is also used by children and by adults talking to a child, to refer
generally to a woman who is essentially older than the child, without
implying any family relationship. Similarly, setä is used generally about older
men in such a sense.
The Finnish word vanhempi is used mostly in plural in this meaning,
vanhemmat : vanhempien (parents). When referring to one parent only, the
word for mother or father is used or, when necessary, an expression like äiti
tai isä (mother or father) is normally used. When the word “parent” is used
metaphorically, as in “parent node” (in a tree-like data structure), Finnish
normally uses isä, e.g. isäsolmu.
For stepmother, stepfather, stepsister, and stepbrother Finnish uses
äitipuoli, isäpuoli, sisarpuoli, and velipuoli, where the latter component is
in lected puoli : puolen. The words sisarpuoli and velipuoli are also used for
half sister and half brother, respectively.

Marriage
In a marriage, avioliitto in Finnish, the general word for spouse is puoliso, but
it is mostly used in formal language only. Usually the words vaimo (wife) and
aviomies or mies (husband) are used. Normally mies is used, but since it also
means “man”, it is sometimes pre ixed with avio for clarity. Several colloquial
words, with varying tones, are in use, e.g. eukko, akka, and muija for wife and
ukko for husband.
A married couple can be called using the plural form puolisot or the
singular noun pariskunta or aviopari, of which the latter is more formal.

Relationship by marriage
In English, relationship by marriage (af inity) is expressed systematically
using words like “mother-in-law”, based on the word for a relationship by
birth. Finnish has simple words for each basic relationship, such as anoppi.
They are listed in the following table.

English Finnish word Notes

word
parent-in- appivanhempi : Mostly used in plural,
law appivanhemman appivanhemmat.
 mother-in- anoppi : anopin
law
father-in- appi : apen Colloquially often appiukko :
law appiukon.
daughter- miniä : miniän
in-law
son-in-law vävy : vävyn Colloquially also vävypoika :
vävypojan.
sister-in- käly : kälyn
law
brother-in- lanko : langon Colloquially also lankomies :
law lankomiehen.

These words, especially käly and lanko, are nowadays often replaced by
analytic expressions, e.g. miehen veli or vaimon veli or sisaren mies instead of
lanko.
In old poetry, nato : nadon is sometimes used for husband’s sister and kyty
: kydyn husband’s brother.

Common-law marriage
The word avoliitto (as opposite to avioliitto “marriage”) is generally used to
denote a marriage-like but unof icial relationship between a woman and a
man. The closest English equivalent is “common-law marriage”. In the
Finnish legal system, avoliitto has some of the legal implications of a
marriage, especially if the couple has children.
Marriage-related terms such as vaimo and anoppi are often used about
relations based on common-law marriage. They may be pre ixed with avo,
e.g. avovaimo (common-law wife) is often used, whereas avoanoppi (mother
of common-law wife) may sound humoristic or colloquial. A couple living in
common-law marriage is usually called avopari.
Since common-law marriage is by de inition unof icial, there are no strict
rules for applying this concept.

56. False friends in Finnish and English

The concept of false friends
False friends (French “faux amis”) are pairs of words in two languages so that
the words are written or pronounced identically or similarly but differ in
meaning. False friends cause problems especially when you see or hear a
word in a foreign language and you assume that it has the same meaning as a
similar word in your native language.
A special case of false friends consists of words that, in addition to being
similar in two languages, have the same origin but different meaning, due to
differences in changes of semantics. False friends in this sense, sometimes
called false cognates, usually appear in closely related languages. For
example, there is a large number of such false friends in Finnish and
Estonian, such as Finnish vaimo (wife) and Estonian “vaimu” (spirit, ghost)
and Finnish huvittava (amusing, funny) and Estonian “huvitav” (interesting).
Between English and Finnish, such false friends are mostly caused by
changed meanings of international words.

Some examples
In the following table, each row contains
an English word
a Finnish word resembling (in spelling or pronunciation or both) the
English word
an explanation of the meaning of the Finnish word in English.
English word Finnish word Explanation of Finnish word
ale ale sale (at a reduced price)
angina angiina tonsillitis
bassoon pasuuna trombone
billion (US) biljoona trillion (US)
canine kaniini rabbit
faggot fagotti bassoon, fagotto
folio folio foil; (less often:) folio
grape greippi grapefruit
harmonica harmonikka accordion
hint hintti homosexual (abusively)
home home mold (fungus growth)
liquor likööri liqueur
marmalade marmeladi jelly sweet; marmalade, jelly
motorist motoristi motorcyclist
pickles pikkelsi mixed pickles
novel novelli short story
petrol (British) petroli paraf in oil
risky riski (adj.) strong (as an attribute of a person)
silicon silikoni silicone
tile tiili brick
undulate undulaatti budgerigar, budgie

Specialized meaning
There are some word pairs that could be regarded as false friends in the
sense that a Finnish word has a much more restricted meaning than its
“friend” in English. For example:
In English, “sex” can refer to the two sexes, but in Finnish seksi means
sexual activity or sexual attractiveness only (and sukupuoli is used for one of
the sexes).
In Finnish, sortsit (or shortsit) means short trousers only, whereas short
underpants are called alushousut.
The English word “tape” occurs as a loanword in Finnish, written teippi,
but it has the very restricted meaning: adhesive tape (whereas a tape in
general is nauha).

False friendship may depend on the context

Some words are false friends in some contexts only:
English “positive” can usually be translated as positiivinen (and in some
contexts it must be translated that way), but translating “I’m positive” that
way would be an error (it must be translated e.g. as olen varma).
 “invalid” can often be translated as invalidi or synonymously vammainen,
but not in a context like “invalid command” (which could be translated as
virheellinen komento).
“liberal” is often liberaali (or synonymously vapaamielinen, “free-
minded”), but “liberal education” is certainly not liberaali kasvatus
(though it might be seen mistranslated that way) but rather klassillinen
koulutus
“moral” as an adjective is normally translated as moraalinen, but “moral
of the story” is not tarinan moraali (rather, tarinan opetus).

Some special false friends

Originally, pateettinen means “high- lown”, whereas the English “pathetic” in
its modern meaning, as opposite to its old dictionary meaning, is translated
e.g. as säälittävä or surkea. But it seems that the impact of English has
changed things so that pateettinen now very often means “pathetic”. In the
Finnish version of The Lion King on video, Zazu’s words about Simba
becoming a pretty pathetic king have been translated as sinusta tulee hyvin
pateettinen kuningas. In this context, both interpretations are plausible, and
perhaps the translator intentionally created the ambiguity!
A personal note might illustrate some problems with false friends. During
my visit to the US in the 1980s, I, being a smoker at that time, was looking for
a vending machine to buy some cigarettes. I asked a motel employee whether
the motel had a cigarette automaton. This resulted in a rather embarrassing
situation. In Finnish, automaatti means a vending machine, or an automatic
teller machine, or other “automatic system”, in addition to automata.

57. “Forbidden” words

Languages generally have words that are part of the vocabulary but are
normally avoided at least in educated speech and writing. Curse words are
the most obvious example. The Finnish curse word perkele (literally: devil) is
known by many foreigners, but it is less known that it might be used as a
relatively mild curse word in some circles, yet taken as very offensive by
many. Young people often use vittu (cunt) very frequently—like a comma, as
they say. People may say jumalauta as a strong curse word, despite its being
originally a prayer, a shortened form of Jumala, auta “God, help [me]”. The
point is that you need to listen to how people speak and then tune your mind
and your usage accordingly. It is seldom a good idea to be the irst one, or
even the second one, who uses a potentially problematic word in a company.
The word neekeri (negro) is nowadays mostly avoided, and e.g. musta
(black) is used instead. There are some other words for ethnicity that are
more dif icult to avoid without knowing current Finnish practices.
Mustalainen used to be a normal word for gypsy; now romani is
recommended. Sámi people were long called lappalainen, but now
saamelainen is regarded as the correct word. Even ryssä (Russian person)
was once a neutral word, in the 19th century, but then it became rather
negative; the correct word is now venäläinen.
There are also innocent-looking words that are widely avoided. The verb
panna means many things like “to put” or “to lay down”, and it also means
having sexual intercourse. The possibility of this association has made people
widely avoid the verb. Instead of old-style Panen kirjan pöydälle (I’ll put the
book on the table) they say Laitan kirjan pöydälle or Pistän kirjan pöydälle,
using the verb laittaa or the verb pistää, which are partly synonymous with
panna.
There are words that are taboo to many people, while other people see
nothing wrong with them. The noun tukka means hair on the top of the head,
and it is still used that way by most people. Yet, young people may avoid it
due to assumed association with pubic hair and use hiukset, the plural of hius,
instead.
The words sika (swine) and lehmä (cow) are normal when referring to
living animals. However, they are often avoided when referring to meat from
those animals. The generic word sianliha (pork, literally “swine’s meat”) is
neutral, but pork chop is much more often called porsaankyljys than
siankyljys. The word porsas : porsaan denotes a young swine (pig) in
principle, but any pork when referring to meat. The general word for beef is
naudanliha, containing the word nauta : naudan that denotes a bovine in
general (cow or bull). In commerce and in restaurants, the word härkä :
härän (e.g., in häränliha) is often used instead of nauta, even though härkä in
principle means “ox” in standard Finnish. For further confusion, the word
sonni (bull) is sometimes used when referring to beef, whether the meat
actually comes from a cow or a bull.

58. Terminology
Forming terms for concepts in administration, law, industry, science, arts,
technology, etc. is an essential part of making and keeping a language useable
in a modern society in various areas of life. This was a key issue in the 19th
and 20th century Finland. Its relative importance has decreased especially in
science, humanities, and technology: nowadays English terms are often
adopted as such or as modi ied somewhat to adapt to the structure of
Finnish.
There are many terminology collections that are more or less regularly
updated and provide an extensive set of terms, though they are not all widely
accepted or used. Some examples of different terminology databases
available online:
Yleinen suomalainen asiasanasto (YSA). A general thesaurus, especially
for de ining keywords of publications, but also used otherwise as a
resource for solving terminology issues.
TEPA-termipankki. Originally a database of technology terms (tekniikan
termipankki), this now contains terms of sciences and other areas as well.
Valter, the Government Termbank, mainly of public administration terms.
Maailman lintujen suomenkieliset nimet, Finnish names for bird species
of the world. An example of an extensive and systematic database
produced by voluntary work.

Word derivation

59. The structure of a derived word

The stem and the suf ix
A derived word consists of the stem of a base word and a suf ix. For example,
the word sanasto (vocabulary) consists of the stem of the base word sana
(word) and the suf ix sto, which has a collective meaning. Here the stem of
the base word is the same as its basic form in dictionaries, the nominative
singular.
The base word may itself be a derived word. For example, from sanasto we
can derive sanastollinen (lexical).
 The Suf ix glossary in this book lists the most common suf ixes in Finnish,
including derivational suf ixes. As it shows, the same suf ix may appear both
as a derivational suf ix and as an in lection suf ix, though this is relatively
rare in Finnish.

Form of the base

In most words derived from nouns and adjectives, the stem of the base
word is the form used in the genitive singular. For example, adding the
general suf ix llinen to the word asenne : asenteen (attitude; prejudice) yields
asenteellinen (prejudiced; related to attitudes), i.e. the base word stem is here
asentee-.
For words derived from verbs, the stem of the base word is mostly the
same as in the 1st person singular, indicative present tense. For example,
from juosta : juoksen (to run) we can derive the word juoksettaa (to make
something/someone run), where the base word stem is juokse and the suf ix
is ttaa.
The stem of the base word may vary due to consonant gradation and other
changes, as described in section Other variation in word stem.
A inal short vowel is normally omitted before a suf ix that starts with a
vowel. For example, when the suf ix u is appended to the verb stem juokse- to
form a name of action, the e is lost: juoksu (run). This also happens when the
inal vowel is preceded by another vowel, e.g. urhea (brave) → urhe|illa (to
go in for sports) , here causing the stem vowel e and the suf ix vowel i to form
a diphthong.
A inal long vowel is shortened before a vowel, not lost. Example: vene :
venee|n (boat) → vane|illä (to boat; to go boating).
Sometimes a derived word concides with an in lected form of the base
word. The verb in initives mentioned above, urheilla and veneillä, are written
the same way as the adessive plural forms of urhea and vene. In spoken
Finnish, the words differ, since the in initives end with boundary gemination.
Alterations
Some words have been created by altering another word in different, often
irregular ways and possibly adding a suf ix. Such creations are very common
in slang and jargon. They often produce a more convenient word that can be
used instead of a long and complicated word. However, probably a stronger
reason for using such words is that they sound informal.
For example, from valkoviini (white wine), itself a normal compond word,
the colloquial valkkari has been produced. In it, either ri or ari can be
regarded as a suf ix, especially since such suf ixes are common in Finnish
words. The stem valkka or valkk is irregular, however; we can say that it is
motivated by the word valkoviini, or its start, rather than just its modi ied
form. Such colloqualisms are often used in different environments in
different meanings. For example, among bird hobbyists, valkkari may mean
valkoposkihanhi, a bird species (barnacle goose; the Finnish name means
“white-cheeked goose”).
It is a matter of de inition whether such alterations are called derived
words.

Truncations
Omitting the end or the start of a word can be regarded as the simplest form
of alteration, a shortened word. It is common in spoken language, but seldom
accepted in formal language. For example, ale (genitive: alen) is a truncation
of alennusmyynti (sale) and very common in advertisements, but normally
not used otherwise in written language. The word info for informaatio is a
common colloquialism, whereas ope for opettaja (teacher) is school language.
Some truncations appear only as the irst component of a compound
word, often imitating similar use in other languages, e.g. digi- (= digitaali-).
They can be classi ied as compositive forms.
Some truncations are abbreviations treated as words. For example, esim. is
common abbreviation for esimerkiksi (for example) and is read as that full
word in formal language, but informally it can be read as just esim and even
written that way, without a period.
A special case is suht. (= suhteellisen, relatively), which is rather rare as an
abbreviation in writing, but common as a truncation spoken language. It is
often combined with koht. (= kohtuullisen or kohtalaisen, meaning
“reasonably” or “moderately”), written varyingly suht. koht. or suht.koht. or
suht koht or suhtkoht, meaning “fairly, rather”.

Acronyms
The word “acronym” has several meanings, but here we use it denote a word
formed from initial letters of words, such as hetu from henkilötunnus (a
compound of henkilö and tunnus). Such words are common in modern
Finnish, but usually colloquial. They are used like normal words, but single
stops k, p, t do no participate in consonant gradation; e.g. the genitive of hetu
is hetun, not hedun.
In a more restricted sense, an “acronym” is formed from irst letters of
words. Such acronyms are rare in Finnish. They are often loanwords so that
the word is not an acronym in Finnish, e.g. rem (rapid eye movement), vip (∼
VIP), Nato (∼ NATO).
New acronyms are often created because a new administrative or other
term is an inconveniently long expression like aluehallintovirasto and an
abbreviation is like avi (∼ AVI) is de ined for it. If the abbreviation is a
pronouncible word, it easily becomes an acronym: it is no longer spelled out,
except in the most formal contexts.
Many acronyms are used in a restricted way only, at least in formal
language: as the irst component of a compound word. Such words are often
base on a pair of words. They include luki- (from luku ja kirjoitus) in
lukihäiriö (dyslexia), hevi- (from hedelmä ja vihannes) in heviosasto (fruit and
vegetable department), and sote- (from sosiaali- ja terveydenhuolto) in
soteuudistus (social welfare and health care reform). In informal language,
however, such words may appear as such, e.g. sote standing for soteuudistus.

Suf ixes and language learning

People learn Finnish derivation suf ixes as they learn words containing them,
rather than by learning the suf ixes separately. This applies to learning
Finnish as irst language (native language) as well as other forms of learning.
However, it is possible to assist such natural learning processes by a more
systematic study of suf ixes.
It is easy to notice similarities in meanings of kirjasto, astiasto, laivasto etc.
when you learn such words, and this may make you expect that sto always
has a similar meaning as a collective suf ix. One day, you might even dare to
coin a new word using it, for example kalasto, from kala ( ish). That’s normal
in Finnish. Some suf ixes are so productive that forming a derivation is not a
big thing, maybe even just comparable to using two or more words together
(an open compound, or a phrase like “set of ish”) in English. But there are
some pitfalls. For example, kalasto is an existing word, but it has a speci ic
meaning; it does not mean any set or collective of ish but the totality of all
ish in some water area.

Spelling problem -oittaa ~ -ottaa

Among the problems of spelling related to derivational suf ixes, the one that
disturbs native speakers most is the issue of -ottaa vs. -oittaa verbs. The
of icial rules are complicated. The base rule is that the suf ix is -oittaa if the
stem of the base word ends with a. For example, we have haavoittaa (to
wound) from haava (wound), but tiedottaa (to inform) from tieto
(information). However, there are many exceptions, and it is often not clear
what the base word is.
In spoken language, most -oittaa verbs appear without the i, e.g.
haavottaa. This makes the issue dif icult to native speakers when they try to
write correctly or speak formally.
However, in both written and spoken language, the -oittaa form is always
used when the base word has three syllables. Example: vahingoittaa (to
harm), from vahinko (damage).

60. Meanings of derivational suf ixes

Productivity of suf ixes
Some suf ixes used for word derivation have a rather ixed meaning: they
modify the meaning of the base word in a predictable way. Often such suf ixes
are productive, which means that they can be attached to almost any word
that belongs to a certain type of words. Mostly, but not always, a very
productive suf ix has a systematic meaning.
For example, from almost any word derived with the llinen suf ix, a further
derivation ending with llisuus or llisyys can be formed, and such derivations
are property names. Thus, from lupa (permission) we have luvallinen
(permitted, allowed) and from it luvallisuus (permittedness, the property of
being allowed). To take another example, from aine (matter, substance) we
can derive the adjective aineellinen (material), from it the active verb
aineellistaa (to materialize), from it the passive verb aineellistua (to be
materized), from it the negative participle aineellistumaton (unmaterialized),
and you could go on.
On the other hand, a derivational suf ix may have very varying meanings
and the suf ix might be restricted to a small set of words. Most derivational
suf ixes are between the extremes: they have some characteristic meaning,
but it is not exact, and the suf ix can be used in other meanings, too.

Collective derivations
A collective derivation often denotes simply a set of things denoted by the
base word. For example, tiestö, from tie (road) means “roads” as a collective,
perhaps understood as a road network.
A derivation may also refer to the environment of such a set or a place or
institution for it. For example, kirjasto, from kirja (book), does not denote a
set of books but a library. The word tiedosto, from tieto : tiedon (information;
knowledge; data), has a speci ic meaning, a (computer) ile. The word tietue
has been formed from the same base to denote a record in a ile or otherwise
in data processing.
The semantic relationship between a base word and a collective derivation
can be different, too. E.g. kolmikko, from kolme (three), means a set of three, a
triplet, and there are similar “numerical collectives” formed from other
numerals. Some derivations are rather remotely related to the base word; e.g.
neuvosto (council; soviet) is based on neuvo (advice).
The following suf ixes are used for collective derivations:
stO is the most common and very productive; the meaning can be
concrete, e.g. vuoristo (mountains, mountain range) from vuori
(mountain), or abstract, e.g. sanasto (vocabulary) from sana (word)
kkO is rather common, typically with a concrete meaning, e.g. hyllykkö
(set of shelves) from hylly (shelf).
uex : uee- occurs in few words only, e.g. laivue (squadron; lotilla) from
laiva (ship)
isO occurs only in the words alhaiso, nuoriso, yhteisö, yleisö, ylhäisö and, in
a non-collective meaning, puoliso (spouse)
In some words these suf ixes have no collective meaning. They have just been
used to form new words, such as puukko (knife) from puu (tree; wood) and
kermakko (creamer) from kerma (cream).
Both the stO suf ix and the kkO suf ix often occur with the plural suf ix i
before it, possibly causing changes in the base word ending. Even vuoristo is
an example of this, since the base word stem ends with e: vuori : vuoren. For
some words, both a derivation without i and one with it are in use, in
different meanings, e.g. from puu (tree; wood) we have puusto (tree stand,
growing stock) and puisto (park).

Alternative suf ixes

As described above, the suf ixes stO and kkO are similar in meaning. There is
no simple rule that says which of these suf ixes (if either) can be used for a
word. This partly depends on dialect variation, but in standard language,
usually only one alternative is accepted. For example, from the word haapa :
haavan “European aspen”, the derivation is haavikko (which thus means
“aspen forest, aspen stand”). However, as surnames, both Haavikko and
Haavisto are in use. For a few common nouns, both derivations are possible,
e.g. kuusikko ~ kuusisto (clump of spruces) from kuusi (spruce).
Word derivation is not always systematic. For example, a verb that means
covering an item with some metal is often derived from the name of the
metal, using the suf ix -ata : -aan, such as kullata from kulta (gold) and
kromata from kromi (chrome). Howeverm this does not apply to metal names
longer than two syllables; they take the suf ix -OidA, e.g. kuparoida from
kupari (copper). There are other specialties, too, like deriving sinkittää from
sinkki, apparently because the word sinkata was already in different use.´

Names of properties
For most adjectives, a name of the corresponding property can be derived
using the suf ix Us : Uden or UUs : UUden, e.g. heikkous : heikkouden
(weakness) from heikko (weak) and nuoruus : nuoruuden (youth) from nuori
(young).
For nouns, such derivations describe the property of being what the noun
expresses or something typical of it. E.g. from ministeri we can derive the
noun ministeriys : ministeriyden (being a minister, having a minister’s
position). The base word usually means a human being.
 Some derivations of these types have a specialized meaning either along
with a property meaning or instead of it. For example, uutuus from uusi :
uuden : uutena (new) means both “newness” and “novelty, a new product”,
whereas teollisuus from teollinen (industrial) means only “industry”
(originally referring to physical production only, now broader).
The choice of the suf ix Us or UUs depends on the stem as follows:
For two-syllable stems, Us is used, e.g. ujo → ujo|us, hullu → hullu|us.
However, the suf ix is UUs, if the in lection stem ends with a short A, e.g.
isä → is|yys. The suf ix varies by word if the in lection stem ends with a
short e, e.g. veli : velje|n→ velje|ys but pieni : piene|n→ pien|uus. For
adjectives with an e stem, the suf ix is almost always UUs, with the
exception of tyyni : tyynen → tyyneys. If the stem ends with ee, the suf ix is
always Us, e.g, terve : tervee|n→ terveys.
For longer stems, Us is used if the stem ends with eA or U, e.g. valkea →
valke|us, tunnettu → tunnettu|us. The UUs suf ix is used if the stem
otherwise ends with A, e.g. ihana → ihan|uus, ehdokas : ehdokkaa|n →
ehdokk|uus. For other endings, the suf ix varies by word, e.g. toveri :
toveri|n→ tover|uus, but ministeri : ministeri|n → ministeri|ys. For words
ending with inen : ise|n, the suf ix is always Uus, e.g. iloinen : iloise|n →
ilois|uus.

In some words, the UUs suf ix is preceded by is, e.g. kohtelia|is|uus

(politeness), from kohtelias : kohteliaa|n (polite). This applies to words
ending with liAs, the word äveriäs, some words ending with ilAs (e.g. joutilas),
and past participles ending with Ut, e.g. oppinut : oppinee|n → oppine|is|uus.
Present participles ending with vA usually have regular UUs derivations,
e.g. näkyvä → näkyvyys. In older language, an is extension was often used, e.g.
näkyväisyys. Words such as suvaitsevuus (tolerance) have now largely
replaced longer forms like suvaitsevaisuus, even though they are most
naturally interpreted as derived from suvaitsevainen (tolerant, as an attitude)
rather than directly from the participle suvaitseva (one that tolerates,
tolerating).
Changes in the base word before an Us or UUs suf ix can be summarized
as follows:
The base word usually has strong grade in consonant gradation, e.g.
kaikki : kaike|n : kaikke|a → kaikke|us, following normal rules.
 However, if the base word is a comparative or superlative form of an
adjective, the grade is weak, e.g. parempi : paremman → paremmuus,
suosituin : suosituimman → suosituimmuus.
The grade is also weak in the words emännyys and isännyys, derived from
emäntä : emännän and isäntä : isännän.
A inal short vowel of the base word is omitted before the UUs suf ix, e.g.
sama → samuus.
A long vowel is shortened before the Us suf ix, e.g. vapaa → vapaus.
When a two-syllable stem ends with a short or long i, it is preserved (but
long i is shortened) in some words, but changed to e in some words. E.g.
paavi : paavius, but siisti : siisteys. For some words, both variants occur,
with i being usually more common, e.g. tiivis : tiiviin → tiiviys ~ tiiveys.
In longer stems, i is usually preserved before Us, e.g. moderni →
modernius. However, when the stem ends with ri, the suf ix Uus is often
used, causing the i to be omitted, e.g. sankari → sankaruus, less often
sankarius. Similar phenomenon occurs in a few other words: aateli →
aateluus, kumppani → kumppanuus.
Adjective stems with three syllables ending with lO or rO take the UUs
suf ix, losing the O, e.g. höperö → höperyys.

Irregularly derived property names include: autius from autio; autuus from
autuas; kookkuus from kookas; laupeus from laupias; lyhyys from lyhyt;
maukkuus from maukas; neitsyys from neitsyt; ohuus from ohut; uljuus from
uljas; (itse)valtius from (itse)valtias.
Some names of properties are identical with a name of action in the basic
form but differ from them in in lection. The word rosvous : rosvouden is a rare
derivation of rosvo (robber) and refers to being a robber, living as a robber.
The more common word rosvous : rosvouksen is a derivation of the verb
rosvota : rosvoan (to rob) and means “robbery, act of robbing”. Due to
similarity of meaning and forms, such words are easily confused with each
other.

Names of actions
Names of actions (and activities) based on verbs are derived in many
different ways, depending on verb. For many verbs, there are alternative
names of action.
 A simple way is to use the -minen suf ix, e.g. puhu|a (to speak) →
puhu|minen (speaking). This is possible for almost all verbs. However, in
addition to being relatively long, the -minen derivations denote activities in
general rather than speci ic acts. They are often used where we would use
the in initive in English, e.g. Erehtyminen on inhimillistä (To err is human).
Other derivations are typically used in compounds and in more specialized
meanings. For example, puhe means both speaking, especially in compound
words (e.g. puhekyky “ability to speak”), and speech as a noun, e.g. an
inauguration speech.
Names of actions are formed mainly using the following suf ixes:
-mA, e.g. elämä from elä|ä (to live)
-nA, e.g. loiskina from loiski|a (to splash)
-ntA, e.g. valvonta from valvo|a (to live)
-ex, e.g. katse from katso|a (to look at)
-i, e.g. muisti from muista|a (to remember)
-nti, e.g. syönti from syö|dä (to eat)
-O, e.g. ajo from aja|a (to drive)
-Os : -Okse-, e.g. käännös : käännöksen from kääntä|ä : käännä|n (to turn;
to translate); this may mean both translation as a process and the result
of translation
-Us : -Ukse-, e.g. huimaus : huimauksen from huimat|a : huima|a (to make
dizzy)
-mUs : -mUkse-, e.g. katumus : katumuksen from katu|a (to repent)
-U, e.g. juoksu from juos|ta : juokse|n (to run)
-UU, e.g. paluu from pala|ta (to return)
Many derivations of these types are also used to denote results of action,
either as an alternative meaning or as the only meaning. Often an -Us
derivation is a name of action, whereas an -Os or -e derivation is a name of
result, e.g. väärennys (falsi ication) vs. väärennös (forgery) from väärentää
(to falsify)—though in practice väärennys is often used in both meanings—
and tulostus (printing) vs. tuloste (printout), from tulostaa (to print).
There are few general rules that govern the choice of the suf ix for a name
of action. The names of actions thus mostly need to be learned separately. In
dictionaries, they may appear as separate entries, but possibly only under the
entry for a verb, as in the following example in Nykysuomen sanakirja:
“hyssyt|tää v. -ys teonn.” This says that hyssyttää is a verb and hyssytys is the
corresponding name of action (teonnimi). The possibility of deriving another
name of action, hyssyttäminen, is regarded as so obvious that it is not
mentioned at all.
It is often possible to use either a -minen noun or a noun formed with one
of the suf ixes listed above, perhaps with just a slight difference in style. For
example, maidon juominen (drinking of milk) is a normal expression, but we
can also say maidonjuonti, with the same meaning but more as “term-like”. In
particular, if we refer to drinking milk as something measurable (such as the
amount of milk consumption, e.g. as something that has decreased or
increased), maidonjuonti is used.

Moderative adjectives
Among derivational suf ixes that produde adjectives, hkO is one of the most
productive. It expresses moderate amount of the properly, much like English
“ish”, except that the Finnish suf ix is fully accepted in formal language, too.
For example, suurehko means “largish, moderately large, fairly large”, and
helpohko means “moderately easy, fairly easy”. Both Finnish words can be
used in any style, though they are not common in spoken language, where we
normally use analytic expressions like aika suuri (or aika iso) and melko
helppo.
As an alternative, compound words like suurenpuoleinen are used. In them,
the latter part is based on the word puoli (half; side). Thus, suurenpuoleinen
might be taken as meaning something that is on the larger side.

Causative verbs
A causative derivation of a verb is one that means causing the action
expressed by the base verb. For example, the causative derivation juo|tta|a of
juo|da (to drink) means “to cause drinking”, typically by helping someone to
drink. As another example, from puhua (to speak), there is the causative
derivation puhuttaa (to make someone speak, to cause discussion). The term
factitive verb is also used, especially when the causation is professional,
making someone or some company do something for you, as for the verb
rakentaa : rakennan (to build): the derivation rakennuttaa : rakennutan
means hiring someone to do some building.
Causative derivations are common in Finnish. The derivational suf ix is
usually ttA- : ta-, as in juo|tta|a : juo|ta|n, or UttA- : UtA-, as in odot|utta|a :
odot|uta|n from odotta|a (wait), sometimes UUttA- : UUtA-, as in pel|uutta|a
from pelat|a : pelaa|n (play); the last example can be seen as an irregular
variant of the less common regular derivation pela|utta|a.
Theoretically, a causative verb can have a causative derivation.
Anecdotally, people refer to verb sequences like teh|dä : tee|n (to do), tee|ttä|
ä (to have something done), tee|tä|ttä|ä (to make somesome have something
done), tee|tä|t|yttä|ä etc. In practice, this is just anecdotal. The verb teetättää
is frowned upon by language authorities, but if used, it means the same as
teettää. Similarly, the verb viivästää (to delay) has the passive derivation
viivästyä (to be delayed), which in turn has the causative derivation
viivästyttää, which is really just a synonym for viivästää (and accepted in
standard language, somewhat illogically).
In Finnish, many verbs that express human emotions or reactions are
causative by their derivation. For example, the expression Minua väsyttää
(I’m tired) contains a causative derivation of the verb väsyä (to become
tired), so that the expression, with an implied subject, says that there is
something (or someone) that causes me to become tired. This, of course, is
just the origin of the expression; the verb väsyttää is now regarded simply as
meaning to be tired. Similar expressions include Minua nukuttaa (I’m sleepy;
literally: something is making me sleep) and Minua suututtaa (I’m angry),
with the base verbs nukkua : nukun (to sleep) and suuttua : suutun (to get
angry).
On the other hand, e.g. nukuttaa also has a simple causative meaning, and
it is used about lulling a baby to sleep and about anesthesizing a patient. (In
the latter meaning, it is still used in everyday language, though in medicine,
antaa yleisanestesia “to give general anesthesia” is used.)
A causative derivation can be regarded as the active part in a pair of an
active and passive verb, as described in section Passive verbs. For example,
juoda can be seen as the passive counterpart to juottaa.
Causative verbs have some specialties in syntax, described in section
Syntax of causation.

Frequentative verbs
The suf ixes ellA : ele- (or for some verbs illA : ile-) and its extended forms
skellA : skentele- and skennellA : skele- are used to derive frequentative verbs.
They mean performing the action expressed by the base verb frequently or
continuously. A simple example is kysellä : kyselen (to ask questions), derived
from kysyä : kysyn (to ask); it simply means repeated action of asking. From
istua : istun (to sit) we get istuskella : istuskelen (to sit about [frequently in
some places]; to sit back [doing something]).
For some verbs, both the ellA ~ illA suf ix and the eskennellA suf ix can be
used, possibly with no clear difference in meaning. For example, from olla :
olen we get both oleilla : oleilen and oleskella : oleskelen, which both mean
staying around for some time, though the former might speci ically refer to
spending one’s time without doing any work. For most verbs, however, just
one of these suf ixes is in use.
For many verbs, these suf ixes also imply re lexive or reciprocal meaning.
That is, the action may have its subject as the implied object, or the verb may
express mutual action. For example, from harjoittaa (to practice; to exercise)
we get harjoitella, which means practicing in some sport or skill, implying
both repeated action and practicing oneself.
Many derivations of this type have a more or less specialized meaning and
need not have any frequentative or continuative meaning. From rakastaa :
rakasta- (to love), the verb rakastella : rakastele- (to make love) has been
derived, and it means sexual intercourse that need not be repeated or
continued. From vääntää : väännä- (to turn, to wind, to twist), we get
väännellä : vääntele-, which may have a concrete meaning (to repeated turn
something), but more often it has a igurative meaning, as in Hän väänteli
sanojani (He twisted/distorted my words).
There are also verbs that apparently contain one of these suf ixes but have
no real base word. For example, suudella : suutele- (to kiss) could be analyzed
as a derivation of suutaa : suuda- (which would be related to suu “mouth”),
but no such verb is known.
Due to the great variation in meanings, verbs of these types need to be
learned separately. If you see a word like vastustella and you do not know it,
you might guess that it is a derivative of vastustaa : vastusta- (to oppose) and
think that it could mean “to oppose repeatedly, to resist”. And here your guess
would be right, but it would be better to check it from a dictionary. If you
similarly thought that arvostella, being a derivative of arvostaa (to
appreciate, to respect), means repeated appreciation, you would guess
wrong; it means criticizing, often implying negative (unfavorable) rather than
positive criticism. The explanation is that arvostaa, derived from arvo
(value), generally means giving some value to something, estimating the
value of something.
Derivations of proper names
A few suf ixes can be used to derive adjectives and nouns from proper names:
lAinen and mAinen.
The lAinen suf ix can be used to derive adjectives for inhabitants of an
area or a place, but also for more abstract relations, often expressed in
English with “-ian” derivations. For example, italialainen, derived from Italia
(Italy) means “Italian” and einsteinlainen (~ einsteinilainen) means
“Einsteinian”, i.e. related to Einstein’s theories
However, many words based on proper names have been taken from other
languages so that they already include a derivational suf ix, e.g. aristoteelinen
(from Swedish “aristotelisk”), cf. Aristoteles (Aristotle) and gregoriaaninen
(Gregorian), cf. Gregorius (Gregory). Thus, such words are not derivations of
proper names from the viewpoint of the Finnish language. However, the
adjectives contain the Finnish suf ix nen (or inen), which is the in lected part
of the word, e.g. aristoteelinen : aristoteelisen. Such words are not capitalized
in Finnish, except of course they have been assigned as proper names. Thus,
savolainen as an adjective, meaning an inhabitant of the Savo region, is not
capitalized, but Savolainen used as a surname is capitalized.
On the other hand, Finnish often uses the genitive of a proper name rather
any adjective. For example, “Newtonian mechanics” is Newtonin mekaniikka
in Finnish; here Newtonin is just the genitive of the name Newton.
The mAinen suf ix indicates similarity. For example, einsteinmainen
means “Einstein-like”. A mainen derivation may also have the meaning
“typical of...”, “that we can/could expect from...”, so e.g. linnamainen could
refer to something that Linna (perhaps Väinö Linna, the author) could have
used, but also to something tha resembles Linna in some sense.

61. Sample derivations

To illustrate word derivation in Finnish, the following list contains direct and
indirect derivations of the word äly (brains, intellect, intelligence). The list is
not exhaustive. It contains the direct derivations in alphabetic order and
then, under each of them, indirect derivations based on it, etc. Normal
dictionaries do not contain all of these derivations, but they are all in actual
use, though perhaps rare.
älykkö intellectual person
 älykkömäinen that looks/is like an intellectual person,
intellectual-like
älykkömäisyys property of looking/being like an intellectual
person
älykäs intelligent
älykkyys intelligence
älykkäästi intelligently
älyllinen intellectual
älyllisyys intellectuality
älyllistää to intellectualize
älyllistyä to be intellectualized
älyllistyminen act/process of being intellectualized
älyllistäjä a person who intellectualizes
älyllistäminen intellectualization
älyllistämätön not intellectualized; not intellectualizing
älymystö intelligentsia, the highbrown
älytä to grasp, to realize, to understand
älyäminen act/process of grasping
älyämätön that does not grasp
älyämättömyys the fact that someone does not grasp
älytön senseless, foolish
älyttömyys senselessness, foolishness
älyttömästi senselessly, foolishly

The word äly has got new meanings in modern times, referring to “intellect”
in computers and systems. Thus, e.g. älypuhelin is often used to mean “smart
phone”. Such changes have also affected the meanings of derivations. For
example, in modern language, one may refer to liikenteen älyllistyminen to
express how traf ic has been “intellectualized”, made “smarter”, in the sense
of being monitored and controlled by more and more advanced automatic
systems.

62. Derived vs. compound words

The distinction between derived and compound words is not always clearcut.
The following types of words have properties of both:
 Derivations with the suf ix mAinen, e.g. kidemäinen (crystal-like). The
suf ix is appended to the nominative of the base word, e.g. kide, instead of
the in lection stem like kitee-, or to the compositive form when available,
e.g. maalaismainen from maalainen.
Derivations with the suf ix lAinen denoting a person have similar
properties, e.g. eläkeläinen is base on the nominative eläke, not on the
in lection stem eläkkee-. However, there is some variation in this, e.g.
nurmeslainen ~ nurmeksalainen, from Nurmes : Nurmeksen.
Compound words with lainen as the second part are of different origin
and mean “of the kind of…”. They have the irst part usually in the
genitive, e.g. kaikenlainen (of any kind), minkälainen (of what kind). In
them, the second part is originally lajinen, based on laji (species, kind). In
some of them, the inal n of the irst part has been assimilated, e.g.
tuollainen, though this assimilation is not always indicated in writing, e.g.
kaikenlainen may be pronounced kaikellainen. Since these words do not
obey vowel harmony, at least in writing (though tällainen may be
pronounced tälläinen), they are best classi ied as compounds.
Words ending with moinen are similar to compounds with lainen. They
mostly do not obey vowel harmony, and the irst part is in the genitive,
e.g. suurenmoinen, except for aikamoinen. They are logically compound
words but often understood as derivations. They are treated as
compounds in orthography: it has nm even though the pronunciation is
[mm]. However, if the irst part (stem) has only one syllable, mm is
written: semmoinen, tuommoinen, tämmöinen (where the irst part is tän,
a short form of tämän).
Words ending with läntä, e.g. lyhyenläntä (rather short), are best
classi ied as compounds on similar grounds, even though läntä does not
appear as a separate word.

Compound words

63. Principles of word composition

Closed and open compounds
In Finnish, nouns are very often put together to produce a compound word
(closed compound, yhdyssana in Finnish). Often this corresponds to using
two words (open compound, sanaliitto in Finnish) in English. For example,
from kivi (stone) and muuri (wall) we can form kivimuuri (stone wall).
Compound words are often written as two words (kivi muuri), but this is
clearly substandard.
In Finnish, you can use a compound that nobody else has used before and
yet have yourself understood, if the meaning can be inferred from meanings
of the components. You could write kivimuuriongelma and have this
understood as meaning “stone wall problem”. Coining a new compound word
need not be any more special than using two words in succession in English
—except that long words may be somewhat more dif icult to read and
understand.
The word kivimuuriongelma is an example of a nested compound, i.e. a
closed compound that has a closed compound as its constituent.

Types of closed compounds

In the vast majority of compound words in Finnish, the irst part is
determinative or restrictive: it restricts the denotations of the compound to
some subset of the denotations of the second part. For example, kivimuuri
refers to those walls that are made of stone.
Some types of compounds refer to something different, however. For
example, pitkätukka, from pitkä (long) and tukka (hair) does not mean hair at
all, but a long-haired person. (Instead, the open compound pitkä tukka means
simply “long hair”.) Compounds of this type are called bahuvrihi in
linguistics. A more common type in Finnish is similar but has the inen suf ix
appended: pitkätukkainen. However, the shorter compound is used when the
construct is part of closed compound, e.g. pitkätukkapoika (long-haired boy);
but the open compound pitkätukkainen poika is possible, too.
In some compounds, the parts are coordinated, and the compound refers
to the “sum” of the parts in some sense, e.g. parturi-kampaaja (barber-
hairdresser). See section Copulative compounds.

Stress in compounds
A compound is pronounced so that the irst syllable of the second part has
secondary stress. However, substandard usage exists in this respect, too—
stressing both parts equally is not uncommon these days.
In principle, secondary stress versus primary stress distinguishes a closed
compound from an open compound, e.g. káupanpùrku versus káupan púrku.
Some words that are originally closed compounds are now treated as
simple words. For example, maailma (world) is originally a compound of maa
(earth) and ilma (air), but it is now pronounced without secondary stress
and mostly as mailma, with two syllables. Words with a single-syllable
pronoun form as the irst part are stressed as uncompound words, e.g.
séllainen and not séllàinen.

Open or closed compound?

Many compounds that have either an adjective or a genitive form of a noun as
the irst part could be treated as open or as closed. Typically the closed
compound has a more restricted, more speci ic meaning. For example, iso
lokki is a simple combination of an adjective and a noun and means just
“large gull”, whereas isolokki means a particular species, the glaucous gull.
Similarly, talon poika means “a/the son of a/the house”, whereas talonpoika
has a very specialized meaning: “yeoman, a peasant who owns his house and
farm”.
A closed compound with the irst part in the genitive often denotes a
general concept, whereas the corresponding open compound may have a
more concrete meaning. For example, kaupanpurku is a legal term for
annulment of a sale in general, whereas kaupan purku would normally be
used to refer to the annulment of a speci ic sale, so that it would be translated
as “the annulment of the/a sale”.
On the other hand, often the difference between a closed compound and
an open compound is just a matter of a rather arbitrary decision. There is
really no logical reason why we use kevytmaito (low-fat milk) as a closed
compound but rasvaton maito (fat-free milk) as an open compound;
generally, words derived with the tOn suf ix are rarely used as the irst part of
a closed compound.
There are special rules for writing two-word combinations that have a
pronoun as one part. The rules are meant to make written language more
stable and uniform, and they do not always re lect pronunciation.
Expressions that should be written as open compounds are often
pronounced as closed, i.e. with only secondary stress on the second part, or
even as single words with no secondary stress. For example, the correct
spelling is sen tähden (therefore, because of that), but it is common to
pronounce it as one word, sentähden, even without secondary stress on the
second syllable. The expression alun perin is seldom pronounced [álum
périn], usually it is [álumpèrin], and niin kuin is usually pronounced
[níiŋkuin] or, colloquially, shortened to [níiŋku].
The following list contains the recommended spellings for combinations
containing a pronoun and some other common problem cases. The tilde “~”
indicates that both alternatives are permitted. The rules have recently been
changed in some cases to a more permissive direction, so spelling checkers
may reject some of these spellings.
aika lailla, aika tavalla, aina kun, aivan kuin, ajan mittaan, ajan oloon, ajan
tasalla, alaspäin ~ alas päin, alinomaa, alla mainittu, alla oleva, alla päin (in
low spirits), allapäin (on the underside), allekirjoittanut, alleviivattu, alun
alkaen, alun perin, ani harva, ani harvoin, ani varhain, arvossa pidetty,
asiaankuuluva ~ asiaan kuuluva, asianmukainen, asiantunteva, avopäin;
edellä mainittu, edellä oleva, edeltä käsin, edessäpäin, ehdoin tahdoin, ennen
kaikkea, ennen kuin, ennen pitkää, ensi alkuun, ensin mainittu, ensi sijassa, ensi
silmäyksellä, ensi tilassa, ensi vuonna, ensisijainen, eri lailla, eri tavalla, eri
tavoin, eri toten, erityyppinen, esiin tullut, eteenpäin ~ eteen päin;
harhaanjohtava (misleading, deluding), harhaan johtava (leading astray),
heti kun, huiskin haiskin, hujan hajan, huomioon ottaen, hyväksi käyttäminen,
hyväksikäyttö, hädin tuskin, hällä väliä;
ikään kuin, ilmi elävä ~ ilmielävä, ilmiriita ~ ilmi riita, itse asiassa, itse
kukin, itsestään selvä (~ itsestäänselvä);
joka päivä, jokapäiväinen, joka tapauksessa, jollain tavoin, jompikumpi,
jonka jälkeen, jonkin aikaa, jonkin verran, jotenkuten, juurta jaksaen,
jälkeenjäänyt (surviving; retarded), jälkeen jäänyt (fallen behind), jälkeenpäin
~ jälkeen päin, jälkikäteen;
kahden kesken, kahdenkeskinen, kaiken kaikkiaan, kaikenlainen, kaikin
puolin, kaksi kertaa, kaksinkertainen, kerta kaikkiaan, kertakaikkinen, kesken
jäänyt, kesken kaiken, kipin kapin, koko ajan, koko lailla, kotiinpäin ~ kotiin
päin, kotoapäin ~ kotoa päin, kotonapäin ~ kotona päin, kummin päin ~
kumminpäin, käsin kirjoitettu, käänteentekevä;
loppujen lopuksi, lukuun ottamatta, läpinäkyvä, läsnä oleva, läsnä ollessa,
läsnäolija, läsnäolo;
 maanosa (continent), maan osa (part of a country), mielin määrin,
minkälainen, minkä takia, minkä tähden, minkä vuoksi, minnepäin ~ minne
päin, missäpäin ~ missä päin, mitenkuten, miten päin, mitä varten, monin
verroin, muitta mutkitta, mukaan lukien, mukaan luettuna, muun muassa,
muunlainen;
niin ikään, niin kauan kuin, niin kuin, niin kutsuttu, niin ollen, niin pian kuin,
niinpäin ~ niin päin, niin sanottu, nimenomaan, nipin napin, nurinpäin ~ nurin
päin, näin ollen, näinpäin ~ näin päin;
ohi menevä (bypassing), ohimenevä (passing, transitory), oikeinpäin ~
oikein päin, olemassa oleva, olemassaolo, osaa ottava (participating),
osaaottava (sympathetic), osanotto, osanottaja;
paikan päällä, paikka paikoin, perinpohjainen, perin pohjin, perästäpäin ~
perästä päin, pikkuhiljaa (~ pikku hiljaa), pikkujuttu ~ pikku juttu, pikkutyttö ~
pikku tyttö, poikkipäin, pois lukien, poispäin ~ pois päin, poissa oleva (absent),
poissaoleva (absent-minded), poissaolo, puheena oleva, puolikymmentä,
puolisataa, puolituhatta, puoli tusinaa, päinvastoin (~ päin vastoin),
päälläpäin ~ päällä päin, päältäpäin ~ päältä päin, päätäpahkaa;
ristiin rastiin;
samanaikainen, saman alan, saman tien, saman verran, sanoin kuvaamaton,
selvin päin, sen jälkeen, senkaltainen ~ sen kaltainen, sen sijaan, sen takia,
sentapainen ~ sen tapainen, sen tähden, sen verran, sen vuoksi, sielläpäin ~
siellä päin, siellä täällä, sieltäpäin ~ sieltä päin, sikin sokin, silloin kun, silloin
tällöin, sillä aikaa kun, sillä lailla, sillä puolella, sillä puolen, sillä tavoin kuin,
sillä välin kun, silmällä pitäen, sinnepäin ~ sinne päin, sinne tänne, sisäänpäin
~ sisään päin, sitten kun, sitä kautta, sitä mukaa kuin, sitä paitsi, sitä varten,
sitä vastoin, sivumennen, suin päin, suomen kieli, suomenkielinen, suoraa
päätä, suuntaa antava, suurin piirtein;
taaksepäin ~ taakse päin, takanapäin ~ takana päin, tervetuloa (~ terve
tuloa), tervetullut, tieten tahtoen, toden teolla, toimeenpaneva, toimeenpano,
toisinpäin ~ toisin päin, toissa päivänä, toissapäiväinen, toissa vuonna, totta
kai, tuiki tavallinen, tuiki tärkeä, tuolla puolella, tuolla puolen, tuonnepäin ~
tuonne päin, tuota pikaa, tähän asti, tähänastinen, tällä kertaa, tällä lailla,
tällä tavoin, tällä puolella, tällä puolen, tämän jälkeen, tämän vuoksi, tänne
asti, tännepäin ~ tänne päin, täälläpäin ~ täällä päin, töin tuskin;
ulkoapäin ~ ulkoa päin, ulospäin ~ ulos päin, umpimähkään, uraauurtava,
uudenaikainen;
 valantehnyt ~ valan tehnyt, varta vasten, viime aikoina, viimeaikainen, viime
hetkellä, viimekertainen, viimeksi mainittu,viime kuussa, viime viikolla, viime
vuonna, viimevuotinen, voimassa oleva, voimassaolo, vuoden mittaan, vuoron
perään, vähän väliä, väärin päin ~ väärinpäin;
yhtaikaa, yhteen menoon, yhtä aikaa, yhtäaikainen, yhtä hyvin, yhtä kaikki,
yhtäkkiä, yhtä kuin, yhtä lailla, yhtä mittaa, yhtä suuri, yksinomaan,
ylhäältäpäin ~ ylhäältä päin, yllin kyllin, yllä mainittu, yllä oleva, yltä päältä,
ylösalaisin, ylöspäin ~ ylös päin, ynnä muut, yötä päivää;
äsken mainittu ~ äskenmainittu.
See also section Word-speci ic intensi iers, which lists a number of
expressions like upouusi and ypö yksin, where the irst part usually has no
meaning as a separate word.

Nominative in irst past makes the compound

closed
With few exceptions, the irst part of an open compound cannot be a noun in
the nominative in Finnish. Writing a compound like kivimuuri as kivi muuri is
regarded as a grave mistake by many, as a typical symptom of not being able
to write Finnish properly. Yet, such mistakes are common.
However, some expressions are written as open compounds with the irst
word in the nominative. These include personal names (e.g. Jukka Korpela),
some combinations of a title and a name (johtaja Virtanen “director
Virtanen”), and some combinations involving an adjective that has no
in lection (poika parka “poor boy”, also written poikaparka). See Congruence.

Compound verbs
Usually the second part of a closed compound is a noun or an adjective, less
often a verb. Most compound verbs have been formed to correspond to a
compound noun. For example, koeajaa (to give a trial run) corresponds to
koeajo (trial run), from koe (test, experiment) and ajo (run), which is derived
from ajaa (to run). Old style guides recommended against such verbs and
suggested expressions like ajaa kokeeksi instead, but without much success.
There are few genuine compound verbs that are formed directly from an
adverbial and a verb, such as ristiinnaulita (to crucify), from ristiin (to a cross,
illative of risti) and naulita (to nail). This word has survived mostly due its
widespread use in religious language and igurative use.
 In compounds consisting of an adverbial and a verb, the adverbial is
usually an adverb, as in allekirjoittaa, laiminlyödä, läpikäydä, yhteensovittaa.
Except for some compounds with a specialized meaning, such as
allekirjoittaa (to sign; literally: to under-write), a different expression can
alternatively be used and is often regarded as better style: the simple verb
followed by the adverbial, e.g. lyödä laimin (to neglect), käydä läpi (to go
through), sovittaa yhteen (to adjust things to make them it). However, a
name of action is formed as if it were a derivation of the compound verb, e.g.
laiminlyönti, läpikäynti, yhteensovittaminen (or yhteensovitus).
A different example is epäonnistua (to fail), from epä- (a negative pre ix)
and onnistua (to be successful), though it can also be classi ied as a verb with
a pre ix. Historically, epä is a participle of the negation verb ei, but in modern
language, it is used only in a pre ix-like manner.

64. The case form of the irst part

Possible cases
The irst part of a closed compound is usually in the nominative case or in the
genitive case. Instead of the nominative, a special compositive form is used, if
the word has such a form. The rules for nominative vs. genitive case are
described in the next subsection.
Any other case form, except the comitative, may appear, too. However, they
are normally used only when the second part names an action and the irst
part consists describes the location or other properties of the action, e.g.
työssäoppiminen, also written työssä oppiminen (learning at work).

Nominative vs. genitive

The irst part of a closed compound is in the genitive when some of the
following conditions is met:
The irst part expresses the object of the action expressed by the second
part, e.g. tienrakennus (road construction, from tie “road” and rakennus
“construction, building”) and kaupanpurku (annulment of a sale).
The irst part expresses the agent of the action expressed by the second
part, e.g. linnunlaulu (bird song, from lintu “bird” and laulu “song,
 singing”). This is relatively rare, because usually open compounds
(linnun laulu or, with plural, lintujen laulu) are used instead.
The irst part speci ies a context to which the second part belongs, e.g.
tienpinta (surface of the road; pinta means “surface”).
The irst part otherwise speci ies who or what possesses (concretely or
abstractly) the thing expressed by the second part. For example,
kansanedustaja (member of parliament) has the word kansa (people) in
the genitive, since the compound means “representative of the people”.
Compare this with kauppaedustaja (trade representative), which has has
kauppa (trade, sale) in the nominative, since it is not a matter of
representing trade but rather representing a company in trade.
Otherwise, the nominative or the compositive form is used, as a rule. The
nominative indicates that the irst part determines the second part in some
other way than those described above. For example, in kirjakauppa (book
shop) it tells what the shop sells, and in alkupalkka (starting salary, literally:
start salary) it tells what situation the salary applies to.
However, there are many exceptions, especially in old vocabulary.
Moreover, it is often dif icult so say how an expression should be analyzed.
The nominative might be used when there is no compelling need to use the
genitive.
If the irst part is in the nominative, it is always in singular—even when
the word is otherwise used in plural only, e.g. hääkutsu “wedding invitation”,
even though we otherwise use häät (wedding) in plural.
If the irst part is in the genitive, it is usually in singular, even when
meaning is plural, e.g. sairaanhoitaja (nurse; literally: sick’s caretaker). In
some terms, there is variation, e.g. viruksentorjunta ∼ virustentorjunta (virus
protection).

65. In lection of compounds

Normally only the last part of a compound word is in lected, e.g. kivitalo :
kivitalossa, koeajaa : koeajoin.
A compound verb is sometimes split in in lection, if the irst part is an
adverbial. For example, even if the compound yhteensovittaa is used in
in initive and partitive forms, like yhteensovitettu, it is often split in inite
forms. It is much more natural and more accepted to say Sovitin laitteen osat
yhteen than Yhteensovitin laitteen osat.
 If the irst part of a compound is an adjective in the nominative, there are
three possible in lection principles:
1. Only the second part is in lected, e.g. isoisä : isoisälle.

2. Both parts are in lected, e.g. omatunto :

omantunnon.
The in lection type is indicated in Finnish dictionaries, but in different ways.
Suomen kielen perussanakirja and Kielitoimiston sanakirja describe principle
3 words as having two possible in lection types. In the older Nykysuomen
sanakirja, principle 3 is an in lection type (number 85). Often neither
alternative has a clear majority. Moreover, dictionaries cannot cover all
compounds, such as the large set of names of species of organisms. They
normally belong to type 3 especially if the irst part is a name of a color in the
nominative, e.g. mustatorvisieni : mustissatorvisienissä ~ mustatorvisienissä.
In compounds with an adjective as the irst part, it is increasingly common
to leave that part unin lected. This is re lected in language standards. In
newer dictionaries, e.g. harmaahaikara is described so that only the second
part is in lected (principle 1) and isoveli as following principle 3, while earlier
dictionaries specify principle 2, isoveli : isolleveljelle.

66. Hyphens in compounds

Usually a closed compound is written as a single word without any character
between the parts. However, a hyphen is used inside a word in the following
situations:
The second part starts with the same vowel as the irst part end with, e.g.
linja-auto (bus). Note that a hyphen is not used between identical
consonants, e.g. syyssateet, consisting of the parts syys and sateet.
The compound is copulative, as explained later, e.g. suomalais-
ruotsalainen (Finnish–Swedish).
Either of the parts is a proper name, e.g. Helsingin-matka (trip to
Helsinki). However, some of such compounds are written without a
hyphen and in all lower case, since they have turned to common words
(appearing in dictionaries), e.g. dieselmoottori (diesel engine),
ranskanleipä (French bread). The hyphen is omitted if a new word is
 derived from a compound, e.g. Etelä-Eurooppa (South Europe) but
eteläeurooppalainen (South European).
The irst part is written with digits or is a special character, e.g. 42-
miehinen (with 42 men), @-merkki (@ sign).
The irst part is an abbreviation, e.g. EU-jäsenyys (EU membership).
However, if it is an abbreviation that ends with a period and is meant to
be read as the full word, no hyphen is used, according to current rules, e.g.
puh.joht. = puheenjohtaja (chairman).
The irst part is a foreign word that makes the word dif icult to read
without a hyphen, e.g. go-peli (the game of go), par-tulos (par result). In
practice, the parts might be well known to the intended audience, but the
hyphen makes the structure more evident, so this rule might be seen as a
special case of the following.
In some words to indicate the structure of the word and to avoid
misunderstandings. This is a vague rule and rarely applied, but it makes it
possible, in principle, to distinguish e.g. between the compound laulu-ilta
(song evening) and the non-compound lauluilta (ablative plural of laulu
“song”).

A hyphen is also used at the start or end of a word in some contexts where
the word is part of a larger expression. For example, etunimi ja sukunimi ( irst
name and surname) can be written and pronounced etu- ja sukunimi. The
hyphen does not affect pronunciation; it just indicates visually that here etu
is not an independent word but part of a compound, just so that the second
part, here nimi, is omitted, or more exactly shared with the next word. The
term “suspended compound” is sometimes used about such constructs.
Similarly, the irst part of a compound may be shared with the preceding
word the same way, e.g. syntymäaika ja -paikka = syntymäaika ja
syntymäpaikka. In expressions like this, the part -paikka is pronounced with a
main stress, even though it is logically a second part of a compound and
would otherwise have secondary stress only.
Special rules apply when a part of a compound consists of two (or more)
words, as in Alfa Romeo -autot. see section Open compound as part of closed
compound.

67. Nested compounds

A compound word may appear as a component of a compound, and this is
rather common. For example, from the words vehnä (wheat), jauho ( lour),
and pussi (bag) we can form vehnäjauhopussi. It is interpreted so that the
parts are vehnäjauho and pussi, simply because this is the only sensible
interpretation, given the meanings of the words. It is rather rare that a nested
compound is genuinely ambiguous so that that it can be divided into two
major parts in different ways.
In a nested compound, the irst syllable of second major part has
secondary stress, e.g. véhnäjauhopùssi. A part that is itself a compound word
may have a third-level stress. Thus, if we denote 1st, 2nd, and 3rd level stress
by superscript digits after a stressed vowel, the pronunciation would be
ve¹hnäja³uhopu²ssi. However, the pronunciation may be simpler, with just
two secondary stresses: véhnäjàuhopùssi.

68. Compositive forms

The concept of a compositive form
Many words have a special form used as the irst part of a closed compound
instead of the nominative. As a common example, nouns and adjectives
ending with nen normally have a compositive form ending with s instead of
nen. For example, ihminen (human being) has the compositive form ihmis,
appearing in words like ihmiskunta (mankind) and ihmissuhde (personal
relationship). Irregular compositive forms include syys of syksy (autumn), e.g.
in syyskuu (September; literally “autumn month”) and viher of vihreä (green),
e.g. viheralue (park or green belt; literally “green area“).
A compositive form like hevos does not appear otherwise. Some
compositive forms may appear as independent words, e.g. syys as a poetic
variant of syksy, in the nominative.
Compositive forms exist in many other languages as well. For example, the
English word “democracy” is based on the Greek word “dēmokratía”, which is
a compound with the irst part in a compositive form “dēmo” (as opposite to
the nominative form “dêmos”),
Many compositive forms are just shortened forms or otherwise
explainable on phonetic grounds. However, Finnish has many different types
of compositive forms.
 Compositive forms are not used in compounds that refer to a word, such
as hevonen-sana (the word hevonen), or otherwise contains an expression as
quotation of a kind, e.g. Jättiläinen-elokuva (the movie with the name
Jättiläinen).

The change -nen : -s

Both nouns and adjectives ending with nen have a compositive form where
the ending is changed to s, e.g. nainen : nais- (woman). The compositive form
is the same as the consonant stem of the word, as appearing e.g. in the
partitive singular like nais|ta. For words of this type, it is really the
nominative singular that is exceptional; all other forms have ise or is instead
of nen.
As an exception, such compositive forms are not used in some geographic
names such as Punainenmeri (the Red Sea). Such names are arti icial
creations, the result of a rule that was adopted in the late 20th century:
writing geographic names and many other terms as closed compounds,
instead of earlier open compounds like Punainen meri.
Another exception is that words ending with -kertainen are not used as the
irst part of a compound at all. Some of them, relating to small numbers, have
special compositive counterparts: yksinkertainen (single, simple) : yksöis-,
kaksinkertainen : kaksois-, kolminkertainen : kolmois-, e.g. kolmoispiste (triple
point). Sometimes even nelois- is used, for nelinkertainen.
The compositive forms alkeis- (elementary) and itseis- (absolute) are
special in the sense that the corresponding independent words alkeinen and
itseinen are just theoretical. These compositive forms were once constructed
to replace the international words elementaarinen and absoluuttinen.

Use of singular for plural words

In a sense, the use of singular instead of plural is a compositive form for
words that are otherwise used in plural only, called plurale tantum words.
For example, häät (wedding) is always used in plural, except in compounds
like hääkakku (wedding cake).
If the singular form ended with nen, a compositive form ending with s is
used instead. Thus, the word hautajaiset (funeral) is always used in plural as
an independent word, and even in compound words, the theoretical singular
form hautajainen is not used. Instead, the compositive form hautajais- is
used, e.g. hautajaispuhe (funeral oration).
Omission of suf ix
Many words that normally contain some derivational suf ix appear without
that suf ix in a compositive form. This applies to color names like valkoinen :
valko-, sininen : sini-, punainen : puna-, and keltainen : kelta-. Thus, we say
punainen lintu (a red bird) but punavarpunen (a bird species, scarlet
grosbeak; literally “red-sparrow”). Words like sini and puna appear as
independent words, too, but in a different meaning: as nouns denoting
pigments.
Several word stems do not appear as independent words in the base form
at all, but appear in a few in lected forms and as compositive forms. They
include the stems of locational adverbs such as ulko- (used in ulkona, ulkoa,
ulos), which appears in many compounds like ulkopuoli and ulkoministeriö.
We can say that ala-, esi-, jälki-, keski-, lähi-, taka-, ulko-, and ylä- are
compositive forms of the adverbs alla, edellä, jäljessä, keskellä, lähellä, takana,
ulkona, and yllä or their relatives alle, alta, etc. In addition, kauko- (with the
vowel -a changed to -o) is the compositive of kaukana, kaukaa, or kauas, and
etu- can be seen as the compositive of edessä (which has the stem ete-), e.g.
etuovi (front door).
The word täsmällinen (exact) is a derivation of täsmä, which does not
appear as such as an independent word, but is used as a compositive form,
e.g. in täsmävaaka and täsmäase. Similarly, pika- (fast, express) can be
regarded as the compositive of pian (soon) or pikainen (rapid) and äkki-
(abrupt, sudden) as the compositive of äkkiä (abruptly) or äkillinen.
Omission of a suf ix is regular for international words that end with
aalinen or iivinen: the nen part is omitted, e.g. sosiaalinen – sosiaalihuolto,
aktiivinen – aktiiviura. However, in copulative compounds, the normal
compositive form ending with s is used, e.g. sosiaalis-taloudellinen
(socioeconomic).

Omission of inal sound

When a word ends with a vowel in the nominative, it may lose that vowel
when it appears as the irst part of a compound. For example, the adjectives
suuri, pieni, and uusi often appear as suur-, pien-, and uus-. This is not
systematic, but it is common when the second part is a noun, e.g.
suurkaupunki (large city).
 Apart from the adjectives mentioned above, this phenomenon, called
apocope in linguistics, mostly appears in proper names only, e.g. Haapoja
(compound of haapa and oja).
Consonant omission may appear in the word kohtuus (fairness,
reasonableness), e.g. kohtuuhinta (reasonable price), but not in all
compounds.

Truncation
Sometimes several sounds are omitted from the end of a word, and this
cannot be described as omission of a suf ix. Such truncation is common with
some modern terms, and it often directly imitates foreign expressions. For
example, the word ekologinen has the compositive form eko-, much like
English “eco-” often stands for “ecological”. In Finnish, such compositive
forms can be used productively, e.g. ekotalo (ecological house).
Compositives of this type include afro-, bio-, euro-, geo-, neuro-, psyko- and
tekno-. They are sometimes ambiguous; e.g. euro- may refer to Europe, or the
European Union, or the euro currency.
A special compositive is kristi-, e.g. in kristikunta (Christendom). It looks
like a truncated form of kristitty or kristillinen, both meaning “Christian”, but
historically it comes from the Swedish form “Kristi”, which imitates the Latin
genitive form “Christi” (Christ’s).

Variation of inal vowel

In several old compounds, the last vowel of the irst part differs from the
vowel used in the word otherwise. This variation has no apparent logic, but
with the exception of the kolme : kolmi- case discussed later, the variation
consists of the change of -a or -ä to -o or -i. The following list covers most of
these compounds, except proper names: aitovieri, huhtikuu, iki-,jalkopohja,
jalkopää, karjopiha, kotomaa, kotoperäinen, lehmikarja, lehmihaka, pyörö-,
sikolätti, sikopaimen, sikotauti, sisikunta, sittipörriäinen, sittisontiainen. Most
of these words are rare in modern language and often poetic, except huhtikuu
(April) and the words beginning with iki- (e.g. ikiliikkuja, ikimuistoinen,
ikinuori, ikivanha) or pyörö- (e.g. pyöröhirsi), which is the compositive of
pyöreä (round). The compositive koto- corresponds to koti (home) in
meaning but is historically a form of its base word kota, which now means
only a Lapp hut or similar building.
 This phenomenon is an old feature of the language and no more
productive; for example, new compounds with sika (swine) do not use the
siko- form but the nominative, e.g. sikatalous. From the viewpoint of language
learning, it can thus be characterized just as an irregular feature of word
composition in a limited set of compounds.

Stem choice
Some words have alternate forms in the nominative, such as tuhat ~
tuhannen, askel ~ askele, kyynel ~ kyynele. For them, only the shorter form—
which is generally much more common anyway—is used as the irst part of a
compound word. However, for the word ainoa ~ ainut (only; solitary), the
ainoa form is normal, ainut just poetic, but in several compounds, ainut- is
much more common, e.g. ainutkertainen (one and only), ainutlaatuinen
(unique).

Stem extension with -s

A few compounds have their irst part in a form that has -s appended: herras-
(e.g. herrasmies “gentleman”), pappis- (e.g. pappisseminaari), pari (in
pariskunta “married couple”), päiväs- (in päiväsaikaan “in the daytime”),
rouvas- (e.g. rouvashenkilö), saarnas- (in saarnastuoli), talvis- (in talvisaikaan
“in winter time”), tiilis- (in tiiliskivi).

Other stem variation

The following table shows some more or less irregular compositives. Some of
them consist of a combination of changes described above, such as omission
of suf ix and change of inal vowel.
Word Compositive Meaning Use of compositive
aita aito- fence In a few words.
huhta huhti- burn-beaten Only in huhtikuu (April).
area
ikä iki- age In a few words, special
meaning.
irti irto- loose, separate Always.
 jalka jalko- foot In a few words.
kirjava kirjo- multi-colored Mostly.
koti koto- home In a few words.
lehmä lehmi- cow In a few words.
nyt nyky- now, present Always.
ruskea rusko- brown Often.
sika siko- swine In a few words.
sitta sitti- feces In a few words.
sota soti- war Only in sotisopa (armor).
syksy syys- autumn Mostly.
valkea valko- white Mostly.
vihreä viher- green Mostly.
For example, in most compounds where the irst part means “green”, the
compositive viher is used, e.g. viheralue, viherhuone, viherkasvi. But
compounds like vihreälehtinen (green-leaved) and vihreäsilmäinen (having
green eyes) have the basic form vihreä.
In proper names, there are many other compositive forms, such as
Leppiniemi, where the irst part leppi- is a compositive of leppä (alder).

Change of word
In a few compound words, the irst part corresponds to a completely
different word with the same meaning. For example, in emämaa (mother
country) and emolevy (mother board), emä- and emo- are used to mean
“mother”, instead of the normal word äiti. The words emä and emo are
original Finnish words for mother, but nowadays used in specialized contexts
only.
As an another example, the word väki normally means “people, crowd”,
but in many compounds, it has its old alternative meaning “strength”. E.g.
väkijuoma, literally “strength-beverage”, means strong alcoholic beverage,
and väkivalta, literally “strength-power”, means violence.
The word marras is an old word for “dead”, which is normally kuollut in
Finnish, but marras appears in a few compounds like marraskuu (November)
and marraskesi (scarfskin).
The adjectives pieni, pienoinen, and pikku all mean “small, little”, with
variation in style, so that only pieni belongs to normal prose style. However,
in compounds, they all appear, in the forms pieni- ~ pien-, pienois-, and pikku-,
without difference in style, just in distribution and partly in meaning. Usually
pienois- refers to something miniature, a reduced-size version of something,
and pikku- is often used in a completely neutral way to refer to e.g. a
relatively small-sized animal species such as pikkujoutsen (Bewick’s swan,
literally “small-swan”).

Compositives of numerals
Some basic numerals have compositive forms: kolme : kolmi- (3), neljä : neli-
(4), seitsemän : seitsen- (7), and kymmenen : kymmen- (10). Examples:
kolmivuotias (3 years old)
nelivuotias (4 yeard old)
seitsenvuotias (7 years old)
kymmenvuotias (10 years old)
However, these compositives are not used in numerals ending with -toista or
-kymmentä, unless the combined numeral itself is in the compositive form.
Thus, we have kolmetoista (13), but kolmitoistavuotias (13 years old).
If a numeral meaning 30, 40, or 70 appears in a compositive form, both of
its parts are in such a form, e.g kolmikymmenvuotias (30 years old).
However, regular nominative forms are rather common, e.g. kolmevuotias,
and they are accepted in standard language, too. In some words like
nelikulmio (rectangle), the compositive word is used always or almost always.
For numerals 20, 30,…, 90, regular forms (e.g. kuusikymmentäluku “sixties”)
are more common than the special forms (e.g. kuusikymmenluku).
The numerals for hundreds and thousands have compositive forms where
the second part is in the nominative instead of the partitive. In these forms,
the basic numeral too is in the compositive. For example, the compositive of
kaksisataa is kaksisata- and the compositive of kolmetuhatta is kolmituhat-.
However, these forms have become rare, and it is much more common to use
the nominative, e.g. viisisataavuotias instead of viisisatavuotias.
Ordinal numbers seldom appear as the irst part of a compound word. For
example, kolmas (third) appears in words like kolmaskertainen (one that has
committed something the third time) and kolmasluokkalainen (third-grader)
and in compound numerals like kolmastoista (13th). In most words, it is
represented by kolmos-, the compositive form of kolmonen, i.e. the name of
the digit “3”. For example, the third base in pesäpallo, a Finnish game
resembling baseball, is kolmospesä, and the third gear in a car is
kolmosvaihde. Thus, we can call quality levels of a product ykköslaatu,
kakkoslaatu, kolmoslaatu, neloslaatu—and there it probably ends.
In the few contexts where ordinal numbers appear in compound words
other than numerals, such as -luokkalainen words relating to grades (or
“classes” in Finnish terms) at school, the compositives ensi- and tois- or their
colloquial versuions eka- and toka- are used instead of ensimmäinen and
toinen.

Compositives of bahuvrihi type

As described in section Principles of word composition, Finnish has
compound types called bahuvrihi, consisting of an adjective and a noun, such
as lyhytjalka (short-legged), from lyhyt (short) and jalka (leg). Such
compounds, which have no derivational suf ixes, are much less common than
derivations with the -inen suf ix, like lyhytjalkainen. When such a word
appears as the irst part of a compound, the situation changes: a compositive
form of the bahuvrihi type is used.
For example, “long-tailed” is pitkähäntäinen in Finnish, from pitkä (long)
and häntä (tail); the bahuvrihi pitkähäntä would be possible, but basically
poetic. Yet, as the irst part of a compound e.g. in names of animal species,
only the bahuvrihi is used, e.g. pitkähäntäkenguru.

Nouns used as compositives of adjectives

Finnish has a large number of adjectives derived from nouns with the llinen
suf ix, such as taloudellinen (economic) from talous : talouden (economy).
They are normally not used as the irst part of a compound, except in
copulative compounds like taloudellis-poliittinen (economic and political).
Instead, it is common to use the base word instead as the compositive of its
derivation, so to say.
For example, we can say taloudellinen kasvu (economic growth), imitating
the English expression. In order to make the expression a single word, we
don’t use taloudelliskasvu but instead talouskasvu. Similarly, “royal” is
kuninkaallinen, derived from kuningas : kuninkaan (king), but “royal palm” is
kuningaspalmu. Generally, there are four ways to translate an English
expression with a word like “royal” as an attribute, though usually only one
or some of them are in actual use for a certain concept:
using an adjective as an attribute, e.g. kuninkaallinen laivasto (royal navy)
using a noun in the nominative as the irst part of a compound, e.g.
kuningashuone (royal house)
using a noun in the genitive as the irst part of a compound, e.g.
kuninkaanlinna (royal castle)
using a noun in the genitive as an attribute, e.g. kuninkaan asetus (royal
decree)

Compositives of verbs
A verb as such cannot appear as the irst component of a compound word in
Finnish. Instead, a verb is represented by a noun related to the verb or by a
special special compositive form based on the verb. For example, the word
elää (to live) may be represented by its derivation elämä (life), but also by the
form elin. The compound elintarvike means “food stuffs, groceries”; tarvike is
“material” or “equipment”. The confusing thing is that as a separate word elin
means “organ”, both in an anatomic sense and as an organizational concept,
but here it represents the verb elää. Another example is olinpaikka
“whereabouts”, literally “being-place”, since olin represents the verb olla “to
be” and paikka means “place”. It is just a coincidence that olin also appears as
a separate word, as a in lected form of the verb (meaning “I was”).
Compositives of verbs are not formed and used in a systematic way, but for
each verb, there is usually a limited set of alternatives in use, perhaps just
one. The alternatives can be divided into two major types: nouns derived
from verbs and compositive forms that do not appear as standalone words.
This division is somewhat arti icial. For example, in the word keittokirja
(cookbook), the irst part keitto logically represents the verb keittää (to
cook). The word keitto also appears as a standalone word, but in such use, it
normally means just “soup”. Thus, we can say that the same derivational
suf ix -o is used here in two very different meanings: to derive a noun with a
speci ic meaning somehow related to the verb and to create a compositive
form of the verb, representing the verb generally.
Different compositives may be in use for the same verb, usually with no
apparent logic. For example, for the verb syntyä (to be born), a large number
of compositives are in use: synnyin-, synnyntä-, synty-, syntymis-, syntymä-.
The most common is syntymä-, which also appears as a noun, meaning
“birth”. Most of the others are mainly used in old words where they have been
established and may have somewhat poetic tone. For example, syntymämaa
and synnyinmaa both mean “land of birth”, but the former tends to be an
objective designation, whereas the latter is more solemn or emotional.
All verbs (except the negation verb ei) have a -minen derivation, which
coincides in form with the IV in initive. This derivation has a regular
compositive form -mis-, which can in principle be always used. However,
more often, other compositive forms are more common, and the -mis- form
may even be just theoretical, partly because it is often inconveniently long.
Compare e.g. tulo-, the common compositive of tulla, with the theoretically
possible alternative tulemis-. However, -mis- forms are sometimes used to
emphasize that an action or activity is referred to, rather than its result. For
example, the verb järjestää (to order; to sort; to organize) normally has the
compositive järjestys-, but since järjestys is also noun meaning “order”, the
compositive järjestämis- may be used to refer to ordering rather than order.
Thus, järjestämisongelma is a problem with organizing or sorting something,
whereas järjestysongelma is a problem with order, a disturbance.
The following table shows derivational suf ixes that appear in compositive
forms of verbs. The table does not make a distinction between suf ixes that
are also used to derive nouns and suf ixes that appear in compositive forms
only. Some of the sample compounds could be interpreted as consisting of
just two nouns, so that e.g. in muistisääntö, the irst part would be the noun
muisti (memory) rather than a compositive form of muistaa (to remember).
Suf ix Sample verb Sample compound
-mA juo|da juomahimo
-ntA kasva|a kasvantaväärä
-e haasta|a haastemies
-i muista|a muistisääntö
-nti tupakoi|da tupakointikielto
-in ol|la olinpaikka
-O aja|a ajopuu
-kkO etsi|ä etsikkoaika
-mis- laskeutu|a laskeutumisaika
 -s masentu|a masennuskausi
-Os osta|a ostoskeskus
-Us huumat|a huumausaine
-U itke|ä itkuvirsi
-UU hakat|a hakkuutähteet

The suf ixes listed above are mostly productive, i.e. new words are formed
using them. However, in such use, the -in suf ix, though common in the
vocabulary, is probably not productive any more.
The following table presents composite forms of some very common
verbs.
Verb Compositive(s) Examples of compounds
alkaa alku-, alkamis- alkuhetki, alkamishetki
antaa anto-, antamis- antolainaus, antopäivä, antamispäivä
esittää esitys-, esittämis- esitysaika, esittämisaika
jäädä jäämä- jäämäluettelo
katsomis-, katsoma-, katsomistapa, katsomapaikka,
katsoa katse- katsekontakti
kuulua kuuluvuus- kuuluvuusalue
käynti-, käymis-,
käydä käymä- käyntiaskel, käymisastia, käymäpaikka
käyttöesine, käyttöjännite, käytinratas,
käyttää käyttö-, käytin-, käyte- käyteaine
mennä meno- menokyyti
näkö-, näkemis-,
nähdä näkemä- näköaisti, näkemiskyky, näkemäväli
olla olo-, olin-, olemis- olotila, olinpaikka, olinaika, olemismuoto
ottaa otto- ottoaika, ottolapsi
pitää pito- pitokausi, pitovaatteet
saada saanti-, saamis-, saantitodistus, saamisoikeus,
 saama- saamavekseli
saattaa saatto- saattoalus, saattomatka
sanoa sanonta-, sanoma- sanontatapa, sanomakello
suorittaa suoritus-, suorittamis- suoritusaika, suorittamisaika
tapahtuma-,
tapahtua tapahtumis- tapahtumahetki, tapahtumisjärjestys
tehdä teko- tekotapa
tietää tieto- tietokyky
tulla tulo- tulosatama

There is a much more comprehensive table of compositive forms of verbs in

an appendix.
The negation verb is very exceptional even in compounds. In old usage, its
compositive form is epä-, which is historically its present participle, e.g.
epätoivo (despair, literally “no-hope”). It often indicates active resistance or
failure to meet a norm. However, the inite form ei-, always with a hyphen, is
also used as a compositive form, to indicate simple negation. If we also
consider pre ixes that are part of a loanword, we can have a set of different
negations of some loanwords, like sosiaalinen (social): epäsosiaalinen
(asocial), ei-sosiaalinen (non-social), asosiaalinen, antisosiaalinen.

69. Copulative compounds

The concept
In most compounds, the irst part is logically an attribute of the second part,
restricting its meaning. In some types of compounds, the parts stand on an
equal basis; such compounds can be called copulative. Neither of the parts is
an attribute of the other; rather, they are used together. For example,
suomalais-amerikkalainen (Finnish-American) is something that is both
Finnish and American, like a ilm produced in cooperation. If the irst part
has a compositive form, as discussed in the preceding section, that form is
used, as in the example, instead of the basic form suomalainen.
 Sometimes a compound has more than two coordinated parts, e.g.
suomalais-amerikkalais-saksalainen (Finnish-American-German).
Copulative compounds are typically adjectives. Sometimes nouns are
combined e.g. to indicate a combined profession or role, as in parturi-
kampaaja (barber-hairdresser). Some names are copulative compounds, e.g.
Itävalta-Unkari (Austria-Hungary), but e.g. modern company names that
re lect fusions typically have special written form, e.g. TeliaSonera instead of
the more logical Telia-Sonera. Combinations of surnames are conventionally
written as copulative compounds, e.g. Virtanen-Lahtinen.

Spelling and pronunciation

The parts of a copulative compound are normally separated by a hyphen (not
an en dash “–”), and both parts have main stress on its irst syllable, e.g.
súomalais-ámerìkkalàinen. Thus, the construct acts phonetically as two
words, but it is written as one word.
However, such a compound is written with a hyphen only if the parts are
also similar in shape, not just parallel in meaning. Even though a word like
sosioekonominen (socio-economic) is logically copulative, it is written
without a hyphen. Pronunciation tends to follow the pattern of normal
compounds, i.e. the second part has only secondary stress.
Similarly, we write afroaasialainen, but the alternative word afrikkalais-
aasialainen (African-Aasian) is written with a hyphen and has primary stress
on both parts.
There are old compounds that are logically copulative but written and
pronounced as normal compounds, e.g. voileipä (sandwich, literally “butter-
bread”) and mustavalkea (black and white), ylösalas (up and down),
sinivalkoinen (blue and white), and similar color names.

Copulative compound as part of a compound

Expressions like “quality-price ratio” logically have a copulative compound as
their irst part. In Finnish, such an expression as a whole is treated as a
compound, but the written form varies a lot. The of icial rules allow two
different styles, hinta-laatusuhde, with a single hyphen, and hinta–laatu-
suhde, with an en dash and a hyphen. The latter is easier to understand and
corresponds better to the structure of the word. Words of this type are
typically pronounced with main stress with each of the primary constituents,
i.e. as if they were three words: hínta láatu súhde. It is possible to use genitive
attributes to avoid compounds of this type, e.g. hinnan ja laadun suhde, but
this is not common.
The spelling alternative with an en dash can be used when the dash
connects words that express participants in some sense. In words where the
irst part is a copulative compound expressing just e.g. ingredients, this is not
possible, and the only accepted spelling is as in liha-makaronilaatikko (meat
and macaroni casserole). When such words become common, they are often
pronounced as normal compounds, e.g. líhamàkarònilàatikko, and often
written without a hyphen.

70. Derivation-like compounds

Some compounds might be classi ied as derivations on the grounds that their
second part does not appear as a separate word in contemporary language.
The word älyniekka (a clever person, a genius) consists of äly (intellect) and
niekka, and the second part (which comes from the Russian word ending
“nik”) appears only as the second part of a handful of words. However, the
word is best regarded as a compound, partly because it has not adapted to
vowel harmony.
Many derivations ending with nen could be explained as compounds even
though the second part does not occur as an independent word (or if it does,
it has a different meaning). Words such as viisipaikkainen ( ive-seater)
represent a very productive word type. They are often described in
dictionaries as entries like the following (taken from a Finnish–English
dictionary):
paikkainen (yhdyss); neli∼ auto (lentokone ym) a four-seater
This means that the “word” paikkainen (often presented as -paikkainen)
occurs in compound words only (yhdyssanoissa), and it is explained only be
explaining a particular example of its use, nelipaikkainen.
Although such dictionary entries can be very helpful, such words are more
logically analyzed as derivations with two base words. Instead of treating
viisipaikkainen as a compound of viisi and paikkainen, we can regard it as a
derivation with suf ix inen and with two base words, viisi and paikka. Wecan
think that the logical base word is the open compound viisi paikkaa ( ive
seats), but in the compound context, the irst word appears in the
compositive form (if it differs from the dictionary form) and the second one
in the dictionary form: viisipaikka.
This analysis is more natural, since there many compounds with a
structure like viisipaikka, existing as independent words. For example,
harmaaparta (gray-bearded), from harmaa (gray) and parta (bear), is a
synonym for harmaapartainen, just stylistically different.
71. Open compound as part of closed
compound
When an open compound is the irst part of a closed compound, the parts of
the inner compound are separated by a space as usual, but a hyphen is
inserted at the start of the second part of the outer compound. For example,
combining the open compound avaimet käteen (literally “keys to hand”) and
the word sopimus (contract) we get avaimet käteen -sopimus (turn-key
contract). In pronunciation, each word, including the words of the open
compound, is pronounced separately, with main stress on its irst syllable,
though the irst and last word may have a somewhat stronger stress than the
middle word.
The hyphen in the written form is an an orthographic convention intended
to make the expression easier to read. It is often not applied; substandard
spellings like avaimet käteen sopimus are frequently seen.
The convention also applies to expressions like Tuntematon sotilas -
romaani, where the open compound is the name of a book or another work
and the second part is a general noun indicating the type of the work. The
name of the work can be longer, too. These expressions are often avoided by
using a different order like romaani Tuntematon sotilas or, more clearly,
romaani ”Tuntematon sotilas”, which structurally corresponds to English
expressions like “the novel The Unknown Soldier”. By convention, such
expressions are treated as open compounds.
If an open compound has an attribute that restricts or extends its
meaning, the expression as a whole is treated formally as a closed compound.
It is written with a space between the parts, but with a hyphen appended to
the irst part, e.g. Suur- San Francisco (Greater San Francisco). Such spellings
look odd to most people, so they are usually avoided. For example, instead of
Itä- Sri Lanka (Eastern Sri Lanka), one may write itäinen Sri Lanka, though
this is not quite accepted, or Sri Lankan itäosa (Eastern part of Sri Lanka).
You may ask what to do if both parts of a closed compound are open
compounds. Such expressions are rather unnatural, but they are needed in
some contexts, especially due to some odd naming conventions for products.
The of icial rule is that a hyphen is used either at the end of the irst part or
at the start of the second part. Thus, combining the trade name Arla Ingman
with the descriptive part rasvaton maito (fat-free milk), we should write
either Arla Ingman- rasvaton maito or Arla Ingman -rasvaton maito. Needless
to say, such conventions are not widely known and applied; in fact, the
manufacturer uses Arla Ingman Rasvaton Maito.
In old Finnish usage, a company name was used in the genitive, e.g. Valion
rasvaton maito, where Valio is a manufacturer name. Nowadays, companies
wish to use their company name or trade name as immutable, in the basic
form, and also wish to use a long product name as a trade mark.
In formal prose, it is probably best to use the exact written form of a
product name given by the manufacturer, no matter how much it violates the
general rules of the language.

72. Contractions
Contractions as fusion words
Contractions such as ettei, from että ei (that not), are written like compound
words, but they are really expressions of their own type. They are
pronounced like simple words, e.g. ettei has no secondary stress, and the
phonetic syllables are et and tei. In word division, both et-tei and ett-ei are
accepted, though such words are best left undivided.
The difference between legato pronunciation and a contraction is largely a
matter of de inition: do we treat two words as separate, just pronounced
together, or as fused together to form a single word?
In contractions, the second part does not usually adapt to vowel harmony.
We normally say jotteivät (= jotta eivät), though jotteivat is used, too.

Common contractions
In standard language, the following words form contractions with the
indicative form of the negation verb (en : et : ei : emme : ette : eivät): ehkä,
että, jotta, koska, miksi, mutta, siksi, vaikka. In the contraction, the inal vowel
of the irst word is lost, e.g. ehkei, ettemme.
For että and jotta, contractions are mostly automatic, i.e. take place
whenever the word is followed by the negation verb. However, a contraction
is sometimes avoided for stylistic reasons or for emphasis; e.g. että emme is
possible instead of ettemme, just not common. For the other words,
contractions are less automatic, but still used more often than not.
 Contraction is common, partly even automatic, also in cases where a short
word would appear between the contracting words. For example, it is
possible to say En tiennyt, että hän ei tule, but is more normal to contract että
and ei even “over” the word hän, yielding En tiennyt, ettei hän tule. Such
contractions are more common in written language than in speech.

Special contractions ellei and jollei

The words ellei and jollei, both meaning “if not” or “unless”, and their
in lected forms like ellen are historically contractions and act as contractions.
The irst parts do not appear in modern language as separate words. (The
word jolla exists, but in a different meaning, not as meaning “if”.)
These contractions are normally automatic: if a sentence would contain jos
ei (or jos en etc.), either ellei or jollei (or ellen or jollen etc.) is used instead.
There is no substantial difference between ellei and jollei. The former is
much more common. The latter might be seen as somewhat more emphatic.

Colloquial contractions
In spoken language, many other contractions appear, too, such as täällon =
täällä on. In speech, the words jos and kun often form contractions of a
different kind with the negation verb: instead of omission of a vowel, the inal
consonant is doubled. Examples: jossen = jos en, kunnet = kun et.
Thus, the conjunction jos (if) and the negation verb can be combined with
each other in three ways: ellei, jollei, and jossei, where the last one is
colloquial only. The uncontracted jos ei is possible, too, but normally not
used.

Nouns

73. The roles of cases in Finnish

Varying meanings
Nouns have an impressive number of cases in Finnish, and this is often seen
as a major dif iculty in learning the language. However, cases largely
correspond to prepositions in English, and learning a case is not very
different from learning a preposition.
Admittedly, case in lection has some complications. Learning which case
should be used in each context is comparable to learning to select the right
preposition in English. Just like we say “interested in…” in English, using
speci ically the preposition “in”, the corresponding Finnish word kiinnostunut
requires a speci ic case—the elative, with suf ix sta or stä—for the word
expressing the target of the interest. This does not mean that the elative
always corresponds to “in”; in fact, it much more often corresponds to “from”
or “about”.
Most cases in Finnish have mixed usage: they may have a speci ic concrete
meaning, but they are also used in many other meanings or simply as part of
a phrase. English uses phrases like “I fell in love with her” so that we may ask
why we use “with” here—after all, love can be one-sided. Similarly Finnish
uses phrases like Rakastuin häneen, and there is no logical reason for using
the illative case (häne|en) here; it’s just part of the phrase.
Since some verbs or other expressions often require a speci ic case for the
associated noun, all general descriptions of the meanings of cases are
unavoidably incomplete. For example, the concrete meaning of the elative is
locational: it corresponds to the English word “from”; e.g. Suomesta, the
elative of Suomi (Finland), means “from Finland”. However, the elative is often
used in other meanings, and one of them was mentioned above, e.g. Olen
kiinnostunut Suomesta. This has no concrete locational meaning, any more
than “in” has in the corresponding English sentence “I am interested in
Finland”.
The word rection is sometimes used to refer to a phenomenon where a
verb “requires” a particular case (or, in other languages, preposition) to be
used for an associated noun.
Much of the use of cases is described in dictionaries in descriptions and
examples of using verbs. For example, an entry for the verb kiinnostua (to
become interested in) describes how a noun in the elative is used with it.
Similarly, if you look up the word rakastua (to fall in love), you should see
that it is used with a word in the illative case, so that you can form a sentence
like Rakastuin Maijaan (I fell in love with Maija), using the illative form
Maijaan. Thus, there is usually no explicit statement about rection, but the
existence of rection can mostly be inferred from examples.

Grouping of cases
The cases in Finnish can be divided in three groups on structural grounds:
the grammatical cases (5 or 6), which mostly express grammatical
relations, e.g. distinguish the object of a clause from the subject
the locational cases (6), which have concrete meanings relating to
locations but also igurative use and several specialized purposes
the marginal cases (3), which are mostly used only in some phrases and
in special situations and can often be classi ied as adverbs
Three of the grammatical cases have some specialized locational use, as a
remainder of their origin: essive (-nA case), partitive (-A or -tA case), and
translative (-ksi case).

Frequency of usage
The cases have rather different frequencies of use:
the common cases nominative, genitive, and partitive, which cover about
70% of all occurrences
the medium-frequency cases: the essive, the translative, and the six
locational cases in the broad sense, as explained above, which cover most
of the rest; the frequencies per case vary from 1% to 7%
the three rare cases abessive, comitative, and instructive, which mostly
live in special phrases only; each of them has a frequency of about 0.1% to
0.3%, though the frequency of the instructive can be about 2%,
depending on the interpretation of a set of words as adverbs versus
instructive forms
the accusative, with about 0.1% frequency, of debatable status in the case
system.

About the dif iculty of learning cases

Language learners certainly have dif iculties with Finnish cases, but the
dif iculties have often been exaggerated. In order to read very simple texts in
Finnish, like menus of restaurants, texts in product packages, and proper
names, it mostly suf ices to recognize just three common cases: the
nominative (no suf ix in the singular), the partitive (suf ix a, ä, ta, or tä) and
the genitive (suf ix n). Locational cases are rare in such contexts, except for
the inessive (suf ixes ssa and ssä) and the adessive (suf ixes lla and llä).

74. Summary of case forms

Nouns, adjectives, numerals, and pronouns have case in lection in Finnish.
The same principles apply to all these parts of speech, but there are some
specialties. The following presentation includes the accusative case, even
though it exists for some pronouns only.
Traditionally, Finnish is described as having 14 or 15 cases, depending on
whether the accusative case is counted or not. The cases correspond to
English prepositions roughly as shown in the following table. For each case,
the irst row shows the singular, and the second row shows the plural, except
for the last two cases, which always appear in plural form. The uppercase A
denotes either a or ä, according to vowel harmony. The asterisk (*) denotes a
copy of the last vowel of the stem.
English
# Name Suf ix Example Translation
prep.
– talo house
1 nominative –
t talot houses
n
talon of (a) house
2 genitive jen, ien, iden, of
talojen of houses
itten, ten, in
nA as; in the talona as a house
3 essive
inA role of taloina as houses
A, tA, ttA taloa house
4 partitive –
jA, itA taloja houses
ksi, kse- to (role of); taloksi to (a) house
5 translative
iksi, ikse- for taloiksi to houses
ssA talossa in (a) house
6 inessive in
issA taloissa in houses
from (a)
stA from talosta
7 elative house
istA (inside) taloista
from houses
 8 illative *n, h*n, seen into taloon into (a)
in, ihin, isiin taloihin house
into houses
llA talolla at (a) house
9 adessive at; on
illA taloilla at houses
from (a)
ltA talolta
10 ablative from house
iltA taloilta
from houses
lle talolle to (a) house
11 allative to
ille taloille to houses
without (a)
ttA talotta house
12 abessive without
ittA taloitta without
houses
together with my
13 comitative ine taloineni
with house(s)
n with (the with
14 instructive taloin
in aid of) house(s)
t minut me
15 accusative –
idät meidät us

The names used for cases in this book are the Finnish names (nominatiivi,
genetiivi etc.) in English form. Most of them are not used in grammars of
other languages. The origin of the names is explained in section Finnish
grammar terms.
The cases also have names formed from Finnish words with the suf ix ntO,
e.g. nimentö, omanto. They were used at school decades ago, but they have
mostly fallen into disuse.
The cases are listed somewhat differently in different grammars and
references. The order used in this book differs from the one used in Iso
suomen kielioppi in two ways: the accusative, being marginal, appears last
and not as the 3rd; and the essive and the partitive appear in different order,
since this order matches the role of the essive, the partitive, and the
translative in the system of locational cases.
 Words are divided into in lection types in order to describe variation in
in lection. They are brie ly discussed section In lection types of nouns and
listed in more detail in the appendix-like part In lection types. The
descriptions of in lection types summarize the general in lection rules as
applicable to certain classes of words.

75. Plural of nouns

The plural suf ixes
The table in the preceding section shows the suf ixes of cases in plural as
combined suf ixes. They can mostly be divided into a plural suf ix and a case
suf ix, where the case suf ix is the same as in singular, with some exceptions.
Finnish nouns have four different plural suf ixes:
-t in the nominative, not followed by any case suf ix, e.g. talo|t
-i- in most case forms; example: talo|i|ssa
-j- as the consonant counterpart of -i- between vowels, in the partitive
and in the genitive, e.g. talo|j|a, talo|j|en
– (no suf ix) in the genitive plural when
the case suf ix is -ten, as in lapsi : las|ten (child); although the
suf ix might be divided into plural suf ix -t- and genitive suf ix -
en, this is not common in grammars
the in lection stem ends with i, as in lasi : lasi|en; this could
alternatively be described as las|i|en, so that the i is the plural
suf ix and the i of the stem is lost before it, but this is less
natural

The -t suf ix in the nominative is dropped when a possessive suf ix is

appended. Since possessive suf ix also causes the strong grade to be used in
consonant gradation, the difference between singular and plural is lost in the
nominative when a possessive suf ix is used. For example, talo and talot both
become taloni, when the 1st person singular possessive suf ix is added, and
similarly lakki and lakit both become lakkini.

The plural stem

Plural forms with -i- as plural suf ix are said to consist of a plural stem
followed by the case suf ix. For example, the plural stem of talo is taloi, and
the plural stem of kala is kaloi, appearing in forms like kaloissa and kaloille.
As the latter example shows, the plural stem is not necessarily just the
in lection stem used in singular followed by i. There are several different
changes in stem before an i suf ix. Examples of types of variation: puu : pui-,
tie : tei-, hai : hai-, (lapsi :) lapse- : lapsi-, ilmi : ilmei-, kolea : kolei-, syvä :
syvi-, tekijä : tekijöi-, kova : kovi-, vahva : vahvoi-.
For words ending with a diphthong ai, ei, oi in the singular stem, the plural
stem is the same as singular stem. E.g., hailla can be either singular or plural
form of hai (shark). Plural forms of such words are generally avoided; instead
of hai, we can use the compound haikala (“shark- ish”), with singular forms
like haikalalla and plural forms like haikaloilla.

Plural forms of loanwords

Finnish does not use foreign plural forms for loanwords the same way as we
may use in English for words of Latin or Greek origin. For example, Finnish
has kaktus : kaktukse|t (cactus : cacti), so that the loanword has been adapted
to the in lection patterns of old Finnish words.
Some loanwords are based on plural forms in other languages but have
singular meaning, e.g. fakta (fact, from Latin plural “facta” of “factum”),
muf insi (muf in). They take normal plural suf ixes in Finnish, e.g. faktat :
faktoja, muf insit : muf inseja. This has sometimes been criticized as being
“double plural”, and forms such as faktumi and muf ini have been proposed,
without much success.
Use of plural
The use of plural versus singular is described in section Singular and plural.

76. Locational cases

The system of locational cases
The six cases inessive, elative, illative, adessive, ablative, and allative form a
rather orthogonal system of locational cases, with the irst three typically
referring to inner relations (in, from, into) and the rest to corresponding
outer relations. “Inner” means being inside or in close contact, whereas
“outer” may refer to surface or surroundings. For example, lattialla, from
lattia ( loor), means “on the loor”, whereas lattiassa means “in the loor”, e.g.
when discussing a hole in the loor.
The cases essive and partitive originally had locational meanings, too, and
this is still preserved in some expressions (e.g. ulkona “outside”, ulkoa “from
outside”). The essive also means, for normal nouns, being in a state or role
(e.g. lapsena “as a child”). The translative often expresses the resulting state
of a transition. The essive and the translative can thus be regarded as stative,
“locational” in the sense of related to being in a state or entering a state.
Thus, in total, 9 of the 14 or 15 cases can be explained as somehow
locational! On the other hand, all these cases all have uses that are not
locational even iguratively.
The following table illustrates the locational cases in the very broad sense.
Note that the use of “old” locational cases is rudimentary: it mostly re lects
just remains of the original simple structure of three locational cases (with
broad meanings). Within them, the “Entering” case, is not really a case but a
collection of forms that have multiple suf ixes, re lecting multiple origins (e.g.
ulo|s, luo|x, luo|ksex, rannemma|ksi). These cases often appear in adverb-like
words such as ylempänä, ylempää, ylemmäksi (~ ylemmäs), which are
comparison forms of the adjective ylempi (higher, upper). They will be
described in more detail in section Locational adverbs.

Inner Outer Stative Old

locational
 Being -ssA, inessive -llA, adessive -nA, essive -nA, essive
talossa (in a talolla (at a talona (as a ulkona
house) house) house) (outside)
Leaving -stA, elative -ltA, ablative – -(t)A,
talosta (from a talolta (from a (elative is partitive
house) house) used) ulkoa (from
outside)
Entering -*n…, illative -lle, allative -ksi, -s, -x, -ksex, -
taloon (into a talolle (to a translative ksi
house) house) taloksi (to a ulos (to
house) outside)

Concrete and abstract locations

Like the corresponding English prepositions, the locational cases can express
physical relations, as in talossa, which refers to being inside a house, but also
“location” in time, e.g. syyskuussa (in September), and more abstract
relations. We can be in, exit, or enter a feeling, consciousness, mood, idea,
activity, companionship, etc.
In particular, we can say lähteä matkalle (to start a trip), olla matkalla (to
be travelling), and palata matkalta (to return from a trip). In these sayings,
Finnish uses the word matka (travel, trip) as something you can be “on”.
The expression mennä lounaalle (to go for a lunch) can be understood as
locational in an abstract sense. It is correlated with expressions like olla
lounaalla (to have lunch) and tulla lounaalta (to come back from lunch).
Similarly, lähteä oluelle means going for a beer, and olla kahvilla means being
somewhere for having coffee, e.g. on a coffee break.
When referring to abstract locations, outer cases are normally used, e.g.
jään pian eläkkeelle (I will soon retire on pension)
menen suomen kielen kurssille (I will attend a course on Finnish)
olen lomalla (I am on vacation)
olen tulossa luennolta (I am coming from a lecture)
olen nyt vapaalla (I am off-duty now; literally: I am now on free)

Expressing states
The stative locational cases form an incomplete system. We can say Hän toimi
opettajana (He acted as a teacher) and Hänet valittiin opettajaksi (He was
elected a teacher), using the essive to indicate being in a state and the
translative to indicate entering a state. However, leaving a role is expressed in
other ways; there is no dedicated case for it.
When the resulting state is expressed as well, we can use the elative for
the state being left, translative for the entered state: Hän siirtyi opettajasta
yrittäjäksi (He changed job from teacher to entrepreneur). If the resulting
state is not expressed, we need to use a completely different expression
instead of just putting a word in a particular case. We would say e.g. Hän jätti
opettajan toimen (He left the teacher’s job).
Inner locational cases, rather than stative cases, are used to express states
and changes of state in many sayings. For example, olla humalassa means “to
be drunk”, tulla humalaan means “to get drunk”, and selvitä humalasta means
“to sober up”. The word humala means state of drunkenness. Another
example is Olen vakavissani (I’m serious [about an issue at hand]), which
uses the inessive plural of the adjective vakava (serious). If you say Olen
vakava, it would rather mean that you are generally a serious-minded person,
and such expressions are normally not used. But it would be possible to say,
using the essive, Pysyin vakavana (I kept a straight face), referring to a
temporary state of mind or its expression in behavior.

Inner vs. outer locational cases

In many contexts, both inner and outer cases are possible, often with
difference in meaning or connotations. In grammars, examples such as
talossa (in a house) versus talolla (near a house, at a house) are often given,
so that inner cases mean being inside something whereas outer cases refer to
being near a place or just in its environment. However, the usage is more
complicated.
The difference can also relate to the basic use of a place versus secondary
use. For example, we can say Hän on koulussa (He is at school) or Hän on
koululla (He is in the school building or near it). The difference here is that
the inner case koulussa refers to being at school learning (or teaching), where
as the outer case koululla typically relates to being there (inside or near the
school building) for some other reason, e.g. in an event. Similarly, kirkossa
refers to being in a church attending a service, whereas kirkolla can mean
being in or near a church building for other reasons or, most often, just being
in the center of village or town, “around the church” very broadly speaking.
Outer cases are used to refer to a person’s place, home. For example,
Menemme kylään Virtasille means “We’ll visit the Virtanen family”. Such usage
has probably promoted an extended use, even though it is foreign origin: it is
now common to use outer cases about working in a company, being at an
institute, or being in a shop or café. Examples: työskennellä Nokialla (to work
in the Nokia company), käydä yliopistolla (to drop by at the university), and
shoppailla Stockmannilla (to do shopping at the Stockmann warehouse). The
main reason is that foreign languages use prepositions like English “at”,
which are interpreted as corresponding to outer cases. Using inner cases in
such expressions (Nokiassa, yliopistossa, Stockmannissa), though re lecting
more original Finnish usage, would mostly sound odd nowadays.
Another trend, also affected by other languages, is the use of outer cases to
refer to being somewhere to use it for its primary function. Thus, many
people say mennä kuntosalille (to go to a health club; literally “to go to
condition hall”), and if they would say mennä kuntosaliin, they would only
mean going into the premises. So here the use of cases is the opposite of the
old koulussa versus koululla distinction.
Thus, the use of inner versus outer cases can be complicated, and
ambiguities have been introduced by the changes in their uses. Saying that
someone is yliopistolla means “near the university” in the old system, but
nowadays it almost always means just “at the university”.
In older usage, it was common and recommended to use inner cases in
expressions for storing data, e.g. tallentaa levyyn (to save on a disk). While
this is more logical, it has become much more common and generally
accepted to use outer cases, e.g. tallentaa levylle. In some contexts, both
alternatives are still in use, e.g. Tiedot pidetään palvelimella ~ palvelimessa
(The data is kept on a server).
In broad expressions for locations, such as “on the right”, Finnish normally
uses outer cases, e.g. oikealla (on the right), vasemmalla (on the left), keskellä
(in the middle). However, there are many irregularities in such expressions;
see section Locational adverbs.

Inner vs. outer cases for place names

When referring to physical locations, most place names are used in inner
cases, e.g. Helsingissä, Helsingistä, Helsinkiin. However, for many place names,
outer cases are used, e.g. He asuvat Vantaalla (They live in Vantaa). These
forms refer to being in a place like the inner case forms do. It is just so that
some names “require” outer cases. Usually such names relate to rivers, lakes,
or hills, mostly ending with -joki, -järvi, or -mäki. Inner cases would refer to
being in a river, in a like, or inside a hill; e.g. Seinäjoella means “in Seinäjoki
(city)”, whereas Seinäjoessa means “in the river Seinäjoki”. The name of the
city of Vantaa is actually the same as the short name of a river (longer form:
Vantaanjoki), and Vantaassa means “in the river Vantaa”.
The rules for selecting inner or outer locational cases for place names
have many exceptions. For instance, we say Tampereella (in Tampere) and
Raumalla (in Rauma) for no easily explainable reason. Even Finns have
problems in selecting the correct case when using a less common
municipality name. A list of municipality names and their cases, Kuntien
nimet ja niiden taivutus, has been composed to help with such problems.
Most place names outside Finland are used in inner cases. Exceptions
include Venäjä : Venäjällä (Russia) and plural names of island groups, e.g.
Hebridit : Hebrideillä (Hebrides). Names of islands are often used in outer
cases, especially in touristic contexts, e.g. Mallorca : Mallorcalla, and the same
applies to resort areas in the mainland, e.g. Rimini : Riminillä. This is often
applied even to states with an island as their main part, e.g. Malta : Maltalla ~
Maltasssa. There has been some debate on the acceptability of outer cases in
such contexts, but it is now widely accepted and common.
The principles outlined above apply to expressions of physical location.
Other uses of locational cases are not affected. For example, even though we
say Helsingissä (in Helsinki), we would say Helsingillä on pitkä historia to say
that the city of Helsinki has a long history, using the adessive (-llä) together
with the verb on to correspond the English verb “has”. Similarly, even though
we say Vantaalta (from Vantaa), we would say kirja kertoo Vantaasta (the
book tells about Vantaa), using the elative (-sta) like “about” is used in
English.

“Dynamic” use of locational cases

In expressions like “I found a basket in the forest” and “I lost the basket in the
forest”, English uses the “in” preposition, describing where the event took
place. Use of cases in Finnish is partly based on different thinking. We say
Löysin metsästä korin, using the elative metsästä, so a more literal translation
would be “I found from forest a basket”. The underlying idea is that the
basket is moved from the forest into my possession. Similarly, we say
Hukkasin korin metsään, using the illative (as if we said “I lost the basket into
the forest” in English).
We also say Luin lehdestä, että… (I read in a newspaper that…). One can
say that we refer to getting information from a source instead of thinking that
it is in the source as we read it.
Similarly, when something is being built, the illative or the allative
(normally corresponding to “into” or “to”) is used. Example: Espooseen
rakennetaan uusi sairaala “A new hospital will be built in Espoo”. The word
rakennetaan means here “will be built”, uusi is “new” and sairaala is
“hospital”, and Espooseen is an illative form, which most often means “to
Espoo”.
In many contexts like this, we could use “static” cases, the inessive and the
adessive, too. We can say Espooseen rakennetaan paljon asuntoja or Espoossa
rakennetaan paljon asuntoja. Both mean that a lot of homes are built in
Espoo, but the aspect is different: Espoossa says that the building takes place
in Espoo, whereas Espooseen expresses that new homes will appear (or
“come to being”) in Espoo, i.e. Espoo will get new homes.

Locational cases expressing possession

In expressions like Talossa on pienet ikkunat (The house has small windows)
the inessive indicates being part of somethings or a property of something,
rather than being literally “inside” something. In such usage, the inessive
indicates possession, much like the adessive can indicate possession when
the possessor is a living being, e.g. koiralla on pitkä häntä (the dog has a long
tail); see Expressions for having something.
The possessive use of locational cases is systematic in the sense that we
can use three of them to express gaining, having, and losing possession, e.g.
Veneeseen asennettiin moottori (An engine was installed in the boat),
Veneessä on moottori (The boat has an engine), Veneestä poistetttiin moottori
(The engine was removed from the boat).

Close contact
Inner locational cases also indicate close contact. This explains usage such as
Hänellä on uudet kengät jalassa (He is wearing new shoes; more literally: He
has new shoes in foot). Of course, you put your feet into your shoes, not vice
versa, but the Finnish expression is not based on thinking what is inside
what. Rather, it expresses that some objects are in very close contact with
parts of the human body. Similarly, we say e.g. panna hattu päähän (to put a
hat on the head) and istua hevosen selässä (to sit on a horse, literally: to sit in
horse’s back).
Similarly, we can Hän otti hatun päästä (He took his hat off) and Hän pani
hatun päähänsä (He put his hat on).

Expressions for being covered

Yet another specialty is that inner cases are used for substances that cover
something. When we say Järvi on jäässä (The lake is frozen, literally: Lake is
in ice), we refer to ice covering the surface of the lake. Similarly, Taivas menee
pilveen (The sky is getting cloudy, literally: Sky goes into cloud) refers to
clouds covering the sky.
Expressions like Koivut puhkeavat lehteen (The leaves of birches are
coming out, literally: Birches burst into leaf) can also be understood as
having “inessive of covering”. This is correlated with Koivut ovat lehdessä
(There are leaves in birches).
Additional examples: kädet veressä (with bloody hands), auto on
ruosteessa (the car is rusty), talo on tulessa (the house is on ire). These do
not normally mean “hands covered with blood” etc., but something in that
direction. Strengthening adverbs can be used to suggest an idea of “covered
with…”, e.g. kädet aivan veressä.

Specialized uses of locational cases

The locational cases have many uses that do not refer to locations even in a
igurative sense, such as the illative in luotan sinuun (I trust on you). Such
meanings will be discussed in the descriptions of individual cases, and they
normally mean that one speci ic case is used, without relating to other
locational cases.
There are, however, specialized uses that are still locational in some
extended sense and involve a correlated use of locational cases. Some typical
examples:
When we say Menen lääkäriin (I will see a doctor), using the illative, we
do not mean going inside a doctor. Rather, lääkäri (doctor) means
“doctor’s of ice” here. Such use is correlated with Olen lääkärissä (I’m
 seeing a doctor) ja Tulen lääkäristä (I’m coming from seeing a doctor),
using the inessive and the elative.
Menen marjaan (I’ll go berry picking, literally: I go to berry). Expressions
like this are also used for picking mushrooms (Hän on sienessä “He is
picking mushrooms”) and catching ish (Hän tuli kalasta “He came from
ishing”). They are correlated with similar use of other locational cases,
e.g. Olen marjassa and Tulen marjasta.
Ovi on lukossa (The door is locked; literally: Door is in lock). This
expresses a state, but using a concrete noun for a lock. Similarly we say
Panin oven lukkoon (I locked the door) and Avasin oven lukosta (I
unlocked the door).
Olen väsyksissä. This means basically the same as Olen väsynyt (I’m tired),
but maybe with a slightly different tone, expressing that I am in a state of
tiredness. Väsy|ks|i|ssä is by its form the inessive plural of väsys, but such
a word does not appear except in inner locational cases—mainly just
väsyksissä and väsyksiin, seldom if ever väsyksistä. For more examples, see
Cases of nouns as adverbs.

77. Case forms used to express time

When expressing a moment, interval, or duration of time, locational cases are
mostly used, depending on the type of expression:
the essive is used about years, e.g. tänä vuonna (this year), vuonna 2015
(in 2015), vuosina 2015–2020 (in 2015–2020); in this context, the
consonant-stem form vuonna of vuosi is used (instead of the normal
vuotena)
the essive is used about seasons when they have an attribute, e.g. ensi
talvena (next winter), kauniina kesinä (in beautiful summers); but e.g.
talvella (in winter)
the essive is used about days, e.g. viidentenä päivänä (on the ifth day),
tiistaina (on Tuesday), vappuna (on the irst of May), as well as multiday
feasts, e.g. jouluna (at Christmas), and consecutive days, e.g. viikonloppuna
(during weekend)
the inessive is used about months, e.g. viime kuussa (last month); the
adessive also possible, but much less common, e.g. tammikuussa ~
tammikuulla
the inessive is used about duration, e.g. Tein sen tunnissa (I did it in an
hour)
the inessive expresses the scope of repetition, e.g. kolme kertaa päivässä
(three times a day)
the nominative is used to express regular repetition, e.g. joka aamu
(every morning), joka kesä (every summer), joka toinen päivä (every
second day)
the nominative is also used when a numeral and unit of time are used to
express a duration, e.g. asuin siellä kolme vuotta (I lived there for three
years); here the numeral kolme is in the nominative, and the associated
noun is in the partitive, according to general rules for numerals
in informal language, the nominative is often used when the essive is the
correct case, e.g. Ville lähti viides päivä, more correctly Ville lähti
viidentenä päivänä (Ville left on the ifth day)
the nominative can be used about exact time of day, e.g. kello kaksi (2
o’clock, usually meaning PM), as an alternative to the ablative, as
explained in the next item
the ablative can alternatively be used about exact time of day, e.g. kello
kahdelta and puoli kuudelta (half past ive); it is especially used about
scheduled events, e.g. kokous alkaa puoli kuudelta (the meeting starts at
half past ive)but the nominative is also used in such contexts, e.g. kello
kaksi and puoli kuusi
the ablative is used to express that something ends for some period of
time, e.g. Lopetamme tältä päivältä (We’ll end for this day)
the ablative indicates the origin of something in time, e.g. Tämä viini on
vuodelta 1998 (This wine is from year 1998)
the ablative is also used, as an alternative to the elative, for a starting time
especially when relating to festivities, e.g. juhannukselta ~ juhannuksesta
aloitan lomani (on Midsummer day I will start my vacation)
the genitive (in singular) or the nominative (in plural) is used to express
that something lasts an entire period, e.g. Olin siellä koko tammikuun (I
was there the whole January) and Teimme sitä kaikki päivät (We did that
all days long)
the partitive is used in negations of expressions described in the
previous item, e.g. En ollut siellä koko tammikuuta (I did not spend there
the whole January)
 the partitive is also used, in plural, to express durations using units of
time, e.g. asuin siellä vuosia (I lived there for years) and asuin siellä useita
vuosia (I lived there for several years)
the elative and the illative are used to express a “from… to…” range, e.g.
kello kahdesta kello kolmeen (from 2 o’clock to 3 o’clock) or just kahdesta
kolmeen; they can also be used as standalone, e.g. Olen ollut täällä kello
kahdesta (alkaen) (I have been here since 2 o’clock) and Olen täällä kello
kolmeen (asti) (I will be here until 3 o’clock)
the elative is used in some contexts for compound words expressing time
where the irst part is alku- (early, neart the start) or loppu- (late, near the
end) or one of the parts second part expresses time (period) of the day or
season, e.g. alkuvuodesta (near the start of the year) and iltayöstä
(towards midnight); also aamusta ~ aamulla (in the morning)
the elative is also used in some sayings like pitkästä aikaa (after a long
time); note that this an incongruent expression (elative with partitive)
the illative is also used in a negative context, to express a duration of time
when something has not happened, e.g. En ole tavannut häntä vuosiin (I
have not met him for years)
the translative is used in the meaning “for”, e.g. kesäksi (for summer) or
viikoksi (for a week) and also aluksi (for a start), lopuksi (lastly), ensiksi
( irst), seuraavaksi (next), viimeksi ∼ viimeiseksi (last), ensimmäiseksi
( irst), toiseksi (second) etc.
the translative can also mean “by…”, “at the latest in…”, e.g. Teen sen
maanantaiksi (I will for it by Monday, i.e. so that it is available on Monday)
otherwise mostly the adessive is used, e.g. aamulla (in the morning), ensi
viikolla (next week), 1900-luvulla ~ 20. vuosisadalla (in the 20th century),
keskiajalla (in the Middle Ages)

When referring to time by some event or person, Finnish normally uses the
word aika (time) preceded by a genitive, e.g. energiakriisin aika (the period of
the energy crisis) and Kekkosen aika (Kekkonen’s time). To form an adverbial
corresponding to a “during…” expression, the word aika is usually put in the
essive: energiakriisin aikana. The word aika may also appear in the genitive,
but then the meaning is “during the entire time of…”; it is often accompanied
by the (unin lected) adjective koko (whole, entire), e.g. koko Kekkosen ajan.
78. Nominative
Form of the nominative
The nominative is the case of a subject of a clause and has no ending in the
singular. In plural it has the ending t (e.g. talo : talot), whereas in all other
cases, the plural suf ix is i or j, appearing before the case suf ix (e.g. taloissa).
Thus, the suf ix t can be interpreted as indicating both the case and the
number. Apart from this, the nominative has no case suf ix.
The nominative singular often has a form different from the stem of all
other cases, e.g. hevonen (horse) as opposite to other cases that start with
hevose- or hevos-. However, this is interpreted as stem variation.

Use of the nominative

The nominative is used as the case of the subject and under certain
conditions as the case of an object (see Marking the object). For example, in
the sentence Minä söin omenat (I ate the apples), the subject minä is in
nominative singular, the object omenat is in nominative plural.
The subject can also appear in the partitive case.
The nominative is also used in title texts, labels, lists, etc., when there is no
reason to use an in lected form. However, in package texts, the partitive is
also used, e.g. Herneet ~ Herneitä (peas).
The nominative is used in informal language for the unit when expressing
unit costs, e.g. viisi euroa kilo ( ive euros per kilo). The correct way in
standard language is to use the ablative, e.g. viisi euroa kilolta.

Absolute nominative
The nominative is also used in expressions such as ase kädessä (weapon in
hand) in the statement Hän käveli ase kädessä (He walked with a weapon in
his hand). Such expressions are called, somewhat misleadingly, absolute
nominative. The point is that the nominative form of a noun is used as part of
an adverbial together with other words, describing the location, state etc.
This distinguishes the construct from a subject in the nominative. Usually the
subject is easy to distinguish from an absolute nominative, since the subject
normally appears irst, but for poetic reasons or for emphasis, we can say e.g.
Ase kädessä hän taisteli meitä vastaan (By force of arms he fought against us).
 The “absolute nominative” typically corresponds to a phrase using the
“with” preposition in English. Note the lack of any possessive suf ix here,
even though we would say Hänellä oli ase kädessään (He had a weapon in his
hand), where ase is a predicative.

79. Genitive

Form of the genitive in singular

In singular, the genitive always has the n suf ix. The genitive often differs
from the nominative in other ways, but this is caused by stem variation,
which is not limited to the genitive, e.g. valas : valaa|n (and valaa|ksi,
valaa|na etc.), poika : poja|n (and poja|lle etc.). Stem variation is described in
sections starting from Variation in word stem and in suf ixes.

The genitive singular as type form

The genitive singular is often mentioned to indicate the in lection stem of a
word, for example vapaus : vapauden (freedom). For most words, all other
case forms can be constructed when we know the nominative and the
genitive singular, and it is easy to remove the suf ix from the genitive singular,
since it is always n. However, showing just the stem, e.g. vapaus : vapaude-,
might be regarded as more logical.

Form of the genitive in plural

In plural, the genitive has several possible suf ixes that are appended to
different stems, partly depending on the word, partly in free variation, as in
omena : omenien ~ omenoiden ~ omenoitten ~ omenain (apple).
The possible genitive plural suf ixes, including the plural suf ix i or j when
present, are shown in the following table.
Suf ix Examples Notes
-iden maa : ma|iden, aine : When plural stem ends with two
aine|iden vowels.
-itten maa : ma|itten, aine : In free variation with -den.
aine|itten
 -ien lasi : las|ien, voima : Final vowel in stem lost before the
voim|ien suf ix.
-jen talo : talo|jen, vanha : Instead of -ien when stem vowel
vanho|jen retained.
-ten mies : mies|ten, nainen : Appended to consonant stem.
nais|ten
-in vanha : vanha|in, vanki : Archaic, poetic, or special-use.
vanke|in

Typically one of the suf ixes is clearly more common than the others, such as
omenoiden in our example case. Some other form, such as omenien, might be
classi ied as a normal alternative, which can be selected by a speaker e.g. to
suit the phonetic context better.
The suf ixes den and tten are in free variation, but den tends to be much
more common, especially in writing. The tten variant appears typically in
conjunction with a possessive suf ix. For example, for the word paperi, the
most common genitive plural is papereiden, whereas papereitten is much less
common. The form papereidensa, with the possessive suf ix nsa, is also more
common than papereittensa, but with a much smaller margin.
The formation of the genitive plural varies by word type, by word, and by
language form. Largely it needs to be learned from dictionaries or by the
natural method. Good dictionaries contain information for creating the
possible forms, but not details of their distribution—for many words, some
forms are very rare, though possible. The following points describe most of
the variation:
1. The suf ix den or tten (interchangeably), appended to the plural
in lection stem, can be used when
the in lection stem in the singular ends with two vowels, e.g.
maa : maa|n : ma|i|den, tie : tie|n : te|i|den, upea : upea|n :
upe|i|den, venex : venee|n : vene|i|den
the plural stem ends with ei or Oi and the stem has at least
three syllables, e.g. paperi : papere|i|ssa : papere|i|den, kartano
: kartano|i|ssa : kartano|i|den, makkara : makkaro|i|ssa :
makkaro|i|den; such words often have alternative forms of
types 3 or 4 described below, e.g. paperi|en, kartano|j|en
 2. The suf ix en, appended to the plural
in lection stem, can be used when that stem has
i as the only vowel in its last syllable, e.g. muna
: mun|i|ssa : mun|i|en.
the plural in lection stem ends with Oi or Ui, e.g. sana : sano|i|ssa :
sano|j|en, loru : loru|i|ssa : loru|j|en
the word ends with e both in nominative singular and in singular
in lection stem, e.g. nalle : nalle|n : nalle|j|en; however, the genitive
plural forms of such words sound somewhat odd and are generally
avoided

5. The suf ix ten can be appended to the

consonant stem, without any plural suf ix, for
words that have a consonant stem, e.g. nainen :
naise|n : nais|ta : nais|ten. This can be
expressed so that if the partitive singular ends
with a consonant and tA, you can from a
genitive plural from it by changing the A to en,
e.g. (avain :) avainta : avainten, (sisar :) sisarta
: sisarten.
Even native speakers are often perplexed with the multitude of forms of the
genitive plural, and they may ask which form is the correct one. Normatively,
many words have several alternative forms that are correct. In practice,
however, it is usually safest to use the most common form. For example, the
normal genitive plural of omena is omenoiden, and omenien comes next and
could be used if it looks or sounds better (e.g., kauniiden omenien might
sound better than kauniiden omenoiden, where the repeating iden might be
disturbing). But the forms omenoitten, omenojen, and omenain, though
formally correct, are best avoided, except in poetry.

Using -ten versus other suf ixes

Words that have a consonant stem can alternatively taker either a ten suf ix
or an ien suf ix, with the latter appended to the vowel stem but with its last
vowel removed. For example, lapsi : lapse|n : las|ta has the genitive plural
forms las|ten and laps|ien. Other examples: nainen : naisten ∼ naisien, avain :
avainten ∼ avaimien, sisar : sisarten ~ sisarien.
For most words with a consonant stem, the ten form is much more
common. In particular, for words ending with nen in the nominative, the ien
form, such as naisien, is very rare.
However, for words ending with -in and denoting a device, the ien form is
more common, e.g. for tulostin : tulostime|n (printer), tulostim|i|en is more
common than tulostin|ten.
For superlative forms like suurin : suurimman, the ien suf ix is used, e.g.
suurimpien. The ten suf ix is used, as an alternative, only for some
superlatives that have a locational meaning (concretely or iguratively), e.g.
ylin : ylimpien ∼ ylinten.
Some two-syllable words have a consonant stem but take only an ien
suf ix, not a ten suf ix. They include lohi : loh|ta : lohien, kansi : kant|ta :
kansien, moni : mon|ta : monien, tuli : tul|ta : tulien, uusi : uut|ta : uusien, vuosi
: vuot|ta : vuosien (very rarely vuotten).
Words ending with As : AAn, such as asukas : asukkaan, usually have only
iden and itten forms, such as asukkaiden ∼ asukkaitten, even though they have
a consonant stem, too, as in the partitive asukas|ta. However, for some words
of this type, a ten form is used in sayings and in archaic style, e.g. käsi : kät|tä
: käsi ∼ kätten, with the latter form appearing in phrases like kätten jälki and
kätten päällepaneminen. Similarly, we have lammas : lampaa|n : lampaiden ∼
lammasten, but the latter is limited to a few contexts like susi lammasten
vaatteissa (wolf in sheep’s clothing).
Words ending with ex, such as aine : aineen, can be interpreted as having a
consonant stem, as in the partitive ainet|ta. However, a ten form such as
ainetten is not used for them in modern standard Finnish. Instead, they have
iden or (less often) itten in the genitive plural: aineiden ∼ aineitten.
A few words lack a consonant stem in the normal sense but can be said to
have it for the purposes of forming the genitive plural: enkeli : enkelien ∼
enkelten (angel), jumala : jumalien ∼ jumalten (god), sankari : sankarien ∼
sankarten. The ten forms are more or less poetic.

Using -iden versus -ien or -jen in long words

In words with three or more syllables, there are relatively complicated
rules for choosing between the -iden and -ien or -jen suf ixes. In some words,
both are possible, e.g. paperi : papere|iden ∼ paper|ien. In many words, only
one of them is correct, e.g. lukija : lukijo|iden but opettaja : opettaj|ien.
The iden suf ix (and its variant itten) is possible, and maybe the only
possible, for the word types listed below. For other words with three or more
syllables, either ien or jen is used, depending on conditions described above.
“Ending” refers to the ending of the word in the base form, nominative
singular.
Words ending with CijA (where C denotes a consonant), e.g. opiskelija :
opiskelijoiden (but e.g. opettaja : opettajien).
Words ending with VCjA (where V denotes a vowel), e.g. vikunja :
vikunjoiden.
Words ending with eijA or AijA, e.g. armeija : armeijoiden, piraija :
piraijoiden.
Words ending with two vowels, e.g. idea : ideoiden, valtio : valtioiden.
Words ending with lU, e.g. kokeilu : kokeiluiden. However, the jen suf ix is
more common, e.g. kokeilujen, except when the ending is CVlU, for which
iden and jen are roughly equally common, e.g. palvelu : palvelujen ∼
palveluiden.
Words ending with li, mi, ni, ri, e.g. titteli : titteleiden, systeemi :
systeemeiden, titaani : titaaneiden, paperi : papereiden. However, the ien
suf ix is also possible and common, and when the ending is preceded by
two vowels, ien is considerably more common than iden, e.g. kriteeri :
kriteerien ∼ kriteereiden. There is variation across words; e.g. for hormoni,
the only form is hormonien.
Words ending with lA, nA, rA, e.g. sairaala : sairaaloiden, ikkuna :
ikkunoiden, makkara : makkaroiden. For some words of these types, the
jen suf ix is also possible, e.g. sairaalojen, but usually rather rare.
However, for the words jumala (god), miljoona (million), and persoona
(personality, person), neither the iden suf ix nor the jen suf ix used, i.e.
the forms are jumalien, miljoonien, persoonien.
Words ending with kA or gA, but the jen suf ix is roughly as common, e.g.
katiska : katiskojen ∼ katiskojen, kollega : kollegoiden ∼ kollegojen. For
words ending with kkA, the iden is suf ix is usually much more common if
the word has three syllables, e.g. klinikka : klinikoiden ∼ klinikkojen,
whereas in longer words, only jen is used, e.g. tematiikka : tematiikkojen.
 A few other other words ending with A, having both iden and jen as
suf ixes: navetta : navetoiden ∼ navettojen (and its rare synonym ometta),
savotta : savotoiden ∼ savottojen, pohatta : pohattojen ∼ pohatoiden,
ulappa : ulapoiden ∼ ulappojen.
Words ending with O, e.g. numero : numeroiden, henkilö : henkilöiden. The
jen suf ix is also possible, e.g. numerojen and henkilöjen, but very rarely
used. However, there are some exceptions. For words ending with stO, the
jen suf ix is common, often much more common, e.g. kirjasto : kirjastojen ∼
kirjastoiden. The same applies to words ending with kkO, especially when
they are longer than three syllables, e.g. allergikko : allergikkojen ∼
allergikoiden. Words ending with ttO have only the jen suf ix, e.g. sulatto :
sulattojen.

An overview of the meanings of the genitive

The genitive often indicates relations similar to those expressed using the
“of” preposition in English, or sometimes with the “’s possessive”. Thus, an
expression of the form A:n B often corresponds to “a/the B of A” or
sometimes “A’s B” in English. However, the Finnish genitive has much wider
use. Among other things, It is also often used when English has “at”, “in”, “for”,
or some other preposition.
The genitive has a high frequency of use largely due to its several
meanings. This re lects its origin as a fusion of two or three cases that had
different meanings. The meanings of the genitive can be grouped as follows:
Possessive genitive, used mainly in attributes, e.g. Paavon talo (Paavo’s
house), secondarily also in genitive predicatives, e.g. Tämä talo in Paavon
(This house is Paavo’s).
Genitive as the case of a grammatical object, e.g. Näin Paavon (I saw
Paavo), or an object-like quanti ier, e.g. Asuin siellä vuoden (I lived there a
year). Together with the next item, this can be called objective genitive.
Genitive as an attribute indicating the object of an action, expressed by a
noun that is typically a derivation of a verb, e.g. Paavon erottaminen
( iring of Paavo).
Genitive indicating the agent in many modal expressions, as in Paavon
pitää mennä (Paavo has to go). Together with the next item, this can be
called subjective genitive.
Genitive indicating the agent in a clause equivalent, e.g. Tämä talo on
Paavon rakentama (This house was built by Paavo).
 Genitive used in the irst part of a closed compound. By its meaning, it can
be possessive, objective, or subjective.
Genitive used with most postpositions and prepositions, e.g. Paavon
jälkeen (after Paavo).
Genitive of an adjective as an attribute of another adjective or of an
adverb, e.g. poikkeuksellisen kylmä (exceptionally cold).
The following subsection describes the use of genitive attributes of nouns.
Other meanings and uses of the genitive are described in other parts of this
book, linked to in the above list.

Meanings of genitive attributes

The meaning of the genitive attribute can be described abstractly so that A:n
B, where n is the genitive suf ix, means a/the B associated with an/the A.
Instead of “associated with” we might also say “relating to…”. This includes
relations like “possessed by” and “part of”, but also many other relations.
In the following examples, the irst word is an attribute in the genitive:
Maijan isä (Maija’s father)
talon katto (the roof of the house)
kirjan sisältö (the content of the book)
hallituksen toimenpiteet (the actions of the govenment)
Waterloon taistelu (the battle of Waterloo)
Oulun yliopiston professori (a professor at the University of Oulu); here
the genitive attribute yliopiston has a genitive attribute, Oulun
Nobelin palkinto (a/the Nobel prize)
Maastrichtin sopimus (the Maastricht Treaty)
Afrikan maat (the African countries)
Brittein saaret (the British Isles; literally “islands of Brits”)
fysiikan laboratorio (physical laboratory; literally “laboratory of physics”)
Venäjän–Japanin sota (the Russo-Japanese war)
Finnish often uses the genitive when English and other languages use an
adjective derivation or just two nouns in basic form. For example, “Swedish
prime minister” is Ruotsin pääministeri, where Ruotsin is the genitive of
Ruotsi (Sweden), “two-family house” is kahden perheen talo, and “rapid
reaction force” is nopean toiminnan joukot.
The genitive is also often used for a general noun used in conjunction with
a proper nown, such as Espoon kaupunki (city of Espoo) and suomen kieli (the
Finnish language). These really mean “the city called Espoo” and “the
language called suomi”, and the genitive is just part of a syntactic structure,
without having any special meaning. Thus, although the genitive is here
syntactically an attribute of a general noun, the word in genitive is logically
the main word and the general noun just indicates its class.

Ambiguous genitive attributes

When a noun is derived from a transitive verb (i.e. a verb that may have an
object), a genitive attribute may mean an object of the action, but it may also
have one of the other meanings of the genitive. For example, an expression of
the form A:n ryöstö could refer to a robbery, ryöstö, where the object A was
stolen, or to a robbery made by the person A, or to a robbery that took place
in the shop A, or to a robbery made in the city A.
This sounds very confusing, but mostly the meaning of the word used in
genitive restricts the alternatives. The expression as a whole, together with
the context, normally makes only on interpretation possible. Yet, newspaper
headings can be really ambiguous due to such issues, perhaps intentionally—
to make people read more. For example, poliisin uhkailu may mean “threats
against the police” or “threats made by the police”.
A genitive attribute like tiukan linjan may mean “of strict policy”, so that
tiukan linjan poliitikko is a politician who favors a strict policy in some issue.
However, when associated with a noun derived from verb, the attribute may
be ambiguos: tiukan linjan vastustajat may refer to opponents that have a
strict policy or, very differently, to people who oppose a strict policy.
In some expressions, ambiguities are avoided by using an open compound
versus a closed (and hyphenated) compound. For example, Suomen
suurlähettiläs means a Finnish ambassador, whereas Suomen-suurlähettiläs
means an ambassador of another country in Finland, Britannian Suomen-
suurlähettiläs is a British ambassador in Finland. Somewhat similarly,
Venäjän poliikka means the politics in Russia or the policies of Russia,
whereas Venäjän-politiikka means politics or policies in dealing with Russia.
There are situations where people avoid a genitive attribute even when no
real ambiguity exists. Finnish grammars often describe the genitive as
primarily indicating possession or even ownership. This has made people
avoid the genitive when they feel that it would incorrectly suggest ownership.
This explains expressions like the compound Mannerheim-risti (the
Mannerheim cross) instead of Mannerheimin risti; cf. Yrjönristi (St. George’s
cross), Viktorian risti (Victoria cross).
80. Essive
The essive suf ix nA
The essive suf ix is always na or nä, e.g. talo : talo|na : talo|i|na, ihminen :
ihmise|nä : ihmis|i|nä. As explained in section Vowel stem vs. consonant stem,
many words have an alternative (often outdated or poetic) essive form based
on a consonant stem, e.g. vuosi : vuote|na ~ vuon|na.

Use of the essive

The essive usually indicates some sort of role or state, which may be
permanent or temporary. For example, “he worked as a teacher” is hän
työskenteli opettajana, with the last word opettaja (teacher) in the essive.
Such an essive form refers to the subject of a clause, or sometimes to the
“logical subject”, as in Minulla on tapana työskennellä myöhään (I use to work
late; literally “at me is as habit to work late”). It may also refer to the object,
usually with no real risk of misunderstanding, as in Lähetin sen tavallisena
kirjeenä (I sent it as an ordinary letter).
The essive can also be used as a predicative, as in Hän on opettajana
Turussa (He/she works as a teacher in Turku). It indicates temporary role or
state, as opposite to sentences with the nominative such as Hän on opettaja
(He/she is a teacher).
The essive is common in expressions like nuorena (as young) and vanhana
(as old). Such expressions are usually translated into English using
subordinate clauses, e.g. nuorempana pelasin paljon šakkia as “when I was
younger, I played chess a lot” (rather than “as younger…”).
The essive is also used in expressions like Tämä sopimus on tehty kahtena
kappaleena (This contract has been made in two copies) and when
expressing a unit, e.g. Paljonko maili on metreinä? (How much is a mile in
meters?) and Hinnat on ilmoitettu euroina (The prices are given in euros).
However, for units, the inessive is used more often, e.g. metreissä, euroissa,
and this is now accepted by language authorities.
An expression in the essive sometimes expresses a cause or a reason,
much like an “as …” expression in English. Example: Punatukkaisena minun on
vältettävä polttamasta itseäni auringossa (As redheaded I need to avoid
getting sunburnt). Here punatukkaisena does not mean “when I am
redheaded” bu rather “because I am redheaded”.
When the essive is used with the verb olla (to be), in a construct called
predicative adverbial, it says that the state is temporary. For example, Olen
sairas (I am sick) may indicate permanent or temporary property, whereas
Olen sairaana means that I am sick at the moment, suggesting that the
condition is temporary.
The essive is used with verb pitää in the meaning “to regard as” as the
required case, as in pidin häntä luotettavana (I regarded him as reliable).
Such usage might be seen as indicating a state, in a way.
The essive was originally a locative case, later mostly replaced by the
inessive and the adessive, as explained in section Locational cases. The old
meaning is still preserved in some adverbs, like kotona (at home) and ulkona
(outside) and in comparatives of nouns, e.g. rannempana (closer to the
shore).
Moreover, the essive has temporal usage in some contexts, like
maanantaina (on Monday); see Expressions of time.

81. Partitive

The partitive suf ixes A and tA

The suf ix of the partitive is either A or tA, according to rather complicated
rules, described below separately for singular and for plural. In some
descriptions, ttA is also mentioned as partitive suf ix, but such forms are
better described so that the irst t is part of the stem.
In spoken language, the A suf ix of the partitive is often assimilated so that
the actual suf ix is *, i.e. the vowel before the suf ix is prolonged, e.g. taloo
(standard taloa), katuu (standard katua), hevosii (standard hevosia). A
different, less common feature is that instead of a jA ending, mere i is used in
spoken language, so that the form has no case suf ix, just the plural suf ix, e.g.
taloi (standard taloja), katui (standard katuja).
In many forms of spoken language, the suf ix is the lengthening of the last
vowel of the stem, if the suf ix is A in standard Finnish. Example: kivi : kivee :
kivii instead of standard kivi : kiveä : kiviä.
Form of the partitive in singular
In partitive singular, the suf ix is A for most words, e.g. poika|a, talo|a, risti|ä.
The suf ix is appended to the in lection stem, so the stem vowel may be
different from the base form, e.g. veli : velje|n : velje|ä.
The tA suf ix is used for
words that end with a long vowel or a diphthong in nominative singular,
e.g. maa|ta, tie|tä
words that end with iO, e.g. radiota, keittiötä (though in spoken language,
the forms radioo, keittiöö are often used instead)
words with a consonant stem, e.g. kieli : kiele|n : kiel|tä, ihminen : ihmise|n
: ihmis|tä
other words that end with a consonant in nominative singular, e.g.
taivas|ta, mies|tä, puhelin|ta
single-syllable pronoun stems, e.g. tämä : tä|tä.
The tA suf ix is also used for some other types of words in older language and
in dialects, e.g. elämätä, ainoata instead of modern standard Finnish elämää,
ainoaa.
Especially in words ending with eA in standard language, the tA suf ix is
common in spoken language. The reason to this is that their stems end with
ee, e.g. colloquial korkee : korkeeta instead of standard korkea : korkeaa (~
korkeata).
For words that end with e and boundary gemination in the nominative and
with een in genitive singular, the partitive singular ends with ttA. The
situation is best described so that the irst t is part of the word stem, as it
historically is, e.g. venex : venee|n : venet|tä. This only happens for words
ending with ex and for the truly exceptional word ori : oriin : oritta (stallion).
In contrast, we have e.g. nalle : nalle|n : nalle|a (with no boundary gemination
in the base form).
A few words have a simpli ication of a consonant pair before tA: lapsi :
lapsen : lasta (instead of lapsta), veitsi : veitsen : veistä (instead of veitstä),
peitsi : peitsen : peistä.
For some words that have a consonant stem, the partitive can alternatively
be formed from the vowel stem, e.g. toimi : toime|a (~ toin|ta). Such forms are
rare, with the exception of niemi : nieme|ä (~ nien|tä).
The words meri (sea) and veri (blood) have irregular partitive singular
forms in the sense that the suf ix vowel is a: merta and verta. These are an
exception to vowel harmony rules; other forms of these words have regular
front vowel suf ixes, e.g. meressä and veressä.
Form of the partitive in plural
The basic rules for forming the partitive plural are:
The suf ix is tA, if the in lection stem in singular ends with two vowels,
e.g. radio : radio|i|ta.
Otherwise, the suf ix is A, e.g. poika : poik|i|a. There is usually some
change in the last vowel of stem; in the example, the vowel a is lost.
If the case suf ix is A and the plural suf ix i would appear between two
vowels, it is changed to j, e.g. talo|j|a.
There are several exceptions in words with three syllables or more,
described later in this section.
Changes in the inal vowel of the stem are very common, e.g. maa : ma|i|ta, tie
: te|i|tä, valas : valaa|n : vala|i|ta, upea : upe|i|ta, e.g. poika : poja|n : poik|i|a,
hevonen : hevose|n : hevos|i|a. The changes are described in detail in section
Vowel changes before an i suf ix. The changes also apply to forms where j
appears instead of i. For example, the in lection kala : kalo|j|a can be
described so that we irst append the plural suf ix i, causing the stem change
from kala to kalo-, and and the case suf ix a, yielding kalo|i|a; and as the last
step we replace i by j.
There is considerable variation in words with three syllables or more.
They often have the tA suf ix either instead of the A suf ix or as an alternative
to it, e.g. lukija : lukijo|i|ta, mansikka : mansiko|i|ta, omena : omeno|i|ta ~
omen|i|a, yksikö|i|tä ~ yksikkö|j|ä. (Note that forms like yksiköitä
exceptionally have weak grade in consonant gradation.) This variation is
complicated and depends on the ending of the stem, on the number of
syllables in it, and on the length of its penultimate (last but one) syllable.
Many descriptions of Finnish present several rules on the partitive plural,
yet do not cover all of the variation. For such reasons, the partitive plural is
one of the thematic forms given in dictionaries of Finnish. When learning
Finnish as a foreign language, you can thus choose to learn the form
separately for each word, or to learn some rules of thumbs that cover some
common types of words.
The following table summarizes the formation of the partitive plural of
words with three or more syllables in their stem. The table lists, by word
ending, the types of words that have a tA suf ix at least as an alternative.
Other words have an A suf ix. In the irst column of the table, C denotes any
consonant, and V denotes any vowel. The second column describes the
relative frequency of the tA suf ix in words of the given type. The phrase
“ ifty- ifty” means that it is about as common as the A suf ix, whereas “often”
means that it is less common.
Ending of stem Freq. of -tA Example(s)
any two vowels always yksiö : yksiöitä; esine (: esinee|n) :
esineitä
-ga often kollega : kollegoita ~ kollegoja
-CijA always lukija : lukijoita
-AijA always piraija : piraijoita
-eijA always armeija : armeijoita
-VCja always kampanja : kampanjoita
-kA except -kkA often tunika : tunikoita ∼ tunikoja
-kkA, 3 syllables almost lusikka : lusikoita
always
-lA except jumala often/always kapula : kapuloita
-nA, see often/always ikkuna : ikkunoita
exceptions
ulappa often ulappa : ulapoita ∼ ulappoja
-rA often/always tavara : tavaroita
-etta ifty- ifty navetta : navettoja ∼navetoita
-li less often kappeli : kappeleja ∼ kappeleita
-mi less often albumi : albumeja ~ albumeita
-ni less often hormoni : hormoneja ~ hormoneita
-CVri almost toveri : tovereita ∼ tovereja
always
-CVVri ifty- ifty kriteeri : kriteerejä ~ kriteereitä
-kkO, 3 syllables very often ristikko : ristikoita ∼ ristikkoja
-kkO, > 3 syllables less often allergikko : allergikkoja ∼ allergikoita
-lO very often vartalo : vartaloita
 -mO very often panimo : panimoita
-nO very often kartano : kartanoja ∼ kartanoita
-rO very often numero : numeroita ∼ numeroja
-stO, 3 syllables rarely varasto : varastoja ~ varastoita
-CVlU, 3 syllables ifty- ifty palvelu : palveluja ∼ palveluita
-CVlU, > 3 rarely menettely : menettelyjä ~ menettelyitä
syllables
-CVVlU rarely kokeilu : kokeiluja ~ kokeiluita

For stems ending with -lA, -nA, -rA, the tA suf ix is usually either the only one
or clearly more common. However, the A suf ix appears as a relatively
common alternative, if the penultimate syllable is long and open, i.e. ends
with a long vowel or a diphthong, e.g. sairaala : sairaaloita ∼ sairaaloja. There
is a small set of words that have, along with normal forms with the tA or A
suf ix, a form with the A suf ix so that the inal vowel of the stem is lost, e.g.
omena : omenoita ∼ omenoja ∼ omenia. In this set, most words have variant
ending with -OjA as a theoretical possibility only, e.g. hattara : hattaroita ∼
hattaria ∼ hattaroja (theoretical).
Adjectives ending with -nA have only the -A suf ix, e.g. ihana : ihania.
The words jumala (god), miljoona (million), and persoona (personality,
person) are exceptional: their plural stems are jumali-, miljooni-, and
persooni- (instead of jumaloi- etc.), e.g. adessive plural jumalilla. Their
partitive plural has always the suf ix -a, i.e. jumalia, miljoonia, persoonia.
Partitive plural forms with a tA suf ix are occasionally produced even by
native speakers for words not covered by the rules above, such as pohatta :
pohatoita (instead of the normal pohattoja). Some of such forms are
mentioned in parentheses in dictionaries like Kielitoimiston sanakirja and
might therefore be considered as correct, but rare.

Use of the partitive

The partitive has several meanings and uses:
It indicates the partiality of a grammatical object. E.g. the sentence söin
omenaa has such an object, and it would normally be translated as “I was
eating an apple”. In contrast, söin omenan contains a total object (with
 the object in the genitive), meaning that the entire apple was eaten, and
it could be translated as “I ate an apple” or “I ate the apple”, depending
on the context. This is described in more detail in section Marking the
object.
Partiality can also mean incompleted action as opposite to completed
action, for which genitive, nominative, or accusative forms for the object
are used. For example, Etsin kirjaa, with the partitive, means “I was
looking for a/the book” (though it could also be present tense), whereas
Etsin kirjan, with the genitive, means “I looked up a/the book”, i.e. the
book was searched for and actually found.
The partitive is also used in an object-like quanti ier according to the
same rules as in an object, e.g. Asuin siellä useita vuosia (I lived there for
many years).
The partitive is used as the case of a subject in some types of presence
clauses (existential clauses), e.g. Pöydällä on kirjoja (There are books on
the table). The conditions for this are discussed in section Cases of the
subject.
The partitive is used (in singular!) with numerals, e.g. kolme taloa “three
houses” and in other expressions for quantity, e.g. monta taloa “several
houses”.
For mass nouns, the partitive is used as an attribute in expressions that
refer to a speci ic share of the mass, as in kuppi kahvia (a cup of coffee) or,
more formally, kupillinen kahvia (a cupful of coffee). In an expression like
kaksi lasia viiniä (two glasses of wine) there are two partitives: in the
quantity expression kaksi lasia and in the mass noun expression viiniä.
The partitive is often the case of a predicative, e.g. Lasissa on viiniä (There
is wine in the glass).
In comparisons, the partitive can be used instead of the word kuin (than)
to express against what the comparison is made, e.g. the partitive sokeria
in Tämä on sokeria makeampaa ~ Tämä on makeampaa kuin sokeri (This
is sweeter than sugar).
In old idiomatic use, the partitive may express cause or reason, especially
when it is a state of mind or treat in a personality, e.g. Hän teki sen
ilkeyttään (He did it out of malice). This applies to verbs describing
actions. In such contexts, the word may have an attribute, e.g. pelkkää
ilkeyttään (out of mere malice). It is also possible to use the elative,
without a possessive suf ix, e.g. pelkästä ilkeydestä.
 The partitive is used with some prepositions and postpositions, e.g. ennen
joulua (before Christmas), ilman autoa (without a car), minua kohtaan
(towards me, to me), kohti taloa ~ taloa kohti (towards the house), lähellä
taloa (near the house), tietä pitkin (along the road), huomista varten (for
tomorrow), seinää vasten ~ vasten seinää (against the wall).
The original locational use (corresponding to “from”) of the partitive is
re lected in some adverb-like words like alempaa (from below, from a
lower position) and for comparatives of nouns, e.g. rannempaa (from
closer to the shore). See Locational cases.

Partitive as grammatically required case

In many situations, the partitive is simply the grammatical form required by
the verb, as in rakastan sinua “I love you”. This does not mean partiality of
love but rather re lects the continuous nature of love. In exceptional contexts,
such verbs might be used with a “total” object, e.g. Rakastan sinut kuoliaaksi
is the Finnish name of the movie “I Love You to Death”. Generally, a verb that
expresses some state of mind or attitude has its object in the partitive, e.g.
ihailen häntä (I admire him), kunnioitan heitä (I respect them).
Many common phrases used as standalone wishes consist of just an
adjective and a noun in the partitive, involving an implied verb like toivotan (I
wish). Example: Hyvää huomenta (Good morning), often shortened to just
Huomenta. The noun huomen (morning) is hardly used in other contexts in
modern language; normally morning is aamu.

82. Translative
The translatives suf ixes ksi and kse-
The suf ix of the translative is ksi, but before a possessive suf ix it is changed
to kse, e.g. taloksi but talokseni, taloksesi, talokseen (~ taloksensa) etc.

Use of the translative

The translative may indicate the result of a state or role transition, e.g. tulla
opettajaksi (to become a teacher), muuttaa vesi viiniksi (to turn water to
wine), hänet valittiin presidentiksi (he was elected president), Suomi
julistettiin itsenäiseksi (Finland was declared independent), kirja käännettiin
suomeksi (the book was translated into Finnish), sää muuttui koleaksi (the
weather became chilly), vaihdoin dollarit euroiksi (I changed the dollars to
euros).
The translative is also used in contexts like Nettotulo jäi pieneksi (The net
income was low), which says the same as Nettotulo oli pieni but suggests that
the income was expected to be higher. Compare this with the use of essive, as
in Nettotulo pysyi pienenä, which also says the same thing but may suggests a
more permanent condition, continuation of previous trend.
The translative may also be used about something new that is made,
expressing its intended role or property. Examples: Aita on rakennettu
suojaksi hirviä vastaan (The fence has been built to be a protection against
elks), Kaikki ihmiset on luotu tasa-arvoisiksi (All men have been created
equal).
When used with the verb olla, the translative can be used in the meaning
being suitable, adequate, or it for some position. The person or other entity
that is so characterized is expressed by a word in the elative (-stA case).
Usually the sentence is negative or presents doubtful question. Examples:
Hänestä ei ole johtajaksi (He is not it for a position of a boss, he wouldn’t be a
good boss), Onkohan hänestä johtajaksi? (Would he really be it for a position
of a boss?).
Often the translative corresponds to the preposition “to” or “for” in the
meaning “for the purpose of…”, e.g. tulla avuksi (to come to help), esittää
perusteluksi (to present as a rationale), ostaa ruokaa sunnuntaiksi (to buy
food for Sunday), syödä puuroa aamiaiseksi (to have porrage for breakfast).
This also applies to more abstract notions, e.g. hänen hyväkseen (for his
bene it) and Jumalan kunniaksi (for the glory of God). The translative of the I
in initive of a verb mosty expresses purpose, e.g. saadakseen (in order to get).
In an expression like Hän teki sen hyvin aloittelijaksi (He did it well for a
beginner), the translative corresponds to the English preposition “for” in the
sense “in regard to being…”. In such usage, the translative can also associated
with an adjective or a noun, e.g. terve ikäisekseen (healthy for his age), liian
vanha uutiseksi (too old for news).
The translative may also relate to regarding or calling something or
someone as something. We can say, using the essive, pidän häntä ystävänä (I
regard him as a friend), but we say, using the translative, luulin häntä
ystäväksi (I took him for a friend) and sanoin häntä viisaaksi (I called him
wise). Verbs used with the translative include ehdottaa (nominate, propose),
hyväksyä (accept), kutsua (call, name), kuvitella (imagine), luulla (incorrectly
take as), nimetä (name), olettaa (assume), sanoa (say, call), todeta (state,
establish), tuntea (feel; recognize).
Translative forms of ordinal numerals are used when enumerating items
in narration: ensimmäiseksi ~ ensiksi, toiseksi, kolmanneksi, etc. ( irst, second,
third, etc.). To some extent, the Latin expressions pro primo, pro secundo, pro
tertio, etc. are used instead in formal style.
The translative has many other uses in phrases, e.g.:
sano se suomeksi (say it in Finnish); here suomeksi = suomen kielellä
sain sen lahjaksi (I got it as a present)
asettua taloksi (to settle down)
toistaiseksi (for now)
pyydän anteeksi (I apologize), often shortened to anteeksi; the theoretical
base form is anne, but the translative is the only form used
olla ihmisiksi (to behave decently, “like human beings”)
ilmaiseksi (for free), the translative of ilmainen (free of cost)
onneksi (luckily), the translative of onni (luck); but the expression Onneksi
olkoon means “Congratulations”
miksi (why), the translative of mikä (what)
tueksi (in support of ), the translative of tuki (support), e.g. vaatimuksen
tueksi (in support of the claim)

Thus, the translative is used in expressions like sanoa suomeksi (to say in
Finnish) and kääntää suomeksi (to translate into Finnish). But if the language
is expressed with two words, like suomen kieli instead of just suomi, the
adessive and the allative are used: sanoa suomen kielellä, kääntää suomen
kielelle.
Many translative forms, such as aluksi (for a start, to begin with), have
become more or less adverbs, though they may still be treated and used like
noun forms, too, e.g. hyväksi aluksi (for a good start). Some dictionaries have
them as separate entries, described as adverbs, but they might also be
described only under an entry for the noun, in this case alku (start), if at all.
Old locational use (corresponding to “to, into”) of the translative is
re lected in some adverb-like words like alemmaksi (down, to a lower
position), which is the translative of alempi (lower). It is also used for
comparatives of nouns, e.g. rannemmaksi (to a place closer to the shore).
 The translative also denotes time in some contexts, e.g. kahdeksi viikoksi
(for two weeks), maanantaiksi (by Monday). See Expressions of time.

Special usage with tulla and saada

The translative has special idiomatic use in participles together with the verb
tulla, which in this context means “to become” rather than “to come”, or the
verb saada. The use is best described with examples:
Tulin sanoneeksi means “I accidentally/unintentionally said”. The phrase
contains the past participle sanonut, so literally it means “I became one
that has said”. Often the phrase implies some regret or mistake, like
letting slip a rash comment. However, it may also indicate that something
was unplanned, or it may just soften a question: Tulitko käyneeksi
Espoossa? means more or less “Did you perchance visit Espoo?”
Tapauksesta tulee kuluneeksi viisi vuotta (Soon it will be ive years since
the event). Here tulla is in present tense form, actually referring to near
future. This is just a statement with no “unplanned” tone; it just says that
a certain duration has passed.
Päätös tuli tehdyksi (The decision was accidentally made), with the
translative of the passive past participle tehty, usually suggests something
unintentional or even mistaken. However, it may also have a purely
passive meaning, “was made”, and it is used instead of a 4th person
statement like Päätös tehtiin for syntactic reasons; see Finite passive
forms in Finnish for more details. Compare this with the phrase Päätös
tuli tehtyä, with the partitive, clearly indicating an unintentional action;
this phrase type was earlier regarded as dialectal but has been approved
since the 1970s. The translative is common in this context in Eastern
dialects, the partitive in Western dialects.
Päätös saatiin tehdyksi (The decision was made). This suggests that there
were dif iculties or delays. In English, we might say something like “We
managed to make the decision” or “The decision was eventually made”.
Here, too, the partitive can alternatively be used, e.g. Päätös saatiin tehtyä.

83. Inessive
The inessive suf ix ssA
The inessive is always formed with the suf ix ssa or ssä, but the stem often
changes, in ways described elsewhere in this book. Moreover, in plural, the
inessive suf ix is preceded by the plural suf ix i. Example: kukka : kuka|ssa :
kuk|i|ssa ( lower : in lower : in lowers).

Meanings of inessive
The inessive usually refers to being in (inside, within) something, in a
concrete or abstract sense. Examples: talossa (in a/the house), tammikuussa
(in January), vaikeuksissa (in a trouble; literally: in dif iculties). Regarding its
use to express time, see Expressions of time.
The inessive thus mostly corresponds to the preposition “in”, but may also
correspond to e.g. “at”, e.g. koulussa corresponds to “at school”.
The inessive is also used in contexts where it means being in close contact
with or attached to something, as in käsineet kädessä (with gloves on;
literally: gloves in hand). Section Locational cases covers such uses of the
inessive as well as other idiomatic usage.

84. Elative
The elative suf ix stA
The elative is always formed with the suf ix sta or stä, but the stem often
changes, in ways described elsewhere in this book. In plural, the elative suf ix
is preceded by the plural suf ix i. Example: kukka : kuka|sta : kuk|i|sta ( lower
: from lower : from lowers).

Meanings of elative
The elative often corresponds to the English proposition “from” and usually
refers to being moved away from something, in a concrete or abstract sense.
Examples: talosta (from a/the house), tammikuusta alkaen (from January
onwards), selvitä vaikeuksista (to pull through a trouble; literally: get clear
from dif iculties).
The elative is also used in contexts where it means leaving a state of being
in close contact with or attached to something, as in ottaa käsineet kädestä
(to take gloves off; literally: to take gloves from hand). Section Locational
cases covers such uses of the inessive.
In addition, the elative is used in the following meanings:
To mean “through…” in some contexts, e.g. Hän tuli takaovesta (He came
through the backdoor).
To specify the subject of a change, e.g. Hänestä tuli poliitikko (He became a
politician; literally: from him came politician).
To refer to origin or material, e.g. Maja on rakennettu puusta (The cottage
is made of wood.
To indicate the source of information in expressions like Tiedän sen
kokemuksesta (I know it from experience).
To indicate the reason for gratitude, e.g. Kiitos neuvosta (Thanks for the
advice).
To express theme or topic, as in Puhuimme asiasta (We talked about the
matter, We discussed the matter). In such usage, it often corresponds to
the English preposition “about” or “on”.
To mention a cause, as in Hän teki sen pelkästä ilkeydestä (He did it out of
mere malice). The partitive, e.g. pelkkää ilkeyttään, has the same meaning
in such usage.
To indicate a group or entity that something is a member or a part of,
often corresponding to the English preposition “of”. Examples: viisi
meistä ( ive of us), osa maasta (part of a/the country).
To refer to the source of a statement, opinion etc. , as in minusta “in my
opinion” or the longer minun mielestäni (literally: from my mind).
With some verbs that mean e.g. being fond of or liking something or
someone. We say Pidän sinusta (I like you), or, using a colloquial verb and
colloquial forms, Mä tykkään susta. The background is probably that the
verb pitää means concretely “to keep hold of”, so Pidän sinusta originally
meant “I’m keeping hold of you”. Another example is Olen kiinnostunut
sinusta (I am interested in you).

85. Illative
The illative suf ixes *n, h*n, seen, siin
The suf ix of the illative has several forms, e.g. kala : kala|an : kalo|i|hin ( ish),
puu : puu|hun : pu|i|hin (tree), and vene : venee|seen : vene|i|siin ( ish). The
suf ixes can be described as *n, h*n, seen, and siin, where the asterisk *
denotes a vowel that is identical with the preceding vowel.
When the suf ix is *n, it phonetically means that the last vowel before it is
lengthened and then an n is appended.
The illative suf ixes used for a word are determined by the in lection stem
of the word. However, in some words, either h*n or seen can be used in
singular and either hin on siin in plural.
In foreign words that end with a long vowel or diphthong, the suf ix h*n
may have the vowel either according to the pronunciation or according to the
spelling of the base word. For example, the illative of fondue [fondyy] can be
either fonduehyn or fonduehen, and the illative of jockey This awkward
situation can often be avoided by using alternative word forms adapted to
Finnish writing, such as fondyy : fondyyhyn.
In foreign words that end with a short vowel written in a manner different
from Finnish spelling, the vowel used in the *n ending is usually the last
written vowel. For example, the illative of smoothie [smuuði] is smoothieen
[smuuðiin], though this form can also be written as if the base form were
pronounced with ie at the end, i.e. smoothiehen.
The original illative suf ix has probably been zen, but the z sound (now
absent in Finnish) has partly developed to s, partly to h, which has often
vanished. Moreover, the e has widely been assimilated to the preceding
vowel.

Choice of suf ix in singular

The rules for selecting the singular suf ix are:
If the in lection stem consists of one syllable only, the suf ix is always
h*n. Words of this type usually have a long vowel or a diphthong, e.g. maa
: maa|han, tie : tie|hen, or they are pronoun stems, e.g. tämä : tä|hän (the
in lection stem of tämä is exceptionally tä).
If the in lection stem ends with a short vowel (not part of a diphthong),
the suf ix is *n. Example kivi : kive|en. In poetry and in Ostrobothnian
dialects, the h*n suf ix may appear instead, e.g. talo|hon instead of the
standard talo|on.
If the in lection stem ends with a long vowel, the suf ix is seen, e.g. vene :
venee|seen, kaipuu : kaipuu|seen, sairas : sairaa|seen.
If the in lection stem ends with a diphthong, the suf ix is h*n. Words of
this type are loanwords, but they include old and common loanwords like
 torstai : torstai|hin.
The in lection stem cannot end with a consonant. Words ending with a
consonant in the basic form have a vowel stem used in in lection, e.g. lyhyt :
lyhye|n : lyhye|en, or they are foreign words with a binding vowel i, hence
take the in suf ix, e.g. Oxford : Oxfordi|n : Oxfordi|in.

Choice of suf ix in plural

In plural, the illative suf ix is always preceded by an i acting as the plural
suf ix. Therefore the illative suf ix is in, hin, or siin as follows:
If the suf ix in seen in singular, it is siin in plural, e.g. ohje : ohjee|seen :
ohje|i|siin, vapaa : vapaa|seen : vapa|i|siin. However, in these words, the
hin suf ix is possible, too, but mostly rare; e.g. ohjeihin and vapaihin are
accepted, but very rare.
For words in in lection types hame : hameen 48, vieras : vieraan 41, vapaa
: vapaan 17, korkea : korkean 15, kuollut : kuolleen 47, the suf ix is siin, but
hin is a permitted alternative, though very rare. E.g. hame : hame|i|siin ~
hame|i|hin.
In a small set of words ending with Ut (see below), the suf ix is siin or, less
often, hin, e.g. kevyt : kevy|i|siin ~ kevy|i|hin.
Otherwise if the plural suf ix i is part of a diphthong, the suf ix is hin, e.g.
maa : ma|i|hin, talo : talo|i|ssa : talo|i|hin, tie : te|i|hin.
Otherwise the suf ix is in, e.g. kivi : kiv|i|in. Words of this type lose the
inal vowel of the stem before the plural suf ix, e.g. kivi : kive|ssä : kiv|i|ssä.

Illative of words ending with Ut

There is a small set of words that end with ut or yt in the basic form without
being participles of verbs (such as sanonut): ainut, airut, ehyt, immyt, kevyt,
kytkyt, kätkyt, lyhyt, ohut, olut, neitsyt, tiehyt. They have an in lection stem
with an e instead of the t. Since ue and ye are not diphthongs in this position,
the illative suf ix is *n, e.g. kevyt : kevye|n : kevye|en. In plural, both siin and
hin are possible, the former being more common; e.g. kevy|i|siin ~ kevy|i|hin.
However, this in lection type is very often confused with the type of words
ending with Uex, with in lection stem ending with Uee, e.g. puolue : puoluee|n
: puoluee|seen. This causes illatives like kevyeeseen. Though still substandard,
they are described in the modern descriptive grammar Iso suomen kielioppi.
Illatives of loanwords and foreign words
When the stem ends with a short vowel, the suf ix is *n, and here * stands for
the inal vowel letter, even if its pronunciation differs from Finnish rules.
Examples: Alaska : Alaskaan, Sydney [sidni] : Sydneyyn [sidniin], Loire [luaar]
: Loireen [luaareen] ~ [luaariin]. As the last example shows, a mute inal e is
doubled in writing, but the pronunciation may be [ee] or [ii].
When the stem ends with a diphthong, the suf ix is h*n. Words of this type
are rare, e.g. Weihai : Weihaihin. Words like Marseille and Versailles have
traditionally been interpreted as ending with a diphthong, e.g. Marseille
[marsei] : Marseillehin [marseihin], but now they may be treated as ending
with [j], e.g. Marseille [marsej] : Marseilleen [marsejiin]. On the other hand,
the latter spelling may be used even when the pronunciation is traditional.
When the stem ends with a long vowel, the suf ix can be h*n or seen. The
rules for this are:
In foreign words, including foreign names, the suf ix is h*n, e.g. gourmet :
gourmet’hen [ gurmee : gurmeehen], Björkö : Björköhön [björköö :
björkööhön], Po : Pohon [poo : poohon].
In adapted loanwords, both suf ixes are possible, but seen is usually more
common, e.g. miljöö : miljööseen ~ miljööhön, trokee : trokeeseen :
trokeehen.
When the suf ix is h*n, the vowel in it is written according to Finnish
orthography. Thus, although the vowel sound is the same as the inal vowel
sound of the base word, the letter need not match the inal vowel letter.
Example: château [šatoo] : châteauhon [šatoohon]. However, sometimes the
inal letter is used, e.g. spray [spreihin] : sprayhin ~ sprayhyn [spreihin], and
this is implicitly accepted: it is described as an allowed variant in
Kielitoimiston sanakirja.
If the spelling of the basic form ends with a consonant but the
pronunciation in a vowel, an apostrophe is used between it and the illative
suf ix, like for other suf ixes. Example: gourmet [gurmee] : gourmet’hen
[gurmeehen].
Foreign words that end with a long vowel have typically the inal vowel
stressed in the original language. This may explain why they take the h*n
suf ix: the in lection follows the pattern of one-syllable words with a long,
stressed vowel, as in maa : maahan.
Loanwords that are more adapted to the Finnish language tend to be
in lected according to the pattern of Finnish words with an unstressed long
vowel, e.g. takuu : takuu|seen.
Such processes of adaptation are re lected in words like gurmee, which is
the word gourmet written as an adapted loanword. For it, alternative illative
forms exist: gurmeehen ~ gurmeeseen.

Specialties in illatives of proper names

Illatives of proper names have some specialties:
The illative of Lontoo (London) is exceptionally Lontooseen, i.e. it is
in lected like normal Finnish words.
In standard Finnish, the name Töölö (an area in Helsinki) has the illative
Töölöön. However, the name has a long inal vowel in Swedish, and
therefore the form Töölööseen may also be heard.
The name Thaimaa (Thailand) is a compound word, with the Finnish
word maa (country) as the second component. The correct illative is thus
Thaimaahan. However, the name is often treated as if it were not
compound, and the illative Thaimaaseen is common (but substandard).

Consonant gradation in illative

In words that have consonant gradation, the grade is strong in illative forms,
even when basic gradation rules would imply weak grade, e.g. kunta :
kunta|an : kunt|i|in, as opposite to weak grade in many other case forms:
kunna|ssa, kunn|i|ssa etc. The reason is that these forms originally had (and
still have in some dialects) an h, e.g. kuntahan : kuntihin.
However, the weak grade is also possible in illative plural forms of some
words:
Words ending with kkO or kkA. The weak grade is more common in words
that have three syllables in the basic form, e.g. yksikkö : yksiköihin ~
yksikköihin. In longer words, the strong grade is more common, e.g.
allergikko : allergikkoihin ~ allergikoihin.
Some words ending with kki, e.g. suosikki : suosikkeihin ~ suosikeihin. The
strong grade is much more common, though.
The word navetta (cowshed): navetoihin ~ navettoihin. The weak grade is
more common.

Meanings of illative
The illative often corresponds to the English proposition “into” or “to” and
usually refers to being moved into something, in a concrete or abstract sense.
Examples: taloon (into a/the house), tammikuuhun asti (until January),
joutua vaikeuksiin (to get into trouble).
The illative is also used in contexts where it means entering a state of
being in close contact with or attached to something, as in panna käsineet
käteen (to put gloves on; literally: to put gloves into hand). Section Locational
cases covers such uses of the illative.
The illative also has many grammatical uses, as in Rakastuin sinuun (I fell
in love with you) and Uskon Jumalaan (I believe in God). The verb uskoa,
when used to express faith, does not normally have an object; instead, an
adverbial in the illative is used. Similarly we say e.g. Luotan sinuun (I trust on
you). The verb kuulua (to belong) takes the illative when it expresses that
something is part of something else, e.g. Hintaan kuuluu aamiainen (The
price includes breakfast); when it means belonging to someone, it takes the
allative (-lle case), e.g. Tämä kuuluu Annalle (This belongs to Anna). Other
grammatical uses of the illative include the following:
kyllästyä pikaruokaan (to get bored of fast food)
mennä naimisiin (to get married)
rakastua opettajaansa (to fall in love with one’s teacher)
tottua hevosiin (to get used to horses, to get familiar with horses)
tutustua naapureihin (to get acquainted with neighbors)
vastata kysymykseen (to answer a question); cf. vastata minulle (to answer
to me)
verrata aiempiin tuloksiin (to compare with previous results)

86. Adessive
The adessive suf ix llA
The suf ix of the adessive is always lla or llä in standard Finnish, e.g. talo :
talo|lla : talo|i|lla, mies : miehe|llä : mieh|i|llä. In dialects and other forms of
spoken language, the suf ix may appear as shortened to ll or l, e.g. talol.

Meanings of the adessive

The adessive has several uses including
 expressions for being on, in, at, or near something, e.g. pöydällä (on the
table), Vantaalla (in Vantaa), lomalla (on vacation); these and similar uses
are described in section Locational cases
expressions for time, e.g. viime viikolla (last week); see Expressions of
time
indication of instrument or method, as in kirveellä (with an ax),
leikkauksella (with surgery; with a cut)
indication of manner or mode, as in ilolla (with delight)
possessive expressions like minulla on “I have” (literally, “at me there
is”), when the possessor is a living being
expressions like kahvi kermalla “coffee with cream”, even though such
usage has been regarded as substandard.
Thus, the adessive is a case with many meanings. In analyzing a sentence, you
may need to postpone the study of adessive forms to a point where you have
analyzed most of the other words, to establish a context for the
interpretation.

Adessive corresponding to “with”

Much of the use of the adessive corresponds to the English preposition
“with”, or maybe “by”. The use of the adessive for expressing tool or method
has always been accepted, but there has been a lot of debate about the
suitability of use where the adessive expresses just a manner or mode or
even corresponds to “accompanied with”.
It has been argued that usage like ilolla are imitations of foreign
expressions. However, in many contexts, it is dif icult to ind good
replacements. For example, the word iloisesti (an sti adverb derivation of
iloinen : iloisen “merry”) would be accepted by all, but it is longer than ilolla
and does not quite mean the same thing. The language authorities have now
widely accepted uses of the adessive such as ilolla.

Adessive as an attribute
Expressions such as “coffee with cream” have no simple equivalent in
Finnish. Although kahvi kerman kanssa would be a literal translation, “good
Finnish” as recommended in old guides uses phrases like kerman kanssa only
as an adverbial relating to a verb, not as an attribute of a noun. Sometimes
kera, an otherwise dated synonym for kanssa, is suggested, but kahvi kerman
kera has not been used much.
Most often, people just say and write kahvi kermalla and similarly lohta
sienikastikkeella (salmon with mushroom sauce) etc. when expressing things
served or used with some add-on. Previously, expressions like kahvi ja kerma
(coffee and cream) were recommended in language guides instead of kahvi
kermalla. Such recommendations have had little effect.
However, extending the use of the adessive as an attribute to other
contexts may still be regarded as substandard—and a frequent source of
language jokes. People understand what myydään huoneisto parvekkeella
means: a lat with a balcony is being sold; yet it can be jocularly
misinterpreted as referring to a lat on a balcony or other ways. Here
huoneisto ja parveke would be unacceptable, since the balcony is sold as part
of the lat. Thus, in formal style, a relative clause is needed: huoneisto, jossa
on parveke.

Adessive expressing vehicle

According to old style guides, the use of adessive for vehicles was restricted
to situations where you controlled the vehicle, using it as an instrument. You
would say menin sinne autolla (I traveled there by car) when you drove the
car, but menin sinne autossa, if you just rode the car. Such distinctions are not
made any more; you can say autolla even when you were just a passenger. It
is, however, possible to say autossa, too, when you think of a car as an
environment.

Adessive expressing quantity of change

The adessive also expresses the quantity of a change, e.g. Asukasluku kasvoi
tuhannella (The population increased by one thousand). This, and the use of
cases of an object for similar purposes, is described in section Object-like
quanti iers .

87. Ablative
The ablative suf ix ltA
The suf ix of the ablative is always lta or ltä, e.g. talo : talo|lta: taloi|lta, mies :
miehe|ltä: mieh|i|ltä.

Meanings of the ablative

The ablative typically corresponds to the preposition “from” and indicates
movement from somewhere or from the surface of something. Examples: Hän
tuli Vantaalta (He came from Vantaa), Otin omenan pöydältä (I took an apple
from the table). Such usage is described in section Locational cases.
The ablative also expresses transfering something from the possession of
someone, as in Sain Jussilta omenan “I got an apple from Jussi”, as well as lack
of possession. See Expressions for having something.
The ablative is also used to express the following relations:
The person who is asked to give or do something, e.g. Pyysin Villeltä auton
lainaksi (I asked Ville to lend me his car, literally “I asked from Ville car for
loan”), Pyydän sinulta anteeksi (I ask you to forgive me). Such usage is a
natural extension to the use of the ablative for expressing transfer of
possession.
The person who is successful or unsuccessful in doing something, e.g.
Meiltähän tämä käy (We can well do it, literally “from us this goes”).
The person who loses something, e.g. Minulta loppuivat rahat (I ran out of
money), Häneltä meni taju (He lost consciousness). We also say Minulta
murtui luu (I broke a bone), even though it does not refer to really losing a
bone.
The unit when specifying things like unit costs, corresponding to the
preposition “per”, e.g. Tämä maksaa kolme euroa litralta (This costs three
euros per liter).
Clari ication of the property being described, often corresponding to the
preposition “by”, e.g. Hän on luonteeltaan ahkera (He is assiduous by his
character), Ne ovat painoltaan yhtä suuret (They are equal by weight). In
this context, the ablative appears with a possessive suf ix.
Cause that prevents something, e.g. Hän ei kiireiltään ehtinyt tulla (He did
not have time to come, due to being so busy, literally “due to his hurries”).
The word kiireiltään is ablative plural of kiire with a possessive suf ix.
Time in some contexts, as in Kokous alkaa yhdeksältä (The meeting starts
at nine o’clock). See Expressions of time.
The taste or feeling in the context of verbs like näyttää in the meaning “to
look like”, e.g. Tämä näyttää hyvältä (This looks good). Especially for
 verbs like maistua in the meaning “to taste like”, the allative can
alternatively be used, e.g. Tämä maistuu makealta ~ makealle (This tastes
sweet).
The phrase type X X:ltä is used to indicate repetition, often suggesting
regular repetition, e.g. vuosi vuodelta (year after year, every year), kerta
kerralta (every time), askele askeleelta (step by step).

88. Allative
The allative suf ix llex
The suf ix of the allative is always llex, i.e. lle with boundary gemination.
Examples: talo : talo|lle: talo|i|lle, mies : miehe|lle : mieh|i|lle. For example,
Anna miehelle kala is pronounced [annam miehellek kala].
Meanings of the allative
The allative typically corresponds to prepositions like ”to”, “onto”, and “for”. It
often indicates movement to the neighborhood or to the surface of
something, e.g. Pane se pöydälle (Put it onto the table), Such usage is
described in section Locational cases.
The allative also indicates the recipient (of giving something, for example).
Examples: ostin hänelle lahjan (I bought her/him a present), sanoin sinulle (I
said to you). It is also used to express to whom something is bene icial,
harmful, pleasant etc., e.g. Uudistus on hyödyllinen monille (The reform is
useful/bene icial to many), Tämä on vaarallinen linnuille (This is dangerous
to birds). In some Indo-European languages, there is a case called dative that
more or less corresponds to these types of using the Finnish allative.
In Finnish, the recipient is always in the allative. In English, we can say “I
gave Mary an apple”, and the word order determines that Mary is the
recipient. In Finnish, we say Annoin Marylle omenan, and we can change the
word order without affecting the basic meaning.
The allative also has the following uses:
It expresses to whom something happens, e.g. Minulle sattui onnettomuus
(I had an accident; lite rally “to me happened an accident”).
It expresses to whom something is addressed, e.g. Selitin sen Maijalle (I
explained it to Maija) and Opetan heille suomea (I teach Finnish to them).
It expresses taste or feeling in the contexts of verbs maistua in the
meaning “to taste like”, though the ablative is a more common alternative,
e.g. Tämä maistuu makealta ~ makealle (This tastes sweet).

89. Abessive
The abessive suf ix ttA
The suf ix of the abessive is tta or ttä. Examples: talo : talo|tta, mies :
miehe|ttä. Plural examples: talo|i|tta, mieh|i|ttä.

Meanings of the abessive

The abessive corresponds to English preposition “without”. It is used rarely,
except in short phrases such as luvatta (without permission), rahatta
(without money), syyttä (without reason), and enemmittä puheitta (without
more talks). Some old-style proverbs may contain it, too, e.g. Joka kuritta
kasvaa, se kunniatta kuolee (Who grows up without discipline, dies without
honor).
Normally, the preposition ilman with the partitive is used instead, e.g.
ilman taloa rather than talotta. Using double negative like ilman rahatta is
not uncommon, but it is not standard.
Although the abessive is rather marginal in the in lection of nouns, it is
still in common in III in initive forms of verbs, like syömättä (without eating).
In such usage, it often cannot be replaced in a natural way by other
expressions (ilman että syö is possible, but clumsy).

90. Comitative
The form of the comitative
The suf ix of the comitative is ne. It is always preceded by the plural suf ix i,
since the comitative is always in plural form, independently of meaning. In a
comitative form of a noun, the ne suf ix is followed by a possessive suf ix. For
example, the comitative of vaimo (wife) is vaimoineni (with my wife),
vaimoinesi, vaimoineen, vaimoinemme or vaimoinenne, depending on the
person.
Adjective attributes in comitative have no possessive suf ixes, e.g. uusi
vaimo : uusine vaimoineen. The same applies to numerals, e.g. tuhannet järvet
: tuhansine järvineen, and pronouns as attributes, e.g. (ne hyvät :) niine
hyvineen.

Meanings of the comitative

The comitative indicates company and often corresponds to the English
preposition “with” in the meaning “together with, in the company of”. The
form is always in plural. For example, Hän saapui vaimoineen (He arrived
with his wife) does not mean that the man has several wives. Similarly,
Lähettäkää hakemus liitteineen osoitteeseen... (Send the application with its
appendix(es) to...) does not specify whether there is one appendix or more.
 The comitative is mostly used in sayings, such as kaikkineen (in all,
totally), kimpsuineen ja kampsuineen (with all stuffs), niine hyvineen (without
getting anything/more; literally: with those good things), and puutteineenkin
(with its/his/her defects, too). The saying omin nokkineen (on his/her own,
alone; literally: with own bill/beak) is incongruent: the attribute is in the
instructive.
In standard literary language, comitative forms are used as adverbials that
relate to a verb. They express that the action described by the verb is
performed so that the subject acts together with someone or something. The
comitative is rather rare and almost never used in speech, except in some
special phrases. Instead of vaimoineen, one usually writes and says vaimonsa
kanssa, using the posposition kanssa with the genitive. However, one might
say Syön omenat kuorineen (I eat applies with their peels); here kuorien
kanssa would be unnatural.

Strengthening additions päivineen and kaikkineen

A noun in the comitative may be followed by päivineen, the comitative of
päivä (day), which may strengthen the meaning to refer to “in all” or be used
just for style. For example, the sentence Tehdas paloi koneineen päivineen
(The factory burned, with its machines) emphasizes that the machines
burned, not just the building, but it can also be read to infer that all machines
burned.
Another strengthening addition is kaikkineen, e.g. koneineen kaikkineen.
The addition is not an attribute, so it has a possessive suf ix. Compare with
the attribute construct kaikkine koneineen (with all its machines).

Extended uses of the comitative

Nowadays comitative forms are used more freely especially in marketing and
similar contexts, often in translated texts. In such usage, the comitative acts
as a counterpart of the English preposition “with”, and often it does not really
relate to a verb. For example, the heading text Saturnus: Kaasuplaneetta
kauniine renkaineen (Saturn: A gas planet with beautiful rings) sounds
somewhat odd and arti icial. In literary style, one would rather write
Saturnus: Kaasuplaneetta ja sen kauniit renkaat, though this presents the
planet and the rings as two things, instead of presenting the rings as a
subsidiary. The adessive case and to some extent the instructive case are also
used in a similar manner. The Finnish language really lacks a natural general
expression of the type “A with B”.
Style guides emphasize that the comitative indicates something that
happens to appear in the company of something else. We can write Hän tuli
lapsineen (He came with his child/children), because a person can logically
come with or without children. But in actual usage, the comitative is used
more wildly, in almost any context where we might use “with” in English, e.g.
Rauma on kaunis kaupunki vanhoine taloineen (Rauma is a beautiful city with
its old houses) and Eläin katsoi minua suurine silmineen (The animal looked
at me with its large eyes)., which would more properly be written using the
adessive or the instructive: suurilla silmillään or suurin silmin.

91. Instructive
The form of the instructive
The suf ix of the instructive is n. Thus, the singular form is the same as the
genitive form, e.g. jalka : jalan (foot : by foot). The plural forms are different
from the genitive, since the instructive plural is formed from the regular
plural stem, e.g. jalo|i|n (cf. the inessive plural jalo|i|ssa), as opposite to the
genitive, which is formed in different special ways, e.g. jalkojen (~ jalkain).
There is never a possessive suf ix in an instructive form. For example, we
can say Tein sen omin käsin (I did it with my own hands), using the instructive
of käsi : käden. If the adessive (-lle case) is used instead, it takes a possessive
suf ix, e.g. Tein sen omilla käsilläni.

Meanings of the instructive

The instructive often indicates an instrument or tool, but it has varying
phraseological use. The singular forms are almost exclusively adverb-like, e.g.
jalan (by foot), and they are used for a small set of words only. However, the
instructive is in productive use in II in initive forms of verbs, e.g. kirjoitta|e|n
(writing; by writing) and as adverb-like case forms of comparison forms of
adjectives, e.g. nopeammin (faster), nopeimmin (fastest), which are plural
instructive forms of nopeampi and nopein.
The plural forms are often used in a singular meaning. For example, Hän
teki sen raskain sydämin (He did it with a heavy heart), the instructive raskain
sydämin (of raskas sydän) is plural by form, singular in meaning.
Genuine singular forms of the instructive might still be seen in expressions
like kahden käden käytettävä miekka (a sword used with two hands).
However, such expressions are generally shortened as kahden käden miekka,
where kahden käden can be interpreted as an attribute in the genitive.
The instructive is rare, except in speci ic phrases. Normally, an instrument
is expressed using the adessive or other cases. We say matkustin junalla (I
traveled by train); the instructive is be used in such expressions.
Instructive plural forms of cardinal numerals, such as yksin, kaksin, and
kolmin, are used to mean “as a group of …”. The most common of these is
yksin (alone). As a synonym for kaksin, the instructive singular kahden is also
used.
It is often dif icult to distinguish between expressions for an instrument of
an action and the mode or conditions of an action. This is one reason why the
instructive often denotes mode or style, as in He tekivät sen iloisin mielin (The
did it in a happy mood; literally: … with merry minds). Here the adessive is
possible, too: He tekivät sen iloisella mielellä. Generally, the adessive and the
instructive are often used in such phrases rather interchangeably.
In some incongruent phrases like hyvillä mielin (in good mood), a noun in
the instructive has an adjective attribute in the adessive.
The following phrase examples show how the meaning of the instructive
varies from the indication of an instrument to describing mode, manner, or
just context:
Rakensin sen paljain käsin (I built it with my bare hands). Note the lack of
possessive suf ix.
Teemme sen pienin askelin (We do it in small steps).
Autoimme heitä monin tavoin (We helped them in many ways). Here
monilla tavoilla is possible, too, and so is the mixed-case monilla tavoin.
Kesällä olen yleensä paljain jaloin (In summer I am usually barefoot).
The common adverb hyvin (very) is originally the instructive of hyvä (good).
This indicates that the use of the instructive for the mode of action is rather
old, even though grammars have generally described it as the case of an
instrument.
The word terveisin, often used in inal greetings in letters, is by its form an
instructive of terveinen (greeting), which is mostly used in plural. It can be
accompanied with an adjective, e.g. parhain terveisin, rakkain terveisin,
ystävällisin terveisin.
 In advertizing language and similar styles, the instructive is often used in a
manner similar to the use of the comitative. Due to rareness and similarity in
form, these cases are often confused with each other. In slogans such as
Joensuu virtaa uusin ilmein (Joensuu lows with new faces), the instructive is
really used just as a counterpart to “with”. The same applies to phrases like
kohtalokkain seurauksin (with fatal consequences).

92. Accusative
The accusative (objective, the case of a grammatical object) is often listed as a
case, but speci ic accusative forms exist only for the personal pronouns
(minut, sinut, hänet, meidät, teidät, heidät) and the interrogative pronouns
kuka ∼ ken “who” (accusative: kenet). This case is discussed in section
Marking the object, subsection Use of accusative forms.
Many grammars describe the accusative as a mixed case that coincides
with the nominative (singular or plural), or the genitive singular, or one of
special accusative forms of pronouns mentioned above. This means that any
grammatical object that is not in the partitive case is said to be in the
accusative. The sentences Sormus löydettin (The ring was found), Löysin
sormuksen (I found a/the ring), Löysin sormukset (I found the rings), and
Löysin hänet (I found him/her) are all said to have their object in the
accusative. This may simplify some descriptions, at the cost of introducing a
many-faced “case”. In modern grammars, and in this book, cases are de ined
by their form, i.e. on morphological grounds, and this means that there is no
accusative for nouns in Finnish.

93. Constructs sometimes regarded as

cases
Sometimes a case called prolative” is suggested, with the ending tse
appended to the plural stem and corresponding to the English prepositions
“through” or “via”. It can be formed from new words, too, e.g. sähköpostitse or
(less formally) meilitse “by e-mail”. Most linguists regard tse simply as an
adverbial suf ix.
Sometimes a case, exessive, with the ending ntA (combined from the nA of
essive and tA of partitive) is suggested, meaning “from the role of”, thus
making the system of locational cases more orthogonal. It is used in a few
dialects, though often in a few words only, e.g. using luonta instead of the
adverb luota (which is morphologically a partitive form and is purely
locational in meaning). However, such dialects may also use -ntA forms much
like case suf ixes, e.g. korjattavanta (from the state of being repaired), an
“exessive” of the participle korjattava.
Word forms ending with nkaa, with a meaning corresponding to the
comitative, i.e. “together with”, exist in some dialects. However, they are
explainable as simple contractions: talon kanssa → talonkaa.
In composite words, the irst word often undergoes changes: hevonen
“horse” and voima “power” yield hevosvoima “horsepower”, as discussed in
section Compositive forms. One might argue that this means that there is a
separate case, compositive.
A case called lative, with endings such as s and k and a generic locational
meaning “to”, has actually existed in the language. It only survives in some
adverbs (e.g. ulos) and in peculiar derivations which are between adverbs
and cases of nouns in the comparative form, e.g. rannemmas (from ranta
“beach, shore” + comparative suf ix + ending s); see section Comparison of
nouns .
There are several very productive suf ixes for deriving adverbs, such as sti,
corresponding to the English suf ix “ly”, which can be attached to most
adjectives, as well as to numerals, e.g. kolmesti “three times”.
However, these forms are normally not regarded as cases. One reason for
this is that they cannot have attributes. We can say sähköpostilla “by e-mail,
using e-mail” or, with almost the same meaning, sähköpostitse. But only the
former can have an attribute, e.g. luotettavalla sähköpostilla “using reliable e-
mail”.

94. Cases of proper names

Proper names are usually in lected according to the same rules as other
nouns. Some examples of forming genitives of proper names: Jukka : Jukan,
Helsinki : Helsingin,Kekkonen : Kekkosen, Tampere : Tampereen, Ruuttu :
Ruutun, Ruutu : Ruudun, Kivi : Kiven.
However, there is variation in the in lection of names. Some people prefer
having their names exempted from normal rules, so that e.g. the genitive of
Satu is Satun, not Sadun, even though the corresponding common name is
satu : sadun (fairy tale). This means in lecting a proper name like a
completely foreign word, without consonant gradation or other stem
variation.
There are two reasons for in lecting names like foreign words. First, it
keeps the base form of the name easily recognizable from in lected forms.
Second, it may help to avoid association with the corresponding common
noun. Additional variation is caused by dialects. For example, the common
noun närhi (name of a bird species, jay) is in lected närhi : närhin in some
dialects, as opposite to standard Finnish närhi : närhen. The same variation
exists for the surname Närhi. For this name, both in lections are accepted in
standard Finnish.
There is a common idea, rejected by language authorities, that a person
has the right to decide the in lection of his name. In practice, a few widely
known names are usually in lected according to the wishes presented by
important people with such names, e.g. Ryti : Rytin, Raade : Raaden. It is,
however, normatively correct to in lect the names according to general
principles: Rydin, Raateen. For various reasons, publications often still honor
the opinions of public persons and in lect e.g. Orpo : Orpon instead of the
standard Orvon, possibly because here association with the general noun
orpo (orphan) might be seen as particularly disturbing.
For Finnish given names of people, there is an of icial online list that
describes their in lection: Etunimien taivutus. There is also a corresponding
resource for surnames: Sukunimien taivutus. The situation is not stable; there
have been some changes in the rules, usually in the direction of permitting
alternative in lections.
In Western dialects, double consonants in proper names are often
exempted from consonant gradation, e.g. Reetta : Reettalle (instead of
Reetalle), Röyttä : Röyttässä (instead of Röytässä). Such forms are sometimes
used even in public communication that otherwise uses standard language.

95. Cases of loanwords and foreign words

In lecting words of foreign origin
Loanwords are not exempted from in lection in Finnish. This applies even to
foreign nouns, i.e. names and other nouns taken from other languages as
such.
 Oldest loanwords have been completely adapted to the Finnish in lection
system, and their in lection is described in dictionaries of Finnish. Therefore,
the subsections below deal with new loanwords and foreign words. Detailed
information about complications of their in lection is available in Finnish in
section Erisnimien ja vieraiden sanojen taivutus of Nykyajan kielenopas. For
many commonly used names, appendix Proper names of this book may be
useful, as it has some information about in lection, too.

Cases of new loanwords

New loanwords are in lected in a simple manner:
The stem of the word remains invariant except for consonant gradation of
double consonants kk, pp, and tt. Examples: trukki : trukin but loki : lokin
(no gradation of single k).
If the basic form of the word ends in a consonant, an i is inserted as a
binding vowel between it and any suf ix, e.g. maraton : maratonin:
maratoniin. As the example shows, the illative ends with iin for such
words. In plural in lection, the i is changed to e as in words that end with
an invariant i in singular forms, e.g. maraton|e|i|ssa.
However, the line between old and new loanwords in this sense may differ
from what you might expect. Even many words that are otherwise apparently
new loanwords have adapted to a pattern of in lection of old Finnish words,
e.g. bisnes : bisneksen (business). For psyyke : psyyken : psyykeä (psyche), the
partitive form psyykettä is common, but substandard. The word avatar tends
to be in lected like -tar derivations, e.g. avattaren : avatarta, but the only
accepted in lection is avatarin : avataria. For siitake (shitake), it is common
and accepted to in lect it like most Finnish words ending with e, e.g.
siitakkeen : siitaketta, and the in lection siitaken : siitakea is rare.

Cases of foreign words

A foreign noun that ends with a vowel is in lected by simply appending case
suf ixes, with no change in the word stem, e.g. Alabama : Alabamassa (in
Alabama) : Alabamaan (to Alabama).
A foreign noun ending with a consonant is in lected so that the letter i is
used as a binding vowel between the stem and the suf ix, e.g. Oxford :
Oxfordissa : Oxfordiin. In plural forms, the binding vowel changes to e before
the plural suf ix i according to general vowel change rules, e.g. Smith :
Smithillä : Smitheillä.
There are several complications to these rules, such as the following:
If the inal vowel is stressed or otherwise treated as long, as in the
Swedish name Malmö, this affects the partitive and illative suf ixes:
Malmö : Malmötä : Malmöhön.
If a word ends with a mute e, as English and French words often do, the
word is in lected as if the e were pronounced, and it is pronounced as e or
(less often) i, e.g. Locke : Locken [lokken], Voltaire : Voltairen [voltäären] ∼
[voltäärin].
If a word ends with unpronounced consonant(s) so that it is pronounced
as ending with a vowel, it is in lected according to the pronounced form
and an apostrophe is used between the stem and the suf ix, e.g. Bordeaux
[bordoo] : Bordeaux’ssa [bordoossa] : Bordeaux’hon [bordoohon].
However, it is common, especially in literature, to in lect such words
against this rule, according to their written form, e.g. Bordeauxissa,
Bordeauxiin.

96. Cases of unin lectable expressions

Types of unin lectable expressions
An expression can be unin lectable for a few reasons:
It is itself an in lected word, such as pojalla, the adessive of poika.
It is an adverb or other particle, such as kauan or ja.
It is a sentence or sentence fragment, such as Säkenöi voimaa (“Sparkles
strength”; was the name of a horse).

Strings of digits and special characters are not unin lectable in this sense,
since they are read as words or phrases that can be in lected. In writing, a
colon is used to separate the expression from the in lection suf ix, e.g. 30:ssä
= kolmessakymmenessä, §:ssä = pykälässä, Ω:lla = ohmilla or oomegalla,
depending on intended meaning.
However, when a character stands for the name of a symbol, rather than
the thing symbolized by it, it is natural to use a supporting noun as described
below. For example, to say that “&” has several different shapes, it is more
natural to write &-merkillä on useita eri muotoja than to use just &:llä. Both
&-merkillä and &:llä would be read as et-merkillä, since the name of the
character is et-merkki.
A title of a book or other work can be in lected normally, if it consists of a
noun and its attributes, e.g. Seitsemän veljestä : Seitsemässä veljeksessä.
However, when several titles are mentioned, they can all be treated as
uninfectable for uniformity, e.g. Seitsemän veljestä -teoksessa.

Using supporting nouns

We may need to use an unin lectable expression in a sentence context where
it has to be in an in lected form. For example, you might want to ask what is
the difference between pojalla and pojalle. The Finnish sentence Mitä eroa on
... ja ...? requires the expressions in the adessive, but you can’t write pojallalla
and pojallalle. Instead, we need to use a supporting noun and apply in lection
to it. The supporting noun is a general noun that corresponds to the class of
the expression, such as sana (word).
There are two ways to attach a supporting noun to an expression,
exempli ied here for an expression that is a word being discussed as an
element of a language:
pojalla-sana; the support noun is the second part of a compound word,
and a hyphen is always used in this context
sana ”pojalla”; the support noun precedes the expression, as a separate
word, and the expression is typically put in quotation marks or italicized
for clarity
Using these ways, we can ask Mitä eroa on pojalla-sanalla ja pojalle-sanalla?
or Mitä eroa on sanalla ”pojalla” ja sanalla ”pojalle”? We could shorten these
as Mitä eroa on pojalla- ja pojalle-sanalla? and Mitä eroa on sanoilla ”pojalla”
ja”pojalle”?, so that the supporting noun “supports” two expressions
simultaneously.
In an awkward situation where a sentence or sentence fragment is used as
a name and the name needs to be in lected, you need to decide on a suitable
support noun. To form the genitive of the horse name Säkenöi voimaa, known
to refer to a stallion (ori in Finnish), the most natural way would be Säkenöi
voimaa -oriin.

97. In lection types of nouns

Variation in in lection
In in lection, both the stem of a word and its suf ixes may take different
forms. For some cases, there are alternative suf ixes, partly in free variation,
partly with some stylistic difference.
To describe the variation, a word may be described by showing some
typical forms from which all the other forms can be derived mechanically.
Typical forms for a noun might be as shown in the following table. The
example words shown are valo “light” (with no variation in stem) and käsi
“hand; arm” (with considerable variation in stem: käsi, käde-, kät-, käte-).
Form Example 1 Example 2
Nominative singular valo käsi
Genitive singular valon käden
Partitive singular valoa kättä
Illative singular valoon käteen
Genitive plural valojen käsien (~ kätten)
Partitive plural valoja käsiä
Illative plural valoihin käsiin

In Nykysuomen sanakirja, the typical forms include the essive singular

(valona, kätenä), which sometimes has specialties in in lection. In the newer
Kielitoimiston sanakirja, the nominative plural is included.
In Latin grammars, nouns are divided into 5 in lection types
(declinations), each with some specialities in case endings. You might thus
ind it unpleasant to hear that in Finnish, there are 85 in lection types for
nouns in Finnish, according to Nykysuomen sanakirja, though “only” 51
according to the newer system. The newer system is used in Suomen kielen
perussanakirja and its successor Kielitoimiston sanakirja as well as the word
list Nykysuomen sanalista and in the Joukahainen database (which uses the
term Kotus-luokka for a type). The system uses somewhat different grouping,
omits some outdated in lection types, and uses verbal descriptions for some
special in lections. Appendix In lection classes of noun-like words
summarizes the new system.
The in lection types (of the new system) can be referred by number, e.g. 1,
or by a type word, e.g. valo, or by a combination: 1 valo or valo 1.
 The in lection type concept does not include consonant gradation in the
stem or the effects of vowel harmony. These phenomena are described
separately. For example, the word helppo (easy) is described in Kielitoimiston
sanakirja as follows: helppo1*B. This means that the word belongs to
in lection type 1 and that there is consonant gradation in it, of gradation type
B, which means the pp : p gradation. You are supposed to know the vowel
harmony rules, so that e.g. the partitive suf ix (which is A for in lection type
1) is a and not ä.
Most of the variation can be understood on the basis of more general
rules. The in lection types just show the effects of the rules on speci ic kinds
of words. Yet, the in lection information included in the types is very handy
when you need to check what the forms of a particular word are.
The following descriptions deal with different in lection types according
to the last letter of the basic form. Although the basic form is often
exceptional, it is the form used in dictionaries, so we use it in this practical
grouping. Consonant gradation is not discussed in this presentation.

Nouns ending with a long vowel

When the word ends with a long vowel, this vowel is shortened before the
plural suf ix i. Otherwise, the stem remains unchanged. Example: puu : puun :
puuta : puuhun : puiden : puita : puihin (tree; wood).

Nouns ending with a diphtong

When the word ends with a diphthong ie, uo, or yö, the irst vowel of the
diphthong is lost before the plural suf ix i. Otherwise, the stem remains
unchanged. Example: tie : tiessä : teissä, suo : suossa : soissa, yö : yössä : öissä.
A stem ending with a diphthong with i as the second component remains
unchanged except that the i is lost before before the plural suf ix i, e.g. hai
(shark) : haissa (in shark) : haissa (in sharks). Since the distinction between
plural and singular is thus lost in most case forms, the plural forms are often
avoided, e.g. using a different word like haikala (“shark- ish”).
Otherwise, a diphtong at the end of word stem remains unchanged. Such
words are relatively new loanwords. Their plural forms (except the
nominative) are avoided, since many of them look and sound odd, e.g. leu :
leuissa, show (pronounced šou) : show’issa (pronounced šouissa).
Nouns ending with short o, u, ö, or y
Nouns that end with a short o, u, ö, or y are the only nouns that have no stem
variation except possibly consonant gradation. Example: yhtiö : yhtiön :
yhtiötä : yhtiöön : yhtiöiden: yhtiöitä : yhtiöihin (company).

Nouns ending with short a or ä

A noun that ends with a short a or ä has stem variation in plural forms: the a
or ä is either lost or changed to o or ö, respectively. See section Vowel
changes before an i suf ix. Examples: pesä : pesän : pesää: pesään: pesien :
pesiä: pesiin (nest) and kala : kalan : kalaa : kalaan : kalojen : kaloja : kaloihin
( ish).

Nouns ending with short i

Nouns that end with a short i may have the i preserved in in lection, except in
the plural stem where it is changed to e according to general rules. Example:
laki : lai|n : laki|a : laki|in : laki|en : lake|j|a : lake|i|hin (law). In the example,
the in lection stem is laki-, the plural stem is lakei-, except that the k may be
omitted due to consonant gradation. This type includes most new loanwords
that end with a consonant in the original form and have an i appended in
Finnish, e.g. ilmi : ilmi|n : ilmi|ä : ilmi|en : ilme|jä : ilme|i|hin.
Other nouns that end with a short i have the i changed to e in the in lection
stem, except in the plural stem where it is omitted according to general rules.
Example: laki : lae|n : lake|a : lake|en : lak|i|en : lak|i|a : lak|i|in (top, crown).
In the example, the in lection stem is lake-, the plural stem is laki-, except that
the k may be omitted due to consonant gradation. Note that the genitive
plural lakien is the same as in the laki : lain in lection.
As the examples show, the in lection cannot be inferred from the
dictionary form. You need to learn the in lection type when you learn a new
word ending with i. The type where i changes to e is older, and new words of
this type are not created.
In words where i changes to e, the formation of the partitive singular
varies. It can be formed with the -A suf ix as in the example, appended to the
in lectional stem (e.g. lake|a). However, in some words, the partitive suf ix is -
tA and the e is omitted before it, e.g. tuli : tule|n : tul|ta ( ire). This happens
when the e in the in lectional stem (and the i in the dictionary form) is
preceded by the consonant l, n, or r (e.g. kieli : kielen : kieltä, ääni : äänen :
ääntä, hiiri : hiiren : hiirtä) or by a t preceded by one of those consonants or a
vowel (e.g. vesi : veden : vettä), and also in some individual words like lohi :
lohen : lohta. There are also some words that additionally have a consonant
combination simpli ied, e.g. lapsi : lapsen : lasta (i.e. ps simpli ied to s before
t), veitsi : veitsen : veistä.
This may sound complicated, and these in lection issues sometimes cause
problems even to native speakers, when dealing with rare words. For
example, they know the in lection kilpi : kilven (shield), but when they
encounter a word like alpi (a name of some wild plants), they might fail to
produce the correct genitive alven, saying alvin or even alpin. Such words
may be in the process of moving to the other in lection type, and the changes
have even been approved by language authorities to some extent.
Some proper names are in lected in two ways, e.g. Närhi : Närhen ~ Närhin,
due to dialect differences. This is accepted, but the corresponding common
noun närhi (jay) has only one accepted in lection in standard language, närhi
: närhen.
Confusion has been caused by intentional use of wrong in lection. For
example, the word viini : viinin : viiniä (wine) was mixed with the rare word
viini : viinen : viintä (quiver). It surely sounded funny when someone irst
said Haluaisitko viintä? instead of the correct Haluaisitko viiniä? (Would you
like to have some wine?). Later, many people started to think that viintä is the
correct form, or at least were not any more sure what the correct form is.
Mixed in lection has now been accepted for the word vuori (lining of a
cloth). The old in lection is vuori : vuorin : vuoria. Now an accepted
alternative is vuori : vuoren : vuorta, making the word coincide with another
word of different origin, meaning “mountain”.

Nouns with -si : -te- : -de- : -t- : -s- variation

Words that end with si preceded by a vowel, such as vesi (water) and käsi
(hand; arm) have the following variation in the stem:
Most forms in singular have -te- or -de-, depending on consonant
gradation, e.g. genitive vede|n, illative vete|en.
Partitive singular has -t- in the stem and the tA suf ix, e.g. vet|tä. This stem
also appears in alternative genitive plural forms such as vet|ten, but the
common form genetive plural is ves|i|en.
Plural forms (except nominative) have a stem with -s-, e.g. ves|i|ssä
(where i is the plural suf ix).
This in lection does not apply to new loanwords, which follow the pattern for
words ending with i without stem alteration in singular, e.g. loosi : loosin :
loosissa : looseissa (booth; lodge).
Common words like vesi and käsi are mastered well by native speakers,
but for less common words, mistakes may be made. For example, heisi is a
relatively rare name for a class of plants and has the old in lection, e.g. plural
heidet, but people may in lect it as if it were a foreign word, e.g. plural heisit.

Nouns ending with short e

There are two different types of words that end with a short e in the
dictionary form. In the more common type, the dictionary form has a short e,
but most other forms have a long ee, e.g. herne : hernee|n : hernee|llä, except
for the partitive singular, which has et in the stem and the tA as the suf ix, e.g.
hernet|tä. These words have boundary gemination in the dictionary form.
The other type has an invariable stem, e.g. nalle : nalle|n : nalle|lla (teddy
bear) and (with consonant gradation) nukke : nuke|n : nuke|lla (doll). In
addition to a few words like the examples, this type includes new loanwords,
e.g. beige, and many common irst names, e.g. Anne and Ville.
The dictionary forms of some loanwords end with a long ee, with regular
in lection for such words, e.g. ilee : ileen : ileetä ( ilet) and pyree : pyreen :
pyreetä (purée). However, they are very often written and spoken as adapted
to the model of words like herne, i.e. ile : ileen : ilettä and pyre : pyreen :
pyrettä. This has now been accepted into the standard language, as an
alternative.
The loanword siitake (shiitake) is usually treated as belonging to the herne
type (siitakkeen : siitaketta), though with no boundary gemination. The
alternative in lection siitake : siitaken : siitakea is also allowed (and favored
by some), but less common.

Nouns ending with a consonant

All words that end with a consonant in the nominative singular form have an
in lection stem different from that form. If the nominative singular were not
established as the dictionary form, these words would best be described by
presenting their in lection stems, such as ihmise-, as primary and the
nominative singular as an exceptional form.
The changes involved vary considerably:
-l : -le-, e.g. askel : askele|n : askel|ta : askel|i|lla (step). Words of this type
may have alternative forms ending with -lex in the nominative, e.g. askelex
: askelee|lla : askele|i|lla. The two paradigms are often mixed with each
other.
-n : -ne-, e.g. kämmen : kämmene|n : kämmen|tä : kämmen|i|llä (palm).
-n : -me- : -m-, e.g. avain : avaime|n : avaim|i|lla. Most words in this class
have the in ending, which is often a derivational suf ix. There are also a
few words ending with An, e.g. hapan : happamen (sour) and sydän :
sydämen (heart). The latter word has the m doubled in pronunciation
(sydämmen), but this exceptional feature is not expressed in standard
writing.
-n : -mA-: -m-, e.g. työtön : työttömä|n : työtön|tä : työttöm|i|llä
(unemployed). Words of this type are mostly adjectives (with in lection
like nouns), though some of them are used as nouns, too. In addition to -
tOn derivations, this type includes the word lämmin : lämpimän (warm)
and the alternative in lection hapan : happaman (~ happamen).
-nen : -se- : -s-, e.g. ihminen : ihmise|n : ihmis|tä : ihmis|i|llä. The short
stem like ihmis- appears in plural forms (except nominative), in partitive
singular, and in the more common variant of the genitive plural, e.g.
ihmis|ten. The other variant of the genitive plural is ihmis|i|en.
-r : -re-, e.g. sisar : sisare|n : sisar|ta : sisar|i|lla (sister).
-s : -kse- : -ks-, e.g. tulos : tulokse|n : tulos|ta : tuloks|i|lla (result).
-s : -*- : –, e.g. valas : valaa|n : valas|ta : vala|i|lla (whale). Here, as in this
book in general, the asterisk “*” indicates that the preceding vowel is
repeated in writing, prolonged in pronunciation.
-s : -de- : -te : -t- : -ks-, e.g. vapaus : vapaude|n : vapaute|en : vapaut|ta :
vapauks|i|lla (freedom).
-s : -he- : -h- in the word mies : miehe|n : mieh|i|llä (man, male person)
-t : -*- : – in the word kevät : kevää|n : kevä|i|llä (spring)
-uT : -Ue- : -U-, e.g. olut : olue|n : olut|ta : olu|i|ssa (beer). This in lection is
rather often confused with the in lection of words ending with uex, e.g.
aluex : alueen : aluetta : alueissa.
-uT : -ee- : -e-, e.g. oppinut : oppinee|n : oppinut|ta : oppine|i|ssa (beer).
Words of this type are mostly participles (with in lection like nouns),
though some of them are used as nouns, too.
other: Words ending with other consonants are in lected like foreign
names, with i used as a binding vowel and the resulting stem in lected like
 ilmi : ilmin. Example: stadion : stadioni |n : stadioni|a : stadioni|lla :
stadione|i|lla. If the inal consonant is a voiceless stop, it usually
participates in consonant gradation in pronunciation but not in standard
spelling, eg. pop : popin : popia [poppia].

The in lection of words ending with s in the dictionary form needs to be

learned separately. This can be said so that you primarily need to learn the
in lection stem, like tulokse- or valaa- or vapaude-; the nominative singular
can usually inferred from that stem, but not vice versa.
New loanwords and foreign names are usually in lected according to the
principle described above for “other”, even if they end with l, n, r, s, or t. Thus,
for example the city name Lagos is in lected Lagosin : Lagosissa etc. In
contrast, old loanwords, including well-established proper names, have
usually been adapted to Finnish in lection patterns, e.g. Kypros : Kyproksessa,
Akropolis : Akropoliilla.

98. Cases in sentence analysis

Case suf ixes generally help to recognize the roles of words in a sentence.
Although some word endings might relate to different cases or to verb forms,
many endings are rather sure signs of a speci ic case being used.
For example, we can analyze the structure of the sentence Liprakoissa
hulmingoissa häimylöi nuhkuisia jupsuja without knowing any of the words.
From the endings we can infer that the irst two words are in inessive plural
and apparently form an adverbial, consisting of an adjective and a noun. The
last two words appear to be in partitive plural, presumably an adjective and a
noun, constituting the subject of the sentence. This makes it rather obvious
that the third word is a predicate, as it most probably is according its form: if
a word ends with a diphthong, like öi, it is a past tense form of the verb (with
few exceptions). Therefore we can expect the last two words to constitute the
object, consisting of a noun and its attribute in partitive plural (due to the
endings -ia and -ja). So we know the grammatical structure, with no idea of
the meaning. Actually, there is no meaning; the words were just invented for
this example.
However, there are more complicated situations. Due to the variation in
meanings of cases, a sentence may contain two phrases in the same case, for
unrelated reasons. This is not forbidden, though it may make a sentence
more dif icult to understand.
In particular, the genitive often appears in different meanings in a
sentence, due to its many uses. The same applies to the partitive. This means
that we may need to analyze a sentence or part of a sentence irst in one way,
then deduce that the analysis must be wrong, and take a different path.
For example, the start of the sentence Kannatamme työttömyyttä
vähentäviä toimia can irst be read as meaning “We support unemployment”,
but both the meaning and the continuation of the sentence make this
interpretation impossible. Although the partitive työttömyyttä could
grammatically be the object of kannatamme, this interpretation would make
it impossible to make the rest of the sentence it into the grammatical
structure. Leaving työttömyyttä aside for a while, we get a meaningful
analysis for the rest: vähentäviä toimia (reducing measures, i.e. measures
that reduce) is in the partitive and constitute the object. We can then see that
työttömyyttä is indeed an object, but for the verb participle vähentäviä. So the
meaning is “We support measures that reduce unemployment”. The Finnish
sentence is not optimal for understandability, and Kannatamme toimia, jotka
vähentävät työttömyyttä might be better. However, administrative, political,
scienti ic, and many other texts often contain sentences loaded with phrases
in the same case.

Possessive suf ixes

99. The concept of possessive suf ix

Possessive suf ixes are appended to noun-like words to relate them to a
person in the grammatical sense, i.e. 1st person (I, we), 2nd person (you), or
3rd person (he, she, they). At the simplest, the relationship is possession, e.g.
autoni with the 1st person suf ix ni means “my car”. However, most uses of
possessive suf ixes are more abstract and often idiomatic.
Possessive suf ixes could be classi ied as personal suf ixes of noun-like
words. In most descriptions, they are treated as part of word in lection,
causing the number of in lected forms of a noun to be about six times as big
as it would otherwise be.
Possessive suf ixes appear after case suf ixes but before word-like suf ixes
like kin, pa, and han. Example: autossanikin (in my car, too).

100. The possessive suf ixes

Person Suf ix Example Translation
1st singular ni autoni my car(s)
2nd singular si autosi your car(s)
3rd singular nsAx, *n autonsa his/her/its car(s)
1st plural mme automme our car(s)
2nd plural nne autonne your car(s)
3rd plural nsAx, *n autonsa their car(s)

In poetry and in dialects, the suf ixes ni and si sometimes appeas as in and is,
e.g. sydämein instead of sydämeni (my heart). In spoken language, in poetry,
and in dialects the suf ix si is often reduced to s, e.g. autos instead of autosi.
The third person is more complicated than the others. Its basic suf ix is
nsa or nsä, and such forms are always used in the nominative and for forms
that end with a consonant. For in lected forms ending with a short vowel, a
more common suf ix is an, en etc., where the vowel is the same as the
preceding vowel. Thus, we write hänen talonsa (his/her house) but hänen
talossaan (in his/her house). The word talossaan consists of the base word
talo, the inessive suf ix ssa, and the possessive suf ix an. It is possible to write
talossansa, too, but such forms, though formally standard, look outdated,
dialectal, or poetic.
As the notation nsAx in the title expresses, the suf ixes nsa and nsä have
boundary gemination. Thus, for example, Hän myi autonsa minulle (He sold
his car to me) is normally pronounced as Hän myi autonsam minulle.

101. Effects of possessive suf ixes on word

stem
When a possessive suf ix is appended to the dictionary form (nominative
singular), the stem used is the same as in the genitive. For example, the
suf ixed forms of olut (beer, ale), genitive oluen, are olueni, oluesi etc.
Otherwise, a possessive suf ix is appended to a case form, after the case
suf ix, e.g. talo|ssa|ni.
If a possessive suf ix is appended to a word form that ends with a
consonant (t or n) as part of a suf ix, the consonant is omitted. For example,
adding the suf ix si to the illative form taloon yields taloosi.
Thus, possessive suf ixes remove the distinction between nominative
singular, genitive singular, and nominative plural. For example, when the
suf ix ni is added to the forms talo, talon, and talot, the result is taloni for all
of them.
At the syllable boundary before a possessive suf ix, the strong grade is
always used, deviating from normal principles of consonant gradation. For
example, the genitive koti (home) is kodin by normal gradation rules, but the
suf ixed versions have t, not d: kotini, kotisi, kotinsa etc. On the other hand, we
say kodissani, since it has a syllable (sa) between the potentially gradating t ∼
d and the possessive suf ix.
The translative suf ix ksi changes to kse before a possessive suf ix.
The following table illustrates the effects of the possessive suf ix on the
stem, using the sample word jalka (leg; foot) and the suf ix ni. The plural
forms are shown under the singular forms. The dash “–” means that the form
is not used.
# Case Unsuf ixed Suf ixed with ni
jalka jalkani
1 nominative
jalat jalkani
jalan jalkani
2 genitive
jalkojen ~ jalkain jalkojeni ~ jalkaini
jalkana jalkanani
3 essive
jalkoina jalkoinani
jalkaa jalkaani
4 partitive
jalkoja jalkojani
jalaksi jalakseni
5 translative
jaloiksi jaloikseni
6 inessive jalassa jalassani
 jaloissa jaloissani
jalasta jalastani
7 elative
jaloista jaloistani
jalkaan jalkaani
8 illative
jalkoihin jalkoihini
jalalla jalallani
9 adessive
jaloilla jaloillani
jalalta jalaltani
10 ablative
jaloilta jaloiltani
jalalle jalalleni
11 allative
jaloille jaloilleni
jalatta jalattani
12 abessive
jaloitta jaloittani
13 comitative – jalkoineni
jalan –
14 instructive
jaloin jalkoineni

102. Use of possessive suf ixes

Standard usage
Standard written Finnish often uses possessive suf ixes instead of or in
addition to genitive forms of personal pronouns. For example, “my car” is
autoni in literary Finnish; it consists of the word auto (car) and the suf ix of
the irst person singular, ni.
It is possible to use additionally a personal pronoun, corresponding to
English “my”: minun autoni. However, in literary style, this should be used
only for emphasis, e.g. when referring to my car in explicit comparison with
your car.
No possessive suf ix is used when the genitive form of personal pronoun is
used in addition to a noun in the genitive form, connected with a word like ja
(and) or tai (or). Thus, although we write minun autoni, we write minun ja
Hannan auto or Hannan ja minun auto when referring to a car owned by me
and Hanna. Similarly, when two pronouns are used, no possessive suf ix
appears, e.g. sinun ja minun auto.

Third person
In the third person, a personal pronoun in the genitive is normally used in
addition to a possessive suf ix, e.g. hänen autonsa (his/her car). If the suf ix
relates to the subject person of the statement, the personal pronoun is
omitted, however. Thus, we can say Myin hänen autonsa (I sold his/her car),
but Hän myi autonsa (He/she sold his/her car). You might also see usage like
Matti ja ystävänsä Ville, but this is substandard: the pronoun hänen must not
be omitted here: Matti ja hänen ystävänsä Ville (Matti and his friend Ville).
The third person suf ixes are also used as corresponding to English words
“its” and “their” when they refer to the subject of the clause. In this context,
they are never preceded by the genitive of a pronoun, sen or niiden. For
example, “The company ired its CEO” would be Yhtiö erotti
toimitusjohtajansa. But as the subject of a statement, “its CEO” is sen
toimitusjohtaja.
Third person possessive suf ixes are not used when the noun is preceded
by a genitive attribute other than third person personal pronoun hänen or
heidän. Thus, we say hänen autonsa (his/her car) but Liisan auto (Liisa’s car).
Meanings of possessive suf ixes
The meanings of possessive suf ixes vary, partly like the meanings of English
words “my”, “your” etc. vary, but also because the suf ixes have special
idiomatic use.
The term “possessive suf ix” is commonly used in Finnish grammars, but it
is somewhat misleading, since these suf ixes mostly indicate something else
than possession. The Finnish term omistusliite is even more misleading, as it
refers to ownership. Possessive suf ixes would perhaps best be described as
personal suf ixes of nouns.
These suf ixes indicate possession rather rarely; autoni usually indicates
possession of some kind, and jalkani (my leg) may be interpreted as
possessive in an abstract sense, but elämäni (my life), veljeni (my brother),
matkani (my trip), or vastustajani (my opponent) are hardly possessive
expressions.
A possessive suf ix is really a relational suf ix, relating a word to a person
or a thing. In many phrases, a possessive suf ix has no identi iable meaning: it
is just part of a grammatical structure.

Rarely with adjectives

Possessive suf ixes are attached to nouns, but usually not to adjectives. For
example, we say vanha autoni (my old car) without adding the ni suf ix to the
adjective vanha. However, an adjective used as a noun can have a possessive
suf ix, e.g. meidän nuoremme (our young folks), using nuori (young) as a noun
(young person).
Exceptionally, adjectives that are used to express equality comparison of a
property can take possessive suf ixes. For example, the adjective pituinen
(from pituus “length, tallness”) is used in expressions like Paavon pituinen
mies (a man as tall as Paavo), and when the reference is expressed with a
personal pronoun, a possessive suf ix is used, too, e.g. minun pituiseni mies (a
man as tall as I).
This also means that congruence does not apply to possessive suf ixes like
it applies to case suf ixes. For example, if we in lect the expression rakas
vanha ystävä in the allative (-lle case), all words get the case suf ix: rakkaalle
vanhalle ystävälle. However, if a possessive suf ix is added, it is appended to
the last word only, e.g. rakkaalle vanhalle ystävälleni.
Pronouns used with possessive suf ixes
Possessive suf ixes are mostly not used with pronouns, except the following:
the re lexive pronoun itse, e.g. Hän katseli itseään peilistä (He watched
himself in a mirror)
the reciprocal pronoun toinen, e.g. He rakastavat toisiaan (They love each
other)
the special pronoun oma (own), e.g. Jokainen meni omaan kotiinsa
(Everyone went to his own home)

Possessive suf ixes in verb forms

Possessive suf ixes are also used for many participles and in initives of verbs.
In that context, they indicate the agent of the action expressed by the verb.
For example, the word kirjoittamani is the past participle form of kirjoittaa
(to write), with the 1st person singular suf ix ni, and means “which I have
written”. Thus, in a clause equivalent like tekemäni työ (work that I have
done), the suf ix ni indicates the agent of action, not possession of any kind.
The following verb forms may have a possessive suf ix:
The longer (translative) form of the I in initive, e.g. kuullakseni (in order
to hear). Here the possessive suf ix is obligatory.
The inessive form of the II in initive, e.g. kuullessani (when I hear/heard).
The instructive form of the II in initive in special contexts, e.g. minun
kuulteni (so that I heard it).
The V in initive, e.g. olin kuulemaisillani (I was about to heard). Here the
possessive suf ix is obligatory.
All participles except negative participles. Examples: uskoin kuulevani (I
thought I heard), sanoin kuulleeni (I said I had heard), kuultuani (after I
had heard), kuulemani huhu (a/the rumor I have heard). Negative
participles like uskomaton (unbelievable; non-believer) do not take
possessive suf ixes.

Possessive suf ixes in adverbs

Many adverb-like words have a possessive suf ix that varies according to the
person form of the clause. The word mielellään (willingly, with pleasure;
preferably) is, by its form, the adessive of mieli (mind) with a possessive
suf ix, so literally it means “with his/her mind”, but it has a specialized
meaning. In standard language, the possessive suf ix varies, e.g. Tein sen
mielelläni (I did it with pleasure), Me teimme sen mielellämme (We did it with
pleasure).
In such usage, the variation of the possessive suf ix has no meaning, since
it simply agrees with the subject. This phenomenon can be classi ied as
congruence.
It is increasingly common, though still substandard, to use invariably the
third person form mielellään, e.g. Tein sen mielellään. This means that such
words are used purely as adverbs.

Possessive suf ixes in postpositions

Most postpositions can have possessive suf ixes. This is natural, because
many of them are originally case forms of nouns. For example, we say auton
edessä (in front of a car) but edessäni or minun edessäni (in front of me). In
common spoken language, however, possessive suf ixes are mostly not used
even in such expressions; instead, we say mun edessä.

Possessive suf ixes and cases

Possessive suf ixes can be used for all case forms except the instructive.
However, they are very rarely used for abessive forms of nouns, e.g.
teoittamme (without our deeds). On the other hand, certain in initives in the
instructive form often take the abessive suf ix and a possessive suf ix
(indicating the agent), e.g. tietä|mä|ttä|ni (without my knowing).

Special uses of possessive suf ixes

Many sayings contain possessive suf ixes, especially third person suf ixes. For
example, the saying se ottaa aikansa (it takes its time) has the suf ix nsa as an
integral part, and mennä menojaan (to go off; to run its course), with the an
suf ix, is heavily idiomatic (literally “to go his/her/its goings”). In the latter
phrase, the possessive suf ix varies by the subject person, e.g. Menin menojani
(I went off).
In sayings like Mikä hän on miehiään? (What kind of a man is he?, literally
“what he is of his men”), the possessive suf ix is part of the phrase with no
special meaning. However, it still takes the person form corresponding to the
subject, e.g. Kuka sinä olet miehiäsi?
There are also adverbs where the possessive suf ix does not really relate to
anything and is invariably in a 3rd person form, e.g.
 yhteensä (together, summed up), based elative yhteen of yksi (one)
yleensä (generally, as a rule), with a base word that is not part of modern
language
sinänsä (as such), based on essive sinä of se (it)
hyvänsä, based on hyvä (good), when used in phrases like miten suuri
hyvänsä (how large it ever might be), cf. section The permissive addition
tahansa, hyvänsä, or vain
tahansa, similar to the above, with a base word that is not part of modern
language

103. Loss of possessive suf ixes

Colloquial usage
In freely spoken Finnish, and often in informal writing too, possessive
suf ixes have largely disappeared, except for some sayings and special
contexts. It is normal to say mun auto, where mun is a colloquial form of
minun. Similarly, instead standard Finnish hänen autonsa, we often say sen
auto.
In public speech, possessive suf ixes are still required. However, effectively
as a concession to common practice, the rules of standard Finnish
traditionally say that possessive suf ixes can be omitted from some
expression that express family relations and immediate environment
relations. Examples include meidän äiti (our mother) ja teidän kylä (your
village). The expressions meidän äitimme and teidän kylänne are possible,
too, in written prose, but they have a more formal tone.
The colloquial usage actually often promotes clarity, since possessive
suf ixes often cause case suf ixes to be omitted. For example, the noun forms
auto, auton, and autot all become autoni, when the possessive suf ix ni is
added.
The loss does not extend to phraseological use or possessive suf ixes in
adverbs in words like mielellään (∼ mielelläni etc.).

Defaulted person
In some contexts, Finnish uses neither a possessive suf ix nor a personal
pronoun. For example, the word äiti (mother) can be used standalone,
leaving it to the context to determine whose mother is referred to. This
applies both to standard language and to spoken language. It is of course
possible to say äitini or mun äiti, but the simple äiti is more common unless
there is a particular reason to make the reference more explicit or the context
is formal.
It is also common to say and write e.g. Nostin kädet ylös (I lifted my hands),
though Nostin käteni ylös is somewhat more common in written language.
Omitting the suf ix is not particularly colloquial in such expressions.

104. Possessive suf ixes with re lexive

meaning
A possessive suf ix can refer to the subject of the sentence, e.g. Myin autoni (I
sold my car) or Hän myi autonsa (He sold his/her car). In the 3rd person,
however, the use of the personal pronomine in the genitive, hänen or heidän,
makes a difference in meaning: Hän myi hänen autonsa means that he/she
sold someone else’s car. Thus, a 3rd person suf ix used alone has a re lexive
meaning, whereas when used with hänen or heidän, the meaning is
antire lexive.
The principle is the same when the subject is a noun. For example, Pekka
myi autonsa means that Pekka sold his own car, whereas Pekka myi hänen
autonsa means that Pekka sold the car of someone else, who has been
previously mentioned.
Errors in such usage are not uncommon even among native speakers. One
reason to this is that spoken language often does not make such a distinction,
as the following table illustrates, even though a re lexive possessive suf ix (as
in Se myi autonsa) is often used in spoken language, too. The last row of the
table is there just for completeness; such expressions are rarely used.
Subject Possessor Finnish, standard Finnish, colloquial
Name Subject of Pekka myi autonsa. Pekka myi autonsa ~ sen
clause auton.
Name Other name Pekka myi Matin Pekka myi Matin auton.
auton.
Name 3rd p. Pekka myi hänen Pekka myi sen auton.
pronoun autonsa.
3rd p. Subject of Hän myi autonsa. Se myi autonsa ~ sen
pronoun clause auton.
3rd p. Other name Hän myi Matin Se myi Matin auton.
pronoun auton.
3rd p. 3rd p. Hän myi hänen Se myi sen auton.
pronoun pronoun autonsa.

Adjectives

105. In lection
Adjectives have cases and plural forms just like nouns. The in lection rules
are the same as for nouns, except for a few special rules presented in the
descriptions of cases. An adjective that appears as an attribute of a noun
generally congrues with it, i.e. the adjective has the same case form as the
noun, e.g. iso talo : ison talon : isossa talossa.
However, there is a small set of adjectives that have no in lection, such as
viime (latest, last), ensi (next), and pikku (small). They are used only as
attributes, and they always precede the noun that they determine. For
example, we say viime kesä (the last summer), viime kesän (of the last
summer), viime kesällä (last summer), etc.
Adjectives very often end with nen in the nominative so that their stem in
other cases ends with se, e.g. punainen : punaiset (red). However, this is not a
special feature of in lection of adjectives; the same principle is applied to
nouns, too, e.g. hevonen : hevoset (horse).

106. Adjectives as attributes of nouns

Although Finnish has general tools for deriving adjectives from nouns, such
derivations are used less than you might expect. For example, in English we
have the noun “Rome” and the adjective “Roman”, both adopted from Latin.
Finnish has Rooma for Rome, but the adjective is derived using a Finnish
suf ix: roomalainen. However, e.g. “Roman empire” is not roomalainen
valtakunta but Rooman valtakunta, which is structurally like “Roma’s empire”,
i.e. with the noun Rooma in the genitive. Similarly, “Finnish Embassy” is
Suomen lähetystö, “royal palace” is kuninkaanlinna (“king’s castle/palace”, as
a compound) and “the Troyan Horse” is Troijan hevonen, where Troijan is the
genitive of Troija.
However, such usage is limited to expressions with a specialized meaning.
Finnish uses adjectives derived from proper names in expressions like
roomalainen kylä (Roman village) and suomalainen mies (Finnish man)—the
expression Suomen mies is old-fashioned.
Finnish also often uses compound words when other languages have a
combination of an adjective and a noun. For example, “central park” is
keskuspuisto (literally “center-park”), “economic crisis” is talouskriisi
(“economy-crisis”), and “monetary union” is rahaliitto (“money-union”).
However, in modern written language in politics, science, etc., long adjectives
are often used instead, e.g. taloudellinen kriisi, imitating expressions used in
other languages. The example uses the adjective taloudellinen derived from
talous : talouden (economy).

107. Adjectives as attributes of adjectives

and adverbs
Genitive forms as quali iers
The genitive form of an adjective can be used to qualify another adjective or
an adverb, e.g. häviävän pieni (extremely small; more literally: vanishingly
small), erityisen hyvin (particularly well). In these constructs, the adjective is
always in singular, and it typically characterizes the amount of the quantity
expressed by the other adjective. Additional examples:
käsittämättömän vaikea (incomprehensibly dif icult)
mukavan pehmeä (comfortably soft)
tavallisen ystävällinen (friendly in a usual way); but colloquially tavallisen
may mean the opposite of its literal meaning: unusually, very
kauhean kiva (very nice; literally: terribly nice); colloquial
kauniin keltainen (beautifully yellow, yellow and beautiful)
tumman sinipunainen (dark violet); expressions of this type are usually
written as compounds, especially when both parts are simple words, e.g.
 tummansininen (dark blue)

Superlative with constraint

The genitive of a superlative form (described in the next section) can also be
used as a quali ier. Finnish has three ways of expressing e.g. “as large as
possible”:
mahdollisimman suuri, using the genitive of the superlative of mahdollinen
(possible); cf. Expressing “as ... as ...”
suurin mahdollinen (= largest possible), putting the main adjective, here
suuri (large), in the superlative and following it with mahdollinen
niin suuri kuin mahdollista, which has the same structure as the English
phrase, except that the word mahdollinen is in the partitive case.
There is no strong stylistic difference between these ways. However, the
expression that starts with mahdollisimman might be seen as emphasizing
the condition.

108. Comparison
Equality comparison
To express the same amount or value of some property, no speci ic forms of
adjectives are used. We simply say e.g. Tämä auto on yhtä vanha kuin tuo
(This car is as old as that). Thus, the pattern “X is as … as Y” is expressed with
“X on yhtä … kuin Y”.

Comparison forms
Like English, Finnish has both a comparative form, e.g. isompi (bigger), and a
superlative form, e.g. isoin (biggest), for any adjective for which comparison
of degrees is meaningful. The base form, such as iso (big) is sometimes called
the positive form, to distinguish it from the comparative and the superlative.
The comparison forms behave like other adjectives in in lection. In
particular, they participate in congruence, e.g. isompi talo (bigger house) :
isommat talot : isomman talon etc.

Comparison normally with suf ixes only

English uses both suf ixes and auxiliary words for the comparison forms of
adjectives. In English we say “easy”, “easier”, “easiest” but “dif icult”, “more
dif icult”, “most dif icult”. Finnish systematically uses suf ixes: helppo,
helpompi, helpoin and vaikea, vaikeampi, vaikein.
Expressions like enemmän helppo (more easy) and eniten helppo (most
easy) sound odd, though they are understandable. However, some people
seem to regard it as natural to use them in especially expressions containing
participles, e.g. enemmän kehittynyt (more advanced) and eniten kehittynyt
instead of the normal kehittyneempi and kehittynein.
When comparing “negatively”, the words vähemmän and vähiten are used
much like the English “less” and “least”, e.g. vähemmän kehittynyt (less
advanced).

Comparative suf ix mpi : mpa : mmA

The comparative suf ix is mpi in the nominative singular but mpA or mmA in
most other cases. For example, helpompi : helpompana : helpommat
(nominative, essive, nominative plural). Apart from the vowel change i ∼ A in
the comparative suf ix, the case in lection is regular. It follows from general
rules that plural forms (except the nominative) lose the inal vowel before the
plural suf ix i, e.g. vaikeammissa.
The comparative suf ix is appended to the in lection stem. Thus, the
comparative of rikas : rikkaa|n (rich) is rikkaa|mpi, and the comparative of
iloinen : iloise|n (merry) is iloise|mpi.
If the stem has two syllables and it ends with a or ä, that vowel changes to
e before the comparative suf ix, e.g. the comparative of paha (bad) is
pahempi. Deviations from this principle occur in both directions, but they are
substandard, e.g. using kivampi as the comparative of kiva (nice, pleasant)
instead of the correct kivempi and extending the change to longer words, e.g.
using matalempi as the comparative of matala (low) instead of the correct
matalampi.

Expressing “than…”
The word kuin (often pronounced as kun or kux in everyday speech) is used
to connect a comparative form to the thing that we are comparing against,
e.g. helpompi kuin tämä (easier than this).
 There is an alternative, a more idiomatic way, which does not use any
connective word but uses the partitive case: tätä helpompi. In such
expressions, the thing compared against precedes the adjective, in normal
word order. Although the two ways have identical meaning, they are
stylistically different.
The idiomatic way, with the partitive, is less common in speech and in
most forms of prose, but it is used in many sayings, such as elämää suurempi
(greater than life). In such sayings, and mostly in other use too, the thing
compared against is expressed with a single word, like elämä in the example.
It can be a longer expression, too. Then the expression as a whole needs to be
in the partitive, e.g. Tämä on nopeampi kuin vanha laivamme = Tämä on
vanhaa laivaamme nopeampi (This is faster than our old ship).

Use of mikä instead of or in addition to kuin

When a comparative is followed by a clause (containing a predicate verb),
there is a strong tendency to to use the pronoun mikä. In standard language
as de ined by old style guides, we say e.g. Se oli suurempi kuin muistin (It was
larger than I remembered), but it is common to say Se oli suurempi mitä
muistin or Se oli suurempi kuin mitä muistin.
Current rules of standard language are more permissive: mikä is allowed
(when used in addition to kuin) especially when the structure of the
subclause requires a speci ic case form. It can even be necessary in a
sentence like Jokainen on niin vanha kuin miksi itsensä tuntee (Everyone is as
old as he feels to be). The verb tuntea, in a meaning like this, requires an
adverbial in the translative (-ksi case). Since the conjunction kuin cannot be
in lected, this calls for an in lectable pronoun, and mikä (with the translative
miksi) is therefore used.

Expressing “more and more…”

Instead of repeated comparatives like “more and more frequently” and
“better and better results” in English, Finnish uses a simple comparative
preceded by the adverb yhä, e.g. yhä useammin and yhä parempia tuloksia.
However, imitation of English and other languages is common especially in
translated texts: useammin ja useammin, parempia ja parempia tuloksia.
Similarly, “they build smaller and smaller devices” is he rakentavat yhä
pienempiä laitteita in idiomatic Finnish, and “fewer and fewer people
remember it” is yhä harvemmat ihmiset muistavat sen.

Expressiong “the more… the more…”

In phrases like “the sooner the better”, Finnish uses the words mitä and sitä,
which are partitive forms of the pronouns mikä and se, for example mitä
pikemmin sitä parempi. Note that the irst adjective is in the instructive plural
form in the example. The forms of the words depend on their role in the
expression. For example, “The more I think of it, the more I like the short
version” would be translated as Mitä enemmän ajattelen asiaa, sitä enemmän
pidän lyhyestä versiosta.
In these constructs, the word mitä is sometimes replaced by kuta or jota.
Instead of sitä, the genitive form sen is sometimes used.

Superlative suf ix in : impa : immA

The superlative suf ix is in in the nominative, but impa or imma in most other
cases, e.g. helpoin : helpoimpana : helpoimmat. This means that in lected
forms of the comparative and the superlative are often rather similar. Even
native speakers make mistakes with them, using the comparative instead of
the superlative, e.g. kaikkein suuremmissa instead of the correct kaikkein
suurimmissa.
The superlative suf ix, like the comparative suf ix, is appended to the
in lection stem. Thus, the superlative of rikas : rikkaa|n (rich) is rikka|in, and
the superlative of iloinen : iloise|n (merry) is ilois|in. The examples illustrate
the vowel changes before an i in a suf ix.
The following table illustrates the case forms of a comparative and a
superlative. The sample word tarkka (exact, accurate) has been chosen to
illustrate both the a ~ e change in the comparative and consonant gradation.
The plural forms are shown below the singular forms.
Case Comparative Superlative
tarkempi tarkin
nominative
tarkemmat tarkimmat
tarkemman tarkimman
genitive
tarkempien tarkimpien
tarkempana tarkimpana
essive
tarkempina tarkimpina
partitive tarkempaa tarkinta
tarkempia tarkimpia
tarkemmaksi tarkimmaksi
translative
tarkemmiksi tarkimmiksi
tarkemmassa tarkimmassa
inessive
tarkemmissa tarkimmissa
tarkemmasta tarkimmasta
elative
tarkemmista tarkimmista
tarkempaan tarkimpaan
illative
tarkempiin tarkimpiin
tarkemmalla tarkimmalla
adessive
tarkemmilla tarkimmilla
tarkemmalta tarkimmalta
ablative
tarkemmilta tarkimmilta
tarkemmalle tarkimmalle
allative
tarkemmille tarkimmille
tarkemmatta tarkimmatta
abessive
tarkemmitta tarkimmitta
comitative tarkempine tarkimpine
(tarkemman) (tarkimman)
instructive
tarkemmin tarkimmin

The nominative singular of the superlative coincides with the instructive

plural of the positive form. This seldom causes confusion, because the
instructive is so rare. But note e.g. that the phrase iloisin mielin (joyfully,
literally: with a merry mind) is in the instructive, so it has the positive form of
iloinen, not a superlative.

Expressing the reference

Superlatives are generally not absolute but relative to some set of objects. If
that set is expressed, it is common to use the elative case (with stA suf ix). In
English, we normally use the “of” preposition for this. Example: vanhin
Suomen kaupungeista (the oldest of Finnish towns). However, it is usually
somewhat more natural in Finnish to use simpler expressions such as
Suomen vanhin kaupunki (literally: Finland’s oldest town). Yet another
expression is vanhin kaupunki Suomessa, but it is not regarded as stylistically
good; it echoes expressions like the English “the oldest town in Finland”.

Strengthening the superlative

The word kaikkein (genitive plural of kaikki, ”all”, thus meaning “of them all”)
is often used to strengthen a superlative, e.g. kaikkein suurin, much like we
can say “the biggest of all” in English. Note that the normal genitive plural
kaikkien is not used in this context.
Alternative, one can say suurin kaikista or (mainly colloquially) kaikista
suurin.

Expressing “… ever”
To express things like “best ever”, Finnish uses expressions like kaikkien
aikojen paras (literally: best of all times). However, it is nowadays common to
imitate the shorter English phrase by saying paras ikinä or paras koskaan.

Comparison of compound words

If an adjective is a compound word, the comparison suf ixes are added
normally at the end of the word, e.g. hyvälaatuinen, hyvälaatuisempi,
hyvälaatuisin (good-quality). This is always possible and quite often the only
accepted way.
However, if the irst part is an adjective, it is sometimes also possible in
use a comparison form of the irst part and leave the second part as is, e.g.
parempilaatuinen and paraslaatuinen. This is rather regular for the
comparative, but for the superlative, paras seems to be the only form that can
appear as the irst part. We can say e.g. kaunismuotoinen (well-shaped),
kaunismuotoisempi ~ kauniimpimuotoinen but only kaunismuotoisin (not
kauneinmuotoinen).
The irst part can also be in the genitive, e.g. pahanlaatuinen,
pahanlaatuisempi ~ pahemmanlaatuinen, pahanlaatuisin ~
pahimmanlaatuinen (bad; malign). Such words can usually have the irst part
rather than the second part in the superlative.
For compounds with a igurative meaning, such as hyväsydäminen (kind-
hearted), comparison suf ixes can be added at the end only, e.g.
hyväsydämisempi.

Comparison of words for left and right

The adjecives vasen and oikea mean “left” and “right”. The former has the
in lection stem vasempa- (weak grade vasemma-), so by its form it is a
comparative, but the nominative is vasen instead of vasempi and the partitive
is usually vasenta, rarely vasempaa.
These adjectives lack comparison forms in these meanings, but oikea has
the normal comparative oikeampi when it means “correct”.
Their longer synonyms vasemmanpuoleinen and oikeanpuoleinen are used
in comparison forms, especially in the superlative, e.g. vasemmanpuoleisin
(leftmost). The longer synonyms can be used for other reasons, too, for
emphasis or for clarity. An expression like Valitse oikea ovi is ambiguous:
“Choose the right door” or “Choose the door on the right”. The expression
Valitse oikeanpuoleinen ovi means unambiguously the latter.
The words vasemmanpuolimmainen and oikeanpuolimmainen are
sometimes used in superlative meanings. However, according to Nykysuomen
sanakirja, they are just synonyms for vasemmanpuoleinen and
oikeanpuoleinen.

Irregular adjectives
There is only one truly irregular adjective in Finnish as regards to
comparison: hyvä, parempi, paras ∼ parhain (good, better, best). The
comparative and superlative forms are based on the stem para-, which also
appears in many derivations such as parantaa (to make better, to heal).
The comparative parempi has the same in lection as other comparatives
(paremman etc.).
The superlative paras has irregular stem change: the in lection stem is
parhaa- (e.g. the plural is parhaat). The alternative superlative parhain is
in lected like normal superlatives, e.g. the plural is parhaimmat. The
following table shows the in lection of these synonymous superlatives.

Case paras parhain

paras parhain
nominative
parhaat parhaimmat
genitive parhaan parhaimman
parhaiden ~ parhaimpien (~ parhaimpain ~
parhaitten parhainten)
parhaana parhaimpana
essive
parhaina parhaimpina
parasta parhainta
partitive
parhaita parhaimpia
parhaaksi parhaimmaksi
translative
parhaiksi parhaimmiksi
parhaassa parhaimmassa
inessive
parhaissa parhaimmissa
parhaasta parhaimmasta
elative
parhaista parhaimmista
parhaaseen parhaimpaan
illative parhaisiin (~ parhaimpiin
parhaihin)
parhaalla parhaimmalla
adessive
parhailla parhaimmilla
parhaalta parhaimmalta
ablative
parhailta parhaimmilta
parhaalle parhaimmalle
allative
parhaille parhaimmille
parhaatta parhaimmatta
abessive
parhaitta parhaimmitta
comitative parhaine parhaimpine
(parhaan) (parhaimman)
instructive
parhain parhaimmin

The genitive plural form parhainten is rare; it is probably mostly a

misspelling of the adverb parhaiten (best, in the best way). The instructive
parhain of paras, coinciding with the nominative of the synonym, occurs
mainly in the phrase parhain terveisin (with best greetings).
 There are several adverbs based on the superlative paras, partly with the h
lost, partly with ha changed to ah: parahin, parahiksi, paraiksi, paraillaan,
paraiten, parhaastaan, parhaiksi, parhaillaan, parhaiten.
The two somewhat different opposites of hyvä, namely paha (bad; evil)
and huono (bad; poor, of low quality) have normal comparison forms:
pahempi, pahin; huonompi, huonoin.
There is irregular consonant gradation in the word pitkä. Normally the k in
tk is not gradated, but here it vanishes: pitempi, pisin. In the superlative, the s
comes from a t that has changed to s before i. In the comparative, tk may even
gradate to d: pidempi.
The vowel y may disappear from the word lyhyt : lyhye-, i.e. along with
regular forms lyhyempi and lyhyin, the shorter forms lyhempi and lyhin are
also in common use.

Extended use of comparative

Normally, a comparative form in Finnish refers to an actual comparison with
something. Being older means being older than something or someone else.
However, the comparison can be very implicit, as in vanhemmat ihmiset
(older people), which may leave the question “older than who?” rather open.
Especially due to Swedish in luence, vague comparatives (often
misleadingly called “absolute comparatives”) are used rather often. They do
not express any speci ic comparison but rather a moderate or considerable
degree of something. For example, isompi erä literally means “larger lot”, but
more often it means just a fairly large lot, a largish lot. In Finnish, it would be
more appropriate to say isohko erä, if you wish to avoid the simple
expression iso erä (large lot) as excessive. For almost any adjective that
expresses something that has variation in degree, the suf ix hko or hkö can be
used to derive a moderative adjective, e.g. vanhahko (oldish; elderly),
uudehko (fairly new), helpohko (rather easy), etc. However, some people
might regard vanhahko as meaning older than vanhempi.
Some comparatives have become nouns, while still preserving their use as
adjectives. Thus, vanhemmat can also be a noun, meaning “parents”. It is the
only word for parents in Finnish, and it is normally not used in singular, so
translating a word like “parent” can be dif icult—in some contexts, the
expression äiti tai isä (mother or father) might be needed.
Extended use of superlative
The superlative as such refers to maximal degree of something within some
group, e.g. maan komein mies (the most handsome man in the country).
However, when preceded by the pronoun mitä, it expresses just a very high
degree of something; this is often misleadingly called “absolute superlative”.
For example, mitä komein mies means “a most handsome man, a very, very
handsome man”.
A few superlatives have become nouns, while still preserving their use as
adjectives. The most common example is vanhin. In addition to its normal use
as an adjective, it can refer to a doyen of a profession or, usually in plural,
vanhimmat, to the elders of a parish.

Superlatives in expressing “as … as possible”

Superlatives can be used in two ways to express things like “as … as possible”.
For example, “as old as possible” is mahdollisimman vanha or vanhin
mahdollinen. See section Superlative with constraint.

Relative superlatives
An expression like “third best” can be described as relative superlative: it
does not refer to the best but to the best among a set from which the two best
have been omitted. In Finnish, we say kolmanneksi paras, using the
translative of an ordinal numeral such as kolmas : kolmannen.

Comparison of nouns
An exotic feature of Finnish is that some nouns are used in comparison
forms. For example, from ranta (shore) we can derive rannempi, using a
comparative form as if we had an adjective. The meaning is “closer to a/the
shore”, and such words are almost always used only in a few cases that
express locational relations: rannempana (the essive form, here meaning “in
a place closer to shore”), rannempaa (the partitive, “from a place closer to the
shore), and rannemmaksi (the translative, “to a place closer to the shore”). As
an alternative to the last form, rannemmas can be used, with the same
meaning; the ending s is an old suf ix of the lative case, now extinct except for
forms like this and some adverbs like ulos and alas.
 In poetic language, even normal nouns sometimes have comparison forms,
such as ihmisempi, “more of a human being”, from ihminen : ihmisen “human
being”. Such style tends to raise mixed feelings when used in prose. E.g.
mansikampi, the comparative of mansikka (strawberry), might be regarded as
stylish or as odd; using mansikkaisempi, based on mansikkainen (strawberry-
like, “strawberryish”), is more normal.

Comparison of names for points of compass

The nouns for the cardinal points of compass in Finnish are pohjoinen, itä,
etelä, länsi (north, east, south, west). The word pohjoinen is also used as an
adjective, but for the others, derived words are used: itäinen, eteläinen,
läntinen. For names of areas, Finnish normally uses closed compounds, e.g.
Etelä-Suomi (Southern Finland) rather than eteläinen Suomi.
The adjectives for cardinal points of compass have regular comparison,
e.g. pohjoisempi : pohjoisemman, pohjoisin : pohjoisimman. It is also possible
to use comparative forms of the nouns for them, e.g. idempi : idemmän
instead of itäisempi : itäisemmän. Despite their shortness, they are not very
common; they are mainly used in locational cases as adverbs, e.g. idempänä
(more to the east).
Finnish also has one-word, non-compound names for half-cardinal
points of compass: koillinen (northeast), kaakko (southeast), lounas
(southwest), and luode (northwest). The irst one is also used as an adjective.
For the others, the corresponding adjectives are kaakkoinen, lounainen, and
luoteinen. The word lounas also means “lunch”.

Adverbs

109. The concept of adverb

Adverbs are words that are used to complement a word or an entire
sentence. A typical example is Tein sen eilen (I did it yesterday), which
consists of a predicate, an object, and an adverb, where eilen can be
interpreted as complementing the entire sentence or just its predicate tein.
 The concept of adverb are best de ined negatively: an adverb is a word
that is not a noun-like word or a verb and that is used to complement an
expression. For example, the sentence Tein sen tiistaina (I did it on Tuesday)
contains the complementing word tiistaina, but it is a regular in lection form
(essive) of the noun tiistai.
Adverbs are often characterized as having no in lection, but this is not
quite true. First, the difference between an adverb and an in lected form is
often a matter of de inition. For example, kerran (once) is classi ied an adverb
in dictionaries, but it could alternatively be classi ied according to its origin:
as the instructive singular of the noun kerta. Second, in Finnish there are sets
of related adverbs that have case suf ixes, e.g. sisällä, sisältä, sisälle refer to
being inside, coming from inside, and getting inside something. They could
be described as in lected forms of the noun sisä with limited in lection. Such
sets are discussed in section Locational adverbs.

110. Derived adverbs

In addition to simple adverbs such as heti “immediately” and melko (rather),
there is a large, potentially in inite number of adverbs derived from
adjectives.
The most common suf ix in adverbs is sti, which typically means “in a …
manner”, where “…” denotes the meaning of the base word. The sti suf ix is
much like the “ly” suf ix in English and can be appended to the in lection
stem of almost any adjective. E.g. from rohkea (brave) we get rohkeasti
(bravely) and from kaunis : kaunii|n (beautiful), we get kauniisti. The suf ix sti
has boundary gemination, so e.g. rohkeasti tänne is pronounced as rohkeastit
tänne in standard language.
Another common suf ix in adverbs is in, e.g. hyvin (well; very), from hyvä
(good). By its form, it is originally the instructive plural of the adjective. Such
derivations are often based on comparative forms, e.g. from kauniimpi (more
beautiful, from kaunis, beautiful) we get kauniimmin (more beautifully), and
from the corresponding superlative kaunein : kauneimman we get
kauneimmin (most beautifully).

111. Comparison of adverbs

Adverbs do not have comparison forms, strictly speaking, since adverbs are a
dead end in in lection and word derivation: an adverb may be an in lected
form or a derived form by its origin, but it is itself not a base for in lected or
derived words. However, in practical terms, some adverb types constitute
sets that effectively mean comparison, as shown in the following table.
Positive Comparative Superlative
Adjective – mpi : mman in : imman
suf ix
Adjective helppo helpompi (easier) helpoin (easiest)
example (easy)
Adverb suf ix sti mmin immin
Adverb helposti helpommin (more helpoimmin (most
example (easily) easily) easily)

As an alternative to superlative adverbials like helpoimmin, derivations like

helpoiten are often used for many words.
The following section describes how the mmin and immin words can be
described as in lected forms of the comparative and superlative adjectives
rather than derivations of the basic positive adjective.

112. Forms of adjectives as adverbs

Instructive forms as adverbs
The instructive plural of comparative and superlative forms are almost
exclusively used as adverbs. This means that these forms effectively create
comparison forms of adverbs derived with the sti suf ix. Example:
nopeasti (rapidly, fast), from the adjective nopea
nopeammin (more rapidly, faster), the instructive of the comparative
nopeampi
nopeimmin (most rapidly, fastest), the instructive of the superlative
nopein
There are also adverbs like these but with a base word that does not exist in
modern language. For example, the base word of mieluummin (rather,
preferably) and mieluimmin (best of all, most preferably) would be mieluu,
but it does not exist in current language.
Similarly to the extended use of the superlative, as in mitä nopein (very,
very rapid), the superlative adverb may be pre ixed with mitä, e.g. mitä
nopeimmin (very very rapidly, really fast).
The equivalents of the English adverbs “well”, “better”, and “best” are
hyvin, paremmin, parhaimmin ~ parhaiten. The word hyvin is originally the
instructive plural of hyvä (good). The adverb hyvästi also exists, but in
modern language, it relates to saying goodbye (Jää hyvästi or just Hyvästi).
There are also some other instructive plural forms of basic adjectives that
are used as adverbs, such as harvoin (rarely), kauan (a long time), kovin
(very; cf. kova “hard”), oikein (right, correctly), pahoin (badly), samoin
(similarly), tosin (surely but…; cf. tosi “true”), usein (often), väärin (wrong).
The adverb aikaisin (early) belongs to this type, since it is the instructive
plural of the adjective aikainen (early), not its superlative, which has the
same form.
The comparison forms of instructive forms used as adverbs are derived
from the base adjective. E.g. for pahoin, they are derived from the comparison
forms of the adjective paha: pahemmin, pahimmin. For aikaisin, the
comparative is aikaisemmin, but the shorter aiemmin (derived more directly
from the base word aika) is also used.
Some adverbs are originally instructive plural forms of nouns, e.g. osin
(partly), tuskin (hardly; cf. tuska “pain”), and vaivoin (with dif iculty). They do
not have comparison forms.

Adverbs vähän, paljon, and kauan and their

comparison forms
The adverb vähän (a little) can be interpreted as instructive singular of the
adjective vähä (small). The adjective is otherwise rare in modern language,
except in proper names like Vähä-Aasia (Asia Minor), but it but has many
widely used derivations. The derivations include the comparison forms
vähempi (lesser) and vähin (least) and the corresponding adverbs vähemmän
and vähiten ~ vähimmin.
The adverb paljon (a lot) is based on paljo, which is used both as an
adjective and as a noun to express a large amount. It has no comparison
forms. Instead, the adjectives enempi and enin and the corresponding adverbs
enemmän (more) and eniten ~ enimmin (most) are used. They are based on
the stem enä, which is not used as such in modern languages except in some
proper names lik Enäjärvi and as the partitive form enää, which is used as an
adverb in negative contexts, e.g. En muista sitä enää (I do not remember it
any more). A common substandard form, used in some dialects, is enään.
The adverb kauan (a long time) is based on the same stem kauka- : kaua-
as the locational adverbs kaukana, kaukaa, and kauas. The comparative and
superlative adverbs are based on that stem: kauemmin (a longer time),
kauimmin (the longest time).
In a negative clause, the partitive paljoa is often used, though paljon is
permitted, too: Se ei maksanut paljoa ~ paljon. This corresponds to general
rules for the case of an object. Similarly, kauaa is often used instead of kauan
in negative clauses, e.g. En ollut siellä kauaa ~ kauan (I did not stay there
long). However, such use was not accepted by language authorities before
2015.

Other adverbs
The adverb myöhään (late) is the illative of myöhä (late time), on which the
comparison forms are based: myöhemmin (later) and the rare myöhimmin
(most late).
The adverb ennen (before, earlier), also used as an adposition, expresses
comparison as such. The corresponding comparative form ennemmin the
same meaning, but it is also used to express preference, “rather, sooner”.

Genitive forms as quali iers

A genitive form of an adjective can be used in adverb-like manner to qualify
another adjective or an adverb, e.g. tavattoman halpa (unusually
inexpensive). In English, an adverb ending with “-ly” is typically used instead.

Instructive forms versus -iten derivations

Along with parhaimmin, the adverb parhaiten is also used, and actually much
more common. Similar alternatives, formed by adding the iten suf ix to an
adjective stem, exist for many adverbs, though some of them are colloquial in
style. The following are standard and possibly more common than the -immin
words (shown here in parentheses): eniten (enimmin), mieluiten
(mieluimmin), pahiten (pahimmin), parhaiten (parhaimmin), vähiten
(vähimmin). Opinions disagree on the suitability of words like helpoiten
(instead of helpoimmin), huonoiten (instead of huonoimmin), and nopeiten
(instead of nopeimmin). They are not listed in dictionaries of standard
Finnish.
The -iten derivations are usually based on a stem that is either two-
syllabic, like paha, or ends with -ea, e.g. nopea.

Adverbs with -immiten suf ix

Adverbs with the iten ending also appear so that the ten suf ix is appended to
the normal plural in lection stem of a superlative form, e.g. nopeimmiten,
based on nopein : nopeimmissa. These forms do not substantially differ from
the use of instructive plural forms of superlatives, such as nopeimmin.
However, they are often more easily understood as adverbs rather than as
forms of adjectives.
On the other hand, there are specialized meanings: pikimmiten,
hetimmiten, and kiireimmiten all mean “as soon as possible” (with varying
tone), whereas vanhemmiten means “as one gets older” or “later in life”. The
word useimmiten means “usually, as a rule”, so it is rather close in meaning to
useimmin (most often).

113. Locational adverbs

Similarity with locational cases
Similarly to the system of locational cases, adverbs that express locational
relations usually come as triplets, for the relations of being in, exiting from,
and entering a place. The similarity is partly direct in the sense that the
adverbs are locational case forms, but there are exceptions to this. The case
forms can be outer locational cases (with suf ixes llA, ltA, lle), inner locational
cases (with suf ixes ssA, stA, *n ~ h*n), or old locational cases (with suf ixes
nA, A ~ tA, s), though the “entering” adverb may also have the nnex suf ix.

Common locational adverbs

The following table presents some common locational adverbs. The meaning
in English is given for the “being in” adverb only. Some of these adverbs, such
as sivulla etc., could be regarded as case forms of normal nouns, but most of
them have a stem that does not appear as such in the language, though they
may appear as a compositive form. For example, the words sisällä (inside),
sisältä (from inside), and sisälle (to inside) as well as sisässä, sisästä, and
sisään (with the same meanings) are structurally case forms of sisä. However,
sisä does not appear in other forms, such as the nominative, except in
compounds (e.g. sisäelin “internal organ”).
Meaning “Being in” “Leaving “Entering”
from”
down alhaalla alhaalta alhaalle ~ alas
below alla alta allex
before, ahead edellä edeltä edellex
in front edessä edestä eteen
out, at hand esillä – esillex ~ esiin
lost hukassa hukasta hukkaan
after, behind jäljessä jäljestä jälkeen
everywhere kaikkialla kaikkialta kaikkiallex
far away kaukana kaukaa kauas
in the middle keskellä keskeltä keskellex
at home kotona kotoa kotiin
at a distance, (far) loitolla – loitollex
away
at, by, near luona luota luoksex ~ luox
near lähellä läheltä lähellex
where missä mistä minnex ∼ mihin
on the right oikealla oikealta oikeallex ~ oikeaan
away poissa – pois
over there siellä ~ sieltä ~ siitä sinnex ~ siihen
siinä
 inside sisällä sisältä sisällex ~ sisään
on the side sivulla sivulta sivullex
in the back takana takaa taaksex ~ taax
saved, in safe place tallessa (tallesta) talteen
there tuolla ~ tuolta ~ tuonnex ~ tuohon
tuossa tuosta
here täällä ~ täältä ~ tästä tännex ~ tähän
tässä
outside ulkona ulkoa ulos
on the left vasemmalla vasemmalta vasemmallex ~
vasempaan
up ylhäällä ylhäältä ylhäällex ~ ylös
above; on yllä yltä yllex

The differences between täällä, tuolla, siellä are similar to the differences
between tämä, tuo, and se, which are their base words. This means that täällä
refers to a location near the speaker, tuolla refers to a location within sight
being pointed at, and siellä refers to a location elsewhere that has been
mentioned or is obvious from the context. For example, Mene sinne (Go there)
is meaningful only if it is clear from the previous discussion which place is
referred to, whereas Mene tuonne (Go over there) can be used while pointing
at a place or direction or when a relative clause or an adverbial is used for
verbal pointing, e.g. Mene tuonne puun alle (Go there below the tree).
Similar condiderations apply to the associated “leaving from” and
“entering” forms (täältä, tänne etc.).
The alternate forms siinä, siitä, siihen; tuossa, tuosta, tuohon; tässä, tästä,
tähän are in lection forms of se, tuo, and tämä. They are largely synonymous
with siellä, sieltä etc. but may imply an idea of “that thing”, “that thing over
there”, and “this thing”, respectively. Thus, Hän odotti siinä means “He/she
waited in that place”, as opposite to the more vague Hän odotti siellä (He/she
waited there).

Comparison forms for locational adverbs

Most locational adverbs have comparison forms, typically derived from
ultimate base word, which often does not appear as such in modern
language. The following table shows them for the adverbs listed in the
preceding table and for cardinal points of compass, for which the positive
adverb is an inessive form of the noun for the point.
The irst column shows the simple (positive) adverb for “being in”, and the
other two columns show the comparative and superlative forms. For
example, alempana means “more down there”, alempaa “from more down
there” etc. The dash “–” indicates that the comparison forms are not used. For
all forms ending with s, an alternative form ending with ksi exists, e.g.
alemmas ~ alemmaksi.
Positive Comparative Superlative
alhaalla alempana, alempaa, alemmas alimpana, alimpaa, alimmas
alla – –
edellä – –
edessä edempänä, edempää, edimpänä, edimpää,
edemmäs edimmäs
etelässä etelämpänä, etelämpää, –
etelämmäs
esillä – –
hukassa – –
idässä idempänä, idempää, idemmäs –
jäljessä jäljempänä, jäljempää, –
jäljemmäs
kaikkialla – –
kaukana kauempana, kauempaa, kauimpana, kauimpaa,
kauemmas kauimmas
keskellä keskempänä, keskempää, keskimpänä, keskimpää,
keskemmäs keskimmäs
kotona – –
loitolla loitompana, loitompaa, loitoimpana, loitoimpaa,
loitommas loitoimmas
 luona – –
lähellä lähempänä, lähempää, lähimpänä, lähimpää,
lähemmäs lähimmäs
lännessä lännempänä, lännempää, idässä
lännemmäs
missä – –
oikealla oikeammalla, oikeammalta oikeimmalla, oikeimmalta
pohjoisessa pohjoisempana, pohjoisimpana,
pohjoisempaa, pohjoisemmas pohjoisimpaa,
pohjoisimmas
poissa – –
siellä – –
sisällä sisempänä, sisemmältä, sisimpänä, sisimmältä,
sisemmäs sisimmäs
sivulla sivumpana, sivummalta ~ –
sivumpaa, sivummas
takana taempana, taempaa, taemmas taimpana, taimpaa, taimmas
tallessa – –
tuolla tuonnempana, tuonnempaa, tuonnimpana, tuonnimpaa,
tuonnemmas tuonnimmas
täällä tännempänä, tännempää, tännimpänä, tännimpää,
tännemmäs tännimmäs
ulkona ulompana, ulompaa, uloimpana, uloimpaa,
ulommas uloimmas
vasemmalla vasemmammalla, vasemmimmalla,
vasemmammalta vasemmimmalta
ylhäällä ylempänä, ylempää, ylemmäs ylimpänä, ylimpää, ylimmäs
yllä – –

Some of the forms shown in the table are relatively rare and mostly replaced
by analytic expressions. For example, the word vasemmammalla looks and
sounds weird, and we mostly say enemmän vasemmalla (more to the left)
instead. The superlative vasemmimmalla is very rare; we normally say eniten
vasemmalla (most left).

114. Other use of case forms as adverbs

Case form or adverb?
In addition to usage described in the preceding sections, there are some
other uses of case forms of noun-like words as adverbs. There is no strict line
between such use and normal use of case forms. Some case forms have been
“petri ied” so that they have become rather purely adverbs, whereas some
other might still be used as normal in lected form.
The classi ication of words as case forms or as adverbs has little if any
impact on practical use of the language or on the rules of the language. The
old dictionary Nykysuomen sanakirja categorizes words by their part of
speech, but newer dictionaries like Kielitoimiston sanakirja do not; yet they
indirectly classify words as adverbs with the note Sana on taipumaton tai
vaillinaisesti taipuva (The word has no in lection or defective in lection).

Use of adessive
Adessive (-llA case) forms of nouns are often used in an adverb-like manner
to denote the style or kind of an action, e.g. kiireellä (hastily), rakkaudella
(with love), kunnioituksella (respectfully), lämmöllä (warmly). Language
guides have regarded such usage as substandard, suggesting the use of
derived adverbs or verb forms instead, such as kiireellisesti, rakastavasti,
kunnioittaen, lämpimästi. However, the adessive forms are widely used, and
they are mostly accepted in standard language now.

Use of abessive
The use of abessive (-ttA case) forms of nouns is mostly limited to adverb-like
words. For example, the word syyttä (without reason) is by its form the
abessive singular of syy (reason, cause), but it is often understood as an
adverb. For example, syyttä can hardly take an attribute in spoken language,
but in literary style, we could write hyvättä syyttä (without a good reason),
though this sounds old-fashioned.

Plural forms expressing state

There are words that describe states of mind or things, such as eksyksissä,
eksyksistä, and eksyksiin, which refer to being astray, getting away from that
state, and getting into it, respectively. By their form, they are the inner
locational cases, i.e. inessive, elative, and illative (all plural) of eksys : eksykse-,
but such a word does not exist in any other form than those three. Other sets
of words of this type exist in outer locational cases only, e.g. valveilla,
valveilta, and valveille, related to being awake. In such groups, the elative or
the ablative, e.g. eksyksistä and valveilta, are rarely used.
Such forms are described in dictionaries as adverbs, either as groups or
each form as an entry of its own.
Similar groups of words appear also with a normal noun as their stem. For
example, hengissä and henkiin (alive) could be classi ied as adverbs by their
use, but they are the inessive and illative plural of henki (spirit; mind; life).
For example, jäädä henkiin (to stay alive) literally means “to remain into
lives”. The word innoissaan and intoihinsa are forms of the noun into
(enthusiasm), but their use, in plural and with possessive suf ixes, make them
adverb-like. However, dictionaries usually describe such usage under the
entry for the noun, rather than as separate words.

115. Expressing “as ... as ...”

In the following presentation, “Adj” denotes any adjective, and “NP” denotes
any noun phrase, i.e. a noun (or adjective used like a noun, or pronoun, or
numeral) optionally preceded by one or more attributes.

Comparisons
A simple comparison of the form “as Adj as NP”, such as “as good as this”, is
expressed in Finnish in two ways, depending on meaning:
yhtä Adj kuin NP, e.g. yhtä hyvä kuin tämä (as good as this); this can be
preceded by the strengthening adverb aivan or its colloquial alternative
ihan (just)
 Adj kuin NP, e.g. kaunis kuin kesäinen aamu (as beautiful as a summer
morning); this is somewhat poetic and not meant to be an exact
comparison

Restricted expressions
In an expression of the form “as ... as Adj”, the adjective expresses a
constraint, a restriction, e.g. “as fast as possible”. In Finnish, the basic phrase
pattern is:
niin ... kuin Adj, with the adjective in the partitive, e.g. niin pian kuin
mahdollista (as soon as possible), niin iso kuin välttämätöntä (as big as
necessary)
A phrase with the restriction “as possible” can alternatively be expressed
with the pattern mahdollisimman ..., e.g. mahdollisimman pian (as soon as
possible). Despite these possibilities, the English abbreviation asap, read as
written, is now common in some jargons.
For a phrase of the pattern “as Adj as possible”, e.g. “as small as possible”,
there is yet another alternative, using the superlative of the adjective, e.g.
pienin mahdollinen, see Superlative with constraint.

116. Word-speci ic intensi iers

To intensify the meaning of an adjective, we can use various adverbs. In
English, the word “new” can be intensi ied by saying “brand new” or “really
new”. In Finnish, we can similarly say aivan uusi or todella uusi. Alternatively,
we can use an adjective-speci ic intensi ier, often alliterating with the
adjective and often written as a closed compound with it, e.g. upouusi. The
word upo is used in this context only, so it is very speci ic to the adjective
uusi.
There are also similar speci ic intensi iers for adverbs, such as yksin
(alone): ypö yksin (all alone). An intensi ier may also restrict the meaning of
the modi ied word. As such, yksin can be used in neutral contexts like Hän
teki sen yksin (He did it alone, by himself), but in such contexts, it cannot be
intensi ied by ypö (but e.g. aivan yksin). When we say ypö yksin, it means
being alone, without company, in a more or less negative sense.
The meaning a word-speci ic intensi ier is that the adjective or adverb
applies truely, genuinely, properly. When we say that a car is upouusi, it is
more or less straight from the shop, as opposite to a car that has been used
for a few weeks and could still be called uusi. Rather similar intensi ication
can be achieved by reduplication, by using the adjective twice, the irst
occurrence being in the genitive, e.g. uuden uusi.
Usually each speci ic intensi ier is used with one word only, and each
adjective or adverb has at most one intensi ier or a small set of similar
intensi iers—more or less variants of the same word. The following list
shows words with speci ic intensi iers (only the basic meaning of the
adjective or adverb is given), ordered by the main word (in bold).
apo ~ appo ~ apposen alasti (naked)
apo ~ appo ~ apposen auki (open)
ani harva (few)
ani harvoin (rarely)
pähkähullu (mad)
rutikuiva (dry)
rutiköyhä (poor, penniless)
litimärkä (wet)
uppo-outo (strange, odd)
pilkkopimeä (dark, lightless)
piripintaan (to the brim), piripinnassa, piripintanaan
putipuhdas (clean)
ripirinnan ~ ritirinnan (parallel with)
sepposen selällään (wide open; used about a door, window etc.)
supisuomalainen (Finnish)
tipotiehensä (away, gone, missing)
tipotiessään (away, gone, missing)
tuhkatiheään (frequently)
tuiki tuntematon (unknown)
typötyhjä (empty)
upouusi (new)
täpötäysi (full)
ventovieras (strange, foreign)
vihoviimeinen ~ vihonviimeinen (last)
vitivalkoinen (white)
ani varhain (early, at an early moment)
ani varhainen (early)
ypö yksin (alone)
It can be seen that the intensi ier typically looks like a word formed from the
adjective via simpli ication and modi ication. It often consists of two syllables
and looks like an adjective in base form. Some intensi iers look like in lected
forms, though, e.g. apposen, which can be interpreted as the genitive of
apponen. The word viti is actually an independent word, too (fresh snow), but
hardly used in modern language that way. The word tuhka (ash) is a normal
word, but its use as an intensi ier seems to be independent of that.
The word sysimusta (jet-black) is not included in the list, since sysi
(charcoal) has a few other uses. The compound can be interpreted as
descriptive, “black like charcoal”, at least by origin, rather than having a
special intensi ier that has no meaning of its own. On similar grounds, the list
excludes such interesting expressions like likomärkä (“soaking wet”),
läpimätä (“through-rotten”), pikimusta (“pitch black”), raivoraitis (“ragingly
sober”), rapajuoppo (“mud drunkard”), sikasiisti (“swine clean”), and
umpihullu (“closed-mad”).
Most adjective-speci ic identi iers are written as the irst part of a closed
compound, whereas most adverb-speci ic identi iers are written as separate
words. This tends to re lect the pronunciation, but there is variation in it as
well as in writing; e.g. nonstandard forms like viho viimeinen and ypöyksin are
relatively common.
New word-speci ic intensi iers are sometimes coined, though they mostly
remain in limited, often jocular use, like rutiruotsalainen (really Swedish),
more or less echoing supisuomalainen, and epoensimmäinen (the very irst).

Pronouns

117. Personal pronouns

Standard and spoken forms
The following table shows the personal pronouns in standard Finnish and in
common spoken language. In addition to the nominative form, the in lection
stem used in most other forms is given. Various dialect forms, such as the
Eastern Finland mie and sie for minä and sinä, are used, too, even in urban
environments.

Person English Finnish, standard Finnish, colloquial

Singular 1st I minä : minu- mä : mu-
Singular 2nd you sinä : sinu-; te : tei- sä : su-; te : tei-
Singular 3rd he/she hän : häne- se : si(i)-
Plural 1st we me : mei- me : mei-
Plural 2nd you te : tei- te : tei-
Plural 3rd they he : hei- ne : nii-

For example, “I love you” is rakastan sinua (or, colloquially, mä rakastan sua),
since the word for “you” is in the partitive form, formed from the stem sinu-.
The words se and ne used as 3rd person pronouns in spoken language are
classi ied as demonstrative pronouns in grammars. Their in lection is
described in the next section. That section also describes the use of tämä and
nämä instead of hän and he in certain contexts.
Apart from the irregular stem variation described in the table above, the
in lection of personal pronouns is mostly regular. However, the genitives of
me, te, and he have the exceptional case suf ix dän in addition to the plural
suf ix i: meidän, teidän, heidän. Moreover, the personal pronouns have
accusative forms (minut etc.).
For clarity and for quick reference, the in lection is also presented in the
following tables.
In lection of minä and sinä
The following table shows the case forms of minä (mä). The in lection of sinä
(sä) is the same. In most forms, the standard and colloquial forms differ only
in the presence or absence of the -in- part, except in the illative.
Case Standard Colloquial Notes
nominative minä mä
genitive minun mun
essive minuna muna The colloquial form is rarely used.
partitive minua mua
translative minuksi muksi The colloquial form is rarely used.
inessive minussa mussa
elative minusta musta
illative minuun muhun
adessive minulla mulla
ablative minulta multa
allative minulle mulle
abessive minutta mutta Mostly just theoretical forms.
accusative minut mut

In lection of hän
Case Standard Notes
nominative hän
genitive hänen
essive hänenä
partitive häntä
translative häneksi
inessive hänessä
elative hänestä
illative häneen
adessive hänellä Also hällä in poetry and dialects.
ablative häneltä Also hältä in poetry and dialects.
allative hänelle Also hältä in poetry and dialects.
abessive hänettä Mostly just theoretical form.
accusative hänet

In lection of me, te and he

The following table shows the case forms of me. The in lection of te and he is
the same.
Case Standard Notes
nominative me
genitive meidän
essive meinä
partitive meitä
translative meiksi
inessive meissä
elative meistä
illative meihin
adessive meillä
ablative meiltä
allative meille
abessive meittä Mostly just theoretical form.
accusative meidät

The 2nd person singular pronouns

In 2nd person singular, the form Te (usually capitalized) is a polite form,
often used when talking to someone that you do not know personally and
who is not very young.
In older language, the use of Te (called teitittely in Finnish) was
widespread and often required by social norms. The situation is complicated
now, and it is not rare to hear even sinä and Te mixed when talking or writing
to a person. Using sinä (called sinuttelu) is increasingly common, partly due
to the in luence of similar changes in Swedish usage. The issue is sensitive.
The use of sinä in of icial letters by state administration has even been called
unconstitutional, but the Parliamentary Ombudsman decided that it is
acceptable.
The use of sinä vs. Te also affects possessive suf ixes, si vs. nne, and person
suf ixes of verbs, t vs. tte. For example, when asking “Where did you leave
your car?”, you could say Minne jätit autosi? when using sinä form of address
and Minne jätitte autonne? when using Te. The pronouns themselves do not
appear here, as they are implied by the verb forms.
It is best to start with Te when in doubt but stay tuned to switching to sinä
as soon as you have noticed that you are being addressed as sinä. However,
among young people and usually between colleagues at work, sinä is
normally used, and Te might sound rather odd. In shops, using sinä when
addressing a customer is common, though frowned upon by some.
Earlier, people used to make sinunkaupat (an agreement to call each other
sinä, also implying being on a irst-name basis), but this is not common any
more. Instead, people usually just adopt the more informal language.
In the old days, a third form of address was in use: the 3rd person singular
was used, with a suitable title as the subject, e.g. Haluaako rouva vielä jotain
muuta? (literally: Does the lady want something else?). This sounds very
dated, but can still be heard.
Often the choice between sinä and Te can be avoided by using sentences
that do not refer to a person in any way. For example, instead of asking
Haluatteko/Haluatko vielä jotain muuta? we can ask neutrally Tuleeko vielä
jotain muuta? (Will there be anything else?)
A different method, in rather common use, is to use fourth person verb
forms when applicable. For example, instead of saying Ota paita pois or
Ottakaa paita pois (Take off the shirt), a doctor might say Otetaan paita pois,
which leaves the agent formally unspeci ied, but the context makes things
clear.
The 3rd person pronouns in spoken language
In common spoken Finnish, the 3rd person pronouns (hän, he) are normally
not used. Instead, the pronouns se and ne (described in the next section),
corresponding to English “it” and “they”, are in use. However, hän or he may
be used for politeness or in an attempt at being more formal, even when
otherwise using spoken language forms.
In literary Finnish, it is essential to distinguish between a person and
other things in the use of 3rd person pronouns (hän versus se, he versus ne).
In spoken language, the situation has always been more complicated.
Although common spoken language rarely uses hän, in popular and dialectal
language, hän appears both as referring to people and as referring to animals
and even things.
Even in common spoken language, hän is used to refer to things in phrases
like tiedä häntä, väliäpä hällä, hällä väliä, which all mean more or less “it
doesn’t matter” or “who cares”.

Implications of the lack of he/she distinction

Obviously, the lack of distinction between sexes in the 3rd person singular
pronoun causes some problems, especially in translations. The spoken
language usage where se stands for “he”, “she”, and “it” can make expressions
even more ambiguous.
We normally mention a person by name or some other denotation, such as
mies (man) or nainen (woman), when a pronoun would be ambiguous in
practice. In translations, it can be dif icult to do such things without losing
too much of the style of the original. In spoken language, nouns like mies or
nainen in such usage are normally preceded by the determinative pronoun se,
used in an article-like manner. E.g. “The he said…” might be translated as
Sitten mies sanoi… to avoid ambiguity; in speech, we might say Sit se mies
sano. Often it is more natural to use a proper name, e.g. Sitten John sanoi…
Although Finns may thus use people’s names instead of pronouns more
often than in English, it needs to be said here that in conversations, it is not at
all common to mention the name of the person you are talking to. Things are
changing, but we still mostly use just the personal pronoun, or maybe just an
inclined form of a verb, e.g. Voitko sä sanoo… (Can you say…) or, more
formally, Voitko sanoa… (or even Voitteko sanoa…, which corresponds to the
use of Te). It would not be incorrect to say John, voitko sanoa… (John, can you
say…), it’s just less common.

Use of se, joka instead of hän, joka

When a 3rd person pronoun would be accompanied with a relative clause, se
is normally used instead of hän and ne instead of he, even in standard
language. Example: Se, joka ei syö lihaa, voi ottaa kasvislasagnea (One who
does not eat meat can have the vegetable lasagna). In such contexts, Hän,
joka… would be incorrect; it sometimes appears as a hypercorrectism, since
normally the use of se about people is colloquial.
However, if the pronoun in such a context refers to a speci ic person or
speci ic persons, rather than “anyone”, the pronoun hän or he is used in
standard language. This means that the relative clause is non-restrictive.
Such expressions are rare and somewhat arti icial. Example: hän, jonka me
kaikki hyvin tunnemme (he, whom we all know well).

Use of genitives of personal pronouns

Instead of possessive pronouns like “my” and “your”, Finnish uses genitive
forms of personal pronouns. They all end with the usual genitive suf ix n but
are otherwise somewhat irregularly formed. See section Possessive suf ixes
for the use of suf ixes instead of or in addition to these pronouns.
Person English Finnish Finnish, colloquial
Singular 1st my minun mun
Singular 2nd your sinun; teidän sun; teidän
Singular 3rd his/her hänen sen
Plural 1st our meidän meidän
Plural 2nd your teidän teidän
Plural 3rd their heidän niiden ~ niitten

Omission of personal pronouns

In literary language, when the predicate is in a 1st or 2nd person form, it is
normal to omit the subject. Thus, we write sanon, sanot, sanomme, or sanotte
instead of minä sanon, sinä sanot, me sanomme, or te sanotte. It is possible to
use a personal pronoun in such a context, but then there is emphasis on the
person. For example, Asumme Espoossa is a normal literary way of saying “We
live in Espoo”, and Me asumme Espoossa would imply emphasis, in practice
contrast with some other people who live elsewhere.
On the other hand, in common spoken language, a mere sanon without a
personal pronoun would sound somewhat odd. Normally one says mä sanon,
mie sanon, or something similar, using a colloquial or dialectal personal
pronoun.
The 3rd person pronouns are normally not omitted, except in a
subordinate clause when its subject is the same as in the main clause. Thus,
we can write Hän sanoi, että tulee myöhemmin (He said that he will come
later). The subject of the subordinate clause could also be omitted if the
subject of the main clause is a noun rather than a pronoun, e.g. Johtaja tulee
heti kun voi (The director will come as soon as he can). Such omissions even
make the sentences somewhat easier to understand, since if hän is present,
the question may arise who is referred to. In spoken language, the pronoun is
normally not omitted in such contexts; instead, we say Se sano että se tulee
myöhemmin and Johtaja tulee heti kun se voi (or … heti kun hän voi, since in a
context like this, hän may well be used instead of se in speech).

Use of sun and mun as adverbs

The colloquial genitive forms sun and mun are sometimes used as adverbs,
even in literary language. In the phrases sitä sun tätä and less common sitä
mun tätä, they act more or less as conjunctions, so that the meaning is “this
and that, things of different kinds”. They act as strengthening adverbs or just
ill words in expressions like Voi sun pojat! = Voi pojat! (Oh boys!).

118. Demonstrative pronouns tämä, tuo, se

Standard and colloquial forms
The following table shows the basic (nominative) forms and in lection stems
of demonstrative pronouns.
English Standard Finnish Finnish, colloquial
this tämä : tä- tää : tä-
these nämä : näi- nää : näi-
that tuo : tuo- toi : to-
those nuo : noi- noi : noi-
it se : si(i)- se : si(i)-
logatathey ne : nii- ne : nii-

In lection of demonstrative pronouns

The plural forms that start with n are truly exceptional; they exist for these
words only. There are other irregularities, too, in addition to the stem
variation shown in the table above: the word se has the inessive siinä (having
the essive suf ix nä!), the elative siitä (with a partitive suf ix; often
pronounced siittä), and the illative siihen (with an illative suf ix, but the
vowel is irregular).
The following table shows the in lected forms of demonstrative pronouns
in standard language.
Case Tämä Nämä Tuo Nuo Se Ne
nominative tämä nämä tuo nuo se ne
genitive tämän näiden tuon noiden sen niiden
essive tänä näinä tuona noina sinä niinä
partitive tätä näitä tuota noita sitä niitä
translative täksi näiksi tuoksi noiksi siksi niiksi
inessive tässä näissä tuossa noissa siinä niissä
elative tästä näistä tuosta noista siitä niistä
illative tähän näihin tuohon noihin siihen niihin
adessive tällä näillä tuolla noilla sillä niillä
ablative tältä näiltä tuolta noilta siltä niiltä
allative tälle näille tuolle noille sille niille
abessive tättä näittä tuotta noitta sittä niittä
comitative näine näine noine noine niine niine
instructive näin noin niin

The abessive forms in the table are rather theoretical; in practice we say
ilman sitä, not sittä. The instructive forms are used only as adverbs. Along
with the genitive plural ending iden, the ending itten is also used (e.g.
näitten), but less common. In spoken language and in poetry, the word tämän
is often shortened to tän.

Use of demonstrative pronouns

Similarly to the corresponding English pronouns, tämä refers to something
close to the speaker or writer, tuo refers to something (within sight) that he
is pointing at (with gestures or words), and se refers to something known
from the context or to something close to the listener or reader.
In addition to such basic usage, these pronouns have varying special uses.
For example, after someone has said something, you might say Tuo on totta
(That is true).
The partitive tuota, usually in the colloquial form tota, is commonly used
as a ill word with no meaning, either alone or as the combination tota noin ∼
totanoin.

Use of tämä and nämä as 3rd person pronouns

The pronoun tämä is used in the role of 3rd person pronoun when hän would
be ambiguous, e.g. Kauko yritti nähdä Merjan, mutta tämä oli tungoksen
keskellä (Kauko tried to see Merja, but she was in the midst of a crowd). Here
hän would be ambiguous, as it could refer either to Kauko or to Merja.
Generally, when two (or more) persons have been mentioned in a context,
hän usually refers to the irst one and tämä to the second (or last) one. Thus,
in the example case, hän would primarily be taken as referring to Kauko. To
make the situation clearer, we can omit the subject from the second clause,
since then it is understood so that it shares its subject with the irst clause:
Kauko yritti nähdä Merjan, mutta oli tungoksen keskellä.
The plural pronoun nämä can similarly be used instead of he.
In spoken language, tämä and nämä are hardly used this way. Instead, the
meaning of se (or hän) is implied by context, or clarifying words like names
are used instead of or in addition to pronouns, e.g. Kauko yritti nähdä Merjan,
mut se Merja oli ihan tungoksen keskellä.
Demonstrative pronouns as attributes
The demonstrative pronouns are also used as attributes of nouns, much like
“this” and “that” in English, e.g. tämä talo (this house), tuo talo (that house
[over there]), se talo (that house) and in plural nämä talot (these houses) etc.
Similarly to the use of the pronouns as standalone, the attribute tämä
refers to something close to the speaker or writer, at least mentally, tuo refers
to something close to the person addressed, and se is used otherwise to
indicate something as de inite. In particular, se is used when a restrictive
relative clause follows, e.g. se talo, jonka ostit (the house that you bought). In
usages like these, tämä, tuo, and se are called determinative pronouns in
many grammars. In such use, the pronouns resemble de inite articles in
many ways, as discussed in section Lack of articles. In this usage, se is used
about people, too, i.e. se, joka may refer to a person; see section Use of se
instead of 3rd person pronoun with a relative clause.

The pronoun se as a nominalizer

The pronoun se is often used as an auxiliary device to turn a clause to
something that can be used like a noun, i.e. to “nominalize” a clause. For
example, we say Viittaan siihen, mitä sanoin eilen (I refer to what I said
yesterday). Here siihen, the illative of se, has just a grammatical role: it makes
it possible to associate the subclause mitä sanoin eilen with the verb viittaan,
which requires the use of the illative case. The topic is described in more
detail in section Subclauses as constituents.

Derivations of demonstrative pronouns

The words tällainen (of this kind), tuollainen (of that kind), and sellainen
(such) are historically compounds of genitives of demonstrative pronouns
(tän, tuon, sen) and the adjective lajinen, but they have changed irregularly
and may look like derivations. They are pronounced like uncompound words
(e.g. séllainen : séllaisìssa), not with a secondary stress on the second syllable.
The word tällainen is commonly pronounced as adapted to vowel harmony,
tälläinen, but writing so is still substandard.
There is a similar set of words, with a similar origin and with the same
meanings: tämmöinen, tuommoinen, and semmoinen. They are standard
Finnish, but mostly used in speech and informal writing only. The second
part moinen has limited, specialized use as a separate word in modern
language. The spelling tämmöinen is standard.

Compounds of tämä
In compounds, the genitive of tämä appears partly in the full form tämän, e.g.
tämäntapainen (somewhat like this); täntapainen or täntapanen is clearly
colloquial. However, in tällainen and tämmöinen it appears in the short form
tän, with the n assimilated.

119. Dual pronouns

In the Finnish, some pronouns are dual in the sense of referring to exactly
two or to one of exactly two. In English, the pronoun “both” is of this type.
Finnish has some more:
the pronouns kumpikin and molemmat, corresponding to English “both”
kumpikaan, the negative-context variant of kumpikin
the pronoun jompikumpi, meaning “either of the two”
the interrogative pronoun kumpi (which of the two)
the use of toinen when referring to one of a set
In applicable contexts, the use of one of these pronouns is obligatory when
referring to a known set of two. For example, the English phrase “one of
them”, when referring to people, needs to be translated as toinen heistä or
jompikumpi heistä when “they” are two people, otherwise as yksi heistä or
joku heistä.
The pronoun molemmat is plural in form and treated as plural in
congruence, e.g. molemmat miehet (both men), molemmat ovat (they both
are). Other dual pronouns are treated as singular, even kumpikin, e.g.
jompikumpi mies (either of the two men), kumpikin on (we/you/they both
are).

120. Interrogative pronouns

Kuka and mikä
The basic interrogative pronouns are kuka (who) and mikä (what, which).
Their in lection is irregular. Singular forms of kuka except the nominative are
based on the stem kene-, such as kenen (whose) and kenet (whom; a special
accusative form), whereas plural stem is kei-. Historically, kuka is a mixture of
two synonymous pronouns kuka and ken. The nominative, ken is now poetic,
and so is the plural kutka.
Most forms of mikä are formed using just the stem mi-, e.g. the partitive is
mitä. This pronoun has no separate plural forms, except for nominative
plural.
The following table shows the in lected forms of kuka ∼ ken and mikä. The
abessive,
comitative, and instructive forms would be just theoretical and have been
omitted. Note that the plural forms of mikä are the same as the singular form,
except for the nominative.
Case Kuka, sing. Kuka, plural Mikä, sing. Mikä, plural
nominative kuka ∼ ken ketkä ∼ kutka mikä mitkä
genitive kenen keiden minkä minkä
essive kenenä keinä minä minä
partitive ketä keitä mitä mitä
translative keneksi keiksi miksi miksi
inessive kenessä keissä missä missä
elative kenestä keistä mistä mistä
illative keneen ∼ kehen keihin mihin mihin
adessive kenellä ∼ kellä keillä millä millä
ablative keneltä ∼ keltä keiltä miltä miltä
allative kenelle ∼ kelle keille mille mille
accusative kenet (ketkä) (minkä) (minkä)

The short forms kellä, keltä, and kelle appear in spoken language and in
poetry.
Sometimes the substandard forms keidän and keidät are used as genitive
plural and accusative plural or kuka, respectively. They are analogous with
the forms of plural personal pronouns: meidän, meidät etc.
 In some dialects, the form ketä is used as the nominative singular, saying
e.g. Ketä sen teki? instead of Kuka sen teki? This sounds odd to people who are
not familiar with such usage.
When followed by the adverb tahansa, the pronoun kuka or mikä is not
interrogative: kuka tahansa means “anyone” and mikä tahansa means
“anything”. See The permissive addition tahansa, hyvänsä, or vain.

Special uses of mikä

Some forms of mikä have special meanings that correspond to separate
interrogative words in English, e.g. missä (where), mistä (from where), mihin
(where to), and miksi (why). They are also used as normal forms of the
pronouns, e.g. missä kaupungissa (in which city).
The form mihin is mostly synonymous with the adverb minne, but mihin
can be be seen as asking for more speci ic information. It is also used as an
attribute, e.g. mihin kaupunkiin (into which city); minne cannot be used that
way.
The word miksi is special, because it is normally understood as meaning
“why”. Thus, the question Miksi hän muuttui? is probably understood as
asking “Why did he change?” rather than “To what did the change?”, even
though the latter is a possible interpretation, too.

Derivations of mikä
There are several commonly used interrogative adjectives and advebs
derived from the mi- stem with word derivation suf ixes, such as
millainen (what kind of; historically a compound, short form of
minkälainen, which is also in use)
milloin (when)
minne (where to; like mihin, but not used in contexts where an in lected
form of mikä is needed, e.g. mihin kaupunkiin? “to what town?”)
miten (how)

The dual kumpi

There is a special dual interrogative pronoun: kumpi is used instead of kuka
or mikä whenever a choice between just two alternatives is implied. For
example, Kumpi teki sen? means “Which one of the two did it?” When asking
about two things or persons, the use of kumpi is obligatory in the sense that
asking Kuka heistä teki sen? implies that the group referred to has more than
two members. Other dual pronouns jompikumpi, kumpikin, and ei kumpikaan
are obligatory in the same sense.
The in lection of kumpi follows the rules for comparatives of adjectuves.
This means that the stems of kumpi are kumpa- and kumma- in singular,
kumpi- and kummi- in plural. For example, the genitive is kumman, as in
Kumman valitset? (Which one of the two do you choose?).
Appending the word-like suf ix kin changes the meaning of kumpi:
kumpikin means “each one of the two”. The suf ix kaan is used in negative
contexts, e.g. Ei kumpikaan tiennyt sitä (Neither of the two knew it),
When followed by the adverb tahansa or hyvänsä, the pronoun kumpi is
not interrogative but means “either of the two”, “whichever of the two”.

121. Quantifying pronouns

The concepts of quantifying and inde inite
pronouns
Quantifying pronouns express something about the size of the set of things
referred to. At the extremes, kaikki (all) refers to all things in some class and
ei mikään (no, nothing) or ei kukaan (no one) refers to none.
Quantifying pronouns are called inde inite pronouns in many grammars.
This is correct in the sense that these pronouns do not refer to any speci ic
entity, but it is incorrect in the sense that the meaning of e.g. kaikki is very
de inite.
The following table summarizes the quantifying pronouns and shows the
size of the set referred to, as number of elements, or cardinality to use the set
theoretical term. The symbol n denotes the size of the class referred to. Of
course, when a word like joku is used in plural (jotkut), the cardinality is
more than 1.

Pronoun Meaning Cardinality Example

joku someone 1 (or more) Joku söi omenan.
jokin something 1 Jokin söi omenan.
kuka anyone 1 Kuka tahansa saattoi syödä
tahansa omenan.
mikä any 1 Mikä tahansa saattoi syödä
tahansa omenan.
kumpi either one 1 (of 2) Kumpi tahansa saattoi syödä
tahansa omenan.
eräs a, certain 1 Eräs mies söi omenan.
muuan a, certain 1 Muuan mies söi omenan.
tietty a certain 1 Tietty mies söi omenan.
toinen other 1 Yksi kasvatti omenan, toinen söi
sen.
muu other 1 Joku muu söi omenan.
jompikumpi one (of 1 (of 2) Jompikumpi söi omenan.
two)
ei mikään nothing 0 Ei mikään syönyt omenaa.
ei kukaan no one 0 Ei kukaan syönyt omenaa.
ei neither 0 (of 2) Ei kumpikaan syönyt omenaa.
kumpikaan
kumpikin each one 2 (of 2) Kumpikin söi omenan.
molemmat both 2 (of 2) Molemmat söivät omenan.
pari a couple of 2–3 (?) Pari miestä söi omenan.
muutama a few about 3–7 Muutama mies söi omenan.
jokunen a few about 3–7 Jokunen mies söi omenan.
harva few about 3–7 Harva mies söi omenaa.
moni many > 5 (?) Moni mies söi omenan.
usea many > 5 (?) Useat miehet söivät omenan.
useimmat most > n/2 (of n) Useimmat miehet söivät
omenan.
jokainen each one n (of n) Jokainen mies söi omenan.
joka each one n (of n) Joka mies söi omenan.
 kukin each one n (of n) Kukin mies söi omenan.
kaikki all n (of n) Kaikki miehet söivät omenan.

Jokin and joku

The inde inite pronouns jokin (some) and joku (someone) are used about a
thing or a person that is unknown to the speaker or writer. They are used in
standard language so that joku refers to a person, except in some special
usage, and jokin refers to anything else. So we say joku mies (some man) but
jokin tapahtuma (some event). Used alone, like a noun, the words jokin and
joku correspond to “something” and “someone”.
In spoken language, however, the usage is mixed; typically, joku is used in a
few case forms, jokin in other forms, e.g. joku tapahtuma and jonkun
tapahtuman but jossain tapahtumassa.
In standard language, jokin is in lected so that the jo part is in lected and
the kin ending remains unchanged or has its k lost in some forms: jokin,
jonkin, jotakin (or jotain), jossakin (or jossain) etc. The word joku is
exceptional: both the jo and the ku part are in lected: jonkun, jotakuta,
jossakussa etc.
Nowadays, mixing jokin and joku is allowed even in standard language:
instead of four-syllable forms of joku, corresponding forms of jokin can be
used (and usually are used). For example, instead of joillakuilla we usually
say joillakin.
The following table summarizes the in lection of jokin and joku. The joku
forms in parentheses are usually replaced by jokin forms. The abessive and
comitative forms are rather theoretical.
Case Jokin sg. Jokin pl. Joku sg. Joku pl.
nominative jokin jotkin joku jotkut
genitive jonkin joidenkin jonkun (joidenkuiden)
essive jona(k)in joina(k)in (jonakuna) (joinakuina)
partitive jota(k)in joita(k)in (jotakuta) (joitakuita)
translative joksikin joiksikin (joksikuksi) (joiksikuiksi)
inessive jossa(k)in joissa(k)in (jossakussa) (joissakusisa)
elative josta(k)in joista(k)in (jostakusta) (joistakuista)
illative johonkin joihinkin (johunkuhun) (joihinkuihin)
adessive jolla(k)in joilla(k)in (jollakulla) (joillakuilla)
ablative jolta(k)in joilta(k)in (joltakulta) (joiltakuilta)
allative jollekin joillekin (jollekulle) (joillekuille)
abessive jottakin joittakin jottakutta joittakuitta
comitative joinekin joinekuine

There is also some specialized usage of joku, both in standard language and
in common spoken language:
in a belittling meaning as an attribute in some types of sayings, e.g. on
kuin joku johtaja (is like a director, behaves as if were a director)
to indicate an inde inite small amount, e.g. vain jotkut kannattivat
ehdotusta (only a few supported the proposal); this can be used even
when the number of things or people are known

The permissive addition tahansa, hyvänsä, or vain

When an interrogative pronoun such as mikä (what), kuka (who), or kumpi
(which [of two]) is followed by the word tahansa, hyvänsä, or vain, the
meaning changes completely: for example, mikä tahansa means “anything
whatsoever”. The sentence Kuka tahansa teistä voi tehdä sen means “Anyone
of you can do it”, and Kumpi tahansa teistä voi tehdä sen means “Either of you
two can do it”.
The basic pronoun in these expressions is in lected normally, while the
adverb tahansa is kept the same; e.g. kenelle tahansa means “to whom
whatsoever, to anyone you like”.
The adverb hyvänsä has the same meaning as tahansa.
The adverb vain has the same basic meaning in this context, but it may be
interpreted as suggesting that the choice really does not matter. There is also
a longer version of this phrase type with the verb haluta (wish; want) added
after the adverb. The person form of the verb must match the form of the
predicate of the clause. Example: Voit antaa tämän kenelle vain haluat (You
can give this to anyone you want). The adverb vain can then be omitted: Voit
antaa tämän kenelle haluat.
These adverbs can also be used in conjunction with derivations of
interrogative pronouns, e.g. millainen tahansa (of whatever kind) and milloin
hyvänsä (at any time).

Expressions for “one of...”

Finnish has a rich set of alternatives in expressing the idea “one of a set”. It
distinguishes between “one of a set of two” and “one of a set more than two”,
and it also makes other distinctions.
Consider the English expression “one of them did it”. If the set of suspects
is known to consist of two people, a dual pronoun must be used. We can say
toinen heistä teki sen or jompikumpi heistä teki sen. The latter expresses
uncertainty: either one may have done it. The former may also be used when
the speaker or author knows which one actually did it.
When there are, or may be, more than two suspects, there are several
alternatives. They are illustrated in the following examples of saying “one of
the men”:
yksi miehistä: this uses the numeral yksi (one) in a pronoun-like manner;
it is very common in spoken language, often with yksi shortened to yks
joku miehistä: this emphasizes uncertainty, suggesting that the speaker or
writer does not know which of the men the clause applies to
eräs miehistä: as explained below, this suggests in principle that the
speaker or writer knows which of the men is referred to, but in practice
the expression is used more freely

Eräs and yksi

The pronoun eräs : erään partly corresponds to the English inde inite article
“a”, but it is used much less, only when needed rather than as required by
grammar. If you write eräs mies, it’s not quite the same as “a man” in English;
rather, it makes it explicit that the man has not been mentioned previously
but is known to the writer or speaker. In particular, if a sentence begins with
a noun referring to something that has not been mentioned before, it is
normal to use eräs before it in literary style, e.g. Eräs mies kertoi minulle… (A
man told me…).
In colloquial language, the numeral for one, yksi, usually in the shortened
form yks, is commonly used instead of eräs, e.g. Yks mies sano mulle… The
pronoun eräs is rare in spoken language.
Even in literary style, yksi can be used in a pronoun-like manner in some
contexts, though usually so that it can naturally be interpreted as meaning
just “one”. Examples: yhdessä hetkessä (in a moment, suddenly), se oli yhtä
juhlaa (it was magni icent; literally: it was of one celebration), he ovat yhtä
mieltä (they agree; literally: they are of one mind).
In old style guides, eräs was described as referring to something known to
the speaker or writer but not known to the listener or reader. For example, in
the statement Helsinki on yksi maailman kauneimmista kaupungeista
(Helsinki is one of the most beautiful cities in the word), yksi was
recommended instead of eräs. Though the rules have been relaxed, yksi is still
a better choice here. A more idiomatic expression, using the partitive plural
and no pronoun-like word, is probably even better: Helsinki on maailman
kauneimpia kaupunkeja.
The pronoun eräs has some specialized usage:
To express an inde inite amount, which may vary by context. This
includes a meaning like “a few”, e.g. eräitä vuosia sitten (a few years ago).
In colloquial use, the amount can be large, when eräs is used more or less
ironically, e.g. Olen eräitäkin kertoja sanonut (A have said quite a few
times) and Olen eräänkin kerran katunut sitä (I have often regretted it).
In insinuating remarks, where the implied reference is rather exact, e.g.
Eräillä on varaa siihen, which means “Some people can afford it” implying
that these “some people” include someone present or discussed.

Muuan
The pronoun muuan has the same meaning as eräs. It is mostly literary, used
in iction prose, and it has irregular in lection: the in lection stem is
muutama-, and the partitive is muuatta. It is rarely used in singular except in
the nominative. In plural (muutamat : muutami-), it coincides with the plural
forms of the inde inite pronoun muutama discussed later in this section.

Tietty
By its form, tietty is a passive past participle of tietää (to know), based on the
consonant stem of the verb, as opposite to the normal past participle tiedetty
(known). However, tietty has a specialized meaning and can be classi ied as a
pronoun.
Language guides used to treat tietty simply as a variant of tiedetty, so that
it should be used only about something that is known by both parties of
communication. Thus, tietty mies would refer to a known man, someone who
is known at least to the speaker (writer) and to the listener (reader); in other
contexts, pronouns like eräs and jokin were presented as preferred. However,
tietty is used widely simply to indicate something as de inite, much like we
say “a certain …” in English. This is now accepted in standard language.

Toinen and muu

The pronouns toinen and muu both mean otherness, but they are used
differently: toinen means generally “another one”, whereas muu often
suggests the idea of “another one instead of this one”. For example, Onko
sinulla muuta ehdotusta? (Do you have another proposal?) suggests that the
irst proposal is not feasible, whereas Onko sinulla toista ehdotusta? just asks
whether there is another proposal, perhaps as one that could be accepted in
addition to the irst one. However, due to the meaning of the sentence, there
is no difference e.g. in Sen teki joku toinen ~ joku muu (It was done by
someone else).
In phrases corresponding to correlative expressions “one ... the other”,
Finnish uses yksi ... toinen or uses toinen repeatedy. For example, when
discussing two objects, “one is red, the other is black” can be said as yksi on
punainen, toinen musta or toinen on punainen, toinen musta. There is no big
difference in meaning, but toinen ... toinen might be seen as presenting things
in a more balanced way.
The word toinen is also used as an ordinal numeral, meaning “second”.
Sometimes this creates real ambiguity. For example, toinen nimi can mean
“another name” or “second name”. A question like “Do you want to watch
another episode?” might be translated as Haluatko katsoa toisen jakson?, but
this would suggest that it is about watching a second episode. The
formulation Haluatko katsoa vielä yhden jakson? would avoid this, perhaps at
the cost of changing the tone to mean “yet another”.
By its form, toinen is a derivation of the pronoun tuo (that). It is also used
as a reciprocal pronoun in phrases like toisiaan and toinen toistaan (one
another).

The dual jompikumpi

The pronoun jompikumpi is used instead of jokin or joku when there are
exactly two alternatives. For example, when talking to two persons, asking
Voiko joku auttaa minua? (Can someone help me?) would be a general
question, whereas Voiko jompikumpi auttaa minua? (Can either of you
someone help me?) would ask help from either of them.
Similarly, the statement Meidän on valittava jompikumpi vaihtoehto (We
need to choose one of the two alternatives) implies that there are only two
alternatives.
Both parts, jompi and kumpi, are in lected, using the stem jompa- : jomma-
and kumpa- : kumma-. For example, the allative is jommallekummalle, as in
Anna se jommallekummalle (Give it to one of the two).
The following table summarizes the in lection of jompikumpi. Due to its
meaning, jompikumpi is normally used in singular only, but sometimes it
appears in plural in conjunction with nouns used in plural form with singular
meaning, e.g. jommatkummat sakset (either one of two pairs of scissors).
Case Singular Plural
nominative jompikumpi jommatkummat
genitive jommankumman jompienkumpien
essive jompanakumpana jompinakumpina
partitive jompaakumpaa jompiakumpia
translative jommaksikummaksi jommiksikummiksi
inessive jommassakummassa jommissakummissa
elative jommastakummasta jommistakummista
illative jompaankumpaan jompiinkumpiin
adessive jommallakummalla jommillakummilla
ablative jommaltakummalta jommiltakummilta
allative jommallekummalle jommillekummille
abessive jommattakummatta jommittakummitta
comitative jompinekumpine
instructive jommankumman jomminkummin

The negative-context pronouns mikään, kukaan,

and kumpikaan
The counterparts of jokin and joku in negative statements are mikään and
kukaan. Thus, e.g. English “anything” is normally jokin, e.g. Näin jotakin (I saw
something), but it corresponds to mikään when the sentence has the
negation verb (en, et, ei etc.), e.g. En nähnyt mitään (I did not see anything).
The usage is described in more detail in section Expressions for nobody,
nothing, nowhere etc.
In presence clauses, these pronouns normally appear in the partitive, due
to the negative form of the clause, e.g. Täällä ei ole mitään (There is nothing
here), Täällä ei ole ketään (There is nobody here).
The following table shows the in lected forms of these pronouns. They are
the same as the forms of mikä and kuka with the kAAn or An suf ix. The
abessive, comitative, and instructive forms would be just theoretical and have
been omitted.
Kukaan, Mikään, Mikään,
Case Kukaan, singular
plural sing. plural
nominative kukaan ∼ kenkään ketkään mikään mitkään
genitive kenenkään keidenkään minkään minkään
essive kenenäkään keinäkään minään minään
partitive ketään keitään mitään mitään
translative keneksikään keiksikään miksikään miksikään
inessive kenessäkään keissäkään missään missään
elative kenestäkään keistäkään mistään mistään
keneenkään ∼
illative keihinkään mihinkään mihinkään
kehenkään
adessive kenelläkään ∼ kellään keilläkään millään millään
keneltäkään ∼
ablative keiltäkään miltään miltään
keltään
kenellekään ∼
allative keillekään millekään millekään
kellekään

The pronouns kukaan and mikään normally appear along with the negation
verb, but they are also used in other contexts where the clause is negative in
its meaning. For example, Voiko joku auttaa minua? (Can someone help me?)
is a normal question, whereas Voiko kukaan auttaa minua? (Can anyone help
me?) is more of a rhetoric question, implying a negative answer.
The pronoun kumpikaan, used together with the negation verb, is
somewhat similarly the negative counterpart of jompikumpi, i.e. ei kumpikaan
means “neither of the two”, and it is used both about people and about things.
The pronoun kumpainenkin is sometimes used instead of kumpikin. It is
in lected regularly, just keeping the suf ix kin intact; e.g. the genitive is
kumpaisenkin.

The dual pronouns kumpikin and molemmat

The pronouns molemmat and kumpikin correspond to the English pronoun
“both”. Syntactically, the former is used with the plural, e.g. molemmat miehet
menivät, the latter with the singular, e.g. kumpikin mies meni. In practice,
there is no big difference in meaning, but the latter might be seen as
emphasizing individuality: “each of the two men went” as opposite to the
more collective “both men went”.
In in lection, the word molemmat is the plural of molempi and it is
in lected like comparatives of adjectives, e.g. the genitive is molempien. The
word molempi does not appear in singular, except in the colloquial phrase
molempi parempi (doesn’t matter; literally: each of the two [is] better).
When used with a noun that is used in plural only, even kumpikin appears
in plural, e.g. molemmat häät ∼ kummatkin häät (both weddings). It is also
used in plural when referring to two groups, each expressed using a plural
noun, e.g. Kummatkin, sekä pojat että tytöt (both [groups], boys as well as
girls).
The word kumpikin is in lected according to its structure: the pronoun
kumpi and the unin lected suf ix kin, e.g.
The pronoun kumpikin has a rarely used synonym kumpainenkin, which is
in lected so that kin remains unchanged and the part before it has regular
in lection of words ending with nen, e.g. the genitive is kumpaisenkin.

The inde inite pronouns pari, muutama etc.

The pronouns pari, muutama, jokunen, harva, moni, and usea can be called
genuinely inde inite: they express an inde inite amount of things or people.
They say something about the amount, but nothing exact, and their
interpretations may vary. The pronoun eräs also has some inde inite use.
 The word pari, when used as a pronoun, as in pari miestä, means two or
three, or maybe a little more. The super icially more explicit pari kolme has
the same meaning: it does not mean exactly two or three, but can sometimes
be four, or maybe even ive. The word pari is also a noun, meaning a pair, i.e.
exactly two. Cf. section Approximate numbers.
The pronouns muutama and jokunen tend to mean “a few”—more than
two, but with no ixed lower or upper bound. In standard language, the
pronoun joku has a similar meaning when referring to things and not to
people. Thus, Ostin muutaman omenan, Ostin jokusen omenan, and Ostin
jonkun omenan all mean basically the same (I bought a few apples). However,
such use of joku is rare and would be confused with the colloquial use of joku
instead of jokin to mean “some, something”.
The word harva is an adjective (meaning “sparse” or “not dense”), but it is
also used as a pronoun. E.g. harva ihminen or harvat ihmiset means “few
people”. Thus, it refers to a small amount, emphasizing the smallness,
relative to some implied reference. For example, harvat ystäväni probably
refers to just a few people, whereas harvat suomalaiset could refer to
hundreds of people—but a small amount relative to the total number of
Finns. The word harva is often preceded by the adverb vain (only).
However, the phrase harva se... means “most...”, as an adverbial, e.g. harva
se päivä (in most days).
Expressions containing muutama can be used in singular or in plural, with
the same meaning, e.g. muutamassa paikassa = muutamissa paikoissa (in a
few places).
The pronouns moni and usea mean “many” or “several”, with no well-
de ined difference between them, though moni could be seen as meaning
generally more than usea. As the irst part of a closed compound, moni is
much more common.
The pronoun moni can be used both in singular and in plural, e.g. moni
ihminen or monet ihmiset (many people) with a difference in style but not in
meaning. The same applies to the pronoun usea, but it is mostly used in
plural, e.g. useat ihmiset, though usea ihminen is possible, too.
The pronoun useimmat is the plural form of the superlative of usea. It
means simply “most”, referring to the absolute majority (more than half), but
it is inde inite as regards to the exact amount. In some interpretations,
useimmat means great majority or even almost all.
Use of monta like a numeral and the double
partitive montaa
The pronoun moni has regular in lection with e as the stem vowel (e.g. the
genitive is monen) and with a consonant stem mon-, so that the partitive is
monta. It is normally used in a manner similar to numerals, applying the
partitive rule for the associated noun, e.g. Sain monta kalaa (I caught many
ish), just like we say Sain kolme kalaa (I caught three ish).
However, since the rules also require the numeral in the partitive in
contexts like En saanut kolmea kalaa (I did not catch three ish), people often
add another partitive suf ix to monta, too, in similar contexts: En saanut
montaa kalaa (I did not catch many ish). This has now become accepted
usage.

The universal pronouns jokainen, joka, kaikki, and

kukin
The pronoun jokainen corresponds to English “every”. It is always used in
singular, e.g. jokainen maa (every country), except when (rarely) used with a
noun that is always plural in form, e.g. jokaiset häät (every wedding). When
used like a noun, jokainen refers to everyone or every item in a set de ined by
the context or, in the absence of apparent contextual reference, to everyone in
general, e.g. jokainen tietää... (everyone knows...).
Alternatively, joka can be used to mean “every”. In this usage, it is
unin lected (unlike in its use as a relative pronoun, explained in the next
section). For example, jokaiselle miehelle (to every man) is synonymous with
joka miehelle, but the latter is somewhat poetic. When not referring to
people, there is not much style difference: joka kaupungissa ~ jokaisessa
kaupungissa (in every town). On the other hand, there are several contexts
where joka has special usage, in all styles, and cannot be replaced by
jokainen:
joka viides (every ifth) and similar expressions involving an ordinal
numerals
joka päivä (every day) and similar expressions of time, in the nominative,
e.g. joka ilta, joka viikko, joka vuosi
joka ainoa ~ joka ikinen (every single one)
 joka paikassa (in every place, everywhere), joka paikasta (from every
place), joka paikkaan (to every place) and similar constructs with nouns
like suunta (direction), puoli (side; feature), e.g. joka suunnasta (from
every direction)
The pronoun kaikki (genitive kaiken) corresponds to “all”. It can be used in
different ways:
As a standalone pronoun, used in a noun-like manner, kaikki refers to all
in a set implied or expressed by the context. For example, Kaikki
hyväksyivät ehdotuksen means “All accepted the proposal”. It may be
clari ied by another pronoun, e.g. me kaikki (we all). When referring to
things, it corresponds to “everything”, e.g. Kaikki meni hyvin (Everything
went well).
As an attribute, it is normally used with a plural word but itself in
singular in the base form, e.g. kaikki miehet (all men). In in lected forms,
kaikki is in plural in such usage, e.g. kaikkien miesten (all men’s).
It may also be used as an attribute to a singular mass noun, and then it
means “all of...”, e.g. kaikki vesi (all the water). Even words like kansa
(people; folk) may be treated as mass nouns in this sense, though
expressions like kaikki kansa are somewhat poetic.
In expressions of time, kaikki in singular means “the entire...”, “all the...”,
whereas kaiket in plural (in sayings) means “all ...s”, “each and every...”.
Examples: kaiken kesää (all the summer), kaiken yötä (all the night),
kaiken aikaa (all the time), used as adverbials; kaikki kesät (all summers),
kaikki yöt (all nights), kaikki ajat (all times), can be used as an adverbial
or as a subject.
The pronoun kukin, like the English “each”, is similar to jokainen and joka but
emphasizes individuality: kukin maa (each country) refers to every country,
suggesting that each country has its own features, decisions, etc.
The pronoun kukin is in lected so that the suf ix is appended to the ku
part, before kin, e.g. kunkin, kussakin, kuhunkin. It is normally used in singular
only, but sometimes it appears in plural in conjunction with nouns used in
plural form with singular meaning, e.g. kutkin häät (each wedding). It is also
used in plural expressions like kutkin valtiot, but this can be regarded as
incorrect; the singular kukin valtio (each state) should be used instead. The
following table summarizes the in lection of kukin. The abessive and
comitative forms are very theoretical, and plural forms are rarely used.
Case Singular Plural
nominative kukin kutkin
genitive kunkin kuidenkin
essive kunakin kuinakin
partitive kutakin kuitakin
translative kuksikin kuiksikin
inessive kussakin kuissakin
elative kustakin kuistakin
illative kuhonkin kuihinkin
adessive kullakin kuillakin
ablative kultakin kuiltakin
allative kullekin kuillekin
abessive kuttakin kuittakin
comitative kuinekin

The pronouns jokainen, kaikki, and kukin (but not joka) can also be used as
standalone like a noun, corresponding to “everyone” or ”every thing”, “all”,
and “each one”. When used that way about people, kukin is often emphasized
by using the pronoun itse. For example, Itse kukin päättää… means “Each one
decides himself/herself…”.

The identifying pronoun sama

The pronoun sama (same) can be classi ied as quantifying, since it speci ies
an identity of some kind. It is mostly used as an attribute, e.g. sama mies (the
same man), but also in a noun-like manner, e.g. sama koskee tätä tapausta
(the same applies to this case). It is used much like “same” in English, but
there is some special usage, too:
The phrase aivan sama or sama se or se ja sama or, more colloquially, ihan
sama means “who cares”, “never mind”.
The adessive form samalla can mean “at the same time” or “in the same
occasion”.
The inessive form samassa means “at the very same moment”.
 The instructive plural samoin (often classi ied as an adverb) means “the
same way” or “also”. It is also used in the phrase kiitos, samoin (thanks,
the same to you) when responding to wishes, when applicable.

The derived adjective samanlainen means “similar”. In practice, the

distinction between sama and samanlainen is not quite clear. Often sama
does not really mean identity, just essential similarity, e.g. in the slogan
samasta työstä sama palkka (for the same work, the same salary/wages).

122. Relative pronouns

The basic relative pronouns joka and mikä
The basic relative pronouns are joka and mikä. They both correspond to
English “which”, “that”, and “who”, so that both joka and mikä can start either
a restrictive relative clause or a non-restrictive relative clause.
In practice, this causes much less confusion than you might expect. Finnish
frequently uses the demonstrative pronoun se when a relative clause is
restrictive. For example, se koirani, joka voitti kilpailun (or se koiristani, joka
voitti kilpailun) means “my dog that won the contest”. Without the word se,
the expression koirani, joka voitti kilpailun is ambiguous in the sense that the
relative clause may or may not be restrictive. Its meaning can be the same as
with se, or it can mean “my dog, which (by the way) won the contest”.
In Finnish, the use of a comma before a personal pronoun does not depend
on whether the relative clause is restrictive. Normally a comma is used, but it
may be omitted according to general punctuation rules in some contexts.

The in lexion of joka

The normal relative pronoun is joka. It is in lected so that the ka part is
omitted except in genetive singular (jonka) and nominative plural (jotka). In
informal style, the ka part is included in some other forms, too. For example,
the illative is johon in singular, joihin in plural, but johonka and joihinka are
also used in speech. The forms in use are shown in the table below.
Case Singular Plural Notes
nominative joka jotka
genitive jonka joiden In informal style also with the ka suf ix.
essive jona joina
partitive jota joita
translative joksi joiksi
inessive jossa joissa
elative josta joista
illative johon joihin In informal style also with the ka suf ix.
adessive jolla joilla
ablative jolta joilta
allative jolle joille In informal style also with the ka suf ix.
abessive jotta joitta Very rare.

The in lexion of mikä

The alternative relative pronoun mikä has the same in lection as in its use as
an interrogative pronoun: mikä : minkä : minä etc. This means that the
in lection is rather similar to that of joka.

Choice of case forms

The case form of a relative pronoun is determined by its grammatical role in
the relative clause. This form may well differ from the case form of the word
that the pronoun refers to, the antecedent. Example: Muistatko hotellin, jossa
asuimme viime matkallamme? (Do you remember the hotel where we lived
during our last trip?) Here the relative pronoun jossa is in the inessive,
indicating location, whereas its antecedent hotellin is in the genitive, as it is
the object of the main clause.

Choosing between joka and mikä

In standard language, the pronoun mikä is used instead of joka in the
following contexts:
The pronoun relates to an entire clause (containing a predicate) before it,
e.g. Ehdotus hylättiin, mikä aiheutti kaaoksen (The proposal was rejected,
which caused a chaos); the pronoun relates to ehdotus hylättiin.
 The pronoun relates to a superlative adjective, e.g. parasta, mitä tiedän
(the best that I know). In these expressions, the superlative is in the
partitive form. However, if the superlative is an attribute of an implied
noun, the rules in the following item apply. For example, Tämä auto on
paras, joka ~ mikä minulla on ollut (This car is the best that I have had),
since paras is here short for paras auto.
The pronoun relates to an expression containing a superlative attribute,
e.g. paras koira, minkä tunnen (the best dog that I know). However, in this
type, joka may alternatively be used, and must be used if the expression
refers to a person, e.g. paras mies, jonka tunnen (the best man that I
know).
The pronoun relates to another pronoun used in singular and not
denoting a person, e.g. kaikki, mitä olen nähnyt (all that I have seen) and
se, mitä tapahtui (the thing that happened). When the antecedent
pronoun refers to a person, joka is used, e.g. se, jota odotin (the person
that I was waiting for). The same applies when the antecedent is in plural
form, e.g. nämä, jotka nyt näet (these that you now see) versus tämä,
minkä nyt näet (this that you now see).
The pronoun refers to an implied pronoun, e.g. Tee, mitä haluat = Tee se,
mitä haluat.
The pronoun refers to an expression of place, e.g. Kävin Vaasassa, missä
olen syntynyt (I visited Vaasa, where I was born). In this type, joka can
also be used.; in the example, the inessive jossa would be used. Typically,
joka makes the reference more localized, referring to an exact place.

In spoken language, mikä is often used much wider instead of joka, though
normally not about people. This is probably a source of the misconception
(among some native speakers) that joka should be used about people, mikä
about anything else.

Sentences that begin with joka

When a sentence begins with the pronoun joka in some case form, the
pronoun is usually part of a relative clause that constitutes the subject of the
main clause. This structure is common in proverbs, e.g. Joka torjuu moitteet,
pilaa elämänsä (Whoso is refusing instruction is despising his soul; Proverbs
15:32). In such contexts, joka always refers to a person. However, a sentence
may begin with the word joka in a different meaning, “every”, e.g. Joka päivä...
(Every day...).
Such a relative clause does not relate to any word in the main clause, i.e. it
has no antecedent, so it may sound somewhat special. Partly for such
reasons, the pronoun se is often placed at the start, so that it acts as the
antecedent: Se, joka torjuu moitteet, pilaa elämänsä. Another method is to use
the pronoun se or hän after the relative clause: Joka torjuu moitteet, se pilaa
elämänsä.

Use of kuka ~ ken as relative pronouns

The interrogative pronoun kuka ~ ken (who) is also used as a relative
pronoun, but only in some special contexts. Normally, the English relative
pronoun “who” corresponds to joka in Finnish, e.g. nainen, jota rakastan (the
woman whom I love). When a relative pronoun referring to a person is used
as standalone, not relating to any word in the preceding clause, kuka ~ ken is
used, e.g. Hän voi valita, kenet hän haluaa (He can choose whomever he
wants).

Adjectives and adverbs used like relative pronouns

The pronoun-like adjective jollainen (of which kind) is relatively rare and
mostly literary. For example, the expression auto, jollaista et ole ennen
kokeillut means “a car of a kind that you have not tried before”. A similar
adjective millainen is used when mikä would be used instead of joka, e.g.
Sellainen koira, millainen isäntä (like dog, like master).
The pronoun-like adverbs jolloin and milloin similarly mean “at which
time”, and the pronoun-like adverbs jonne and minne mean “where to” or
“into which”. Example: Jatkoimme matkaa Jyväskylään, jonne saavuimme kello
23 (We continued the trip to Jyväskylä, where we arrived at 11 PM).

Word order in relative clauses

Although word order can generally vary a lot in Finnish, especially in poetry,
relative clauses always start with a relative pronoun or a comparable
adjective or adverb. It cannot thus have a preposition; instead, a postposition
is used. For example, we can say ennen tätä or tätä ennen (before this), but
ennen can be used only as a postposition can be used in Järjestelmä otetaan
käyttöön keväällä, mitä ennen sitä testataan (The system will be taken into
use in spring, before which it will tested).

Associating a relative pronoun with an antecedent

A relative pronoun refers to a noun phrase (noun with its attributes), known
as its antecedent. The antecedent appears most often immediately before the
relative pronoun. For example, puhelimeni akku, jonka ostin eilen means “the
battery (in my phone) that I bought yesterday”, so it says that yesterday I
bought the phone, not the battery.
If the antecedent is farther, it should be preceded by the demonstrative
pronoun se, in the form required by the context. This is possible only when
the relative clause is restrictive. For example, sen puhelimeni akku, jonka ostin
eilen means “the battery of that phone of mine that I bought yesterday” and
implies that I have several phones and I am now referring to one of them,
identi ied by the relative clause.
Instead of se, some other restrictive attribute such as sellainen (such) and
ainoa (the only) can sometimes be used to associate an antecedent with a
relative pronoun. Example: Hän kysyi sellaisten tuotteiden hinnoista, joita
meillä ei ole myynnissä (He asked about the prices of products that we do not
have for sale). If the relative clause is non-restrictive, such methods cannot be
used: the antecedent must precede the pronoun. We can say Ostin auton,
jonka hinta oli 5 000 euroa (I bought a car, the price of which was 5,000
euros). If we wish to add an adverbial to the main clause, e.g. Villeltä (from
Ville), it needs to be placed before auton: Ostin Villeltä auton, jonka hinta oli 5
000 euroa.
In informal language, the rules are often broken. If someone says Hän kysyi
tuotteiden hinnoista, joita meillä ei ole myynnissä, he will be understood,
though perhaps with some dif iculty. The listener needs to realize that joista
cannot refer to hinnoista but to tuotteiden; products are sold, not prices.
Standard Finnish rules now allow a relative pronoun to refer to
antecedent “over” a postposition. Example: Pekka keskusteli asiasta Liisan
kanssa, joka näytti hajamieliseltä (Pekka discussed the matter with Liisa,
which looked absent-minded). Here Liisan is the antecedent of joka, despite
the intervening postposition kanssa. Though accepted, such expressions are
best avoided, if possible, typically by turning the relative clause to a sentence.
123. Re lexive and reciprocal pronouns
The re lexive pronoun itse
The nominative form itse of the re lexive pronoun has boundary gemination,
e.g. itse kukin is pronounced itsek kukin, but this is not re lected in other
forms: they have an unvarying short e, e.g. itsen, itseä etc. The word has no
plural forms; singular forms are used instead, e.g. meille itsellemme (to/for us
ourselves).
The pronoun itse has two types of uses, re lexive and emphasizing; the
latter use is described in subsection Use of itse for emphasis . As a re lexive
pronoun itse always has a possessive suf ix: itseni, itsesi, itsensä, itsemme,
itsenne correspond to English “myself”, “yourself”, etc. Thus, “I washed
myself” is pesin itseni, whereas “I was washing myself” is pesin itseäni (with a
“partial” object in the partitive, with suf ix ä).
The re lexive pronoun refers to the subject of the clause. For example,
when it appears as an object, it indicates that the subject of the action is also
its object. When used in the allative case (-lle case), it typically indicates that
the action was performed for the bene it of the subject. This is similar to the
use of “myself”, “yourself” etc. in English, but in Finnish, the re lexive
pronoun is used in various case forms according to sentence structure. For
example, “I bought myself a house” is Ostin itselleni talon.
Within a clause equivalent, the re lexive pronoun refers to the agent of
such a structure. Thus, Äiti käski pojan ostaa itselleen asunnon means “The
mother told the son to buy himself an apartment”, whereas a reference to a
noun farther apart is expressed using a different pronoun: Äiti käski pojan
ostaa hänelle asunnon (The mother told the son to buy her an apartment).
In some contexts, English uses a re lexive pronoun but Finnish may have a
re lexive verb, which does not take any object. For example, instead of pesin
itseni we can also say peseydyin. This is the 1st person singular form of
peseytyä “to wash oneself”. Such verbs are mostly used in literary style; in
spoken language, pesin itseni is more common.
Some forms of itse are used in an adverb-like manner in a specialized
meaning. Itsekseni, itseksesi, itsekseen etc., i.e. the translative with a
possessive suf ix, means “to myself; alone”. Itsestään, i.e. the elative, always
with the 3rd person suf ix, means “by itself, automatically”.
Use of itse without possessive suf ix
The pronoun itse is used without a possessive suf ix in some contexts:
In many compounds, e.g. itsesuggestio (self-suggestion), itsepalvelu (self
service). However, a few compounds have a possessive suf ix, always in
3rd person form, e.g. itsensäpaljastaja (exhibitionist).
Used in a noun-like manner to denote self, inner essence, e.g. Omaa itseä
etsimässä (Searching for one’s self). Such usage is mostly literary.
Used to emphasize another word, as described in next subsection, e.g. Itse
kuningas saapui (The king himself arrived).

Use of itse for emphasis

The pronoun itse is also used, as such without in lection, to emphasize
another word or expression, without implying re lexivity of any kind. The
meaning depends on sentence structure and on word order:
If itse immediately precedes the expression it relates to, as in itse
kuningas (the king himself), it emphasizes that the person himself or
herself is referred to, not e.g. a representative or someone similar. It may
also used to express just the importance of the person, e.g. Itse kuningas
oli paikalla (The king himself was present).
Otherwise, itse emphasizes that the person referred to did or does
something personally instead of letting others do it for him or her.
Example: Kuningas kirjoitti puheensa itse (The king wrote his speech
himself).

The phrase itse kukin means “each one”. The pronoun kukin alone would
mean the same thing, but itse emphasizes this. Other phraseological use
includes itse asiassa (as a matter of fact).

The reciprocal toinen toistaan and toisiaan

As reciprocal pronouns, forms of the word toinen are used. This word means
“second” but also “other”. To express “each other” or “one another”, this word
is repeated and the second occurrence has a possessive suf ix, e.g. He tukivat
toinen toistaan (They supported each other) or He antoivat lahjoja toinen
toiselleen (They gave presents to each other). As the example shows, both
occurrences are in singular here, even though the meaning is plural.
 Alternatively, the plural of toinen with a possessive suf ix can be used
alone: He tukivat toisiaan and He antoivat lahjoja toisilleen. The meaning is
the same, but the longer toinen toistaan emphasizes the mutuality.
Hybrids of these expressions, like toinen toisiaan, are common. They were
previously regarded as substandard, but they are now accepted.

124. The pronoun oma (own)

The word oma is usually classi ied as an adjective with pronoun-like
properties. Here it is described as a pronoun of a special kind. It usually
corresponds to “own” in English, but there are specialties in its use. It has
regular in lection oma : oman etc.
Normally oma is used as an attribute, like an adjective, before a noun. The
noun often has a possessive suf ix in standard Finnish, e.g. Mies vastasi
omalla tavallaan (The man responded in his own way). In expressions like Se
on oma tarinansa (It is a story of its own), oma corresponds to “of its own” in
English.
It is also possible to use oma in the role of a noun, mostly with a
possessive suf ix, e.g. Antaisitko kynän? Olen hukannut omani (Would you
please give me a pen? I have lost mine). It may also mean one’s “own things”
or “own people”, e.g. Älä ota toisen omaa (Don’t take what belongs to
someone else; literally: “other’s own [thing]”).

Numerals

125. Numerals, nouns, and adjectives

Numerals are classi ied as a part of speech mainly for practical reasons
rather than their linguistic nature. A cardinal numeral expresses an amount
of things. Cardinal numerals such as kolme (three) could be regarded as
nouns. An ordinal numeral expresses the place of a thing in some order.
Ordinal numerals such as kolmas (third) could be regarded as adjectives.
In Finnish, cardinal numerals are in lected and used like nouns, just with
some syntactic specialties. Ordinal numerals are in lected like adjectives,
applying congruence with the associated noun. For example, we write viides
luokka (the ifth class), viidennessä luokassa (in the ifth class), viidensille
luokille (for the ifth classes), with congruence in both case and number
(singular/plural for the noun).
There are also derivations of numerals that are used like normal nouns,
e.g. kakkonen (digit two; number two), as well as adverbs derived from
numerals, e.g. kahdesti (twice). Some common types of such derivations are
discussed in this chapter.

126. Basic numerals

Numerals are relatively simple in Finnish, though the in lection partly differs
from common patterns. The following table shows the basic numerals. Both
the cardinal numerals (English zero, one, two etc.) and the ordinal numerals
(English zeroth, irst, second etc.) are given, in the nominative and in the
genitive. The in lection stem of the numeral is obtained from the genitive by
omitting its suf ix n.

Number in
Cardinal numeral Ordinal numeral
igures
0 nolla : nollan nollas : nollannen
ensimmäinen :
1 yksi : yhden
ensimmäisen
2 kaksi : kahden toinen : toisen
3 kolme : kolmen kolmas : kolmannen
4 neljä : neljän neljäs : neljännen
5 viisi : viiden viides : viidennen
6 kuusi : kuuden kuudes : kuudennen
7 seitsemän : seitsemän seitsemäs : seitsemännen
8 kahdeksan : kahdeksan kahdeksas : kahdeksannen
9 yhdeksän : yhdeksän yhdeksäs : yhdeksännen
kymmenen :
10 kymmenes : kymmenennen
kymmenen
100 sata : sadan sadas : sadannen
1000 tuhat : tuhannen tuhannes : tuhannennen
1 000 000 miljoona : miljoonan miljoonas : miljoonannen
1 000 000 000 miljardi : miljardin miljardis : miljardinnen
1 000 000 000 000 biljoona : biljoonan biljoonas : biljoonannen
Biljoona (1012) is the 2nd power of miljoona (106), corresponding old
British English meanings. Higher powers of million follow the same principle:
triljoona (1018), kvadriljoona (1024), kvintiljoona (1030) etc. However, all
these words are best avoided. In translated texts, especially in newspapers,
biljoona and triljoona are often incorrect translations of English “billion” and
“trillion”, which correspond to Finnish miljardi and biljoona, respectively.
Instead of biljoona, we can use tuhat miljardia for such reasons.
Except for 1, 2, and 3, the ordinal numeral is formed from the stem of the
cardinal numeral by appending an ordinal suf ix, which is s in the nominative.
The suf ix is appended to the weak in lection stem of the cardinal numeral.
The numeral neljä has the regular plural stem nelji-, but it has the variant
neli-, e.g. neljissäkymmenissä ~ nelissäkymmenissä (about forty years old).
Only the variant neli- is used in some derivations, e.g. nelittäin (in groups of
four).
Some numerals have special compositive forms used as the irst
component of a compound word: 3 kolmi-, 4 neli-, 7 seitsen-, and 10 kymmen-.
Some compound numerals also have compositive forms.
For tuhat, there is an alternative, less common nominative form that
coincides with the genitive: tuhannen. In modern language, it mostly appears
in some sayings like tuhannen tulimmaista = tuhat tulimmaista (the deuce!
literally “a thousand most iery things/beings”).
Contrary to the English practice of saying “a hundred” or “one hundred”,
Finnish never uses the numeral yksi (one) before sata or tuhat. With
miljoona, miljardi, etc. it can be used, but only for emphasis, e.g. Uudistus
maksoi vain yhden miljoonan (The reform cost only one million).

127. Cardinal numerals

In lection
The cardinal numerals are mostly in lected regularly, like nouns. The
exceptions are:
yksi has the basic stem yhte ~ yhde (e.g. essive yhtenä, genitive yhden), but
the partitive is yhtä (consonant stem yh and suf ix tä)
kaksi is in lected like yksi, e.g. kahten : kahden : kahta
kolme may or may not have boundary gemination, e.g. kolme kissaa may
be pronounced as written or as kolmek kissaa; it is in lected as if it had no
boundary gemination, with the e preserved as such, e.g. kolmen
viisi has the basic stem viite ~ viide (e.g. essive viitenä, genitive viiden), but
the partitive is viittä (consonant stem viit and suf ix tä); this is the same
in lection as for e.g. the noun käsi (hand)
kuusi is in lected like viisi
seitsemän, kahdeksan, and yhdeksän are in lected as if the inal n were
missing, e.g. seitsemää : seitsemässä; in other words, their stem ends with
a vowel, and the nominative has a special n ending, making the
nominative and the genitive identical
kymmenen is similar to seitsemän, e.g. the genitive is identical with the
nominative and the inessive is kymmenessä; in addition, the partitive is
kymmentä (consonant stem kymmen and suf ix tä)
tuhat has the in lection stem tuhante- ~ tuhanne-, the partitive tuhatta,
and the plural in lection stem tuhansi-; the form tuhannen, in addition to
being the genitive, is sometimes used as the nominative, too.
Use of cardinal numerals
In Finnish, an expression consisting of a cardinal numeral and a noun has the
noun in the partitive singular form, e.g. viisi taloa ( ive houses), when the
expression as a whole is the basic form. When it is in lected, both words take
the appropriate case form, in singular, e.g. viidessä talossa (in ive houses).
This is described in more detail in section Noun forms used with numerals.
When an expression containing a cardinal numeral is used as the subject
of a clause, the predicate is in plural if the expression is de inite, e.g. Nämä
viisi maata tekivät… (These/The ive countries made…). If it is inde inite, the
predicate is in singular, e.g. Viisi maata teki… (Five countries made…). There
is more information on this in section Singular and plural of verbs.
The nominative singular of a cardinal numeral also used when the
numeral is part of a grammatical object. We say Yhtiö omistaa tämän talon
(The company owns this house), where the object is in the genitive, but Yhtiö
omistaa viisi taloa (The company owns ive houses), where the object (viisi) is
in the nominative. In negative statements, the partitive is used, according to
the normal rules for the case of an object, e.g. Yhtiö ei omista viittä taloa.
The cardinal numerals are normally used in singular forms only. They
appear in plural when the associated noun is one that is always used in the
plural, such as housut (pants, trousers): kahdet housut (two pairs of pants),
kaksien housujen (of two pairs of pants). See Plural of nouns. For such words,
the numeral always congrues with the noun, even in the nominative. Even the
word yksi is in plural in such a context: the Finnish name of the movie “Four
Weddings and a Funeral” is Neljät häät ja yhdet hautajaiset.
Plural forms of numerals are also used in expressions like Otimme yhdet
oluet (We took one beer [each]). In shortened forms such as Otetaan vielä
yhdet (Let us take one more), the plural numeral (yhdet) is short for yhdet
oluet or something similar.
The words for powers of ten, i.e. kymmenen (10), sata (100), tuhat (1,000),
miljoona (1,000,000) etc. can be used like nouns in plural, e.g. sadat ihmiset
näkivät sen (hundreds of people saw it), ostin kymmeniä omenia (I bought
tens of apples). They can also be used in partitive singular with numeral-like
attributes like monta (many), monta kymmentä omenaa (many tens of
apples).
128. Ordinal numerals
Instead of ensimmäinen and toinen, the more regular forms yhdes (:
yhdennen) and kahdes (: kahdennen) can be used, but only in composite
numerals. As the irst part, only yhdes and kahdes can be used, e.g.
yhdestoista, kahdeskymmenes. As the last part, both alternatives can be used,
e.g. kolmaskymmenesensimmäinen ~ kolmaskymmenesyhdes, the latter being
less common and maybe even odd-looking to some people.
The words ensimmäinen and toinen are in lected like nouns ending with
nen, e.g. the genitive of toinen is toisen.
Other ordinal numerals are based on the stems of the cardinal numerals,
and they have an ordinal suf ix, which is
s in the nominative singular, e.g. neljä|s
t in the partitive singular, e.g. neljä|t|tä
nte or nne, depending on consonant gradation, in other singular forms
and in the nominative plural, e.g. neljä|nte|nä, neljä|nne|llä, neljä|nne|t
ns (always followed by the plural suf ix i) in other plural forms, e.g.
neljä|ns|i|llä

The ordinal numeral kolmas in exceptional in the sense that the stem vowel e
of kolme changes to a.
The following table shows the case forms of the numeral kolmas (third), to
exemplify the in lection of ordinal numerals.
Case Singular Plural
nominative kolmas kolmannet
genitive kolmannen kolmansien
essive kolmantena kolmansina
partitive kolmatta kolmansia
translative kolmanneksi kolmansiksi
inessive kolmannessa kolmansissa
elative kolmannesta kolmansista
illative kolmanteen kolmansiin
adessive kolmannella kolmansilla
ablative kolmannelta kolmansilta
allative kolmannelle kolmansille
abessive kolmannetta kolmansitta
comitative kolmansine kolmansine
instructive kolmansin

The last three cases of the table are very rare, as usual, except for some
sayings like Ei kahta kolmannetta (No two without a third one).
Ordinal numerals are used like adjectives, with full congruence with the
associated noun, e.g. kolmas luokka : kolmannella luokalla : kolmannet luokat :
kolmansilla luokilla (third class/grade).
The stem of an ordinal numeral (except for ensimmäinen and toinen) is the
in lection stem of the corresponding cardinal numeral, e.g. viide|s
corresponding to viisi : viide|n. However, there is one irregular stem change:
the inal e in kolme : kolme|n changes to a: kolma|s.
The numeral toinen is also used as a pronoun, meaning “other”. Thus, in
principle, an expression like toinen kirja is ambiguous: it can mean “the
second book” or “another book”.

129. Names of numbers

Numbers from 1 to 10 have names that are used like other nouns (alternative
colloquial forms in parentheses): ykkönen, kakkonen, kolmonen, nelonen
(nelkku), viitonen (vitonen), kuutonen (kutonen), seitsikko (seiska),
kahdeksikko (kasi), yhdeksikkö (ysi), kymppi. These names are somewhat
irregular derivations of the basic numerals. For 7–9, there are also
alternative, less common names: seitsemäinen, kahdeksainen, yhdeksäinen.
The words viitonen and kymppi are also used colloquially to refer coins or
notes of ive and ten euros or of other currency. For larger values, the
following words may be used in speech: kakskymppinen (20), viiskymppinen
(50), satanen (100), kakssatanen (200), viissatanen (500), tonni (1,000),
kakstonninen (2,000), etc.
The names from ykkönen to yhdeksikkö are also used to refer to digits,
such as the character “9”.
Names of numbers are also used for grades (e.g. at school, Sain kympin!
means getting 10, the best grade), to numbered positions (e.g. Hän jäi
kolmoseksi = kolmanneksi “He was only third”), and to things named with
numbers (e.g., yhdeksikkö may refer to tram or bus number 9 or to card 9 in a
playing card deck).

130. Names of sets with given number of

items
Names for sets of 2 to 10 items (doubleton, triplet, etc.) are derived with the
ikkO suf ix from the cardinal numerals, with some irregular changes in the
base word: kaksikko, kolmikko, nelikko, viisikko, kuusikko, seitsikko,
kahdeksikko, yhdeksikkö, kymmenikkö. Thus, for 7–9, these names coincide
with the names of numbers.
Instead of kaksikko, the word pari (pair) is used in most contexts.
There is no commonly used word for a singelton in Finnish. (The word
yksikkö exists, but it means “unit” or “singular” as a grammatical category.)
The loanword singelton or singleton or its colloquial form singeli is used
sometimes.
There are special derived nouns for sets of two or more people or animals
born together (twins, triplets etc.): kaksoset, kolmoset, neloset, viitoset,
kuutoset. The singular forms are kaksonen, kolmonen etc., so they coincide
with the names of the numbers 3–6.

131. Composite numerals

Numerals for 11–19
Numerals for 11–19 are compound words, with a numeral for 1–9 as the irst
part and the word toista (partitive of toinen) as the second part: yksitoista,
kaksitoista, …, yhdeksäntoista.
Exceptionally, the irst part the word is in lected, while the second part
toista remains unchanged. For example, the genitive of yksitoista is
yhdentoista. The explanation is that these words are originally open
compounds like yksi toista kymmentä, “one of the second ten”.
Since the numerals for 11 and 12 follow the same pattern as 13–19, there
is no natural word for teenager in Finnish. Due to some similarity in shape
and meaning, the word teini, of a very different origin, is now often used as
corresponding to English “teenager”, but its meaning is more vague.
 Similar constructs have been used for numbers from 21 upwards, e.g.
yksikolmatta, but they fell into disuse during the second half of the 20th
century. However, expressions like kolmattakymmentä re lect similar ideas
and are still in use. For example, alun kolmattakymmentä valitusta, where
alun may be omitted, literally means “(start) of third ten of complaints”, i.e. at
least 31, but at most 39 (and closer to 31 if alun is used). These expressions
are also used for larger numbers, e.g. toista sataa (over a hundred), neljättä
tuhatta (more than three thousand).

Multiplicative numerals
Numerals for 20, 30, …, 90 are based on a multiplicative principle:
kaksikymmentä, kolmekymmentä, …, yhdeksänkymmentä. The second part
kymmentä is the partitive of kymmenen, so e.g. kaksikymmentä means “two
tens”, i.e. 2 × 10, so it is of the same type as kaksi taloa (two houses). Both
parts are in lected, e.g. the genitive of kaksikymmentä is kahdenkymmenen.
Thus, they are in lected like open compounds, but written and pronounced as
closed compounds.
Similarly, 200 is kaksisataa, and 2,000 (written as 2 000 in Finnish) is
kaksituhatta, 20,000 kaksikymmentätuhatta, and 200,000 kaksisataatuhatta.
Words for million, billion, etc. are usually written separately, so that e.g.
2,000,000 is kaksi miljoonaa and 3,000,000,000 is kolme miljardia.
The words kymmenen, sata, and tuhat are also used as nouns in
expressions like monta kymmentä (tens of), pari sataa (a couple of hundred),
satoja tuhansia (hundreds of thousands), and neljä ja puoli miljoonaa (four
and a half million). According to of icial rules, such expressions can also be
written as closed compounds, e.g. parisataa and even neljä- ja puolimiljoonaa.

Additive numerals
For other numbers, a simple additive system is used for numerals. For
example, 42 is neljäkymmentäkaksi, and 21,510 (written in Finnish as 21
510) is kaksikymmentäyksituhatta viisisataakymmenen. Numbers of years are
read the same way, e.g. 1952 as tuhat yhdeksänsataaviisikymmentäkaksi.
However, it is possible (though rare) to use expressions like
yhdeksäntoistasataaviisikymmentäkaksi (literally “nineteen hundreds ifty-
two”).
 By convention, these numerals are written as closed compounds, except
that there is a word space after thousands, millions, billions, etc. and usually
also before the word for million, billion, etc.. For example, if 22 345 678 were
written in letters, it would be kaksikymmentäkaksi miljoonaa
kolmesataaneljäkymmentäviisituhatta
kuusisataaseitsemänkymmentäkahdeksan. This of icial writing rule does not
correspond to actual pronunciation, where a word (as de ined by the
presence of main stress) usually consists of at most two components, e.g.
kaksikymmentä kaksi miljoonaa kolmesataa neljäkymmentä viisi tuhatta
kuusisataa seitsemänkymmentä kahdeksan. The rule also allows writing a
number as a single word, but this is rare for large numbers.

In lection of composite numerals

In a composite numeral (other than 11–19), all parts (for ones, tens,
hundreds, etc.) are in lected, e.g. kaksisataakolmekymmentäneljä :
kahdessasadassakolmessakymmenessäneljässä. Of icial rules allow such
clumsy words to be simpli ied so that only the last part is in lected, e.g.
kaksisataakolmekymmentäneljässä, but this sounds odd to most speakers and
is rarely applied in practice.
Composite ordinals are inconvenient to use, especially in in lected forms,
and they are usually avoided. There are no additional rules for them, but the
in lection rules make them long and repetitive in suf ixes. For example, 123rd
is sadaskahdeskymmeneskolmas, which is perhaps not too awkward, but the
genitive is sadannenkahdennenkymmenennenkolmannen, i.e. all components
are in lected.

132. Noun forms used with numerals

The partitive rule
A rather peculiar feature in Finnish is that a noun associated with a cardinal
number is not in plural as in English and many other languages (e.g., “ ive
apples”), but in partitive singular, e.g. viisi omenaa. This is not indicated in
writing when the noun is expressed with a symbol or an abbreviation; e.g. we
write 5 € but read viisi euroa. Similarly, 100 m is read sata metriä.
In lected forms
The partitive rule applies only when the expression as a whole is in the
nominative, e.g. when appearing as a subject of a sentence. The expression
viisi omenaa can be seen as consisting of a numeral (viisi), used like a noun,
with a normal noun (omena) as its attribute in the partitive. In other case
forms, however, the numeral is used like an adjective: there is congruence
between it and the noun. Examples:
viisi taloa (nominative)
viittä taloa (partitive)
viiden talon (genitive)
viidessä talossa (inessive)

Combination of numeral and symbol

When the noun is expressed with a symbol, the suf ix is written only after the
symbol, but it is read for the numeral, too. We write 5 €:lla but read viidellä
eurolla (for 5 euros, with 5 euros). In this context, “symbol” means a special
character (like €), an identi ier (like EUR, the currency code for the euro), or
an abbreviation (like e, the Finnish abbreviation for the euro).
By convention, the suf ix is also written when the expression as a whole is
in the partitive. This makes it possible to distinguish between viisi euroa and
viittä euroa, though in an unnatural way: 5 € and 5 €:a. In the latter
expression, the suf ix indicator :a really means that the preceding numeral is
to be read in the partitive. Yet, the partitive written is that of euro|a, not that
of the numeral, viit|tä.

Difference from expressions for “n of…”

Historically, an expression like viisi miestä can be understood as meaning
“ ive of the collective of men”. However, it has become a grammatical
construct. As an expression for “n of….” (where n is a number), we use the
elative (stA case) plural, not the partitive. Note the difference between
expressions like the following:
viisi miestä ( ive men), using the partitive singular
viisi miehistä ( ive of the men), using the elative plural and referring to
ive individuals in a known set of men
In the former type, both the numeral and the noun are in lected, e.g. viidelle
miehelle (to ive men). In the latter type, only the numeral is in lected, e.g.
viidelle miehistä.

The exception: the numeral yksi

The numeral yksi (one) is the only exception to the rules above. We say yksi
omena, using the nominative for both words. The expression is in lected so
that both words take the same case form, e.g. yhdellä omenalla. Thus, yksi is
used like an adjective in all case forms.

Use of the partitive in special contexts

Numerals expressing fractional numbers have the noun in the partitive
singular, too, e.g. puoli omenaa (half an apple). The same applies to decimal
numbers, e.g. yksi pilkku viisi metriä, normally written as 1,5 m.
Even for the numeral nolla (zero) and the synonymous expression ei
yhtään, the noun is in the partitive, e.g. nolla pistettä (zero points) or ei
yhtään pistettä (no points).
The partitive is also used with words expressing inexact amounts such as
pari (a couple of) and monta (many), e.g. pari omenaa, monta omenaa. The
partitive, but in plural, is used with the words joukko (a set of), muutamia
(some), paljon (many, plenty of), vähän (a few, a little), e.g. paljon omenia.
Even these take the partitive singular for mass nouns, e.g. vähän vettä (a little
water).
The word pari mentioned above means “two or three” when used to
express a vague amount. It is also used as a normal noun meaning “pair”, and
then the associated noun is in the partitive plural, e.g. pari kenkiä (pair of
shoes), though often a compound like kenkäpari is used instead.

Words used in plural only

With plurale tantum words (nouns that are always used in plural), the
number is in plural. It is in the nominative when the expression as a whole is
in the nominative, e.g. kahdet häät (two weddings), but in lected as needed
by the context kaksissa häissä (in two weddings).
133. Old numeral-like nouns
As in other languages, some old numeral-like nouns are used for expressing
amounts in special contexts:
tikkuri (dicker), 10 pieces, about fur etc.; historical
tusina (dozen), 12 pieces, e.g. kaksi tusinaa kahvikuppeja (two dozens of
coffee cups); used less often than “dozen” in English, e.g. dozens of pages
normally corresponds to kymmeniä sivuja, even though the meaning is
nominally different
tiu (score), 20 pieces, used about eggs, e.g. tiu kananmunia (a score of
eggs); now rare
kirja (quire), 25 pieces, about sheets of paper
krossi (gross), 144 pieces; rare
riisi (ream), 500 pieces, about sheets of paper
pakka (10 reams), 5,000 pieces, about sheets of paper
These nouns are used so that they may be preceded by a normal numeral,
causing the noun to appear in the partitive singular, e.g. kaksi tusinaa. An
associated normal noun that expresses the type of article is in the partitive
plural, e.g. tusina kuppeja or kaksi tusinaa kuppeja.

134. Fractions
Simple fractional numbers 1/3, 1/4 etc. are mostly named systematically
using compound words consisting of the noun osa (part) preceded by an
ordinal numeral: kolmasosa, neljäsosa etc. (literally “third part”, “fourth
part”). However, special derived words kolmannes : kolmanneksen, neljännes,
viidennes etc. are alternatively used for numbers 1/2, 1/3, …, 1/9, and 1/100.
These words can be regarded as derived from cardinal numerals with the
nnes : nekse- suf ix or, perhaps simpler, as derived from the ordinal numeral
stems with the s : kse- suf ix.
The word for number 1/2 is puoli : puolen.
For the number 1/10, the words kymmenennes : kymmenenneksen and the
less regular kymmenes : kymmeneksen are sometimes used, as an alternative
to kymmenesosa. The word kymmenys : kymmenyksen has special meanings: it
means a decimal digit in the decimal part or, in plural (kymmenykset) in
religious use, tithes.
Numbers such as 2/5 are expressed systematically: kaksi viidesosaa
(literally, “two ifth parts”) or, less often, kaksi viidennestä.
 The number 1½ can be read as yksi ja puoli, but more idiomatically and
more often, it is read as puolitoista, where the irst part is in lected, e.g. the
inessive is puolessatoista. Similar expressions for other numbers, such as
puolikolmatta for 2½, are hardly used in modern language any more. Instead,
simple expressions like kaksi ja puoli are used. In them, both parts are
in lected, e.g. kahdessa ja puolessa.

135. Decimal numbers

Finnish uses the comma, Finnish pilkku, as the decimal separator, though in
many contexts, the period, Finnish piste, is used due to the in luence of
English. A number like 4,2 is read neljä pilkku kaksi.
A decimal part consisting of more than one digit is usually read as an
integer, e.g. 5,23 as viisi pilkku kaksikymmentäkolme. Reading the digits
individually, e.g. viisi pilkku kaksi kolme, is also possible – and usual for long
decimal parts.
In older style, the decimal part is read as a fractional number, e.g. 4,2 as
neljä ja kaksi kymmenesosaa (four and two tenths) or longer neljä kokonaista
(ja) kaksi kymmenesosaa. For longer decimal numbers, this method is
inconvenient; e.g. 5,23 would be viisi ja kaksikymmentäkolme sadasosaa.

136. Adverbs derived from numerals

There are some suf ixes used to derive adverbs from numerals, described in
other sections of this book and summarized in the following table.
Suf ix Meaning Example Translation
sen Approximate numeral kolmisen about three
metriä meters
sti Indicates number of kolmesti three times,
repetitions thrice
ttAin Distributive kolmittain in groups of three

137. Distributive adverbs and adjectives

Adverbs derived from cardinal numerals with the -ttAin suf ix express
grouping in sets with the given number of items, e.g. kolmittain means “three
at time”, “three by three”, “in groups of three”. These derivations are based on
the plural in lectional stem, so they are yksittäin, kaksittain, kolmittain,
nelittäin, viisittäin, kuusittain, seitsemittäin, kahdeksittain, and yhdeksittäin.
Such derivations are not used for larger numbers, except for round
numbers (powers of ten): kymmenittäin, sadoittain, tuhansittain,
miljoonittain, miljardeittain etc. For them, the meaning is “tens of”, “hundreds
of” etc., and these words may be used like numerals, with an associated noun
in the partitive, e.g. sadoittain ihmisiä (hundreds of people).
There are also corresponding adjectives yksittäinen, kaksittainen etc., but
only the irst one of them is in common use, meaning “individual, separated,
single, isolated”.
For some numbers, there are other distributive adverbs, some of which
can be interpreted as instructive plural forms or as other in lected forms.
Their meanings are of type “as a group of ...” rather than “in groups of”:
yksin (alone)
kaksin ~ kahdestaan ~ kaksistaan (as a group of two; but English often
uses different phrases, e.g. Olimme siellä kahdestaan = We were there just
by ourselves, when “we” is implied to refer to two people)
kolmisin ~ kolmestaan ~ kolmistaan (as a group of three)
nelisin ~ nelistään (as a group of four)

138. Approximate numbers

Adverbs expressing approximativeness
Approximate numbers can be expressed using a numeral preceded by the
adverb noin, suunnilleen, osapuilleen, likimain, likimäärin or (colloquially)
about ~ öbaut, e.g. noin viisi (about ive). There is no big difference between
these adverbs, but the shortest one, noin, is the most common, and in
contrast, the other adverbs tend to be emphasize the approximateness to
some extent.
Alternatively, expressions like viiden tienoilla or (colloquially) viiden
hujakoilla can be used; tienoo means area or region, so literally viiden
tienoilla means “in the region of/around ive”.
 As in English, the mathematical symbol “≈” or, as its replacement, the tilde
“~” is sometimes used instead, but notations like ≈ 5 are informal style,
except in mathematical formulas.

Derived words for approximate numbers

For numbers 3–10, words derived from cardinal numerals with the isen suf ix
can be used to indicate an approximate number, e.g. kolmisen = noin kolme
(about three). They have some irregular variation in the stems: kolmisen,
nelisen, viitisen, kuutisen, seitsemisen, kahdeksisen, yhdeksisen, kymmenisen.
For tens, thousands, millions, etc., such words can be used as the irst part
of a composite numeral, e.g. viitisenkymmentä = noin viisikymmentä (about
ifty). Similarly, we have the approximate numerals from kolmisentoista
(about thirteen) to yhdeksisentoista (about nineteen).
For one hundred and one thousand, the words satakunta and tuhatkunta
can be used.
All these approximate numerals can be used only in association with a
noun, not as standalone. They are used like normal cardinal numerals so that
the associated noun is in partitive singular, e.g. kolmisensataa euroa = noin
kolmesataa euroa (about three hundred euros). However, if the expression as
a whole needs to be in a case form other than the nominative, these words
cannot be used; we can only say e.g. noin kolmellasadalla eurolla.

The word pari

For the number 2, we can use the inde inite pronoun pari, e.g. pari euroa,
though it has a rather vague meaning. It may mean “two or three”, or “about
two” (e.g. 1.80 euros would probably be counted as pari euroa), or a more
vague small amount.

Approximate description of a person’s age

Finnish uses phrases like Hän on kolmissakymmenissä (He/she is about thirty
years old), with a word for tens, kolmekymmentä, in inessive plural. However,
a simpler analytic expression like Hän on noin kolmekymmentä is probably
more common.
This should not be confused with expression like Hän on
neljännelläkymmenellä (He/she is in his/her thirties), which means that the
person’s age is 30–39 years.
Expressions for little over or under something
To express “a little over…”, we can say vähän yli… or hiukan yli… or, in literary
style, jonkin verran enemmän kuin… In informal language, we can also say
reilut…, but in in lected forms, this word turns to singular, e.g reilut sata
euroa : reilulla sadalla eurolla.
Similarly, “a little under…” can be expressed with vähän alle…, hiukan
alle…, hiukan vähemmän kuin…, or vajaat… Example: vajaat viisi metriä :
vajaata viittä metriä.

139. Adverbs expressing repetition

Adverbs derived with the sti suf ix from stems of cardinal numerals express
how many times something occurs: yhdesti, kahdesti, kolmesti (~ kolmasti),
neljästi etc. mean once, twice, three times, four times, etc. Instead of yhdesti,
the word kerran (genitive of kerta) can be used and is much more common.
As a less common synonym for kolmesti, the word kolmasti is also used.
An alternative is to use the noun kerta and a cardinal numeral: yhden
kerran (or just kerran), kaksi kertaa, kolme kertaa, neljä kertaa etc. These are
more common for larger and more complicated numbers, e.g. viisitoista
kertaa (rather than viidestitoista).

140. Compounds expressing repetition

Compounds with a cardinal numeral as the irst part and kertainen as the
second part mean something that is repeated the given number of times or
has something repeated that many times. For example, kolminkertainen
means “triple, treble, threefold, triplex, three-ply”. These words have normal
adverb derivations, e.g. kolminkertaisesti (triply).
The form of the numeral in these compounds varies:
For 1–6, the instructive plural is used: yksin-, kaksin-, kolmin-, nelin-,
viisin-, kuusin-.
For 7, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, the compositive form is used:
seitsen-, kymmen-, kolmikymmen-. Along with this old usage, the
nominative is also used nowadays: seitsemän-, kymmenen-,
kolmekymmentä-.
For other numerals, the nominative is used: yksitoista-,
kaksikymmentäkolme- etc.
When the number is written with digits in such a context, it is customarily
written without indicating in lection of the number, e.g. 3-kertainen, even
though this in principle breaks the rules of the language: kolmin should be
written 3:in.

141. Writing numbers with digits

Grouping digits
When numbers are written with digits, a space (preferably a no-break space;
see section Spacing) is used as group (thousands) separator, instead of a
comma as in English. The decimal separator is the comma. Thus, the Finnish
notation 2 500 means two and a half thousand (2,500 in English), whereas
2,500 means two and a half, expressed with the accuracy of four digits (2.500
in English). Due to the in luence of software that writes numbers in English
notation, it is not uncommon to see English usage in Finnish, even in of icial
documents.
In banking business and similar contexts, it is still common to use a period
as a group separator in monetary notations, e.g. 2.500 or 2.500,00. The
original motivation was that the period is supposed to prevent forgeries
where a digit is inserted inside a number.
In older usage, an apostrophe was used for grouping, e.g. 2’500 instead of
2 500, and such usage can still be seen at times, though it too is now
nonstandard.
In the decimal part of a number, grouping of digits is allowed but not
required by language rules. It is required in the international and national
standard SFS-EN ISO 80000-1. If used, the separator is always a space, e.g.
0,00002734 ~ 0,000 027 34.

Notations for large numbers

For large numbers, SI unit pre ixes “k” and “M” are often used in informal
language as in English, e.g. 42k = 42 000, but this is not accepted by language
authorities. However, the notation M€ is accepted; it is not interpreted as
denoting megaeuros but as short for miljoonaa euroa (millions of euros).
It is accepted to use the abbreviations tuh., milj., mrd., and bilj. for the
numerals tuhat, miljoona, miljardi, and biljoona. Of these, milj. and mrd. are in
common use, e.g. 54 milj. € = 54 000 000 € = 54 M€. The abbreviation t. is
often used for tuhat when brevity is essential, e.g. Hp. 320 t. = Hintapyyntö
320 000 (euroa), though this is not standard.

Ordinal numerals written with digits

Ordinal numerals written with digits are followed by a period “.”. Thus, 9 is
read as yhdeksän, whereas 9. is read as yhdeksäs. In law texts and in
jurisprudence, the period is omitted, and this practice is usually extended to
general texts when referring to sections of law, e.g. 9 § instead of the more
correct 9. §, read as yhdeksäs pykälä. In jurisprudence, ordinal numerals
written that way are even read as cardinal numerals, e.g. 9 § as yhdeksän
pykälä and toukokuun 5 päivänä as toukokuun viisi päivänä.
Alternatively, an ordinal numeral can be denoted by writing a colon and an
ordinal numeral suf ix, e.g. 9:s for yhdeksäs. This is less convenient and less
common, but it is necessary when an ordinal numeral written with digits
appears at the end of a sentence that is terminated by a period. By
convention, only one period is written there, and the number would be taken
as a cardinal numeral. Thus, we cannot write Hän oli 29. but need to write
Hän oli 29:s. (He was the 29th.) or reformulate the sentence.
The use of a colon and a suf ix is also necessary when an ordinal numeral
appears in an in lected form that differs from the grammatical form of the
next word. We can write 9. kerroksessa = yhdeksännessä kerroksessa (on the
9th loor), but if the word form yhdeksännessä is to appear e.g. as a
standalone expression as an answer and it is written with digits, it needs to
be 9:nnessä (containing both an ordinal suf ix and a case suf ix).

Roman numerals
Roman numerals are not used much in Finnish, mainly just as ordinal
numerals of monarchs and popes, e.g. Yrjö IV (George IV) and paavi Johannes
XXII (Pope John XXII). In such contexts, they are treated as standing for an
ordinal numeral, including its suf ix, so neither a period nor an ordinal suf ix
is written in the base word. In inflection, only the case suf ix is written, e.g.
IV:n = neljännen, as opposite to 4:nnen.
Roman numerals are also used in expressions like Kehä III (Ring road III),
where they are usually read using names of numbers, e.g. Kehä kolmonen.
In lected forms should be written according to such reading, e.g. Kehä III:ta =
Kehä kolmosta.

142. In lection of numerals written with

digits
Principle of indicating suf ixes
Normally digits as such indicate only the basic form or the stem of a cardinal
numeral. Thus, any in lection needs to be shown separately, and ordinal
numerals need to be distinguished from cardinal numerals with some added
notation.
However, there is no way to distinguish between the basic form and the
compositive form. when using digits. This means that a notation like 17-
vuotias is used independently of the intended reading, seitsemäntoistavuotias
or seitsentoistavuotias.

In lection of cardinal numerals

When a number is expressed with digits, it still needs to take the case form
required by the context. For example, if the word viidessäkymmenessä
(inessive of viisikymmentä, 50) is written with digits, it needs to be 50:ssä.
Thus, the digits are followed by a colon and the case suf ix. Since this requires
grammatical analysis, even native speakers very often make mistakes in this
issue.
The following detailed rules apply:
The suf ix is the one appearing in the last in lectable part of the numeral,
e.g. 20:ssä (kahdessakymmenessä) and 12:ssa (kahdessatoista), since the
part toista is not in lectable (even though it is originally an in lected form,
the partitive, of toinen).
If the suf ix starts with a vowel that is identical with the last vowel of the
stem, forming a long vowel, two vowels are written, even though the irst
one belongs to the stem. Examples: 500:aa (viittäsata|a), 5:een (viite|en).
The case suf ix is not written if the numeral congrues with the next word,
e.g. 12 miehen (kahdentoista miehen). The idea is that the case can be
 inferred from the next word. Somewhat debatably, it is allowed (but rare)
to write the suf ix in such expressions, e.g. 12:n miehen.
As an exception to the preceding rule, the suf ix is always written when
the numeral is in the partitive, e.g. 12:ta miestä (kahtatoista miestä). The
reason is that a noun is in the partitive when the numeral is in the
nominative, e.g. 12 miestä means kaksitoista miestä.
Note that e.g. viittäsataa is written as 500:aa, because the second part is
in lected and the suf ix is thus taken from it. It is easy to err here, thinking
that the second part is not in lected, since we have the nominative and the
partitive viisisataa : viittäsataa. The nominative is special since it contains the
partitive suf ix in the second part. In all other case forms, in lection is normal,
e.g. viidelläsadalla = 500:lla.

In lection of ordinal numerals

The rules for ordinal numerals expressed with digits are similar to those for
cardinal numerals, except that the ordinal numeral suf ix needs to be written,
too. Thus, kahdennessakymmenennessä is written as 20:nnessä. Here nne is
the ordinal numeral suf ix, taken from the last (in lected) part,
kymmene|nne|ssä. The nominative kahdeskymmenes is written as 20:s, since
here the ordinal numeral suf ix is just s. According to the same rules that
apply to in lection of cardinal numerals, we write e.g. viidennessätoista as
15:nnessä (taking the suf ixes from the irst part).
However, if the numeral congrues with the next word, the ordinal numeral
can be written using a period after digits, just as in the basic form. The case
form will be implied. For example, the expression 7. luokalla is read
seitsemännellä luokalla (in the seventh class/grade).
It is very common to use expressions like 7. suurin for “7th largest”.
Though ambiguities hardly arise, the writing style is nonstandard, and one
should write 7:nneksi suurin, as this is read seitsemänneksi suurin.

Singular and plural

143. The concepts singular, plural, and
dual
Finnish has different forms of noun-like words when referring to more than
one, i.e. plural forms, as opposite to the basic form, singular. Similarly, for
inite forms of verbs, there are separate singular and plural forms according
to whether the subject refers to one or more. This is part of the in lection of
verbs in person forms.
Predecessors of Finnish also had dual, used to refer to exactly two. All that
is left of this—apart from some suf ixes that are believed to have originally
had a dual meaning—is that there are some dual pronouns. They refer either
to exactly two things or to one of exactly two. For example, in addition to the
normal interrogative pronouns kuka (who) and mikä (which, what), there is
the dual pronoun kumpi (who/which of two).

144. Singular and plural of noun-like

words
Plural forms
Finnish has singular and plural for nouns much like in English. The
nominative plural has the ending t, whereas in most in lected forms the
plural suf ix is i between the base word and the case suf ixes. For example,
the nominative plural of talo (house) is talot, whereas the inessive plural is
taloissa (in houses), where ssa is the inessive case suf ix. The details of the
formation of plural are discussed in section Plural of nouns.
Adjectives have plural, too, and an attribute of a noun follows both the
case and the number of noun. Thus, we say punainen talo (red house) but
punaiset talot (red houses).

Singular forms in plural meaning

Finnish does not always use plural and singular the same way as English. One
difference is that in Finnish, singular is used with numerals, e.g. “ ive houses”
is viisi taloa.
 We also say Panin saappaat jalkaan (I put boots on), using jalkaan
(literally “into foot”) in singular. The same applies to other paired parts of the
body in many phrases, e.g. pistää silmään (to stick out, literally “to stick to
eye”). In such usage, the singular word has a collective meaning, referring e.g.
to both feet or to both eyes. This is also re lected in words like silmäpuoli
(one-eyed, literally “eye-half”).
Singular is also used in some phrases like taivas on pilvessä (the sky is
clouded over) and mennä marjaan (to go berry picking; literally “to go into
berry”), olla kalassa etc. They are discussed from a different perspective (use
of cases) in sections Covering and Specialized uses of locational cases.
There are also other idiomatic uses of singular forms especially in poetic
style, e.g. Siellä miestä kylmeni (a book title, referring to men “becoming cold”,
i.e. dying).
English uses plural for the object in statements like “They shook their
heads”, but in Finnish we say He ravistivat päätään, where päätään is a
singular form of pää (head), with partitive suf ix tä and possessive suf ix än.
We can say that in Finnish we use the singular because each person has only
one head. Consistent with this, we say He heiluttivat käsiään when we mean
that people waved both hands and He heiluttivat kättään when each person
used just one hand; in English, both are are expressed “They waved their
hands”.

Effect of two singular attributes

When two attributes are connected with ja (and) or an equivalent
conjunction, the noun they relate to is in singular in the old usage of Finnish.
We say e.g. iso ja pieni koira (a small and a large dog) in singular, even though
we are referring to two dogs. This extends to genitive attributes, too, e.g.
suomen ja ruotsin kieli (the Finnish and Swedish languages), though it has
become common and accepted to use plural here: suomen ja ruotsin kielet.
Sometimes plural is even needed for clarity, to distinguish e.g. Annan ja Liisan
koirat (Anna’s and Liisa’s dogs) from Annan ja Liisan koira (Anna’s and Liisa’s
dog, i.e. a dog owned by them jointly).

Singular vs. plural predicative

The predicative is in plural when the subject is in plural. Thus, in the
statement Nämä kukat ovat kauniita (These lowers are beautiful), both the
predicate ovat and the predicative kauniita are in plural, since the subject
nämä kukat is plural.

Singular vs. plural predicative adverbial

A predicative adverbial is often singular even when the subject and the
predicate are plural. For example in Opettajat ovat usein sairaana (The
teachers are often sick) the predicative adverbial sairaana is singular. The
plural sairaina is also used, but singular is more common and fully accepted.
The following principles apply to predicative adverbials:
If the predicative adverbial denotes something singular, it is always in
singular form, e.g. Puita istutettiin suojaksi (Trees were planted to form a
protection). Here there are many trees, but they together are considered
as a protection, suoja, hence the singular suojaksi.
Many phrases use singular forms independently of meaning, such as
antaa lahjaksi (to give as present) and olla eduksi (to bene it). For
example, we say Kirjat annettiin lahjaksi (The books were given as
presents) instead of using the plural lahjoiksi.
Otherwise, both singular and plural are possible when the meaning is
plural, but singular is usually more common. When plural is used, it may
have a slightly different tone, emphasizing that the adverbial applies to
each individual. For example, instead of He kävelivät surullisena kotiin
(They walked home sad) we can also say He kävelivät surullisina kotiin.
The plural surullisina (of surullinen “sad”) could be seen as emphasizing
that each of them was sad.

Plural forms in singular meaning (plurale tantum)

Both in Finnish and in English, some nouns are used only in plural, even
when the meaning is singular, such as farkut (jeans), housut (pants), sakset
(scissors), silmälasit (glasses), and sortsit or shortsit (shorts). In linguistics,
such words are called plural-only words or “plurale tantum” words. Finnish
has some more of them, such as aivot (brain), kasvot (face), kottikärryt
(wheelbarrow), lastenvaunut (pram), rintaliivit (bra), tikapuut (ladder), urut
(pipe organ), and viikset (mustache) as well as many words denoting
gatherings or festivities, e.g. avajaiset (opening ceremony), hautajaiset
(funeral), häät (wedding), and ristiäiset (christening party). A difference in
the opposite direction is that English uses “hair” to denote both a strand of
hair and the totality of such strands in one’s head, whereas Finnish uses the
word hius in singular for a strand of hair and the plural hiukset for a totality,
synonymous with the (singular) word tukka.
Some words are used as plural-only in specialized meanings but otherwise
normally. For example, kutsu (invitation) is used normally in singular and in
plural, but in the meaning “party (for invited people)”, it is used only in
plural: kutsut. Similarly, we have syntymäpäivä (birthday) as a normal word
but syntymäpäivät (birthday party) in plural only.
However, a singular form can be used when the word appears as the irst
part of a compound word, such as hääkakku (wedding cake), housuntasku
(pants pocket), and urkusoolo (organ solo). When the irst part is in the
genitive, a plural form is used in some words, e.g. urkujenpolkija (organ
blower).
The word kiikari (binoculars, ield glasses) can be used in singular, but it is
often treated as a plural-only word, kiikarit, and this is now accepted.
Some name of countries and other entities are plural in form, e.g.
Yhdysvallat (the United States) and Alankomaat (the Netherlands). There are
also some Finnish place names used that way, e.g. Virrat. With them, the
predicate and the predicative are usually singular, e.g. Virrat hyväksyi
sopimuksen (Virrat accepted the contract). However, if the subject is plural in
form only and denotes a singular concept, the predicative is in singular, e.g.
Alankomaat on EU:n perustajajäsen (The Netherlands is a founding member
of the EU). An adjective attribute is best avoided, since both kaunis Virrat and
kauniit Virrat kuulostaisi oudolta; to circumvent this, one could say kaunis
Virtain kaupunki.
A plural name may sometimes be used to denote either a single entity or a
collection. For example, we normally say Kanariansaaret on… (The Canary
Islands is…), but the plural ovat is also possible, if we think of it as referring
to the different islands.
Some Finnish place names that end with nen have pecular in lection: all
other forms but the nominative are plural. Examples: Kauniainen :
Kauniaisten (of Kauniainen): Kauniaisissa (in Kauniainen), Ikaalinen :
Ikaalisissa, Sörnäinen : Sörnäisissä. The in lection Kaustinen : Kaustisilla is
also used, but the standard and more common in lection is in singular,
Kaustisella.

Deviations from plurale tantum use

Words that are use in plural in standard language are sometimes used in
singular in speech and in informal writing, e.g. mun aivo (my brain). This is
widely regarded as substandard.
The word markkinat (market; fair) has traditionally been used in plural
only, e.g. Suomen markkinat (the Finnish market). However, in economic
contexts it is increasingly used in singular, e.g. Suomen markkina, though this
is still regarded as incorrect or colloquial by language authorities.
Plurale tantum words are often avoided by using synonyms that have
normal in lection, e.g. the colloquial Kanaria for Kanariansaaret, the slang
form Sörkka for Sörnäinen etc.

Plural words for mutual relations

Words such as veljekset : veljesten are sometimes described as plurale tantum
words, but they actually have plural meaning: veljekset refers to two or more
person who are each other’s brothers. Note than in an expression like Villen
veljet (Ville’s brothers) the simpler word veli : veljen is used. Instead, we say
e.g. He ovat veljeksiä (They are brothers [of each other]).
The singular veljes : veljeksen is also possible, though normally only in the
partitive in conjunction with a noun, e.g. seitsemän veljestä (seven brothers).
There are few words in this category, all with a suf ix including -kset : -sten
in plural, e.g. siskokset (sisters), sisarukset (siblings), serkukset (cousins),
kaverukset (pals), ystävykset (friends), naapurukset (neighbours),
kumppanukset (companions). The word sisarukset refers to both brothers
and sisters, despite being derived from sisar (sister).

Phrasal use of plural

Plural forms are sometimes used for emphasis or style in singular meaning,
especially in word pairs like maat ja mannut (house and home) and kreikat ja
latinat (the Greek and Latin languages). In some greetings and wishes, the
use of plural may give a more polite or more informal impression, e.g. hyvät
jatkot (literally: good continuations) instead of hyvää jatkoa; they both mean
“all the best”.
Many adverbials are plural forms of noun stems, even though they denote
a state or mood, e.g. olla valveilla (to be awake) and olla nukuksissa (to be
sleepy). This is described in section Cases of nouns as adverbs.
Crop words
Words like vehnä (wheat), heinä (hay), herne (pea), and villa (wool) are used
both in singular and in plural in Finnish. In old language, singular was used to
refer to crop as it grows or is being harvested, e.g. vehnä on laossa (the wheat
ield lays lat) and tehdä heinää (to make hay). In other contexts, plural was
mostly used, e.g. myydä vehniä (to sell wheat). However, singular has become
common, especially in trade: myydä vehnää.

145. Singular and plural of verbs

Congruence with the subject
Verbs have plural forms in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person. In the 3rd person
plural, the suf ix is vat or vät. The predicate is normally in plural if the subject
is in plural, e.g. mies juoksee (a man is running) but miehet juoksevat (men are
running).
In common spoken language, however, singular forms are used in the 3rd
person even when the subject is in plural, e.g. miehet juoksee.
As described in the preceding section, congruence does not apply even in
standard language when the subject denotes a single entity, despite having
plural form, e.g. Yhdysvallat teki aloitteen (The United States made a
proposal).

Singular verb indicating inde initeness

Even in standard language, singular verb forms are used instead of plural in
some contexts. When the subject contains a numeral, the verb is in singular,
when the subject refers to an inde inite set, e.g. Kolme miestä juoksee pihalla
(There are three men running on the yard). When the subject is de inite, so
that we would use “the” in English, the verb is in plural: Kolme miestä
juoksevat pihalla (The three men are running on the yard). Such expressions
really do not sound natural without at least some demonstrative pronoun
(used in an article-like manner) or other addition, e.g. Ne kolme miestä
juoksevat pihalla.
Sometimes the use of singular vs. plural verb form even makes a difference
in meaning, in standard Finnish:
 Kaksi sisartani kävivät eilen luonani (My two sisters visited me yesterday).
This implies that the person has exactly two sisters.
Kaksi sisartani kävi eilen luonani (Two of my sisters visited me yesterday).
This suggests, or at least allows, that the person has more than two
sisters.
However, since common spoken language uses singular (kävi) in both
examples, it would be unrealistic to rely on such devices. In practice, one
would rather say Kaksi sisaristani… in the latter case.

Verbs

146. Overview of verb in lection

Richness of forms
It has been said that in Finnish a verb can have over 20,000 forms, but this
means counting “forms” that are never used in practice, or are actually
derived words, or contain word-like suf ixes like -han, etc. A more adequate
estimate is 260 forms.
Much of verb in lection in Finnish is simple. The only irregular verbs are
olla (to be) and the negation verb ei. Otherwise, verb in lection is rule-based.
There are complications due to verb stem variation as well as suf ix form
variation, though.

The most common forms

The frequency of forms varies a lot. In non iction prose, the following forms
dominate:

Form Example Meaning of example

present tense, 3rd person singular sanoo [he/she/it] says
present tense, 3rd person plural sanovat [they] say
present tense, 4th person sanotaan it is said
 present tense, negative form sanox say [in negative
context]
present tense, 4th person, negative sanotax is said [in negative
form context]
past tense, 3rd person singular sanoi [he/she/it] said
past tense, 3rd person plural sanoivat [they] said
past tense, 4th person sanottiin it was said
conditional, 3rd person singular sanoisi [he/she/it] would say
conditional, 3rd person plural sanoisivat [they] would say
conditional, 4th person sanottaisiin it would ne said
present participle, singular sanonut that has said
present participle, plural sanoneet that have said
active participle sanova saying
passive participle sanottu said
in initive sanoax to say

In instructions, the 2nd person imperative forms are used, e.g. sano, sanokaa.
In dialogs, different 1st and 2nd person forms are common, e.g. sanon (I say),
sanoit (you said).

Finite forms, participles, and in initives

The verb forms can be classi ied into inite forms such as sanoo (says),
participles such as sanottu (said), and in initives such as sanoa (to say).
Finite forms are used as predicates, e.g. Kuka niin sanoo? (Who says so?).
Participles are used in some combined forms, as in English. In such use,
the verb olla (to be) acts as the auxiliary verb, e.g. on sanottu (it has been
said). Otherwise, participles are used and in lected as adjectives, e.g. sanottu
asia (said thing), sanotut asiat (said things), etc.
In initives are used in special contexts, often like adverbs. In initives have
properties of nouns, though with many specialties. For example, the in initive
form sanomalla (by saying) consists of the verb stem sano, the III in initive
suf ix ma, and the adessive case suf ix lla.
 The simple inite forms of a verb are the inite forms formed with
in lection only, as opposite to forms using an auxiliary verb, such as olen
sanonut (I have said). The simple inite forms are: indicative present tense,
indicative past tense, conditional, potential, imperative, each with seven
personal forms (six for the imperative). There are also past tense negative
forms, which have a special status, as they are only used in conjunction with
the negation verb.

Summary of in lected forms of verbs

The following table contains all in lected forms of a verb in standard Finnish,
in the following sense:
only simple forms are included, not expressions that use auxiliary verbs,
e.g. olen sanonut
in initives are shown without personal suf ixes (-ni, -si etc.), since they are
the same as possessive suf ixes of nouns; a hyphen “-” at the end of a form
indicates that such a suf ix is required
participles are shown in nominative singular only, since their other forms
belong to in lection of noun-like words rather than verb in lection
re lexive in lection is excluded; it was never a systematic part of the
standard language, and it is limited to some forms of old poetry
the general negative form sanox, as in en sano (I do not say) is not listed
separately, since as a form, it is identical with the imperative 2nd person
singular
Somewhat illogically, the I in initive long forms are shown with different
personal suf ixes, but other in initives without such a suf ix. The reason is
that the long form of the I in initive always appears with a personal suf ix.
The verb used in the examples has simple in lection in the sense that the
stem sano- does not change at all.
Example Name of the form Explanation
sanoax I in initive, short form to say
sanoakse- I in initive, long form in order to say
sanoessa II in initive, inessive while saying
sanoen II in initive, instructive (by) saying
sanottaessa II in initive, passive, inessive while being said
sanomassa III in initive, inessive in saying
sanomasta III in initive, elative from saying
sanomaan III in initive, illative to saying
sanomalla III in initive, adessive by saying
sanomatta III in initive, abessive without saying
sanoman III in initive, instructive say
sanottaman III in initive, passive, be said
instructive
sanominen IV in initive, nominative say
sanomista IV in initive, partitive say
sanomaisilla- V in initive about to say
sanova present participle that says
sanottava present participle, passive that is said
sanonut past participle that said
sanoma past participle, passive that was said
sanottu past participle, passive, 4th that was said
person
sanon present tense, 1st person I say
singular
sanot present tense, 2nd person you say
singular
sanoo present tense, 3rd person says
singular
sanomme present tense, 1st person we say
plural
sanotte present tense, 2nd person you say
plural
sanovat present tense, 3rd person [they] say
plural
sanotaan present tense, 4th person it is said
sanoin past tense, 1st person I said
singular
sanoit past tense, 2nd person you said
singular
sanoi past tense, 3rd person singular [he/she] said
sanoimme past tense, 1st person plural we said
sanoitte past tense, 2nd person plural you said
sanoivat past tense, 3rd person plural [they] said
sanottiin past tense, 4th person it was said
sanonen potential, 1st person singular I probably say
sanonet potential, 2nd person singular you probably say
sanonee potential, 3rd person singular probably says
sanonemme potential 1st person plural we probably say
sanonette potential, 2nd person plural you probably say
sanonevat potential, 3rd person plural [they] probably say
sanottaneen potential, 4th person it is probably said
sanoisin conditional, 1st person I would say
singular
sanoisit conditional, 2nd person you would say
singular
sanoisi conditional, 3rd person would say
singular
sanoisimme conditional 1st person plural we would say
sanoisitte conditional, 2nd person plural you would say
sanoisivat conditional, 3rd person plural [they] would say
sanottaisiin conditional, 4th person it would be said
sanox imperative, 2nd person say
singular
 sanokoon imperative, 3rd person let [him/her] say
singular
sanokaamme imperative, 1st person plural let us say
sanokaa imperative, 2nd person plural say
sanokoot imperative, 3rd person plural let [them] say
sanottakoon imperative, 4th person let it be said
sanomaton negative participle unsaid; that does/did not
say
sanotax negative present tense 4th it is [not] said
person
sanonex negative potential probably does [not] say
sanottanex negative potential 4th person it is probably [not] said
sanoisi(x) negative conditional would [not] say
sanottaisi(x) negative conditional 4th would [not] be said
person
sanoko negative imperative [not] say
sanottako negative imperative 4th let it be [not] said
person

The web site Verbix.com can be used to generate all forms of a given verb. It
includes the forms mentioned above, except for the longer form of the I
in initive, sanoakse-, and the negative imperative form, sanoko. It also
includes the following constructs involving an auxiliary verb or the negation
verb:
perfect tense forms like olen sanonut etc.
pluperfect tense forms like olin sanonut etc.
conditional mood past tense (“perfect”) formslike olisin sanonut
potential mood past tense (“perfect”) forms like lienen sanonut
imperative mood past tense (“perfect”) forms olkoon sanonut, olkoot
sanoneet and olkoon sanottu
negative expressions ei sanota, ei sanottu, ei sanottane, ei sanottaisi,
älköön sanottako, älköön olko sanottu
147. The stems of a verb
The vowel stem and the consonant stem
There are verbs that have no stem variation, such as sanoa used as example
in the preceding section. Some verbs have normal consonant gradation but
no other stem variation, such as kerto|a : kerto|vat : kerro|taan : kerto|i :
kerto|i|vat : kerro|ttiin etc. However, there is also a large number of verbs that
have other variation, namely two different stems, called vowel stem and
consonant stem. Verbs with such variation may or may not have consonant
gradation as well.
At the simplest, the consonant stem is just the vowel stem without its inal
vowel, e.g. tul- versus tule- in the verb tul|la (to come): tule|n (I come). Some
forms, such as the in initive, are based on the consonant stem, whereas
others are based on the vowel stem.
If a verb has a consonant stem, different simpli ications take place if that
stem would end in a consonant cluster. For example, for the vowel stem
juokse- as in juoksen (I run), the corresponding consonant stem is juos-, as in
juosta (ro run), not juoks-.
The dictionary form of verbs, I in initive, is based on the consonant stem,
e.g. tulla, juosta. However, it is often natural to treat the vowel stem as
primary and the consonant stem as its contraction. On the other hand, some
vowel stems are longer than the consonant stem, e.g. harvet|a : harvene|e (to
become thinner). For some types of verbs, neither of the two stems is
primary; they are just different forms.
The common verb seisoa (to stand) has alternate forms based on the
consonant stem seis-, e.g. in the base form seisoa ~ seistä (or rarely seista) and
in the past participle seisonut ~ seissyt. However, only vowel stem forms are
used in the indicative, e.g. seisoo and seisoi, in the conditional, e.g. seisoisi, in
the participles seisova and seisoma, in the III in initive, e.g. seisomassa, except
for the instructive seisottaman ~ seistämän, in the IV in initive seisominen and
seisomista, in the V in initive seisomaisilla-, and in the imperative 2nd person
singular seiso, except that the interjection seis (stop!) can be interpreted as a
consonant stem imperative.
 Vowel stem forms are sometimes incorrectly used instead of standard
Finnish consonant stem forms, e.g. juoksien instead of the correct juosten.

Forms based of the consonant stem

Most verb forms are based on the vowel stem. The following use the
consonant stem (with the verb pur|ra : pure|n “to bite” as example):
I in initive, e.g. purra, purrakseni
Ii in initive, e.g. purren, purressa
4th person forms, e.g. purraan, purtiin, purtaisiin, purtaneen
the common past participles, e.g. purrut, purtu (but not puremani etc.)
imperative forms except the most common (2nd person singular, pure),
e.g. purkoon, purkaamme, purkaa, purkoot, purtakoon
potential forms, e.g. purren, purret, purree, purremme, purrette, purrevat,
purtaneen

Types of stem variation

The following table summarizes the different types of relationships between
vowel and consonant stems. Consonant gradation is not covered here.
Vowel Consonant
Examples
stem stem
-AA- -At- huomaa|n : huomat|a
-e- – tule|n : tul|la, pure|n : pur|ra, nouse|n : nous|ta
-itse- -t- havaitse|n : havait|a
-ene- -et- vanhene|n : vanhet|a
tee|n : teh|dä, näe|n : näh|dä (the only verbs of
-e- -h-
this type)

Verbs of the irst type, -AA- : -At, have special features in in lection, discussed
in the nect section.
Verbs that end with OidA in the in initive usually have only one stem,
ending with Oi. However, some of them have an alternate longer vowel stem
ending with Oitse, which can be used in indicative and condinitional forms.
For example, haravoida (to rake) has the 1st person singular form haravoin
both in the present tense and in the past tense, but the longer stem lets us
distinguish between them: haravoitsen, haravoitsin. Such forms are rare
nowadays and may be regarded as dated.

148. Contraction verbs

There is an important class of verbs with special variation in the stem. Their
stem ends with AA in some forms, At or As or An or A in others. In the general
framework of stems, the AA form acts as the vowel stem, whereas the other
forms are interpreted as variants of the consonant stem—even though the
last of them actually ends with a vowel. In lack of a better term, we can call
them contraction verbs (the term “contracted verbs” is also used; Finnish:
supistumaverbit), referring to the contraction of the long AA to the short A.
The following table shows the thematic forms of korjata (to repair, to ix)
and tavata (to meet). The irst verb has no consonant gradation, whereas the
second one has the gradation p : v.
In initive korjat|a tavat|a
Present tense, 1st person singular korjaa|n tapaa|n
Past tense, 3rd person singular korjas|i tapas|i
Conditional, 3rd person singular korja|isi tapa|isi
Imperative, 2nd person plural korjat|kaa tavat|kaa
Past participle korjan|nut tavan|nut
Past tense, 4th person korjat|tiin tavat|tiin

The in initive forms could alternatively be analyzed as korja|ta and tava|ta.

However, it is normal to interpret that the t belongs to the stem, since for
other verbs, the in initive is based on the consonant stem.
The variation of the consonant stem depends on the form as follows:
The following forms have the At variant: I in initive (tavata), II in initive
(tavaten, tavatessa), 4th person paste tense (tavattiin), imperative forms
except the 2nd person singular (tavatkoon, tavatkaamme, tavatkaa,
tavatkoot).
The An variant appears in the past participle, e.g. tavannut : tavanneet.
This simply means that the consonant in the At part is assimilated to n.
The weak grade (in the example, v) is used in all the forms above, even
when general rules would require the strong grade. We can say that the t
 triggers weak grade as if the syllable ended with it, even if the actual
syllable boundary is before it.
The A variant appears before the suf ix of the conditional, isi, e.g. tapa|isi.
This is a regular phenomenon when a long vowel is followed by a suf ix
that starts with i.
The A variant also appears before the 4th person present tense suf ix
tAAn, e.g. tava|taan.
The As variant appears before the past tense suf ix i, e.g. tapas|i|n.

Contraction verbs form a large and expanding set. In particular, new

loanword verbs are mostly adapted to this class, e.g. liisata : liisaa- (to lease).

149. Auxiliary verbs

The verb olla
The most common verb olla (to be) is used as an auxiliary verb in different
constructs, so that the meaning depends on the form of the main verb
(content verb). Using the forms olen (I am) and olin (I were) and the verb
ostaa (to buy), we can form the following constructs, to be described in detail
in later sections:
olen ostanut (I have bought)
olin ostanut (I had bought)
olen ostava (I will buy); this is archaic style
olin ostava (I was to buy); this too is archaic style
olen ostamassa (I am buying/shopping)
olin ostamassa (I was buying/shopping)
olin ostamaisillani (I was about to buy)
This verb has mostly regular in lection, with ole- as the in lection stem, but
irregular third person forms in present tense (on, ovat) and the stem liene- in
the potential mood.

The verb tulla

The verb tulla (to come; to become) is used as an auxiliary verb in two ways:
to form future tense, e.g. tulen ostamaan (I will buy), in contexts where it
is not suitable to use present tense, ostan, in future meaning
 to form passive expressions of a kind, e.g. työ tuli tehdyksi (the work was
done/completed); see section Finite passive forms in Finnish
This verb has regular in lection, with tule- as the in lection stem.

The verb tehdä

The verb tehdä is not an auxiliary verb but mainly corresponds to “to do” and
“to make”. So the verb refers to actions in general, e.g. Mitä teet? (What are
you doing?), but also to producing something, e.g. Teen kakkua (I’m making a
cake).
However, tehdä is also used as a generic verb referring to a previously
used verb when imitating English (and Swedish) usage. It used to be normal
to repeat a verb when needed, e.g. Ostin uuden auton, ja niin osti naapurinikin,
but nowadays people often use a form of tehdä (such as teki “did”) instead:
Ostin uuden auton, ja niin teki naapurinikin (I bought a new car, and so did my
neighbor).
This verb has regular in lection, except that the vowel stem is teke- (strong
grade) ~ tee- (weak grade) but the consonant stem is teh-.

150. In initives
In initives as verbs and nouns
In initives are classi ied as forms of verbs, but they behave much like nouns.
In Finnish, they may have case suf ixes and possessive suf ixes. Their use in a
sentence often corresponds to the use of nouns. Compare the sentences
Haluan leipää (I want bread) and Haluan syödä (I want to eat). In the latter,
the in initive syödä is the object. Finnish in initives lack tenses, moods, and
number (i.e. singular vs. plural).
On the other hand, in initives are formed using systematic in lection. They
also have properties of verbs: they can have objects and adverbials. In Haluan
syödä aterian täällä (I want to eat a meal here), aterian is an object of the
in initive syödä, and täällä is an adverbial of syödä, not of the predicate verb
haluan.

The ive in initives

In English, the in initive has no suf ix but it is usually preceded by “to”. In
Finnish, there is no counterpart to the word “to” in in initives. Instead,
in initives have suf ixes that indicate a speci ic type of in initive.
In addition to the basic in initive form such as sanoa “to say”, Finnish has
several other in initives. The types of in initives have traditionally been
numbered as follows:
I. the basic in initive, sometimes called the A in initive, e.g. sanoax, and
its “longer form”, which is morphologically a translative case with a
personal suf ix, e.g. sanoakseni “in order to say”, “for the purpose of
my saying”
II. the e in initive, which has two case forms, the inessive, e.g. sanoessa
“when saying”, and the instructive, e.g. sanoen “along with saying”;
see Clause equivalents
III. the mA in initive, which has several case forms, e.g. sanomalla “by
saying” and sanomatta “without saying”
IV. the minen in initive, e.g. in the old-fashioned sinun on sanominen
“you shall say”, “you are obliged to say” (in modern Finnish e.g. sinun
pitää tulla or sinun on tultava); the word sanominen is also used as
normal noun, denoting the act of coming
V. the mAisillA- in initive, which always has a possessive suf ix and is
best described with an example: hän oli sanomaisillaan jotain “he
was just about to say something”

Use of in initives
As in English, the basic in initive is used in conjunction with verbs expressing
wishes, possibilities, capabilities, etc., e.g. Tahdon lähteä pois (I want to go
away), Osaan ohjelmoida (I know how to program). However, as described in
the next section, some verbs require the use of other forms than the I
in initive.
The other in initives are used in various expressions that can be classi ied
as clause equivalents. Sometimes they correspond to “-ing” forms in English,
e.g. hän käveli katsellen lintuja (he walked watching birds), where katsellen is
a II in initive form. Although this form is in the instructive case, it does not
usually denote an instrument but rather refers to something happening
simultaneously with the action expressed by the predicate.
In colloquial language, in initives other than the basic one are rare, mostly
occurring in sayings only, such as sanomatta mitään “without saying
anything”. However, the inner locational cases of the III in initive are used in
speech, too, e.g. mä käyn ostamas maitoo (standard Finnish: käyn ostamassa
maitoa “I’ll go to buy milk”) In non iction prose, the II and III in initives are
common, though this depends on writing style.

I in initive as the dictionary form

All modern dictionaries use the I in initive as the basic form (lookup form)
for a verb. This is somewhat unfortunate for several reasons. The in initive is
not the most common form, and it often has specialties in its form. It often
has a somewhat peculiar formation; e.g., juosta (to run) has the stem juos-,
but most forms of this verb have the stem juokse-. A few verbs do not even
have the I in initive in use (e.g. erkanee “is separated”; its in initive erata is
just a theoretical construction).
To deal with some of the problems, verbs are sometimes referred to by
their typical stem, such as juokse-, or the indicative present tense 3rd person
singular, like juoksee. The reason is that the formation of verb forms is easier
to understand with the stem as the starting point, instead of the in initive.
Some old dictionaries use the indicative irst person singular, such as tulen;
the most adequate form would be the indicative third person singular, such
as juoksee, since all verbs have this form in actual use. This is actually the
form used in Kielitoimiston sanakirja for those few verbs that lack the I
in initive, such as ei, erkanee, kumajaa, kaikaa.
Knowing the dictionary form is not suf icient for constructing all the forms
of a verb. However, this mostly depends on consonant gradation and on some
irregulaties in the in lection of some verbs. For example, there are two
different verbs with the same I in initive form tavata; in indicative 3rd person
singular, they are tapaa (meets) and tavaa (spells).

151. I in initive (A in initive)

The simple I in initive
The I in initive is “the” in initive, i.e. the common in initive used as the
reference form in dictionaries and otherwise. It has several different suf ixes
due to various phonetic changes. The suf ix is either A (i.e. a or ä, according
to vowel harmony) alone or A preceded by a consonant. In all variants, there
is boundary gemination. The suf ixes are:
A: the most common suf ix, used when the verb has one stem only and it
ends with a short vowel, e.g. sano|a, and in contraction verbs, e.g. vastat|a
(: vastaa|n)
dA: used when the verb has one stem only and it ends with a long vowel
or a diphthong, e.g. saa|da, voi|da
tA: used when the verb has a consonant stem ending with s, e.g. juos|ta (:
juokse|n)
lA: used when the verb has a consonant stem ending with l, e.g. tul|la (:
tule|n)
nA: used when the verb has a consonant stem ending with n, e.g. pan|na (:
pane|n)
rA: used when the verb has a consonant stem ending with r, e.g. pur|ra (:
pure|n)
This in initive form does not correspond to any case of nouns in modern
Finnish. Historically, it is a lative form, originally with the k suf ix, which has
degraded to boundary gemination.
In some grammars, the I in initive is called the A in initive, since its
written form always ends with a or ä.
Use of the I in initive short form
The simple I in initive of a verb is used in conjunction with another verb
form, usually a inite form, e.g. Haluan sanoa pari sanaa (I want to say a few
words). However, there are complications:
For many verbs, the associated other verb must be in the illative of the III
in initive, e.g. Pyysin häntä soittamaan minulle (I asked him/her to call
me); here soittamaan is the III in initive form.
For some verbs, like ehtiä, both in initives are possible: Ehditkö jutella? ~
Ehditkö juttelemaan? (Do you have time to chat?). The verb alkaa now
of icially belongs to this category, e.g. Aloin kirjoittaa ~ Aloin
kirjoittamaan (I started writing); previously only the I in initive was
accepted.
For some verbs, the associated other verb is represented by its -minen
derivation, e.g. Rakastan kirjojen lukemista (I love to read books), though
now the I in initive is accepted, too, despite being apparent foreign
in luence, e.g. Rakastan lukea kirjoja.

The I in initive has some special use, too. When associated with the verb olla
(to be), usually in past tense, it indicates being close to doing something.
Example: Olin pudota tuoliltani (I almost fell off my chair); often the adverb
vähällä, here meaning “almost”, is included: Olin vähällä pudota tuoliltani.
As an alternative to such use of the I in initive, we can use the same
structure as in English: Minä melkein putosin tuoliltani.
A construct like olin pudota describes a past event, whereas the V
in initive form olin putoamaisillani descibes a past situation. Only the former
can be used in a igurative sense, e.g. when Olin pudota tuoliltani just says
that something caused a surprise, without suggesting any actual risk of
falling off a chair.
The I in initive is used along with a descriptive verb in colorative
constructs like hän juosta jolkutti (he ran slowly) instead of the simpler hän
juoksi (he ran).
Although the use of I in initive has many features of a noun, it cannot be
used as a subject in standard Finnish. An aphorism like “To think is to pause”
cannot be properly translated into Finnish using I in initives. Instead, noun
derivations of verbs are used, normally a -minen derivation: Ajatteleminen on
pysähtymistä (literally: Thinking is pausing).
The longer form: the translative
The I in initive also has a longer form, which has a different meaning: it
means “in order to…”, and it is thus used to form an intentional clause
equivalent. It consists of the basic in initive form followed by the suf ix kse
(of the translative) and a possessive suf ix, selected according to the person
form of the verb that it relates to. For example, tulin tavatakseni sinut (I came
in order to meet you) has the 1st person singular suf ix ni, since the predicate
tulin is in the 1st person singular form. This form is common in formal prose,
rare in spoken language.
Some longer forms have phraseological use. For example, nähdäkseni can
mean “in order to see” (as relating to 1st person singular), but more often it
is just a phrase that means “as far as I can see” or “in my opinion”. Other
examples: tietääkseni (as far as I know), luullakseni (according to what I
believe, I guess), muistaakseni (as far as I remember), and käsittääkseni ~
ymmärtääkseni (as far as I understand). These are often used in spoken
language, too, though mostly preceded by a personal pronoun, e.g. minun
tietääkseni or mun tietääkseni.

152. II in initive (e in initive)

Form of the II in initive
The II in initive is formed as follows:
1. Change the inal a or ä in the I in initive to e.
2. If the preceding vowel in the stem is e, change that vowel to i.
3. Append the case suf ix n (for the instructive) or ssa or ssä (for the
inessive)
4. If the context so requires, append a possessive suf ix to the inessive
form.
Examples: tulla : tullen : tullessa : tullessani : tullessasi : tullessaan :
tullessamme : tullessanne and kulkea : kulkien : kulkiessa : kulkiessani etc.
In addition, the inessive of the II in initive has a 4th person form,
constructed in a different way: change the iin ending in the 4th person past
tense form to e, then append the inessive suf ix. Examples: sanoa : sanottiin :
sanottaessa; tulla : tultiin : tultaessa; kulkea : kuljettiin : kuljettaessa.
 The II in initive has only the two case forms mentioned, the inessive and
the instructive, but it is frequently used in written language. However, the
actual usage often violates the rules of standard Finnish.

Inessive of the II in initive (-essA)

In principle, the inessive of the II in initive indicates the time of an action
only, e.g. sanoessa means “while saying, when saying, during saying”. Thus, it
is used to construct a temporal clause equivalent. However, in written
language, this form often has other, nonstandard uses.
The following is correct use: Tämä tapahtui Kekkosen eläessä (This
happened when Kekkonen was still alive). However, the form is often
misused as in Paavo voitti Pekan tullessa toiseksi, instead of the more correct
Paavo voitti ja Pekka tuli toiseksi (Paavo won and Pekka was the second); this
statement does not actually mean that the things happened at the same time.
It also misused to express a condition, e.g. Sateen sattuessa menemme sisälle,
which formally means “During an event of rain, we go inside”, but in practice
“If there will be rain, we will go inside”.
The possessive suf ix in the inessive form speci ies the agent of the action
expressed by the form. Thus, tullessani means “during my coming”, i.e. “when
I was coming/came/will come”. The 3rd person has special rules. In Ville toi
lahjan tullessaan (Ville brought a present when he came), the possessive
suf ix an refers to the subject of the sentence. A possessive suf ix is not used
in an expression like Täällä satoi Villen tullessa (It was raining here when
Ville came), where the agent is not the subject of the sentence but expressed
by an attribute, a noun in the genitive, here Villen. When the attribute is a 3rd
person pronoun, hänen or heidän, a possessive suf ix is used: Täällä satoi
hänen tullessaan (It was raining here when he/she came),
The 4th person form of the inessive means that the agent of the action is
unspeci ied, as in 4th person in general. Compare:
Olin nuori tätä taloa rakentaessani (I was young when I was building this
house)
Olin nuori tätä taloa rakennettaessa (I was young when this house was
built); this does not say anything about my participation in building the
house
It is very common to use the 3rd person form without a possessive suf ix
instead of the 4th person form, e.g. Olin nuori tätä taloa rakentaessa, but this
may leave it to the reader to guess which of the above alternatives is meant.
However, a 3rd person form is correct when it refers to a generic person the
same way as the predicate of the sentence, e.g. Nyt näkee paljon sieniä
metsässä kävellessä (Now you see a lot of mushrooms when you walk in the
woods). Debatably, a 3rd person form, used in a generic meaning, can be
regarded as correct in some other contexts, too, e.g. in Näillä seuduilla
liikkuessa on hyvä kartta tarpeen (When moving around these areas, a good
map is needed); here the 4th person form liikuttaessa is another possibility
and undeniably standard.
The expression of the agent in II in initive inessive forms in standard
Finnish can be summarized as follows:
If the agent is the same as the subject of the sentence, a possessive suf ix
is used, e.g. Tein virheen ostaessani tämän (I made a mistake when buying
this) and Tuomo teki virheen ostaessaan tämän (Tuomo made a mistake
when buying this).
If the agent is not the same as the subject but expressible using a personal
pronoun, a possessive suf ix is used together with a personal pronoun in
the genitive, e.g. Tämä oli suosittu tuote minun ostaessani sen (This was a
popular product when I bought it). In principle, the personal pronoun can
be omitted in the 1st and 2nd person, but it rarely is.
Otherwise, the agent is expressed using a genitive attribute only, e.g.
Tämä oli suosittu tuote Pekan ostaessa sen (This was a popular product
when Pekka bought it).
When the agent is not expressed at all, the 4th person form is used, e.g.
Tätä tuotetta ostettaessa on muistettava, että sille ei ole takuuta (When
this product is bought, one needs to remember that it has no guarantee).
However, the 3rd person form (e.g. ostaessa in the example) may be
possible, too.
Some inessives of the II in initive are used as adverbials or postpositions
that are no longer governed by the rules above. For example, tullessa can be
used as an adverbial meaning “on the journey here” in Tullessa pysähdyimme
Jyväskylässä (On the way here, we stopped in Jyväskylä). The form mennessä
is commonly used as a postposition meaning “at the latest” or “by”, e.g.
maanantaihin mennessä (by Monday, i.e. on Monday at the latest); no
possessive suf ix is used in such contexts. On the other hand, tullessa and
mennessä are also used as regular in initives of tulla and mennä.

Instructive of the II in initive (-en)

The instructive of the II in initive does not usually indicate an instrument or
method but simultaneous or accompanying action, e.g. He kävelivät
keskustellen politiikasta (They had a walk, discussing politics). Thus, its
meaning is close to that of the inessive, but the construct formed, contextual
clause equivalent, has a different purpose. He kävelivät keskustellen
politiikasta says that they walked and simultaneously discussed politics,
whereas He kävelivät keskustellessaan politiikasta says that they walked while
they were discussing politics, making the discussion the primary thing here.
This form associates with the subject of a clause, so e.g. in Pekka voitti
jättäen Paavon toiseksi, it refers to what Pekka did: Pekka won, leaving Paavo
on the second place. Such usage is standard, but literary only; in speech, we
would say Pekka voitti ja jätti Paavon toiseksi. As with the inessive,
nonstandard usage is common. For example, Pekka voitti Paavon vuonna
2013 häviten hänelle vuonna 2014 does not comply with the standard rules,
since it says that Pekka beat Paavo in 2013 (simultaneously) losing to him in
2014.
Several II in initive instructive forms are used as adverbs or
prepositions, losing much if not all of the connection with their nominal
meanings. For example, riippuen usually means “depending on…”, used with
the elative, e.g. riippuen säästä (depending on the weather), and it seldom has
the literal meaning “hanging from”). Other examples:
johtuen (as caused by, due to), from johtua (to be derived from, to be
caused by)
koskien (as regards to), from koskea (to touch; to relate to)
liittyen (relating to), from liittyä (to be connected); the meaning “as
connected with” is now rare
These forms are mostly literary and often frowned upon in language guides,
which suggest e.g. using tämän takia instead of tästä johtuen. However,
especially riippuen has become common even in informal language and is
often dif icult to replace.

153. III in initive (mA in initive)

Form of the III in initive
The III in initive is formed by appending mA and a case suf ix to the in lection
stem of a verb, the same stem as used in present tense forms, e.g. juos|ta :
juokse|n : juokse|ma|lla (to run: I run : by running).
In spoken Finnish, the illative of the III in initive very often appears in a
shorter form where an illative suf ix (prolonging of the inal vowel plus an n)
is directly appended to the verb stem, e.g. juokseen instead of juoksemaan.
Especially in fast speech, even the inal n may be omitted, e.g. tekee.

Cases of the III in initive

The III in initive always has a case suf ix, from a limited set of cases: the inner
locational cases (inessive, elative, illative), the adessive (indicating here a
method or manner), the abessive, and the instructive, which is rather archaic.
The following table summarizes their use, with the verb luke|a (to read) as
example and including the very rare passive form of the instructive
(discussed later in this secttion).
Case Example Translation
Inessive Hän on luke|ma|ssa He is reading a book.
kirjaa.
Elative Hän lakkasi luke|ma|sta. He stopped reading.
Illative Hän rupesi luke|ma|an. He started to read.
Adessive Opin sen lukema|lla I learned it by reading the
ohjeet. instructions.
Abessive Hän käytti sitä He used it without reading
luke|ma|tta ohjeita. instructions.
Instructive Sinun pitää luke|ma|n Thou shalt read this = You
tämä. must read this.
Instructive; Tämä pitää lue|ttama|n. This shall be read.
passive

Inner locational cases of III in initive

The inner locational cases of the III in initive are often used in a “locational”
meaning, in the sense of referring to being in action, leaving an action, and
entering an action. Examples:
Hän on korjaamassa autoa (He is repairing the car), Hän tulee korjaamasta
autoa (He comes from repairing the car), Hän menee korjaamaan autoa (He
goes to repair the car). The inessive is typically used with the verb olla (to
be), but it can also be used e.g. in Hän istuu lukemassa kirjaa (He is sitting and
reading a book).
The verbs lähteä (to leave), mennä (to go), and tulla (to come) are
normally not used in the locational cases of the III in initive. It would be odd
to say e.g. Olen tulemassa kirjastosta. Instead, the corresponding nouns
(names of action) lähtö, meno, and tulo, derived from those verbs, are used in
the inessive, e.g. Olen tulossa kirjastosta (I am coming from the library).

Inessive of III in initive (-mAssA)

The inessive of the III in initive is often used in contexts where we use a
progressive form in English, e.g. Olen syömässä corresponds to “I am eating”
or, more speci ically depending on context, “I am having lunch” or something
similar.
However, in Finnish, such expressions involve an emphasis on being in the
middle of some action, instead of being routinely used according to grammar
rules. A famous Finnish saying Minä juon nyt kahvia, originally a comment by
a prime minister to journalists, means “I am having coffee now”, and it is
normal to put things that way rather than Minä olen nyt juomassa kahvia.
Compare the sentences Olin kirjoittamassa kirjettä, kun puhelin soi and
Kirjoitin kirjettä, kun puhelin soi. They both mean “I was writing a letter, when
the phone rang”, but the former emphasizes that I was in the middle of
writing and the phone interrupted me. The latter just states what I was doing
when the phone rang.

Elative of III in initive (-mAstA)

The elative of the III in initive is used in expressions for avoiding or stopping
an action, “getting away” from an action, iguratively speaking. Therefore it is
used with verbs like estää (to prevent), estyä (to be prevented), kieltäytyä (to
refuse), kieltää (to prohibit), kieltäytyä (to refuse), lakata (to stop), pelastaa
(to rescue), pelastua (to be rescued), varoa (to be wary of), varoittaa (to
warn against), välttyä (to avoid), välttää (to avoid). Examples: Hän esti minua
menemästä sisälle (He prevented me from entering), Lakkasin puhumasta (I
stopped talking).
The common verb lopettaa (to stop) is not in the list. We do not use a III
in initive form or any verb form to express what is stopped; instead, a noun
derived from the relevant verb is used, e.g. Lopetin puhumisen (where
puhuminen is a noun for the action of talking, derived from puhua “to talk, to
speak”). A different, less common verb with the same basic meaning, lakata,
is used with the III in initive, e.g. Lakkasin puhumasta.
The verb tulla (to come) can be used with the elative of the III in initive to
express that one is coming from doing something, e.g. Hän tulee äänestämistä
(He is coming from voting).

Illative of III in initive (-mAAn)

The illative of the III in initive is used in many expressions for starting an
action, “getting into” an action and about encourageing an action, being able
to start an action, etc. For example, in English we say “We asked him to
leave”, but in Finnish, we do not use the I in initive of the verb lähteä (to
leave) but the illative of the III in initive: Pyysimme häntä lähtemään.
Many verbs require an associated verb to be in the illative of the III
in initive. Dictionaries do not usually describe this explicitly, though it can
often be inferred from examples. Some common verbs in this category are
alentua (to vouchsafe), auttaa (to help), harjoitella (to practice), houkutella
(to persuade), joutua (to be forced to), jättää (to leave [someone to do
something]), jäädä (to stay), kasvattaa (to educate), kehottaa (to urge),
kouluttaa (to educate), kutsua (to invite), lahjoa (to bribe), neuvoa (to
advise), onnistua (to succeed), opastaa (to guide), opettaa (to teach), oppia
(to learn), pakottaa (to force), pyrkiä (to try to), pystyä (to be able to), pyytää
(to ask), päästä (to get to…), rohkaista (to encourage), rukoilla (to beg),
ruveta (to start), ryhtyä (to start), sattua (to happen), suostua (to agree, to be
persuaded), tottua (to get used), valmistautua (to prepare oneself), yllyttää
(to incite). However, some verbs similar to these in meaning require an
associated verb in the I in initive. For example, we say hän pystyy jo
kävelemään (he is already able to walk) but hän osaa jo kävellä (he can
already walk).
For some verbs like ehtiä (to have time to), either the I in initive or the III
in initive illative can be used: En ehdi syödä ~ En ehdi syömään (I don’t have
time to eat). The latter may be seen as suggesting the idea “to have time to
come and to…”. As a somewhat different example, the verb käskeä (to order,
to command) can be used with the III in initive, e.g. Käskin häntä poistumaan
(I ordered him to leave), but this can also be expressed differently, using the I
in initive: Käskin hänen poistua; here the object is in the genitive, not in the
partitive.
The verb alkaa : alan (to start, to begin) traditionally requires I in initive,
e.g. alan tehdä (I start doing) in standard language. However, the use of III
in initive illative, e.g. alan tekemään ~ tekeen ~ tekee, has always been
common in speech. This variation re lects dialect differences. Language
authorities have now decided that both forms are accepted, though the III
in initive illative only in a standard form like tekemään. This decision has
been heavily criticized, and many people (and publishers) still regard alan
tehdä as the only correct alternative in standard Finnish.
The rules, though mostly not listed explicitly in language norms, have not
been relaxed for most verbs. Yet, constructs like pyrkii tehdä instead of the
correct pyrkii tekemään are not uncommon.
There are also some adjectives and participles that require that an
associated verb be in the illative of the III in initive, such as halukas (willing),
haluton (unwilling), hidas (slow), huono (poor), hyvä (good), innokas (eager),
innostunut (enthusiastic), kiinnostunut (interested), kyllästynyt (fed up),
nopea (fast), pätevä (competent), sopiva (suitable), valmis (ready), väsynyt
(tired). Examples: Olen hidas oppimaan (I am a slow learner), Hän on hyvä
tanssimaan (He is a good dancer), Oletko valmis lähtemään? (Are you ready to
go?).
The illative of the III in initive can be used with the verb olla, without any
adjective, in negative statements and doubtful questions to refer to capability
or suitability for doing something. The person or other entity so described is
expressed with the elative form (-stA case). Example: Hänestä ei ole
johtamaan (He isn’t competent/able to lead). This is similar to expressions
like Hänestä ei ole johtajaksi, where a noun in the translative (-ksi case) is
used, instead of a verb.
The inessive of the III in initive is used in future tense forms, such as
tulette näkemään (you will see).

Adessive of III in initive (-mAllA)

The adessive of the III in initive usually refers to an action carried out as a
means of achieving something that is expressed by another verb. E.g. He
ylittivät joen uimalla (They crossed the river by swimming), Vietin aikaa
lukemalla kirjaa (I spent time reading a book). Constructs like uimalla and
lukemalla kirjaa can be classi ied as instrumental clause equivalents.
 This form is also used to enforce or emphasize the same verb used as a
predicate. For example, the phrase pyytämällä pyysi consists of two forms of
the verb pyytää, and it means intensively asking for something (literally “by
asking asked”). This is described in more detail in section Reduplication.

Abessive of III in initive (-mAttA)

The abessive of the III in initive means “without …ing”, e.g. ajattelematta
means “without thinking”, tietämättään (without his/her knowing). Usually
the implied agent is the subject of the clause, and no possessive suf ix is used
even when the subject is a personal pronoun, e.g. Me teimme sen
ymmärtämättä seurauksia (We did it without understanding the
consequences). If the agent is different, it is expressed with a genitive
attribute, e.g. Päätös tehtiin minun ymmärtämättä sen seurauksia (The
decision was made so that I did not understand its consequences).
The abessive of the III in initive of the verb tietää (to know) can be used in
an adverb-like manner, without any object or adverbials relating to it, but
with a possessive suf ix and possibly with a genitive attribute. Examples: Tein
sen tietämättäni (I did it unknowingly), Ville teki sen tietämättään (Ville did it
unknowingly), Ville teki sen meidän tietämättämme (Ville did it without our
knowing). There is similar use for some other verbs, e.g. Tein sen
tahtomattani (I did it unwillingly). Compare this with normal use with an
object, for example: Tein sen tietämättä ongelman syitä (I did it without
knowing the causes of the problem).
If this form has an object, it is always in the partitive, due to the negative
meaning of the form, e.g. Hän kuunteli uskomatta sanaakaan (He listened to
without believing a word).
This form is also used in phrases like jättää tekemättä (to leave undone),
jättää sanomatta (to leave unsaid), jättää menemättä (to not go), and olla
tekemättä (to not do). It has idiomatic use when the predicate is a form of the
verb voida (to be able): en voi olla sanomatta means literally “I cannot be
without saying”, but it corresponds to the English idiom ”I cannot help
saying”.
The abessive of the III in initive is used to form the negation of the I
in initive, using the verb olla as an auxiliary verb in the I in initive form. For
example, the negation of nauraa (to laugh) is olla nauramatta, and we use
expressions like Oli vaikeaa olla nauramatta (It was dif icult not to laugh).
Instructive of III in initive (-mAn)
The instructive of the III in initive, e.g. tekemän, is used only with the verb
pitää, which denotes necessity or obligation. It is rare and not used in
modern language, except when imitating or quoting old language. E.g. the
question Mitä minun pitää tekemän? (What shall I do?) in old Bible
translations is simply Mitä minun pitää tehdä? in the modern translation.
An even more rare form is the passive version of the instructive, such as
teh|tämä|n. Its form can be constructed from the passive participle past tense
by replacing the inal tU by tAmAn, e.g. tehty yields tehtämän. Example of old
Biblical use (Mark 13:10): Ja sitä ennen pitää evankeliumi saarnattaman
kaikille kansoille; modern translation: Mutta sitä ennen on evankeliumi
julistettava kaikille kansoille (But irst, the gospel must be proclaimed to all
nations).

The stem of III in initive as a participle

The stem of the III in initive, such as tekemä, is also used as a passive
participle. In such usage, the word can be used in principle in any case form,
including the nominative, e.g. puolueen tekemä esitys (a/the proposal made
by the party), genitive puolueen tekemän esityksen etc. The distinction
between such participles and the III in initive is partly a matter of
convention, but the basic distinction is that the participles are used as
attributes, like adjectives.

154. IV in initive (minen in initive)

Derived -minen nouns vs. IV in initive
We can derive a name of action with the minen suf ix from almost any verb,
e.g. puhuminen (speaking) from puhua (to speak). There are several ways to
derive names of actions, such as puhe and puhunta, and the minen suf ix is
just a way to form a general, abstract name.
This is so regular that -minen nouns could even be treated as nominal
forms of verbs. However, the tradition of Finnish grammars is to treat only a
few uses of -minen words as in initives. In Iso suomen kielioppi, this tradition
is broken: -minen words are treated simply as derived nouns. Instead of
speaking of the IV in initive at all, it just describes that -minen nouns have
certain idiomatic uses. However, here we present the traditional view.

The two forms of the IV in initive

The IV in initive is formed with the suf ix minen, appended to the in lection
stem. Of all the possible case forms of such words, only two forms are
regarded as in initives: the nominative and the partitive, e.g. puhuminen and
puhumista.

Uses of the IV in initive

The uses of the IV in initive are:
In expressions for necessity in the nominative, e.g. Tähän on tyytyminen
(One needs to be content with this) and Sitä ei käy kieltäminen (It cannot
be denied), and in the partitive, e.g. Sinne ei ole menemistä (Going there is
out of the question). These are impersonal in their nature: they do not
express the ultimate cause of the necessity, and they present it as
objective.
In expressions for repeated, perhaps accelarated action, in a construct
that contains the same verb in two forms, a inite form (predicate proper)
and the partitive of the IV in initive, e.g. Hän puhui puhumistaan (He kept
talking), Tilanne paranee paranemistaan (The situation gets better and
better).

In initive-like use of -minen derivations

As mentioned above, all case forms of -minen derivations could be described
as in initives. The important thing is that their use is often similar to the use
of in initives, and they can be regarded as parts of clause equivalents.
For example, the expression omenan syöminen (eating an apple) can be
regarded as corresponding to the subclause että syön/syöt/... omenaa (that
I/you/... eat an apple). In such constructs, the logical target (logical object) is
expressed with a genitive expression before the -minen word. This differs
from the normal word order as in syön omenaa or syödessäni omenaa.
The -minen derivations are often used in contexts where English uses the
in initive of a verb. For example, “To err is human” can be translated as
Erehtyminen on inhimillistä. Here we cannot used the I in initive erehtyä (to
err), unless we change the word order: On inhimillistä erehtyä, which would
have a different structure and tone.

155. V in initive (mAisillA- in initive)

The V in initive has logically the suf ix mainen : maise- : mais-, but it appears
in the adessive plural only and always followed by a possessive suf ix, so the
total suf ix is mAisillAni, mAisillAsi, mAisillAAn (~ mAisillAnsA), mAisillAmme,
or mAisillAnne.
The V in initive is used only in conjunction with the verb olla (to be), and
the expression means that someone is or was just about to do the thing
expressed by the verb. It is mostly used in past tense forms and then
indicates that the action was in fact not carried out. Thus, Olin ostamaisillani
sen means that I almost bought it, i.e. was really going to buy, but something
prevented it. The action need not be intentional. We can say e.g. Olin
putoamaisillani katolta (I was about to fall down from the roof). This would
be used to refer to a speci ic situation where falling down was really near.
The V in initive, when associated with a past tense form of olla, describes a
past situation in the context of describing past events. In contrast, special use
of the I in initive as in Olin pudota describes a past event from the
perspective of the present: I almost fell down, i.e. I was near falling but didn’t
fall. Since the V in initive describes a situation, the text context normally
contains a clause that says what happened in that situation, e.g. Olin
ostamaisillani sen, kun vaimoni tuli ja kielsi minua (I was about to buy it, when
my wife arrived and told me not to).
When used in present tense, the expression indicates a irm intent to do
something but in a manner that suggests that it might still be prevented. For
example, Olen ostamaisillani tämän talon means that I have serious intentions
for buying this house, even so that I am about to buy it right now, and it may
call for objections or comments. In contrast, a near-future construct like Olen
ostamassa tämän talon means that I am going to buy this house soon, but
probably not immediately.
All expressions described in this section are rare in speech. Instead,
simpler verb forms and adverbs are used, e.g. Mä olin putoomassa katolta
(using standard forms: Olin putoamassa katolta) = Olin putoamaisillani
katolta, Mä melkein putosin katolta = Olin pudota katolta, and Mä meinaan
just ostaa tän talon = Olen ostamaisillani tämän talon.
156. Participles
Participles as adjectives, nouns, and verb forms
Participles are verb forms such as “written” in English. In Finnish, participles
are treated as adjectives, in addition to being verb forms, so that they have
cases and plural forms. For example, “written” is kirjoitettu, a participle of
kirjoittaa (to write), but depending on context, it appears in in lected forms
such as the genitive kirjoitetun and the plural kirjoitetut.
Participles are mainly used as attributes, as in kirjoitettu sana (written
word). They may also become nouns, along with adjective use. For example,
oppinut means primarily “learned” as an adjective, but it may also mean
“learned person, scholar” and be used as a noun, e.g. as a subject, object, or
predicate, e.g. Oppineet sanoivat (The learned said).
Participles are also used to construct verb forms with an auxiliary verb,
such as perfect tense forms, e.g. Ne on kirjoitettu (They have been written),
and then different rules apply. They are also used in clause equivalents, e.g.
Kuulin hänen sanovan niin (I heard him/her say so).
In some contexts, a participle may be interpreted either as being used as
an adjective or as a part of two-word verb form. For example, Olen väsynyt (I
am tired) can be read both ways: väsynyt, a participle of väsyä (to become
tried), can be treated as an adjective or as part of a perfect form. The
interpretation affects the form of the participle in some contexts. For
example, in plural we say (in standard Finnish) Olemme väsyneitä when using
a participle as an adjective, due to case rules for a predicative, but Olemme
väsyneet when using a perfect tense form.

Simple active participles -vA and -nUt

In initive Present tense Present participle Past participle
sano|a sano|n sano|va sano|nut
etsi|ä etsi|n etsi|vä etsi|nyt
luvat|a lupaa|n lupaa|va luvan|nut
ol|la ole|n ole|va ol|lut
pur|ra pure|n pure|va pur|rut
 tietä|ä tiedä|n tietä|vä tien|nyt

Simple active participles have present (or, more accurately, non-past) tense
and past tense. They are formed as follows:
The present participle has the ending va or vä, which is appended to the
in lection stem, the same as in the present tense forms.
The past participle has nut or nyt suf ix in the nominative but nee in
most other forms (with ee shortening before the plural suf ix i), e.g.
sanonut : sanonee|n : sanonee|t. The suf ix is appended to the same stem
that appears in the in initive. However, there are often phonetic changes:
A t at the end of the stem is changed to n, e.g. osat|a : osan|nut.
An l, r, or s at the end of the stem is causes the n in the suf ix to
become identical with the stem consonant, e.g. juos|ta : juos|sut.
In the verbs tietää and taitaa, the last vowel of the stem is lost
and the t before it is assimilated to n, i.e. tien|nyt and tain|nut.
However, the regular forms tietänyt and taitanut are also used,
but less common.

For example, the participle puhuva, from puhu|a “to speak” means “speaking”
or the subordinate clause “that speaks”. The past participle puhunut (plural:
puhuneet) has no direct counterpart in English, but it corresponds to the
subordinate clause “that spoke” or “that has spoken”.
In colloquial language, the inal consonant of nut or nyt is usually
assimilated to the same as the next consonant and omitted before a pause or
a vowel. E.g., en sanonut sitä (I did not say that) is usually spoken mä en
sanonus sitä.
The past participle is also used to construct the perfect and pluperfect
(past perfect) tenses. For example, olen puhunut (literally “I am one that
spoke”) corresponds to “I have spoken”.

Passive participle as a concept

Finnish also has passive participles, which are real passive forms, as opposite
to most forms called “passive” forms in most Finnish grammars. Passive
participles indicate that something or someone is or was the object of the
action expressed by the verb. For example, the active participles kirjoittava
and kirjoittanut mean “that writes” and “that has written”, whereas the
passive participles kirjoitettava and kirjoitettu mean “that is [being] written”
and “that has been written” or simply “written”.
However, passive participles also say something about the agent. The
above-mentioned forms kirjoitettava and kirjoitettu normally imply a
personal agent. Forms like kirjoittamani specify the agent as 1st person
singular, due to the suf ix ni, and they act as both present and past
participles, corresponding to “that I write” and “that I have written”.
Moreover, negative participles like kirjoittamaton can be used both as
active and as passive

Passive participles, past tense

In most Finnish grammars, only forms with the suf ix ttu, tty, tu, or ty are
classi ied as passive participles. For example, puhuttu means “spoken” (from
puhua “to speak”), and yhdistetty means “connected” (from yhdistää “to
connect”). These forms are also used construct the 4th person forms of
perfect and pluperfect (past perfect) tenses. For example, on puhuttu
corresponds to “it has been spoken” or “it has been told”. For such usage,
these participles can be formed even from intransitive verbs (verbs that
cannot have an object), e.g. olla : oltu.
Such a form implies a personal agent but does not otherwise specify the
agent. In effect, it is a 4th person form. Thus, the meaning is narrower than
the meaning of corresponding English participles. In English, “connected”
does not necessarily mean “one that has been connected by acts of human
beings”. The English participle does not imply a human agent, but the Finnish
participle yhdistetty does, at least in standard language.
There are also passive participles of other person forms, but they are
traditionally described as distinct “agent participle” (agenttipartisiippi)
forms. The traditional name is suitable in the sense that for these participles,
the agent is always expressed, either with a genitive attribute or with a
possessive suf ix. If we consider the meanings of the forms, rather than the
ways in which they are formed, we can distinguish the following passive
participles, illustrated using the verb sanoa (to say) as an example:

Personal English Participle Meaning

form
1st p. singular I say sanomani that I said
2nd p. you say sanomasi that you said
singular
3rd p. singular he/she sanoma(nsa) that he/she said
says
1st p. plural we say sanomamme that we said
2nd p. plural you say sanomanne that you said
3rd p. plural they say sanoma(nsa) that they said
4th person (one says) sanottu that someone said, that was
said

For example, the expression sanomani asiat (in colloquial language: mun
sanomat asiat) means “the things that I said”, whereas sanotut asiat means
“the things that were said”. The agent cannot be expressed in any way
comparable to the “by” preposition in English. Instead, an expression like
“the things said by John” would normally be translated as Johnin sanomat
asiat. This expression uses the 3rd person singular participle without a
possessive suf ix but with an attribute in genitive before it, expressing the
agent.
The 4th person form, indicating unspeci ied but human agent, is often the
only one called passive participle in Finnish grammars. It has the suf ix ttU or
tU. It can be formed from the 4th person indicative past tense form by
changing the iin to u or y. Examples: sanoa : sanottiin : sanottu, syödään :
syötiin : syöty.
Another way to describe the form of the 4th person passive past participle
is the following:
The stem used is the stem of the I in initive, without the in initive suf ix.
Note that in contraction verbs like salata, only the inal vowel is regarded
as the suf ix: salat|a (: salaa|n).
If the stem ends with a long vowel or a diphtong, the suf ix is tU and this
suf ix participates in consonant gradation t : d, e.g. saa|da : saa|tu :
saa|du|n and haravoi|da : haravoi|tu : haravoi|du|n.
If the stem ends with a consonant, the suf ix is tU, and it may or may not
participate in consonant gradation, according to its rules for consonant
combinations, e.g.. tul|la : tul|tu : tul|lu|n (with gradation lt : ll), pes|tä :
 pes|ty : pes|ty|n (no gradation for st), and salat|a : salat|tu : salat|u|n
(with gradation tt : t).
Otherwise the suf ix is ttU and participates in consonant gradation tt : t,
e.g. sano|a : sano|ttu : sano|tu|n.
When the suf ix is ttU, the stem is in the weak grade, independently of the
in lection form of the participle, e.g. hankki|a : hanki|ttu : hanki|tu|n.
When the suf ix is ttU and the I in initive (as a whole) ends with aa or ää,
the last vowel of the stem (a or ä) is changed to e, e.g. osta|a : oste|ttu :
oste|tu|n.
Passive participles can make Finnish sentences dif icult to analyze. Further
complications are caused by the fact that the dictionary form of the 1st, 2nd,
and 3rd person participle, like sanoma, might be in use as an independent
noun, too. For example, sanoma used as a noun means “message”. Thus, an
expression containing a word with the mA suf ix may have two
interpretations, perhaps with rather similar but still different meanings:
hänen sanomansa might mean “his message”, but the second word could also
be a participle, so that the meaning is “what he has said”.
A noun like sanoma and the participle stem sanoma are identical in all case
forms, and they share a common origin; the mA suf ix is used both as a
derivational suf ix and as a participle suf ix. However, these words are used
differently, and their meanings differ: the noun has a special meaning,
whereas the participle, as a verb form, can have any meanings that the verb
can have when used with an object.

Passive participles as verb forms

In Finnish, passive participles are treated as verb forms to a greater extent
than in English: they express a real change, an act or process that has actually
changed something. For example, the meaning of yhdistetty is narrower than
the meaning of “connected” also in the sense that it implies that someone has
done some connecting, not just a state of connection. Moreover, like other 4th
person forms, yhdistetty implies a personal agent.
For example, in English we can say “A is connected with B”, but it would be
wrong to say in Finnish A on yhdistetty B:hen, unless we know that someone
has actually connected A with B; otherwise, we say e.g. A on yhteydessä B:hen
(A is in connection with B). In English we can say that two lakes are
connected when there is a river running from one the other, but the Finnish
sentence Järvet on yhdistetty toisiinsa would mean that people have
connected them e.g. by building a canal.
Due to in luence of foreign languages, participles like yhdistetty have been
used much like English participles, to refer to a state or property. Language
guides have recommended against such usage, and it is now relatively rare.
However, some participles are commonly used that way, e.g. suljettu (closed).
It is still recommended to say e.g. Kauppa on kiinni rather than Kauppa on
suljettu when referring to the state of a shop being closed, rather than to a
past action of closing. Other participles commonly used to express states are
rajoitettu (limited), for which e.g. rajallinen has been recommended, and
määrätty (certain; de inite), which is often dif icult to replace.
Language authorities now accept the use of the following participles in an
adjective-like manner, so that they do not imply a personal agent or an actual
change: etuoikeutettu (privileged), itseoikeutettu (as a matter of course, ex
of icio), määrätty (de inite, certain), oikeutettu (justi ied), perusteltu
(reasonable, justi iable), rajattu (restricted), rajoitettu (limited), sidottu
(bound), tietty (certain), uskallettu (daring), varusteltu (equipped). However,
the authorities warn that such use can still be disturbing to some people.
There is usually a good replacement for any of these words, though it
depends on the context and on the intended meaning.

Passive participle, present tense, -t(t)AvA

A verb with the suf ix (t)tava or (t)tävä is a passive participle that implies an
unspeci ied personal agent and refers to something that is being done or will
be done. Thus, it is “present tense” in the same sense as present tense in
Finnish in general: it refers to non-past things. For example, julkaistava, from
julkaista (to publish), refers to something that is being published or, more
often, will be published. Such participles may have more or less specialized
meanings. For example, hyväksyttävä, from hyväksyä (to accept), means
something that can (or should) be accepted, acceptable.
The passive participle present tense can be formed by replacing the iin
ending of the 4th person past tense by AvA. Examples: sanoa : sanottiin :
sanottava; tehdä : tehtiin : tehtävä; julkaista : julkaistiin : julkaistava.
Alternatively, we can say that it is formed from the passive participle past
tense by replacing the inal U by AvA, e.g. sanottu yields sanottava.
The system of participles is not uniform: this type of a participle is
effectively a 4th person form and has no counterpart in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd
person. In general, there is no grammatically correct way to express the agent
in any other way either, when the participle is used in the role of an adjective
attribute. Thus, we can say julkaistava kirja (a/the book that will be
published), but if you wish to express the publisher, you need to say that
separately or change the entire expression to use a subsidiary clause instead
of a participle, e.g. kirja, jonka tulen julkaisemaan (a/the book that I will
publish). We can say julkaisemani kirja, but it has a past tense participle and
means “a/the book that I have published”.
However, in some contexts passive participles may have possessive
suf ixes, which indicate the agent. For example, the sentence Ehdotus on
käsiteltävänäni has the participle käsiteltävä (being handled, being
processed) in the essive case, but the suf ix -ni really turns the sentence to
mean “The proposal is being handled by me”. An attribute in the genitive has
a similar impact: Ehdotus on ministerin käsiteltävänä (The proposal is being
handled by the minister). Some sayings are based on constructs with the
participle in the nominative and with a possessive suf ix, e.g. Sanoin
sanottavani (I said what I had to say, literally “I said my what-is-said”), Teen
voitavani (I will do what I can).
The passive participle present tense can be used in the role of an adjective
in different case forms, e.g. julkaistavissa kirjoissa (in books that will be
published).
Some forms also have specialized usage. This is summarized in the
following table of the case forms of the participle nähdä (to see), showing in
bold those forms that may have specialized usage along with normal usage.
The specialized usage is described after the table.

Case Singular Plural Example of specialized usage

nominative nähtävä nähtävät Tämä on nähtävä!
genitive nähtävän nähtävien
essive nähtävänä nähtävinä Teos on nähtävänä Ateneumissa.
partitive nähtävää nähtäviä
translative nähtäväksi nähtäviksi Teos asetettiin nähtäväksi.
inessive nähtävässä nähtävissä Teos on nähtävissä Ateneumissa.
elative nähtävän nähtäviltä
illative nähtävään nähtäviin
adessive nähtävällä nähtävillä Teos on nähtäville Ateneumissa.
ablative nähtävältä nähtäviltä
allative nähtävälle nähtäville Teos asetettiin nähtäville.
abessive nähtävättä nähtävittä
comitative – nähtävine
instructive nähtävän nähtävin

Specialized usage:
The nominative singular, used with the verb olla, expresses necessity
or obligation, e.g. Minun on julkaistava kirja joka vuosi (I have to publish
a book every year). Here on julkaistava is a combined verb form. The
sentence has no grammatical subject; the agent is expressed (if at all) by
a noun in the genitive (minun in the example). The object may be
missing, e.g. Minun on lähdettävä (I have to leave).
The inessive plural, used with the verb olla, expresses possibility,
opportunity, e.g. Suunnitelma on toteutettavissa (The plan is
implementable). This can be characterized as a passive sentence: the
grammatical subject (suunnitelma in the example) is the target of the
action, and the agent is expressed using a genitive attribute or a
possessive suf ix or both, e.g. Auto on Pekan käytettävissä (The car is at
Pekka’s disposal), Auto on meidän käytettävissämme (The car is at our
disposal).
The adessive plural, with the verb olla, is used much like the inessive
plural, but only for some verbs and without expressing the agent. It
indicates that something has speci ically been made available. For
example, Maalaus on nähtävillä Ateneumissa means that the painting has
been set for display in Ateneum, whereas Maalaus on nähtävissä means
just the the painting can be seen, is visible.
The allative plural, with the verb olla, is used with different verbs to
refer to making something available, e.g. Maalaus asetettiin nähtäville
Ateneumiin (The painting was set for display in Ateneum).
The essive singular, with the verb olla, is used for some verbs to
indicate that something has been made available or submitted to
something. E.g. Maalaus on nähtävänä Ateneumissa is rather
 synonymous with Maalaus on nähtävillä Ateneumissa. In the following
phrases, the adessive is not an alternative (and the inessive would have a
different meaning): on haettavana (is vacant; can be applied for), on
kuljetettavana (is being transported), on myytävänä (is for sale), on
tutkittavana (is being inspected/investigated), on vuokrattavana (is for
rent). The plural form is possible, too, if the subject is in plural, e.g.
Nämä autot ovat myytävänä ~ myytävinä (These cars are for sale).
The translative singular is used with different verbs to refer to making
something or submitting it to something, e.g. Talo asetettiin myytäväksi
(The house was put up for sale). The plural form is possible, too, if the
subject is in plural, e.g. Virat julistettiin haettavaksi ~ haettaviksi (The
posts were declared vacant).

Participles do not have moods in Finnish. Usually the meaning is indicative,

e.g. käytettävä means “that is used” or ”that will be used”. However, some
forms of this type often denote necessity, e.g. täytettävä (that shall be illed
in), but they may also mean possibility, “that can be illed” in, or be just
indicative, “that will be illed in”. Similarly, syötävä, from syödä (to eat), often
means “edible”, but it may also mean “that will be eaten”. The expression
syötävissä oleva unambiguously means “edible”.
Since participles may be turned into nouns as well, a word like tehtävä has
three rather different uses. It is often a noun meaning “task”, e.g. Tässä on
sinulle tehtävä (Here is a task/job for you); it can be used in specialized ways
as described above, e.g. Minun on tehtävä tämä (I have to do this); and it can
be just a participle of tehdä (to do; to make), e.g. täällä tehtävät uudistukset
(the reforms that are being made / will be made here).

Negative participles
A negative participle indicates the negation of a corresponding normal
participle. The peculiar, and often inconvenient, feature is that the same
negative participle corresponds to several normal participles, which have
different meanings.
For example, the participles lukeva, lukenut, luettu, luettava, lukemani,
lukemasi, lukema(nsa), lukemamme, and lukemanne all have different
meanings. Yet, the same negative participle lukematon corresponds to all of
them. It may refer to someone who is not reading, or who has not read, or
something that is not being read, etc.
 The negative participle can also refer to the impossibility of doing
something. For example, korvaamaton, from korvat|a : korvaa|n (to replace),
normally means “irreplaceable”, though it could in principle also mean e.g.
“that has not been replaced”. However, different words are handled
differently in this respect. Although the positive participle luettava can mean
“legible, readable”, in addition to meaning “that is being read”, the negative
participle lukematon can hardly have the meaning “illegible, unreadable”—
instead, to express such a concept, we need to resort to words like
lukukelvoton.
This is not as confusing as it may seem, since usually the context or the
meaning of the verb resolves ambiguities. For example, the expression
kirjoittamaton laki can only mean “unwritten law”, not “law that does not
write”, since laws don’t write. The word sietämätön, from sietä|ä “tolerate”,
has as such two plausible interpretations, “one that does not tolerate,
intolerant” and “one that will not be tolerated, intolerable”. In order to decide
between these, you need to known the full meaning of the sentence where it
appears. In rare occasions, we might be left with a real ambiguity, and we
might need to make a guess on the basis that in most contexts, sietämätön
has a passive meaning, “intolerable”.
Ambiguities are sometimes avoided by the use of passive verbs. The
participle tietämätön, of tietää (to know), has usually only an active meaning
“one that does not know, ignorant”. The the participle tietymätön, of tietyä (to
be known) has the meaning “one that is not known, unknown”. The passive
verb tietyä is hardly used otherwise, but the participle is common especially
in phrases like kadota tietymättömiin (to vanish into thin air) and olla
tietymättömissä (to be nowhere to be found).

Participles expressing changes

In English, it is normal to refer to changes with expressions where only a
participle indicates the change, e.g. “The problems were caused by reduced
sales”. This is illogical in principle: the cause was not the sales but the
reduction in sales. In Finnish, it is common to write in a similar manner, e.g.
Ongelmat johtuivat vähentyneestä myynnistä. However, language guides
generally recommend more logical formulations, such as Ongelmat johtuivat
myynnin vähenemisestä.
157. Personal forms of verbs
The personal form suf ixes
Finite forms of verbs have personal suf ixes that indicate the agent of action
as the irst person (in singular “I”, in plural “we”), second person (“you”, with
a distinction between singular and plural in Finnish), third person (“he”,
“she”, or “it”), or fourth person. The fourth person is typical of Finnish and
means that the agent is not identi ied by the personal form, except that the
agent is human.
The following table shows the forms for the present tense. The past tense
and the conditional mood lack a personal suf ix in 3rd person singular, and
they (as well as the potential mood) have special combined suf ixes for the
4th person. The imperative has personal suf ixes very different from these.
Person English Finnish Spoken Finnish
1st singular I say sanon mä sanon
2nd singular you say sanot sä sanot
3rd singular he/she says sanoo se sanoo
1st plural we say sanomme me sanotaan
2nd plural you say sanotte te sanotte
3rd plural they say sanovat ne sanoo
4th (one says) sanotaan sanotaan

In standard Finnish, the suf ixes are the following in present tense:
-n in 1st person singular
-t in 2nd person singular
-* (prolonged vowel) or – (no suf ix) in 3rd person singular
-mme in 1st person plural
-tte in 2nd person plural
-vAt in 3rd person plural
- AAn, dAAn, lAAn, nAAn, rAAn, or tAAn in 4th person; the variation largely
depends on the effect of the inal consonant of a consonant stem

Personal forms with a multi-part subject

If the subject consists of two or more parts separated by a conjunction like ja
(and), the personal form of the verb is determined as follows:
the verb is in plural form
if a 1st person pronoun is part of the subject, the verb is in the 1st person
form, e.g. minä ja Ville pidämme tästä (I and Ville like this)
otherwise, if a 2nd person pronoun is part of the subject, the verb is in
the 2nd person form, e.g. te ja Ville pidätte tästä (you and Ville like this)
otherwise the verb is in the 3rd person form, e.g. he ja Ville pitävät tästä
(they and Ville like this)
Thus, 1st person “beats” other persons and 2nd person “beats” 3rd person.
If the parts of a subject are connected with a conjunction like tai (or), the
situation is more dif icult, and practices vary. For example, sinä tai Ville tietää
tämän (you or Ville knows this) sounds strange, and replacing tietää by
tiedät would be even stranger. The problem should be avoided by using the
verb twice, in different forms, e.g. sinä tiedät tämän tai Ville tietää (you know
this, and Ville knows [it]).

The stems in personal forms

When a verb has both a vowel stem and a consonant stem, the 4th person
form is based on the consonant stem, Other forms are based on the vowel
stem. Example: tulen, tulet, tulee, tulemme, tulette, tulevat, tullaan. As this
example shows, in the present tense, the t in the 4th person suf ix is
assimilated by the inal consonant of the consonant stem e.g. tul- and -taan
yield tullaan.

The 3rd person singular suf ix

The 3rd person singular form normally has the last vowel of the stem
prolonged, e.g. sano|a : sano|o, etsi|ä : etsi|i. However, there is no suf ix if the
stem ends with a long vowel or a diphthong, e.g. myy|dä : myy and syö|dä :
syö. Except for the irst syllable of a word, diphthongs can end only with i, u,
or y. Thus, we have e.g. halu|ta : halua|n : halua|a, since the ua is not a
diphthong (the syllable structure of haluaa is ha.lu.aa).
There is also an old 3rd person singular suf ix pi or vi, e.g. syöpi, sanovi.
This includes the form ompi instead of the standard on. Such suf ixes are used
in some forms of poetry and in attempts at imitating such poetry, possibly
failing to use old forms, e.g. using vaikeneepi (with two person suf ixes,
modern and old) instead of the more correct vaikenevi (form of vaieta).
The information above applies to the indicative, present tense. In past
tense and conditional forms, the 3rd person singular always lacks a personal
suf ix. Thus the form ends with a tense suf ix or a mood suf ix, e.g. sano|i|n :
sano|i|t : sano|i in the paste tense (suf ix i) and sano|isi|n : sano|isi|t : sano|isi,
in the conditional (suf ix isi). In the potential, the 3rd person singular suf ix is
always prolonged vowel, speci ically e, e.g. sano|ne|n : sano|ne|t : sano|ne|e.

4th person suf ix

The 4th person present tense is formed as follows:
If the in initive ends with two vowels, the suf ix tAAn is appended to the
in lection stem in weak grade, using the consonant stem when it exists.
E.g. nukku|a : nuku|n : nuku|taan. In these verbs, if the stem ends with a
or ä, it is changed to e, e.g. kestä|ä : kestä|n : keste|tään, nukutta|a :
nukuta|n : nukute|taan.
For other verbs, *n is appended to the in initive form, e.g. saada : saadaan,
valita : valitaan, mennä : mennään. This means that the suf ix as a whole,
as appearing after the (consonant) stem, is AAn, dAAn, lAAn, nAAn, rAAn,
or tAAn.

The variation in the formation of other 4th person forms is discussed in the
descriptions of the past tense and each of the moods.

Clashes with in initive forms

For verbs that end with AAx in the in initive, the 3rd person singular present
tense form is written the same way as the in initive but pronounced without
boundary gemination. For example, työntääx (to push) : työntää (pushes).
A similar clash is caused in common spoken language for verbs like sanoa
and etsiä, since these standard forms appear as simpli ied to sanoo and etsii.

The irregular forms of olla

The most common verb olla (to be), with the stem ole-, has irregular 3rd
person forms. The personal forms are olen, olet, on, olemme, olette, ovat,
ollaan.
In poetry, the form on has the alternative variant ompi.
 The verb olla is otherwise regular, except for forms in the potential mood
(lienen etc.).

Use of personal pronouns with personal forms

In standard Finnish, though usually not in colloquial language, the 1st and
2nd person forms are normally used without a preceding personal pronoun.
The form of the verb, such as sanon, expresses the person. This is described
in more detail in section Omission of personal pronouns.

Personal forms vs. personal suf ixes

Some in initives and participles have personal suf ixes, e.g. tullakse|ni and
tekemä|si. They, too, refer to the agent of action, but by their form, they are
the same as possessive suf ixes of nouns and adjectives.

158. Passive
The general concept of passive
Passive forms are verb forms that indicate that the grammatical subject of a
clause is the target (patient) of the action, instead of being the agent as in
active forms. For example, in the sentence “A stone hit the car”, the subject “a
stone” is the agent and the object “the car” is the target. In the corresponding
passive-form sentence “The car was hit by a stone”, the subject “the car” is the
target and the agent is expressed using an agent construction: an expression
with the preposition “by”. The agent construction can be absent, leaving the
agent unspeci ied; “The car was hit” basically corresponds to “Something hit
the car”.

Finite passive forms in Finnish

Finnish has passive participles of verbs (e.g. pudotettu, pudottamani,
pudotettava), but it lacks passive inite forms of verbs, except for some
special constructs. For example, the English active form “dropped” can be
translated as pudotti, but the passive form “was dropped” has no verb form
equivalent in Finnish. Verb forms such as pudotettiin, though very often
called passive forms in grammars, are 4th person forms, though with some
features of passive forms. Forms like pudotettiin imply a personal agent, so it
would be inappropriate to use when the wind or an animal dropped
something.
However, there are some constructs based on passive participles and an
auxiliary verb, creating expressions that might be regarded as inite passive
forms. They are normally used only when the agent is human.
We can say tuli sanotuksi, in some contexts, as a special use of the
translative case. We can ask Joko tämä tuli sanotuksi? meaning “Was this
already said?”, but this differs from the more normal Joko tämä sanottiin? in
style. The expression tuli sanotuksi (literally “became said”) may mean that
something was waiting to get said and was now said, or it can mean that
something was said more or less accidentally, perhaps against one’s
intentions.
However, such constructs can also be used in contexts where they appear
rather purely as passive forms, such as Hän tuli valituksi suurella
enemmistöllä (He was elected with a large majority). This does not mean that
the election was accidental. Rather, Hän tuli valituksi is used instead of the
4th person construct Hänet valittiin to make him more clearly the topic of the
sentence: this is not about who was elected but what happened to him, to a
person who has already been mentioned. Such use of tuli valituksi may re lect
foreign in luence, but it is accepted usage.
The special constructs are also used in present tense, normally with a
future meaning, e.g. Työ tulee varmasti tehdyksi (The work will surely be
done). In such usage, the construct is rather purely passive and does not
imply similar nuances like the past tense tuli tehdyksi.
It is debatable whether these constructs can be used when the agent is not
human. Since passive partiples like sanottu and tehty imply a human agent in
principle, it can be argued that the same applies to future forms that use such
participles. An expression like Talo tuli hävitetyksi (The house was
destroyed) seems to imply a human agent, instead of e.g. an earthquake.

Equivalents of English passive forms in Finnish

Generally, when English uses a predicate in a passive form, Finnish uses
different approaches:
If the English expression has an agent construction, with “by”, Finnish
normally uses just a statement in the active form. This means that
normally “The car was hit by a stone” would be translated the same as “A
stone hit the car”, but using a different word order, namely Autoon osui
kivi.
If the English expression lacks an agent construction, Finnish normally
uses a statement in the active form in the 4th person, if the agent is
human. Thus, The house was built in 1980 is translated as Talo
rakennettiin vuonna 1980. However, in some contexts, we can
alternatively use passive forms formed using the auxiliary verb tulla as
described above, e.g. Ehdotukset tulivat hyväksytyiksi (The proposals were
approved), instead of the somewhat more natural Ehdotukset
hyväksyttiin.
Otherwise, various strategies are applied. We cannot translate “The car
was hit” as Autoon osuttiin, unless we know that the sentence is about
people hitting the car e.g. with ri les. However, we can say Autoon osui,
using an active form in the 3rd person singular without any subject,
thereby with a generic meaning. Such expressions are not very typical.
Instead, other methods are used more often:
If the verb has a passive counterpart in Finnish, it can often be
used. The sentence “My glass was illed” can be translated as
Lasini täytettiin, if the agent is known to be human. But if the
agent can be an automatic system, we can say Lasini täyttyi.
The verb täyttyä (to be illed) is a passive derivation of täyttää
(to ill). Unfortunately, an entry for a verb in a Finnish
dictionary does not show whether a passive derivation or
other passive counterpart exists and what it is. The list Passive
counterparts of some common verbs in this book should help
in such issues.
If there is a suitable different verb that expresses the same
thing as the English passive construct, it can be used. The
expression “He was killed” can be translated the same way as
“He died”, namely Hän kuoli. This loses information, since “was
killed” and ”died” are not equivalent in English, but using the
4th person form, Hänet tapettiin, would mean “He was killed by
some person or some people”.
Sometimes some circumlocution is needed. For example, if a
computer program displays a message the “The iles are being
removed” in the English version, the Finnish version could
display Tiedostot poistuvat (using the verb poistua, the passive
 counterpart to poistaa “to remove”), but it really sounds like
“The iles are going away”. A better formulation might be
Tiedostojen poisto käynnissä (Removal of iles in operation).

159. The 4th person

The meaning of the 4th person
We have used the term “4th person” in this book. The term you see most
often in Finnish grammars and textbooks is “passive”, or passiivi in Finnish.
Many grammaticians regard the term “4th person” as unsuitable, since these
forms differ in many ways from the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person, in their form,
usage, and effect on syntax. However, other terms are more seriously
misleading.
The reason for avoiding the term “passive” for these forms in this book is
that they are not at all the same as the passive voice in English or in other
Indo-European languages. Rather, a form like sanotaan expresses that the
agent is personal (a human being, or human beings) but otherwise not
speci ied by the verb form. Often its meaning is close to “one says” or to “you
say” when using “you” in a generic sense, referring to anyone, but the 4th
person forms have rather varying other uses, too.
We can say that the 4th person can be used instead of any other person
form, with some change in style or tone. For example, consider the 4th
person form juodaan, from juoda “to drink”. We can say Juodaan kahvia,
meaning “Let’s have coffee”, but also Juodaanko Italiassa paljon kahvia?, “Do
they drink a lot of coffee in Italy?”, and if a foreigner says Suomessa juodaan
paljon kahvia to a Finn, he is (quite correctly) using the 4th person in the role
of 2nd person plural (You drink a lot of coffee in Finland). It would be
grammatically correct to say alternatively Te juotte paljon kahvia Suomessa,
but that would have a different tone: it would emphasize that the speaker is
not Finnish.
A 4th person form cannot have a subject, except in common colloquial use,
where me sanotaan corresponds to the literary sanomme. We can say that 4th
person forms can have varying implied subjects, but an explicit subject is not
allowed in standard language and not used even in spoken language except
for me (we).
 The use of the 4th person often helps us to avoid referring to people too
directly. It is often used to avoid speaking about oneself directly. We can say
Oletetaan, että instead of Oletan, että, much like it is common to say “Let us
assume that” rather than “I assume that”. The 4th person is also often used
when giving instructions or even commands. For example, Otetaanpa tämä
lääke “please take this medicine” uses the indicative mood 4th person form
otetaan (“one takes”) with the pa suf ix (see Word-like suf ixes), avoiding the
use of the imperative and the choice between two alternative forms (ota and
ottakaa).
Similarly, if you buy coffee in a shop, you might hear the question
Otetaanko mukaan? (Will this be taken along?). This avoids the choice
between the two forms of the second person, between sinä and te, i.e.
between Otatko mukaan? and Otatteko mukaan?
The following table demonstrates how a 4th person form can be
associated with any of the six other persons, i.e. used instead of any other
person form.
Person Expression Using 4th person Explanation
form
Sing. Merkitsen tätä Merkitään tätä x:llä. Let us denote this by
1st x:llä. x.
Sing. Ota paita pois. Otetaan paita pois. Please take your shirt
2nd off.
Sing. Hän avasi Kokous avattiin. The meeting was
3rd kokouksen. opened.
Plur. Menemme kotiin. Me mennään kotiin. We are going home.
1st
Plur. Olettepa te ovelia. Ollaan sitä niin You are so cunning.
2nd ovelia.
Plur. He ovat kovin Ollaan kovin ylpeitä. They are so very
3rd ylpeitä. proud.

Translating 4th person forms

The 4th person forms require different strategies in translation, and the
implied agent, or type of agent, needs to be inferred or guessed. The
following situations can be distinguished:
4th person used for 1st person plural: use the 1st person plural (“we”)
form. Depending on the meaning, we would use the indicative, e.g. Me
juotiin kahvia = We had coffee, or the imperative, e.g. Nyt juodaan kahvia =
Let’s have coffee.
4th person used for unexpressed but contextually determined people: use
a subject that corresponds to that reference. E.g. Siellä juodaan kahvia =
They are having coffee there.
4th person used for generic person: use “you”, “one”, “people”, or other
generic subject, e.g. Kahvia juodaan usein enemmän kuin pitäisi = People
often drink coffee more than they should.

Comparison with passive

In the English sentence “The house was built in 1980”, the predicate is in the
passive voice, and “the house” is the subject. In the corresponding Finnish
sentence Talo rakennettiin vuonna 1980, the word order is the same, and the
subject talo is in the nominative, which is normally the case of a subject.
However, Finnish grammars classify talo on such a sentence as the object,
and there is no subject. This is obvious in sentences where the object is a
personal pronoun in the accusative case, e.g. Minut hyväksyttiin (I was
accepted).
In this sentence type, both English and Finnish highlight the logical object
of an action (in the example: the house) by putting it irst in a sentence and
do not indicate the agent of the action (in the example: who built the house)
at all. But the grammatical constructs used to achieve the goal are different.

The suf ixes of 4th person

In the indicative mood in present tense, the 4th person form has different
suf ixes such as dAAn or tAAn, depending on the stem, as described in section
Personal forms. In past tense and in other moods, the suf ixes are longer.
They can be analyzed so that the 4th person suf ix consists of two parts, with
the mood suf ix between them. The irst part is tA or ttA (with the A omitted
before the past tense suf ix i), and the second part is *n, i.e. the vowel before
it is doubled (prolonged) and followed by n. Such “split suf ixes” do not
otherwise appear in Finnish. In most grammars, these forms are described so
that the tA or ttA part is a “passive suf ix” and only the *n part is a personal
suf ix.
The following table shows the 4th person forms (simple inite forms) of
the verb sanoa, which has no stem variation. The forms are shown as divided
into parts: stem, irst part of personal suf ix, tense or mood suf ix, second
part of personal suf ix. For comparison, the 3rd person singular form is also
given.
Type of form 4th person Meaning 3rd person
singular
Indicative, present sano|ta|an it is said sano|o
tense
Indicative, past sano|tt|i|in it was said sano|i
tense
Conditional sano|tta|isi|in it would be said sano|isi
Potential sano|tta|ne|en it will probably be sano|nee
said
Imperative sano|tta|ko|on let it be said sano|ko|on

The following table shows the 4th person forms of another verb,
demonstrating how the 4th person forms, unlike other person forms, are
based on the consonant stem.
Type of form 4th person 3rd person singular
Indicative, present tense juos|ta|an juokse|e
Indicative, past tense juos|t|i|in juoks|i
Conditional juos|ta|isi|in juoks|isi
Potential juos|ta|ne|en juos|see
Imperative juos|ta|ko|on juos|ko|on

In speech and in informal writing, 4th person conditional forms often lack
the *n part and even the i before it, e.g. sanottaisi or sanottais instead of the
standard sanottaisiin. Potential forms often lack the inal n, e.g. sanottanee
instead of the standard sanottaneen.
Using the 4th person form for 1st person plural
As the table in section Personal forms shows, the 4th person form is also
used in common spoken language instead the 1st person plural forms. For
example, it is normal to say me mennään (we shall go), even though in
standard written Finnish, you should write menemme instead.
Used without a personal pronoun, the 4th person form also serves as 1st
person plural imperative; e.g. Mennään! means “Let’s go.” It is normally a
suggestion rather than a command. Compare:
Mennään eläintarhaan (Let’s go to the zoo)
Me mennään eläintarhaan (We’ll go / We are going to the zoo)
In formal language, the imperative is still Menkäämme, a speci ic imperative
form, but it is now very old-fashioned and sounds solemn or ridiculous,
depending on context.

Hiding the person

The 4th person form helps to hide who is doing something, much like the
passive voice is often used in English. This might be desirable, or it might be a
source of misunderstandings and vagueness. Extensive use of the 4th person
is common in administrative and political language—much like the passive
voice is in English.
On the other hand, the 4th person may indicate the agent as irrelevant in
the context, even when the agent is well known. When we say Tähän
rakennetaan supermarketti (A supermarket is being built here), we are
focusing on the building process and its result, not on the agents of the
process. In English, we could say “They are building a supermarket here”,
using “they” in generic sense, but in standard Finnish the word he (they)
cannot be used that way—it would refer to some group of people mentioned
earlier. (However, in speech, we might say Ne rakentaa…, using ne, the
colloquial counterpart of he, in a generic sense.)
Thus, we can say that in Finnish, the 4th person is the normal way of
describing actions of human beings without mentioning the agents at all,
even with a pronoun. In English, the passive voice serves the same purpose.
This similarility in some typical uses is one of the causes of the confusion
between the 4th person and the passive voice.

Generic statements
In statements that are meant to say something that applies to anyone, or at
least anyone within some group, English often uses the pronoun “you”, as in
“If you want to win, you need to practice a lot”. In Finnish, we normally use
just a verb, in the 3rd person singular form, with no subject, in such
situations, e.g. Jos haluaa voittaa, pitää harjoitella paljon, where haluaa and
pitää are are verbs without a subject. This corresponds to “If one wants to
win, one needs to practice a lot”, except that the subject is omitted.
Consistently with this, if such an expression would have “your” in English,
we use the 3rd person possessive suf ix in Finnish, without a personal
pronoun. For example, “Ten things you should never say to your kids” would
be translated as Kymmenen asiaa, joita ei koskaan pidä sanoa lapsilleen.
However, in modern colloquial language, it is common to imitate the
generic use of “you” as a generic expression in English and use the 2nd
person: Jos sä haluut voittaa, sun pitää harjotella paljon. This is often
(misleadingly) called sinä-passiivi or sä-passiivi. In some contexts, such use is
natural, e.g. Jos otat, et aja (If you take [alcohol], you don’t [i.e. must not]
drive).
Generic statements can also be formed by using ihminen (human being) as
subject, e.g. Mitä ihminen kylvää, sitä hän myös niittää (whatever a man sows,
that will he also reap). This is somewhat literary; compare with the more
colloquial proverb Sitä saa, mitä tilaa (You get what you order for), using
verbs without a subject.
Many generic statements could also be formulated using the 4th person
forms, but that is often less natural or has a different tone. For example, Tässä
puistossa nähdään keväällä monia harvinaisia kukkia (In this park, many rare
lowers can be seen in spring) is somewhat more objective than Tässä
puistossa näkee monia harvinaisia kukkia (In this park, one can see many rare
lowers n spring) In a sense, the former talks about lowers, the latter says
what a (generic) person can do. Such differences are often small or
nonexistent; there is really no difference between the 4th person expression
Tästä voidaan päätellä, että (From this it can be deduced that…) and the 4rd
person expression Tästä voi päätellä, että (From this one can deduce that…).

Personal agent
Although 4th person forms do not specify the agent, they specify that the
agent is personal, i.e. a human being or human beings, or maybe God or a
being regarded as comparable to human beings—but not e.g. domestic
animals.
For example, consider the verb tuhota, “to destroy”. An English expression
like “was destroyed” is often described with the word tuhottiin, which is the
4th person past tense of the verb. However, this is correct only if we know or
imply that something was destroyed by a person or by persons, not e.g. by an
earthquake. In the general case, an adequate Finnish word is tuhoutui, which
is the past tense form of the passive verb tuhoutua derived from tuhota.

No “afterthought” agent
When a 4th person form is used, there is no acceptable way to express the
agent in the same sentence, except in the colloquial use me mennään
discussed above. If you start a sentence with Talo purettiin (The house was
wrecked), you cannot add, as an afterthought, an expression of the person or
company that did the wrecking, like you can add “by…” in English.
In old literary language, a word in the ablative case (with suf ix lta, ltä)
was sometimes used, but it looks very dated now. Nowadays administrative
texts and sometimes translations use an expression with the postposition
toimesta, e.g. ministeriön toimesta (by the ministry). This may cause
vagueness, since toimesta can also mean “as authorized/requested by”. Other
expression types used to express an agent are X:n taholta (from X’s side), X:n
keskuudessa (among X), and X:n piirissä (among X).
This means that in spoken Finnish, if you start a sentence in the 4th
person and then notice that you wish to express the agent, you need to
reconstruct the sentence. You might just stop and pause and start the new
sentence, or you might throw in a word like siis (literally: so) in between, e.g.
Talo purettiin… siis… Kaupunki purki talon vuonna 1973 (The house was
wrecked… eh… The city wrecked the house in 1973).

160. Passive verbs

Pairs of active and passive verbs
Many verbs appear as a pair of active and passive verb in Finnish. For
example, tuhota (to destroy) is an active verb, and tuhoutua (to be destroyed)
is the corresponding passive verb. Using the active verb, the subject says who
or what destroys something; using the passive verb, the subject expresses
what (or who) is destroyed.
Thus, the sentence Talo tuhoutui corresponds to “The house was
destroyed”. It says nothing about the agent; the house may have been
destroyed by human beings or by a natural disaster. Both in the Finnish
sentence and in the English sentence, the house is the grammatical subject,
but logically it is the object (target) of some destruction action or process.
Examples of other pairs: (the meaning is here given for the active verb
only): poistaa – poistua (to remove), sytyttää – syttyä (to light; to put ire to),
särkeä – särkyä (to break), lisätä – lisääntyä (to add; to increase).
Often the active verb is structurally primary, and the passive verb has been
derived from it with a suf ix like u, y, utu, utu, uuntu, or yynty. However, some
active verbs, like sytyttää, have been derived from a passive verb with
causative suf ix like tta or ttä. Thus, we can refer generally to passive
counterparts of active verbs, rather than just passive derivations.
This may sound complicated, and it is somewhat complicated in practice,
too. Although many Finnish verbs have passive counterparts, they are formed
in different ways, not in a uniform way. Many active verbs lack passive
counterparts, and often a completely different verb needs to be used. For
example, there is no passive verb corresponding to the verb tappaa (to kill);
the verb kuolla (to die) can often be used. Frequentative verb derivations
with the ele suf ix, like heitellä (to throw around) and toistella (to keep
repeating), have no passive derivations; but their base verbs like heittää (to
throw) and toistaa (to repeat) often have passive derivations such as heittyä
and toistua.

Passive vs. re lexive verbs

Some verbs with a derivational suf ix like UtU are simply passive, like
tuhoutua. Some of them are re lexive, so that they express that the
grammatical subject is both the agent and the target, or at least suggest such
interpretation. For example, heittäytyä means “to throw oneself”, whereas
heittyä, another derivation of heittää (to throw), is just passive and means “to
be thrown”.
Verbs with other derivational suf ixes can be re lexive, too. For example,
the verb form poistun mostly means “I remove myself”, i.e. “I exit” or “I leave”.
On the other hand, it can be used a purely passive verb, e.g. vesi poistuu
means “the water is removed” without implying any agent.
 Even native speakers often interpret verb derivations differently. From the
verb rakentaa (to build), the passive verb rakentua (to be built) can be
derived. However, it is mostly used only about natural processes and about
abstract and unintentional building, e.g. Heidän välilleen rakentui ystävyys
(They became friends, literally: Between them, friendship was built). It also
has the even more abstract meaning “to consist of”. Moreover, people may
think that rakentua, when used to describe a process of building, e.g. in silta
rakentuu (a/the bridge is being built), would mean that something “builds
itself”, as if the verb were re lexive. There is hardly any risk of
misunderstanding, but the same expression may look odd to some people,
yet very handy to others. Usage like silta rakentuu has become more
common, but on the other hand, some people may even regard it as an error.
Using the active verb in the 4th person, e.g. siltaa rakennetaan (or silta
rakennetaan, depending on meaning), avoids such problems.
To take a different example, the verb laihtua (to lose weight, to become
thinner) is usually a purely passive verb: it describes what happens, without
implying any intentional action. The verb laihduttaa is the corresponding
active verb, with meanings like “to make lose weight”. However, laihduttaa is
also used in a re lexive manner, about intentionally doing something in order
to become slimmer. Moreover, laihtua can be used the same way, often with
an emphasis on successful action, e.g. Hän laihtui kolme kiloa vähentämällä
suklaan syöntiä (He lost weight three kilograms by reducing the eating of
chocolate).
It is a matter of de inition whether re lexive verbs are a subclass of passive
verbs. In most grammars, they are treated as a separate class. In Finnish,
there is an essential difference: when using a passive verb, the agent cannot
be expressed in a grammatically acceptable way, whereas for a re lexive verb,
the agent is implied, namely the same as the target.

In lection of passive verbs

Both active and passive verbs have normal verb in lection. For example:
poistan (I remove) : poistat (you remove) : poistetaan (we/you/they
remove)
poistun (I am removed) : poistut (you are removed) : poistutaan
(we/you/they are removed); in practice, these usually correspond to
expressions with the verb “exit” or “leave”
A passive verb cannot have a grammatical object, since by de inition, the
target of the action is speci ied by the grammatical subject. Therefore it may
sound odd that passive verbs have passive participles, such as poistuttu and
poistuttava. They cannot be used as attributes in an adjective-like manner,
only as parts of grammatical constructs that require a passive participle, such
as the 4th person perfect tense On poistuttu (People have left) and a special
construct expressing necessity On poistuttava (One has to leave).

Passive verbs vs. 4th person

A 4th person form of a verb and another person form of its passive
counterpart can often be used as alternatives, though they require different
syntax and may have somewhat different meaning or tone. Compare:
Minut synnytettiin Jorvin sairaalassa (Birth was given to me at the Jorvi
hospital). This uses a 4th person form of the active verb synnyttää (to give
birth). Note the use of a grammatical object, minut (me).
Minä olen syntynyt Jorvin sairaalassa (I was born at the Jorvi hospital).
This uses a 1st person form of the corresponding passive verb syntyä (to
be born). Note the use of a grammatical subject, minä (I).
There are also syntactic connections between 4th person and passive. Some
constructs that contain an active participle for most persons have a passive
participle the 4th person. For example, the perfect tense forms of sanoa are
olen sanonut, olet sanonut etc., using the past tense participle sanonut, but the
4th person form is on sanottu, using the 4th person passive paste tense
participle sanottu.
In modern usage, 4th person forms are often used without implying a
personal agent, especially in technical contexts. Language authorities used to
have strict policy against that, but now the situation is unclear. The usage is
simpler and can be applied wider than passive verbs: all verbs have 4th
person form, which can be constructed systematically, but passive
counterparts exist for some verbs only, and there is no simple system in this.
For example, it is common to use phrases like Tietoja kopioidaan (Data is
being copied) even though the 4th person form kopioidaan in principle
requires a human agent. Following the old usage, we would rather use the
passive verb kopioitua (derived from kopioida, “to copy”), Tiedot kopioituvat,
or rephrase the sentence so that agent of copying is expressed: Ohjelma
kopioi tietoja (The program is copying the data).
Passive counterparts of some common verbs
As mentioned in section Passive, Finnish dictionaries lack cross-references
from active verbs to passive verbs. The following list of common verbs with
passive counterparts has been composed to address this problem.
The list mostly consists simply of pairs of an active verb and a passive
verb. However, for some verbs, two passive verbs are given. They are
separated by a slash “/”, indicating that the alternatives may not have quite
the same meaning, or by a tilde “~” to indicate that they are synonymous. For
many verbs, the passive counterpart applies to some meanings only. For
example, johtaa means many things, e.g. “to direct, to be the leader”, with no
passive counterpart; but in the meaning “to derive”, the passive verb johtua
corresponds to it. Thus, when looking for a passive counterpart, the list
should be used as an aid to inding potential candidates, to be checked in a
dictionary.
The list lacks many common verbs, since some verbs do not normally have
passive counterparts, e.g. hylätä (to abandon; to reject), although a derivation
like hylkäytyä or hylkääntyä can be formed. Although such derivations cannot
be found in dictionaires, they might be intuitively understood by native
speakers. Thus, they can be feasible solutions to translation or
documentation problems. For example, sometimes expressions like Kuva
saattaa hylkääntyä (The image may be rejected) are used in context where
the agent can be or is known to be non-human (like computer software that
processes images fully automatically).
Aiheuttaa aiheutua, alentaa alentua / aleta, alistaa alistua, aloittaa alkaa,
altistaa altistua, asentaa asentua, asettaa asettua, avartaa avartua, avata
avautua / aueta, edistää edistyä, edustaa edustua, ehkäistä ehkäistyä,
eksyttää eksyä, eristää eristyä, erottaa erota / erottua, estää estyä,
haavoittaa haavoittua, hajottaa hajota, hakea hakeutua, halventaa halveta ~
halventua, hangata hankautua, hapattaa hapata ~ hapantua, harventaa
harventua ~ harveta, haudata hautautua ~ hautaantua, heikentää heiketä ~
heikentyä, heiluttaa heilua, heittää heittyä, helpottaa helpottua, herättää
herätä, hiljentää hiljetä / hiljentyä, himmentää himmetä ~ himmentyä,
hoikentaa hoiketa ~ hoikentua, hoitaa hoitua, hukuttaa hukkua, huonontaa
huonota ~ huonontua, huumata huumaantua, hämmentää hämmentyä,
hävittää hävitä, ilahduttaa ilahtua, ilmentää ilmentyä ~ ilmetä, innostaa
innostua, irrottaa irrota, iskeä iskeytyä, isontaa isota, jakaa jakautua ~
jakaantua, jatkaa jatkua, johtaa johtua, julkistaa julkistua, järjestää järjestyä,
jättää jäädä, jäädyttää jäätyä, kaataa kaatua, kadottaa kadota, kantaa
kantautua, kasata kasautua ~ kasaantua, kastaa kastua, kasvattaa kasvaa,
katkaista katketa, kauhistaa kauhistua, kauhistuttaa kauhistua, kaventaa
kaventua, kehittää kehittyä, keittää kiehua ~ keittyä, kelpuuttaa kelvata,
kerrata kertautua ~ kertaantua, kerätä kertyä / kerääntyä, keskeyttää
keskeytyä, keskittää keskittyä, kiertää kiertyä, kiihdyttää kiihtyä, kiinnittää
kiinnittyä, kiinnostaa kiinnostua, kiinnittää kiinnittyä, kiristää kiristyä,
kirjoittaa kirjoittua, kohdistaa kohdistua, kohentaa koheta ~ kohentua,
kohottaa kohota, koota kokoontua, korjata korjaantua, korostaa korostua,
korottaa korottua, korvata korvautua, kostaa kostautua, kuivata kuivua,
kuljettaa kulkea / kulkeutua, kuluttaa kulua, kumota kumoutua, kuvata
kuvautua, kypsyttää kypsyä, käynnistää käynnistyä, kääntää kääntyä, kääriä
kääriytyä, laajentaa laajentua / laajeta, laihduttaa laihtua, lainata lainautua,
lakata lakkautua, lannistaa lannistua, laskea laskeutua, leikata leikkautua ~
leikkaantua, lennättää lentää, levittää levitä / levittyä, lieventää lievetä ~
lieventyä, lihottaa lihoa ∼ lihota, liikuttaa liikkua, liittää liittyä, lisätä
lisääntyä, liu’uttaa liukua, lohduttaa lohduttua, lopettaa loppua, loukata
loukkaantua, lukea lukeutua, lukita lukittua, lyhentää lyhetä ~ lyhentyä,
lähentää lähetä ~ lähentyä ~ lähestyä, lähettää lähteä, lämmittää lämmetä ~
lämmitä, löytää löytyä, maustaa maustua, muistaa muistua, muodostaa
muodostua, muuttaa muuttua, määrittää määrittyä, määrätä määräytyä,
nostaa nousta, nuorentaa nuortua / nuorentaa, nähdä näkyä, näyttää näkyä /
näyttäytyä, ohittaa ohittua, ohjata ohjautua, oikaista oieta, painaa painua /
painautua, paistaa paistua, paisuttaa paisua, pakata pakkautua, palauttaa
palautua, paljastaa paljastua, parantaa parantua, pehmentää pehmetä ~
pehmentyä, peittää peittyä, pelastaa pelastua, pelottaa pelätä, pelästyttää
pelästyttää, perehdyttää perehtyä, perustaa perustua, peruuttaa peruuntua,
pidentää pidetä, pienentää pienetä / pienentyä, piirtää piirtyä, pilata
pilaantua, piristää piristyä, poikkeuttaa poiketa, poistaa poistua, polkea
polkeutua ~ polkeentua, polttaa palaa, pudottaa pudota, puhaltaa puhaltua,
puhdistaa puhdistua, puhkaista puhjeta, puristaa puristua, purkaa
purkautua, pysäyttää pysähtyä, pyyhkiä pyyhkiytyä, päästää päästä, päättää
päättyä, rajoittaa rajoittua, rakentaa rakentua, ratkaista ratketa, rauhoittaa
rauhoittua, rikkoa rikkoutua, sairastuttaa sairastua, sekoittaa seota /
sekaantua / sekoittua, selittää selittyä, selvittää selvitä, siirtää siirtyä, siitä
siittää, sijoittaa sijoittua, sirottaa sirottua, sisältää sisältyä, sitoa sitoutua,
sotkea sokeutua ~ sotkeentua, soveltaa soveltua, sovittaa sopia, sulattaa
sulaa, sulkea sulkeutua, supistaa supistua, suunnata suuntautua, suurentaa
suureta ~ suurentua, suututtaa suuttua, synnyttää syntyä, sytyttää syttyä,
syventää syvetä / syventyä, säilyttää säilyä, särkeä särkyä, säästää säästyä,
tainnuttaa taintua, tasoittaa tasoittua, tehostaa tehostua, tihentää tihentyä ~
tihetä, tiukentaa tiuketa, toistaa toistua, toteuttaa toteutua, totuttaa tottua,
tuhota tuhoutua, tukea tukeutua, tulostaa tulostua, tummentaa tummeta ~
tummentua, tunkea tunkeutua, tuntea tuntua, tyydyttää tyydyttyä / tyytyä,
työntää työntyä, täydentää täydentyä, täyttää täyttyä, ulottaa ulottua,
unohtaa unohtua, upottaa upota, uudistaa uudistua, uusia uusiutua, uuttaa
uuttua, uuvuttaa uupua, vaalentaa vaaleta ~ vaalentua, vahvistaa vahvistua,
vaihtaa vaihtua, vakiinnuttaa vakiintua, vakuuttaa vakuuttua, valaista
valaistua, valikoida valikoitua, valmistaa valmistua, vanhentaa vanheta /
vanhentua, vapauttaa vapautua, varistaa varista, vaurioittaa vaurioitua,
vavisuttaa vavista ~ vapista, verrata vertautua, vesittää vesittyä, vetää
vetäytyä, viihdyttää viihtyä, viilentää viiletä ~ viilentyä, viivyttää viipyä,
viivästää viivästyä, vähentää vähetä / vähentyä, välittää välittyä, värittää
värittyä, värjätä värjäytyä ~ värjääntyä, väsyttää väsyä, yhdenmukaistaa
yhdenmukaistua, yhdistää yhdistyä / yhtyä, ylittää ylittyä, yllättää yllättyä,
ärsyttää ärsyyntyä / ärtyä, ääntää ääntyä, öljytä öljyyntyä ~ öljyytyä.
For apparent reasons, only a transitive verb (a verb that can have a
grammatical object) can have a passive counterpart. There is no passive verb
corresponding to istua (to sit), for example.

161. Re lexive forms

As described in the preceding section, many derived verbs have a re lexive
meaning, such as heittäytyä (to throw oneself). There are also re lexive forms
of verbs, such as heitätä (also appearing as heitäidä, heittäidä, heittäitä, and
heitäitä, varying by dialect), which is the re lexive I in initive of heittää. Such
forms are linguistically interesting, but they have almost disappeared from
the language, and they were never really an established, well-documented
part of standard Finnish.
Even a native speaker has to consult suitable references in order to fully
understand old poetry or other texts that use re lexive forms. Only the saying
loihe lausumahan (started to speak), taken from Kalevala, is sometimes used
in modern language, for stylistic effects. The form loihe is the re lexive 3rd
person singular past tense form of luoda (to create, to make,…), so it means
the same as loi itsensä.
Those who read Kalevala and similar old literature will ind some re lexive
forms, mostly indicative 3rd person singular forms with the -he suf ix, e.g.
vetihe (= veti itsensä). Such forms are also used for stylistic reasons without
re lexive meaning.
Sometimes people try to use re lexive forms just to make a stylistic
impression, but quite often both the form itself and its use are wrong, e.g. the
intended meaning is not re lexive at all. For example, people may form the
word loihesi, using si as past tense suf ix, without realizing that loihe is a past
tense form.
The following table that presents some re lexive forms of the verb heittää
is shown only to help understanding old texts. Along with these forms,
several other variants have been used. Past participle forms such as heitännyt
∼ heittäinyt ∼ heittäynnyt have also been used.
Present tense Past tense Conditional Imperative
1st p. sing. heitäm(m)e heitim(m)e heittäisim(m)e
2nd p. sing. heitätet heititet heittäisitet heitäte
3rd p. sing. heitäkse(n) heittihe(n) heittäisihe(n) heitätköön
4th p. heitättiin

Many re lexive forms are confusingly similar or even identical to normal

forms. The re lexive forms are so rare that any form like heitäme you might
see is more probably a misspelling of a normal form like heitämme.

162. Simple tenses

The two simple tenses
By “simple tense”, we mean a tense formed with in lection of a verb only,
without using an auxiliary verb.
Like English, Finnish has only two simple tenses, present and past, but
there are differences in usage between the languages. The Finnish present
tense is really “non-past tense”: it can also refer to the future as well as to
indeterminate time. We normally say teen sen huomenna, “I will do it
tomorrow”, using the present tense; a future form like tulen tekemään sen (I
will do it) is used in some contexts, though.
The form called present tense is sometimes even used to refer to the past,
especially in vivid story-telling. On the other hand, the form called past tense
is sometimes used to refer to the present or the future, especially in
questions like Tuliko vielä jotain muuta? (Will there be something else [for
you]?). It is also used when asking about something that has been discussed
previously, so that there is a reference to the past in a sense, e.g. Oliko Juha
insinööri? (Was it so that Juha is an engineer?), though this can also be real
past tense (Was Juha an engineer?).

Present tense forms

The present tense has no tense suf ix, so a verb stem is immediately followed
by a personal suf ix, as described in section Personal forms, e.g. sano|a :
sano|n : sano|t : sano|o etc.

Past tense forms

The past tense has the suf ix i, before the personal suf ix. Various changes in
the word stem are common, e.g. loss of stem vowel in elä|ä : elä|n : el|i|n. In
fact, the stem always changes some way, unless it ends with one of the vowels
o, u, ö, y. Many of the changes were described in subsection Vowel changes
before an i suf ix, but there are some other changes as well.
The following list summarizes all the changes at the end of a verb stem
before the past tense suf ix i:
A long vowel is shortened, e.g. myy|dä : my|i.
The irst vowel of a diphthong ie, uo, or yö is lost, e.g. juo|da : jo|i.
The vowel a is changed to o, e.g. anta|a : anto|i, if the stem has two
syllables and the irst vowel is a.
 Otherwise, the vowel a is lost e.g. johta|a : joht|i and rakasta|a : rakast|i.
The vowel e is lost, e.g. kulke|a : kulk|i.
The vowel i is lost, e.g. voi|da : vo|i. This could alternatively be described
so that the past tense suf ix i is omitted. In any case, this change makes
the past tense forms identical with present tense forms.
The vowel ä is lost, e.g. estä|ä : est|i.
The consonant t often changes to s before the past tense suf ix i. This is
regular in contraction verbs, i.e. verbs that end with AtA in the in initive
and with AA in the 3rd person singular, e.g. pelata (to play) : pelaa
(plays). The basic stem is here pelat-, so the past tense forms are pelasin,
pelasit, pelasi etc. The t → s change also takes place in some other verbs,
e.g. huutaa (: huutaa : huusi), kiiltää, lentää, löytää, parantaa, piirtää,
pyytää, rakentaa, rientää, tietää, tuntea, työntää, yltää. In some verbs,
forms with t and forms with s are both in use, e.g. kiitää : kiiti ~ kiisi.
If the verb stem ends with ltA, ntA, or rtA in the strong grade, the A is lost
and the t changes to s, e.g. rakenta|a : rakens|i. (In dialects, the t may be
preserved, e.g. rakent|i.) In a few verbs of this type (kaataa, kaartaa,
saartaa, taitaa), there are alternative forms where the a changes to o and
the t is preserved, e.g. kaata|a : kaas|i ~ kaato|i.
The verb käydä has the stem käv- in the past tense (as well as in the
conditional mood), e.g. käy|dä : käy|n : käv|i|n.
The verb lähteä has the alternative stem läks-, e.g. lähte|ä : läht|i ~ läks|i.

The personal suf ixes in the past tense are the same as in present tense,
with the following exceptions:
The 3rd person singular form has no personal suf ix, e.g. sano|a : sano|o :
sano|i, where the i is the past tense suf ix.
The 4th person form has no i between stem and suf ix, and the suf ix is
tiin (after a consonant stem) or ttiin (when the verb has only vowel
stem). The t in this suf ix is not assimilated, unlike in the present tense:
tul|la : tule|n : tul|laan : tul|tiin.
Person English Finnish Spoken Finnish
1st singular I said sanoin mä sanoin
2nd singular you said sanoit sä sanoit
3rd singular he/she said sanoi se sano
1st plural we said sanoimme me sanottiin
2nd plural you said sanoitte te sanoitte
3rd plural they said sanoivat ne sano
4th (one said) sanottiin sanottiin

The 4th person past tense form can be formed from the 4th person present
tense form as follows:
If the present tense has the suf ix tAAn and the stem before it ends with a
vowel, the suf ix is changed to ttiin, e.g. sano|taan : sano|ttiin, pala|taan :
pala|ttiin.
Otherwise the present tense suf ix is changed to tiin, e.g. juos|taan :
juos|tiin, voi|daan : voi|tiin.

Basic use of simple tenses

The past tense is normally used when referring to something that took place
in the past, unless the conditions for using the perfect or the pluperfect apply.
The present tense is used otherwise, even for future events.
In Finnish, a distinction between current and future actions is often made
by the choice of the case of the object of a verb, rather than verb form. For
example, the clause kirjoitan kirjaa refers to current activity and would
normally be translated as “I am writing a book”. The case of the object is here
the partitive, with the a suf ix, indicating non-completed, ongoing activity. If
we change the case to the genitive, with the n suf ix, the meaning changes:
kirjoitan kirjan refers to future activity of writing that results in producing a
book. From the viewpoint of the situation, it expresses intentions rather than
what is being done right now.
Finnish grammars usually call the past tense imperfekti, which is rather
misleading. (A more adequate linguistic term is preteriti.) The past tense
differs from the imperfect tense of many languages (e.g. French) where it
denotes a past action that has not been completed. The Finnish past tense
may well refer to a completed action, too, e.g. in Kirjoitin viime vuonna kirjan
(I wrote a book last year). If the object were in the partitive, kirjaa, the
statement would refer to incompleted action, or at least it would not say that
the book was completed.
In situations where we would use English expressions such as “I am
watching” and “I was watching”, Finnish normally uses just present or past
tense: katselen and katselin. If you wish to emphasize that you are describing
a process or activity, you can use longer expressions (with a III in initive
form): olen katselemassa and olin katselemassa.

Special uses of paste tense

Paste tense forms are used independently of any time aspects in expressions
like olipa se iso tai pieni (whether it is/was/will be large or small) and olipa
se miten iso tahansa (no matter how big it is/was/will be). These expression
types usually have the pA suf ix on the verb, and they have either the
conjunction tai or both a mi- adverb and a tahansa adverb or equivalent
(hyvänsä, vain). The pA suf ix is not necessary, especially if the adverb sitten
is present, e.g. tapahtui se sitten missä tahansa (wherever it
happens/happened/will happen).
In spoken language, past tense forms are sometimes used in future or
present tense meaning in questions. Asking Tuliko muuta? rather than
Tuleeko muuta? is common and may be understood as more polite. The
question means “Will there be anything else for you”, while the literal
meaning is “Did anything else come”. Similarly, while Oliko teillä S-Etukorttia
literally means “Did you have an S-Etukortti bonus card?”, it actually asks
whether you have it now (with you) and suggests that it be presented.

163. Perfect and pluperfect

Use of olla to form perfect and pluperfect
The perfect tense and the pluperfect (past perfect) tense are formed using
the verb olla and the past participle of the verb. The auxiliary verb olla is in
present tense (olen, olet, on etc.) for the perfect and in the past tense (olin,
olit, oli etc.) for the pluperfect. For example, olen puhunut (literally “I am one
that spoke”) corresponds to “I have spoken”, and olin puhunut (literally “I was
one that spoke”) corresponds to “I had spoken”.
In the 4th person, the auxiliary verb is in the 3rd person singular form, i.e.
on or oli, and the main verb is in the passive participle form, e.g. on puhuttu.
For example, asiasta on puhuttu paljon means “a lot has been spoken about
the matter” (asia means “matter, subject”, paljon means “a lot”). However, in
colloquial language, the auxiliary verb is often in the 4th person form, e.g
ollaan puhuttu.
 Normally the auxiliary verb appears immediately before the participle.
However, simple general time adverbs such as usein (often), joskus
(sometimes), and harvoin (rarely), often intervene, e.g. olen usein puhunut
tästä (I have often spoken about this).

Summary of perfect tense forms

The following table summarizes the different person forms of the perfect
tense. Pluperfect forms differ from them only in the form of the auxiliary
verb,
Person English Finnish Spoken Finnish
1st singular I have said olen sanonut mä oon sanonux
2nd singular you have said olet sanonut sä oot sanonux
3rd singular he/she said on sanonut se on sanonux
1st plural we have said olemme sanonut me ollaan sanottu
2nd plural you have said olette sanoneet te ootte sanonux
3rd plural they have said ovat sanoneet ne on sanonux
4th (one has said) on sanottu ollaan sanottu

Meanings of perfect and pluperfect

The perfect tense indicates a past action as relating to the present, possibly
continuing at present, e.g. Olen puhunut jo kaksi tuntia (I have already spoken
for two hours). When referring to a completed action, the past tense
emphasizes the activity, whereas the perfect tense emphasizes the result and
relates the action to its effects that are observable now. This is similar to the
difference in English. For example, Kirjoitin asiasta ehdotuksen (I wrote a
proposal on the matter) describes what I have done, possibly not relating it
to the present situation. In contrast, Olen kirjoittanut asiasta ehdotuksen (I
have written a proposal on the matter) emphasizes that there is a proposal
written by me, suggesting some relevance to the present situation.
When describing past events, it is often possible to use either past tense or
perfect tense. The perfect tense means that the past is looked at from the
viewpoint of the present in some sense. For example, Yöllä satoi (It rained at
night) just describes the past, and it would normally be used by someone
who observed the rain or heard about it, whereas Yöllä on satanut says the
same thing but implies a viewpoint of the present, such as having just
observed that it is wet outside.
The perfect tense is also used for actions and processes that have started
in the past and still continue, e.g. Olen odottanut jo kaksi tuntia (I have
already waited for two hours) and Olen asunut täällä koko ikäni (I have lived
here my whole life). This is natural, since a “viewpoint of the present” is
involved: what is happening now is continuation of something that started in
the past.
In some expressions, Finnish varies between tenses whereas English uses
perfect tense only. An expression like “He was born in…” can be translated as
Hän on syntynyt vuonna… if the person is still alive, but normally with Hän
syntyi vuonna…, if he has died. When simply stating one’s year of birth, one
says Olen syntynyt vuonna…, but when describing one’s life, it is also possible
to say Synnyin vuonna… In an obituary, it would be normal to use the
pluperfect: Hän oli syntynyt vuonna… (He had been born in…).
The pluperfect indicates a past action that relates to some later situation,
used as a reference, e.g. Olin puhunut kaksi tuntia, kun valot sammuivat (I had
spoken for two hours, when the lights took off).

Form of the participle

In perfect and pluperfect constructs, the participle is always in the
nominative. It is in plural, with the neet suf ix, if the subject is in plural, e.g. he
ovat puhuneet and te olette puhuneet. In spoken language, however, singular
forms are often used instead, as for verbs in general (e.g. te ootte puhunu).
When addressing an individual politely (teitittely), the auxiliary verb
should in plural, olette or olitte, but the participle in singular. Such
incongruent expressions, e.g. Te olette puhunut, are somewhat unnatural, and
mistakes like Te olette puhuneet are common.

Perfect and pluperfect vs. a participle as a

predicative
A combination of the verb olla and a past participle does not always
constitute a perfect or pluperfect form. For example, the expression olen
väsynyt can be interpreted as a perfect tense form of the verb väsyä (to get
tired), i.e. as “I have become tired”, but also as the verb on followed by a
predicative, namely a participle used as an adjective, i.e. “I am tired”, “I am in
a state of tiredness”. The difference may sound small, but the irst
interpretation deals with some process or event, the second one a state.
It is not always clear whether a participle is used as part of a perfect or
pluperfect form or as an adjective or even a noun. For example, the
expression Hän on oppinut may mean may mean “He/she has learned”
(without mentioning what was learned) but also “He/she is a learned person,
a scholar”. Usually the sentence context resolves such an ambiguity.
In plural there is a marked difference, since the adjective or noun is in the
partitive case due to the rules for a predicative, e.g. Me olemme väsyneitä (We
are tired) versus Me olemme väsyneet (We have become tired) and He ovat
oppineita (They are learned persons) versus He ovat oppineet (They have
learned).
In most situations, we use perfect or pluperfect forms in such contexts
only when some additional information about the process is given. A
statement like Me olemme väsyneet as such would sound odd. When nothing
else is said about the process, it would be normal to just mention the
resulting state instead: Me olemme väsyneitä. But with additional
information, perfect tense becomes normal, e.g. Me olemme väsyneet
kuuntelemaan häntä (We are tired of listening to him/her).
Similar consideration apply to 4th person forms such as Talo on maalattu
(The house has been painted). It can also be interpreted as containing a
predicate and describing a state of having been painted, and this is the
normal interpretation if the sentence is just that. This means that in plural
we would say Talot ovat maalattuja. But when we refer to a process or act of
painting, we say Talot on maalattu, usually with some added adverbial like
punaiseksi (red). Sometimes added information is implied by the context. For
example, when a company has contracted to paint some houses, it could send
the message Talot on maalattu after completing the job. However, normally at
least a word like nyt (now) would be added: Talot on nyt maalattu (The
houses have now been painted).

Special role of past participle

In the 4th person perfect and pluperfect forms such as on sanottu (it has been
said), the passive participle such as sanottu is just part of the construct. It
does not have the same meaning as passive participles normally have. In
particular, it can be used even if the verb is intransitive, i.e. cannot have an
object, so that passive forms cannot be used in the normal sense.
For example, the verb herätä (to wake up) is clearly intransitive. Thus, the
passive participle herätty cannot be used as an adjective or otherwise in
other normal functions of a participle. But it can be be used to form the 4th
person perfect and pluperfect: on herätty, oli herätty. An expression like on
herätty can be translated as “one has woken up”, “people have woken up”, or
some other way, depending on what the context implies.

164. Future tense

Use of present tense for future
Finnish normally uses present tense even for future events and actions, e.g.
Tulen huomenna (I will come tomorrow; literally: I come tomorrow).
Typically, either the context or some adverbials expressing time make it clear
that the future is referred to.

Compound future tulen …mAAn

It is possible to use a compound future tense, formed using an auxiliary verb,
the verb tulla “to come”. The main verb is in the mAAn in initive form, e.g.
tulen kirjoittamaan “I will write”, which literally means “I will come to write”.
In many situations, such expressions are used in the concrete meaning
(someone physically arrives somewhere). Usually no ambiguity arises, but
sometimes both interpretations are possible, and there might be no strict line
between the concrete meaning and the grammatical future. The future tense
is mainly literary, so in speech, a sentence like Tulen auttamaan sinua
normally has a concrete meaning (I will come and help you), instead of just
promising to help in the future.
Language authorities generally recommend that constructs like tulen
kirjoittamaan be avoided and present tense be used instead, if the context
makes it clear that future actions are referred to. Many people take a stronger
position and regard tulen kirjoittamaan as simply wrong or claim that there
is no future tense in Finnish.
Old-style compound future olen …vA
An older construct for expressing future is of the type olen kirjoittava (I will
write), using the present participle. It appears in older language and has a
solemn tone; the construct was used in Bible translations until 1992.
Such combinations of words may appear so that the participle is a
predicative, e.g. olet hämmästyttävä. This was in principle ambiguous, with
the meanings “you will amaze” and “you are amazing”, but only the latter is
relevant in modern language. The form hämmästyttävä has more or less
become an adjective, like English “amazing”.

Present-and-future olen ...mAssA

When a construct like olen tekemässä is used with an object in the partitive
case, it indicates ongoing activity, much like English “I am doing”, e.g. olen
kirjoittamassa kirjettä (I am writing a letter). Thus, the meaning clearly
relates to the present, but the action is expected to continue at least for some
time. The form tekemässä is the inessive of the III in initive and can be
explained as meaning “in the process of doing”.
When the object is in another case, namely in a case for a total object, the
expression refers to what is expected to happen in the near future, e.g. olen
saamassa kirjeen häneltä (I am about to get a letter from him/her). The near
future could here be later the same say or the next day, or even a few days
ahead. In contrast, the olen ...mAisillAni construct relates to something that is
about to be done immediately, though especially in spoken language, the olen
...mAssA construct is used even then.
In the absence of an object, an olen ...mAssA expression can be interpreted
in two ways, though often the context and content make only one
interpretation feasible. For example, joukkue on putoamassa kolmanneksi
could be interpreted as “the team is about to fall down to the third place” (i.e.
is expected to fall soon) or “the team is falling down to the third place” as
something that is actually happening right now. An expression like olin
nukkumassa can only mean “I was sleeping”, since sleeping is continuous
action. In contrast, olin nukahtamassa is most naturally interpreted as “I was
just about to fall asleep”, since falling asleep is normally understood as a
momentaneous event.
165. Moods
The four moods of verbs
Finnish has four moods for verbs:
the indicative, e.g. katson (I am watching, I will watch)
the conditional, e.g. katsoisin (I would watch), expressing hypotheticality,
possibility, or politeness
the potential, e.g. katsonen (I probably watch), rarely used, expressing
probability in written language.
the imperative, e.g. Katso! (Watch!), expressing an instruction, suggestion,
request, or command

The suf ixes of moods

The indicative mood has no suf ix, though indicative forms have person
suf ixes like other verb forms. However, note that the stem used may differ
from the stem variant in the in initive. We have e.g. the in initive tulla (to
come), where tul is the stem and la is the suf ix, and the indicative form tulen
(I come), where tule is the stem and n is the person suf ix.
The imperative might be said as having the mood suf ix kO, but the suf ix
really varies. In the most common person form, 2nd person singular, the
imperative coincides with the normal verb stem in writing, but in
pronunciation, it participates in boundary gemination. Thus, the imperative
of the verb with the stem mene- (to go; in initive: mennä) is written simply
mene, but e.g. the words mene pois are pronounced as menep pois in standard
language. The 2nd person plural has the suf ix kaa or kää, and the preceding
vowel is omitted for many verbs. E.g., katsokaa, menkää (from mene-). The
3rd person has koon or köön in singular, koot or kööt in plural, e.g. katsokoon
“let him/her watch”. The 1st person plural has the suf ix kaamme or käämme,
e.g. katsokaamme, but in modern language, it is rare. Finally, the 4th person
form has suf ixes like ttakoon, e.g. katsottakoon.
The conditional has the suf ix isi. If the stem ends with e, this vowel is
omitted before the conditional suf ix, e.g. olisin (I would be), from ole- (to be,
in initive olla). In colloquial language, 3rd person singular often lacks a inal
vowel, e.g. olis instead of the standard olisi and 4th person forms like oltaisiin
are usually shortened even more: oltais.
 The potential has the suf ix ne. When the stem ends with e, this vowel is
omitted before the potential suf ix, e.g. mennet (you will probably go), from
mene- (to go, in initive mennä). This loss of e could produce a consonant
combination of ln, rn, or sn, but these appear as assimilated to ll, rr, or ss. For
example, for tule- (to come), the potential 1st person singular is tullen (I will
probably come). An additional change (loss of k) appears in verb stems
ending with kse, e.g. juosta : juoksen : juossen. All these assimilated forms are
rare, and they are dif icult to recognize even to native speakers.

Tenses and moods

Only the indicative has a simple past tense form, for example katsoin (I
watched). For the conditional and the potential, the auxiliary verb olla is
used, in the conditional or potential form, together with the past participle of
the main verb. Examples: olisin katsonut (I would have watched), lienen
katsonut (I probably watched). The imperative has a similar form, such as
olkoon katsonut, but its meaning is special. For example, olkoon hän tehnyt
mitä tahansa (literally, “let he/she done whatever”) means “no matter what
he/she has done”.

166. Indicative mood

The indicative forms (present tense and past tense) were described in
previous sections.
The indicative mood is used much like in English. It is the basic mood and
presents things as factual or, in future forms, as intended or probable. More
generally, it is used whenever conditions for using another mood are not met.
In Finnish, there is nothing corresponding to the English subjunctive. The
indicative is used instead. For example, English uses the subjunctive “stay”
instead of “stays” in “It is important that he stay at home”, but in Finnish,
normal indicative is used: On tärkeää, että hän pysyy kotona.

167. Conditional mood

The suf ixes in the conditional
The conditional mood has the mode suf ix isi, e.g. usko|a : usko|isi. In spoken
language, the suf ix often loses one or even both of its i’s, e.g. uskois or uskos.
The suf ix is appended to the vowel stem of the verb. This causes
differences like tarjos|i (past tense form of tarjot|a : tarjoa|a, using the
consonant stem) versus tarjoa|isi (conditional, using the vowel stem).
The personal suf ixes are the same as in the indicative present tense, with
the following exceptions:
The 3rd person singular form has no personal suf ix, e.g. sano|a : sano|o :
sano|isi.
The 4th person form has an integrated suf ix (containing both the mode
suf ix and the personal suf ix) such as ttAisiin. The form can be
constructed from the 4th person indicative past tense form by replacing
its iin ending by the Aisiin ending, e.g. sanottiin : sanottaisiin, oltiin :
oltaisiin, mentiin : mentäisiin.
Person English Standard Spoken Finnish
Finnish
1st singular I would say sanoisin mä sanoisin ~ sanosin
2nd you would say sanoisit sä sanoisit ~ sanosit
singular
3rd he/she would sanoisi se sanois ~ sanos
singular say
1st plural we would say sanoisimme me sanottais ~
sanottais
2nd plural you would say sanoisitte te sanoisitte ~
sanositte
3rd plural they would say sanoisivat ne sanois ~ sanos
4th (one would say) sanottaisiin sanottais ~ sanottais

Stem changes in the conditional

In addition to vowel changes before a suf ix starting with i, some vowel
changes take place before the conditional suf ix, though fewer than in past
tense forms. The changes can be summarized as follows:
 A long vowel is shortened, e.g. myy|dä : my|isi. This also affects
contraction verbs with a vowel stem ending with AA, e.g. maat|a : makaa :
maka|isi.
The irst vowel of a diphthong ie, uo, or yö is lost, e.g. juo|da : jo|isi.
The vowel e is lost, e.g. kulke|a : kulk|isi.
In spoken language, contraction verbs with a vowel stem ending with two
different vowels often lose the latter vowel. E.g., the standard in lection is
tarjot|a : tarjoa|a : tarjoa|isi, but in common spoken language it is tarjota :
tarjoo : tarjois.
The verb käydä has the stem käv- (as in the past tense), e.g. käy|dä : käy :
käv|i : käv|isi.
Due to the structure of the suf ix, the stem is always in the strong grade in
Consonant gradation. For example, for pohtia, the present tense forms have
different grades depending on personal suf ix, pohdin, pohdit, pohtii etc., but
the conditional forms all have the strong grade ht: pohtisin, pohtisit, pohtisi
etc.

Meanings of the conditional

The term “conditional mood” is somewhat misleading: most conditions have
the indicative mood, not conditional. The uses of the conditional, described in
the following subsections, can be grouped as follows:
softening requests, suggestions etc.
expressing that a statement or condition is hypothetical or even
counterfactual
expressing wishes, which are often unrealistic
describing the purpose of an action in a jotta or että clause

Finnish conditional vs. English “would”

The conditional mood corresponds to expressions with “would” in English in
a main clause. For example, sanoisin means “I would say”. Like the English
“would” expression, the Finnish conditional may express hypothetical
conditionality, but it is also used to express other things than conditions, such
as hesitation, uncertainty, or politeness.

Conditional for softening

In spoken language, questions and especially requests are very often
“softened” one way or another. The conditional is one of the ways. For
example, “Could I have the salt, please” can be expressed as Saisinko suolan?
(literally, “Would I get salt?”), which is softer than Saanko suolan? (literally,
“Do I get salt?”). A polite request to get something can also use the auxiliary
verb voida (to be able), much as in English, either in the indicative or in the
conditional, e.g. Voinko saada suolan? or Voisinko saada suolan?
When asking someone to do something, the conditional is very common;
see Softening the imperative. Instead of Sulje ovi (which would more or less
correspond to “Close the door” without “please”), we say Sulkisitko oven,
which is formally a question “Would you close the door?”
For verbs expressing obligation or necessity, conditional forms are milder
than indicative forms. For example, sinun pitää corresponds to “you must” or
“you shall”, whereas sinun pitäisi corresponds to “you should”.
The conditional can also be used in suggestions. They can be polite, as in
Mitä jos tavattaisiin illalla? (How about meeting in the evening? Literally:
What if one met in the evening?). A request like Olisitte jo hiljaa! (You should
be quiet at last!) is somewhat aggressive, but still more polite than a direct
command Olkaa jo hiljaa!
Most of the softening described above is just normal politeness, without
re lecting uncertainty or conditionality. In expressions like Voisin tulla
käymään luonasi (I could visit you), the use of voisin instead of voin might be
seen as implying a condition: if you want me to. However, it can also be seen
as just softening a statement, from a statement of what I can do to a
suggestion about what I could do, encourageing a response of some kind.
The conditional may express uncertainty in phrases like Sanoisin, että (I
would say that) or Uskoisin, että (I would believe that). They can also be
interpreted as mannerisms for just expressing that what follows is an
opinion.
In questions, conditional mode often means that something is suggested
rather than just asked. For example, Voisiko se olla kotka? (Could it be an
eagle?) suggests a possible answer to an implied question about an
observation, rather than a literal question. The question Olisikohan se kotka?
(I wonder if it is an eagle) is similar but somewhat stronger suggests an
answer.
In shopping, saying Ostaisinkohan tämän to an accompanying person
normally means “I wonder if I should buy this?” rather the literally
conditional “Would I buy this?” After making a decision, it is normal to use
the conditional as in Ottaisin tämän puhelimen (I’d like to buy this phone),
which literally means “I would take this phone”. Using the indicative otan
instead of ottaisin is possible, too, but somewhat abrupt.

Conditional mood in conditions

In an “if” clause with a condition that is not expected to be ful illed, English
uses the past tense (e.g, “if I watched”), whereas Finnish uses the conditional,
e.g. jos katsoisin. In the associated main clause, English uses “would”, whereas
Finnish uses the conditional there, too. Compare:
Jos syön maapähkinöitä, saan allergiareaktion. (If I eat peanuts, I get an
allergic reaction.)
Jos söisin maapähkinöitä, saisin allergiareaktion. (If I ate peanuts, I would
get an allergic reaction.)
Thus, when the conditional is used as relating to conditions, it usually relates
to unreal (hypothetical) conditions. However, the conditional can be used, for
“softening” effects, when the condition is real and even expected or hoped to
be ful illed. For example, when inviting someone, we can add Olisin iloinen,
jos tulisit (I would be glad if you came).

Conditional in wishes
The conditional mood can be used to express a wish or desire, which is
usually more or less unrealistic or improbable. Examples:
Haluaisin oppia laulamaan. (I would like to learn to sing.) This is a
common way of expressing desires. If the indicative, Haluan, were used
instead, the statement would imply a more determined intent.
Voi kun osaisin laulaa! (I wish I could sing!) This expresses a wish,
typically one that is not expected to be ful illed.
Kunpa osaisin laulaa and Osaisinpa laulaa. These are similar to the
preceding expression, just in a different tone.

Conditional in expressing the purpose

The conditional is used in a subclause that starts with jotta or että and
expresses the purpose of the action described in the main clause. Example:
Kiipesin ylemmäs, jotta näkisin paremmin (I climbed higher in order to see
better).
 Instead of such expressions, intentional clause equivalents can be used,
e.g. Kiipesin ylemmäs nähdäkseni paremmin.

Past tense of conditional

The conditional has no simple past tense form. Instead, we use the verb olla
in the conditional and the past participle of the main verb, e.g. olisin syönyt (I
would have eaten). In the 4th person, the passive participle is used, e.g. Tämä
olisi voitu tehdä paremmin (This could have been done better).
In conditional expressions, the conditional is used when it is known that
the condition was not ful illed, e.g. Jos olisin syönyt maapähkinöitä, olisin
saanut allergiareaktion (If I had eaten peanuts, I would have got an allergic
reaction).

168. Potential mood

The form of the potential
The potential mood suf ix is ne. The personal suf ixes are the same as in the
indicative present tense, except that the 4th person form has an integrated
suf ix (containing both the mood suf ix and the personal suf ix) ttAneen or
tAneen. The latter is used for words with a consonant stem, e.g. tul|la :
tul|taneen. It is rather common, but substandard, to omit the inal n in 4th
person forms, e.g. tultanee.
Person Finnish
1st singular sanonen
2nd singular sanonet
3rd singular sanonee
1st plural sanonemme
2nd plural sanonette
3rd plural sanonevat
4th sanottaneen
For verbs with a consonant stem, a inal l, r, or s in such a stem assimilates
the n of the potential suf ix, e.g. kävel|lä : kävel|lee, pur|ra : pur|ree, syös|tä :
syös|see. This makes such forms dif icult to recognize even to native speakers,
since they are very similar to indicative forms (kävelee, puree, syöksee).
Therefore, such forms are used even less than the potential in general.
A different assimilation occurs if the consonant stem ends with t: it is
assimilated to n, e.g. havait|a : havain|nee. Such forms differ considerably
from indicative forms (e.g. havaitsee).
The verb olla (to be) has an irregular potential in the sense that the stem
there is liene-: lienen, lienet, lienee, lienemme, lienette, lienevät, except for the
4th person form, which is regular: oltaneen. Sometimes regularly constructed
forms ollen, ollet, ollee etc. are incorrectly used instead. The 3rd person
singular form lienee or its contracted form lie is widely used as if it were an
adverb (e.g., lie on, “probably is”) in informal writing, but such usage is
substandard. Otherwise you’ll seldom encounter any potential forms in
normal speech or in informal texts.
The potential has no simple past tense form. Instead, a composite form is
used, formed using the verb olla in the potential (i.e. lienen etc.) and the past
participle of the main verb, e.g. Se lienee tapahtunut eilen (It probably
occurred yesterday). In the 4th person, the passive participle is used, e.g.
Täällä lienee juhlittu (There has probably been a party here).

Rarity of the potential

The potential mood is mainly a literary form. It is rare and often used
incorrectly, since it is normally not used in speech. Although it is generally
described as expressing that something is probable, it has several other uses
as well. Moreover, for expressing probability, it is normal to use the normal
indicative mood together with a suitable adverb like kai, luultavasti, or
todennäköisesti (probably).

Literary use
The potential has some use in literary style, however. It may help to express
uncertainty without giving it too much emphasis. In headings, it helps to keep
the text shorter, especially since in literary style, the suitable alternative is to
use a long adverb. Compare Presidentti matkustanee Venäjälle with
Presidentti matkustaa todennäköisesti Venäjälle (The president will probably
travel to Russia).

Imperative use
The potential is also used to express an instruction or even a command,
though this cannot be regarded as good style. For example, Maksanette laskun
ensi tilassa does not express an estimate about probability (You will probably
pay the bill as soon as possible), but rather a request (Please pay the bill as
soon as possible).

Use in proposals
There is very special use for the potential in jurisprudence, where the
potential may express a formal opinion on what should be done, e.g. oikeus
päättänee, which does not mean “the court will probably decide” but a
judge’s opinion on what the court should decide. There is similar use in
making proposals especially in meetings. E.g., päätettäneen or kokous
päättänee means that someone or some body proposes that a particular
decision be made.

Use in doubtful questions in old popular language

In old popular speech, and still in some forms of spoken language, the
potential might appear in doubtful questions, like osanneeko hän…, which
does not mean “does he probably know how to…” but rather “I wonder if he
actually knows how to…”. This is the original use. The literary use, though
part of standard language, is largely based on the imitation of certain
expressions in Swedish.

Expressions for uncertainty

To express uncertainty, there are several idiomatic expressions in addition to
the potential. The following lists some ways of saying “He is probably rich”,
with variation in tone and style:
Hän lienee rikas.
Hän on kai rikas.
Hän taitaa olla rikas.
 Hän mahtaa olla rikas.

Combined potential and conditional

In standard language, a verb form cannot have two mood suf ixes. In practice,
a combination of the potential and the conditional, especially the verb form
lienisi (would probably be), or less often lieneisi, is used to some extent.

169. Imperative mood

The imperative forms
Person English Finnish Note
2nd say sanox Has boundary gemination.
singular
3rd let him/her sanokoon
singular say
1st plural let us say sanokaamme Usually sanotaan is used
instead.
2nd plural say sanokaa Old alternative form:
sanokaatte.
3rd plural let them say sanokoot
4th let it be said sanottakoon

The suf ixes of imperative forms, x, kOOn, kAAmme, kAA, kOOt, and ttAkOOn ~
tAkOOn, can be regarded as combined mood and person suf ixes. More
theoretically, we could regard x, kO, and kAA as variants of the mood suf ix
and the rest as personal suf ixes.
Since the 2nd person singular form has boundary gemination (marked
above with x), it always has weak grade when consonant gradation applies,
e.g. heittää (to throw) : heitä (throw, imperative).
The 2nd person singular form can described so that it is obtained from the
corresponding indicative form (such as sanot) by replacing the personal
suf ix t by boundary gemination. Exceptionally, the imperative of the negation
verb, älä, lacks boundary gemination.
Other imperative forms than the 2nd person singular are based on the
consonant stem for verbs that have such a stem, e.g. tul|la : tule|n : tule :
tul|kaamme, and for them the 4th person suf ix is tAkOOn, e.g. tul|la :
tul|takoon.

Meanings of the imperative in 2nd person

The imperative mood is used in different meanings. Although grammars
often describe the imperative as primarily commanding, as its name suggests,
it is rare to use it—especially the plain imperative—that way. The uses can be
classi ied as follows:
Giving direct orders on the basis of authority. However, except for
contexts like military service, the imperative is usually softened some way
even when the intent is to give an order and expect it to be obeyed.
Giving practical instructions, mostly in written form. In such contexts, the
imperative is not regarded as offensive due to the impersonal nature of
communication.
Suggestions that are meant to be taken seriously but cannot be treated as
commands. Such imperatives are generally used and accepted in
advertising, e.g. Ota kolme, maksa kaksi (Take three, pay for two), in
philosophy of life, e.g. Ole oma itsesi (Be yourself, be what you are), and in
many other contexts.
Emergency situations like crying for help, e.g. Auttakaa! (Help!).
Requests like Anna tuo kirja (Give that book), though usually the
imperative is softened one way or another.
Wishes and greetings, which often constitute ixed phrases, e.g. Nuku
hyvin (Sleep well). A special phrase is Ole hyvä ~ Olkaa hyvä, which
literally means “Be good” but is used when asking for something (like
“please” in English in such contexts) and also when giving something,
when we would say e.g. “Here you are” in English.
For direct orders in informal situations, the indicative can imply a stronger
command, when accompanied with a word like nyt (now). E.g. Nyt kyllä annat
kynän is a stronger command than Anna kynä and expresses impatience.

Softening a request
Finnish uses various methods to soften a request, either by using an added
suf ix in the imperative or by using other verb forms. Instead of the simple
imperative Anna kynä (Give [me] [a] pen/pencil), the following expressions
can be used:
Annas kynä, using the -s suf ix. This might be said to be minimally
softened.
Annapa kynä, using the -pA suf ix. Maybe a little more softened.
Annatko kynän, using nominally a question (Do you give a pen). This, like
the above, more or less means that the person addressed is expected to
do as asked.
Antaisitko kynän, using nominally a question in the conditional mood.
This might be regarded as a normal polite request.
Voitko antaa kynän, nominally a question about ability (Can you give a
pen). This is more polite.
Voisitko antaa kynän, as above but in the conditional (Could you give a
pen). This is even more polite in form, but rather common.

There is no simple equivalent to the English “please”. Roughly speaking,

Antaisitko kynän is at the same level of basic politeness as “Can you please
give me a pen”. It is possible to say Anna kynä, ole hyvä or Ole hyvä ja anna
kynä, where ole hyvä corresponds to “please”, but these are not commonly
used and might even be taken as rude.

Use of personal pronouns with the imperative

The 1st and 2nd person forms of the imperative are normally used without a
personal pronoun, even in speech. If a personal pronoun is used, it may be
taken as emphasis on the person or persons addressed. For example, instead
of Älkää menkö sinne (Don’t go there), we can say Älkää te menkö sinne (Don’t
you go there), which more or less implies that someone else is going there.
On the other hand, in the sentence Älä sinä tuollaisia puhu (Don’t talk things
like that), the pronoun sinä is normally a ill word, or it might convey the
message “I’m talking to you”.

1st person plural imperative (“let’s …”)

The 1st person plural imperative, such as sanokaamme, is rare in modern
language. It is mostly used in literary style to express assumptions (like “let
us say” in English) rather than imperative proper. In formal or solemn
language, it might be used in suggestions; e.g. in liturgy, a priest may say
rukoilkaamme (let us pray). In colloquial language, the normal (indicative)
form of the 4th person is used instead: rukoillaan.
Thus, a 4th person verb form like mennään (from mennä “to go”) has three
interpretations depending on context:
1. a normal 4th person form (“one goes”, or “you go” when using
“you” generically)
2. a colloquial 1st person plural when used with the pronoun me
(me mennään ”we’ll go” or “we are going”)
3. a 1st person plural imperative when used without a pronoun
(“let’s go”)
In written language, only the irst meaning of these is strictly standard, but
the the third meaning is widely accepted and used, too.
The three uses of a form like mennään can usually be distinguished on the
basis of word order and other parts of the clause:
1. when used as normal 4th person form, it normally follows some
expression describing the context, e.g. Suomessa mennään
kouluun yleensä seitsenvuotiaana (In Finland, people usually start
school at the eight of seven)
2. when preceded by the pronoun me (we), it is is the colloquial
counterpart to menemme (we go)
3. otherwise, it usually has imperative meaning (let’s go), and it
normally appears at the start of a sentence, e.g. Mennään uimaan!
(Let’s go to swim!)
By its nature, the 1st person plural imperative menkäämme or its colloquial
equivalent mennään is not a command but rather a suggestion or
encouragement. To express a direct command to a group including the one
that gives the command, it is normal to use the 1st person plural form or
(less formally) the 4th person form, usually together with the personal
pronoun: me menemme or me mennään.

3rd person imperatives

By their nature, 3rd person imperatives cannot be commands in any normal
sense. Typically their use corresponds to the varying uses of “let
him/her/them ...” in English. This includes the following types of usage:
 In Biblical or otherwise religious language, they are presented as used by
a supernatural being that is able to cause things by his words, e.g. Tulkoon
valkeus or, in modern translation, Tulkoon valo (Let there be light).
In some sayings and some solemn styles, they express wishes, e.g.
Eläköön vapaus! (Long live freedom!) and Tapahtukoon sinun tahtosi (May
your will be done).
In literary style, they can be used to introduce concepts and hypotheses,
e.g. Olkoon x mielivaltainen reaaliluku (Let x be an arbitrary real number).
They often express permission, acceptance, or tolerance, corresponding
to “let him/her/them ...”, e.g. Menköön kotiin jos on väsynyt (Let him go
home if he is tired), Eläköön kuten haluaa (Let him live as he likes).
They are used to express that some people should do something
themselves, when responding to a suggestion to do it for them. Sample
dialog:
– Voisitko pestä Villen auton? (Could you please wash Ville’s car?)
– No en! Pesköön itse autonsa! (Oh no! Let him wash his own car!)
They are used to say that one does not care about some action, as in
Sanokoon mitä sanoo, minä en usko (Let him say whatever he says, I don’t
believe) or as in the following dialog:
– Pekka sanoi tulevansa kahdeksalta. (Pekka said he will arrive at eight
o’clock.)
– Tulkoon vain. Minä tulen yhdeksältä. (Let him do so. I’ll come at nine.)
The word eläköön is in principle the 3rd person singular imperative of elää
(to live), meaning “let him/her/it live”. In practice, it is regarded as more or
less an interjection, meaning “long live…”, so we can also say e.g. Eläköön
uudet mestarit! (Long live the new champions!). The form eläkööt is the
corresponding plural (“let them live”), but very rarely used.
Apart from some phrases like eläköön, 3rd person imperatives are
normally used only in some styles of written language. However, such
imperatives are used even in spoken language in a concessive meaning; e.g.,
eläköön kuten haluaa means “let him/her live as he/she likes”.

4th person imperative

The 4th person imperative is almost exclusively used only in writing and in
solemn speeches. It can be used to express a general wish, e.g. nuorisoa
kasvatettakoon would mean “let the youth be educated”. More often, and
more prosaically, it can be used to express assumptions and hypotheses in
scienti ic and other contexts. For example, oletettakoon would mean “let it be
assumed” and would be just a bit more formal than olettakaamme (let us
assume), which in turn is more formal than oletetaan. Yet another use,
perhaps the most common, is concessive, in phrases like sanottakoon mitä
tahansa (whatever people say; literally: let whatever be said); in speech, 4th
person indicative forms like sanotaan or sanottiin are more common in such
phrases.

The -Os optative

There are special verb forms like ollos, ottaos, and ällös used in old-fashioned
poetic language instead of 2nd person singular imperative forms like ole, ota,
and älä. By their form, they can be classi ied as imperatives, since they can be
analyzed as having the kO suf ix in weak grade, followed by the personal
suf ix s. They are traditionally called optative forms (optatiivi) and may be
interpreted as expressing wishes rather than commands or requests.

The form of the object of an imperative

Independently of the meaning of an imperative form, a special rule applies to
the grammatical case of its object. If the object is in singular and would
appear in the genitive according to general rules, it is in the nominative.
Example: Ota tämä kirja (Take this book), as opposite to Otan tämän kirjan
(I’ll take this book). This is described in more detail in section Marking the
object.

170. Negation
The negation verb
The English negation word“not” has no in lection, but in Finnish, negation is
expressed using a negation verb. This verb has no in initive, and its in lection
is rather restricted, but it is still a verb. It has the personal forms en, et, ei,
emme, ette, eivät (so that the stem is partly e-, partly ei-) and the imperative
forms älä, älköön, älkäämme, älkää, älkööt. Historically, the negative pre ix
epä- (un-, non-) is a participle of the negation verb.
The negation verb is used together with a verb that expresses what is
being negated, e.g. en sano (I do not say). The negation verb appears alone
only in a negative answer to a question, so that the other verb is implied, e.g.
En!, and as the adverb-like form ei, which may be used to accompany a
negative answer, e.g. Ei, en sano.

Summary of negations of a verb

The following table summarizes negations of all simple inite forms of a verb,
using sanoa as the example verb. Of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person forms, only
1st person forms are shown, if the other forms follow the same pattern, with
variation only in the negation verb. Only 1st person singular is shown when
the only difference with plural forms is in the negation verb.

Positive Negative Form used for main Name of the form

verb
sanon en sanox Same as imperative. present tense
sanotaan ei sanotax Special negation present tense, 4th
form. person
sanoin en sanonut Same as past past tense
participle.
sanoimme emme Same as past past tense, plural
sanoneet participle, plural.
sanottiin ei sanottu Same as passive past past tense, 4th
participle. person
sanonen en sanonex Special negation potential
form.
sanottaneen ei Special negation potential, 4th person
sanottanex form.
sanoisin en sanoisi(x) Special negation conditional
form.
sanottaisiin ei Special negation conditional, 4th
 sanottaisi(x) form. person
sanox älä sanox Same as the positive imperative, 2nd
form. person singular
sanokoon älköön Special negation imperative, 3rd
sanokox form. person singular
sanokaamme älkäämme Special negation imperative, 1st
sanokox form. person plural
sanokaa älkää Special negation imperative, 2nd
sanokox form. person plural
sanokoot älkööt Special negation imperative, 3rd
sanokox form. person plural
sanottakoon älköön Special negation imperative, 4th
sanottakox form. person

The negations of conditional forms such as en sanoisi(x) have been marked as

containing a special negation form of the main verb. However, this form
coincides with the simple positive form used in 3rd person singular such as
sanoisi, except that the negation form may have boundary gemination (in
most forms of the language, it does not have it).
The following table summarizes the negation forms for a verb with a
consonant stem, using the verb is juosta (to run) as the example.
Form Positive Negative Verb stem used
present juokset et juoksex vowel stem juokse-
past et juoksex et juossut consonant stem juos-
conditional juoksit et juoksisi vowel stem juokse- with e lost
potential juosset et juossex consonant stem juos-
perfect olet juossut et ole juossut consonant stem juos-
pluperfect olit juossut et ollut juossut consonant stem juos-
imperative juoksex älä juoksex vowel stem juokse-
Negation of present tense forms
In negative indicative present tense, the verb being negated is in a special
form, which coincides—somewhat paradoxically—with the common
imperative form.
The 4th person form is exceptional: in it, the negation verb is in the 3rd
person form, and the main verb is in a special form. That form is the normal
4th person form with the *n part. replaced by boundary gemination. Thus, for
sano|a : sano|taan, this form is sano|tax. For tul|lax : tul|laan, it is tul|lax, i.e.
the same as the in initive.
Thus, to express the negation of the expressions sanon, sanot etc. (I say,
you say,…), we use the following:
en sano (I do not say)
et sano (you do not say)
hän ei sano (he/she does not say)
emme sano (we do not say)
ette sano (you do not say, with plural “you”)
he eivät sano (they do not say)
ei sanota (one does not say)
As usual with verbs, colloquial language normally uses the 1st and 2nd
person pronoun: mä en sano etc., and the 2nd person plural is the same as
the 4th person but with a subject: me ei sanota (we do not say).

Negation of past tense forms

The negation verb has no separate past tense. Instead, in a negation of a past
tense expression, the main verb is in the past participle form, e.g. en sanonut.
The participle has separate forms for singular and plural, but otherwise it is
not in lected in this context—it is always in the nominative. In 2nd person
singular, when using the polite pronoun Te (the teitittely addressing), the
negation verb is in plural, ette, but the participle is in singular in standard
language, e.g. sanonut (but plural participles are often used in practice).
In the 4th person, the main verb is in the 4th person passive participle
form: ei sanottu. The same form is used in the 2nd person plural in colloquial
language: me ei sanottu.
Thus, in standard language the forms are:
en sanonut (I did not say)
et sanonut (you did not say)
 ette sanonut (you did not say, addressing one person politely)
hän ei sanonut (he/she did not say)
emme sanoneet (we did not say)
ette sanoneet (you did not say, with plural “you”)
he eivät sanoneet (they did not say)
ei sanottu (one did not say)

Negation of perfect and pluperfect forms

A perfect or pluperfect form is negated simply by negating the auxiliary verb
olla. For example, the negation of olen sanonut is en ole sanonut, and negation
of olin sanonut is en ollut sanonut. The same principle is applied in the 4th
form, e.g. the negation of on sanottu is ei ole sanottu and the negation of oli
sanottu is ei ollut sanottu (in speech often ei oltu sanottu).

Negation of conditional forms

The negation of a conditional form consists of the negation verb and of the
main verb in a form that ends with the conditional suf ix isi, with no person
suf ix. Thus, the negations of sanoisin, sanoisit etc. are en sanoisi, et sanoisi,
etc.
In some dialects, there is boundary gemination in the isi forms used in this
context, e.g. en sanoisi mitään is pronounced en sanoisim mitään. However,
this is rarely heard in common spoken language.

Negation of potential forms

The negation of a potential form consists of the negation verb and of the
main verb in a form that ends with the potential suf ix nex, with no person
suf ix, but with boundary gemination applied. Thus, the negations of sanonen,
sanonet etc. are en sanone, et sanone, etc., and e.g. en sanone mitään is
pronounced en sanonem mitään.

Negation of expressions with an auxiliary verb

Negation of perfect, pluperfect, and future forms means negating the
auxiliary verbi (olla or tulla). The main verb is in the same form as in a
positive expression. The following examples show irst a positive statement,
then its negation:
 olen sanonut, en ole sanonut
olin sanonut, en ollut sanonut
tulen sanomaan, en tule sanomaan
olen sanova, en ole sanova

Negation of imperative forms

Generally, negation of the imperative means a prohibition (e.g. “do not say”).
In Finnish, the normal imperative forms of verbs consist of the negation verb
in a 2nd person imperative form followed by the main verb in a special form,
e.g. älä sanox, älkää sanokox. Other person forms of the negative imperative
are rather dated and nowadays mostly not used in normal style; they express
wishes rather than commands or instructions.
älä sanox (do not say)
älköön sanokox (let him/her not say)
älkäämme sanokox (let us not say, formal) ∼ ei sanotax (let’s not say,
normal)
älkää sanokox (do not say, when addressing several people or politely one
person)
älkööt sanokox (let them not say)
älköön sanottakox (let it not be said)
Instead of the old 1st person plural imperative like älkäämme sanokox, the
normal (indicative) mood of the 4th person, e.g. ei sanotax, is used almost
always, except in solemn language. A difference between such use and using
the same words for indicative statements (we do not say) is usually made
with intonation or with an exclamation sign (Ei sanota!).
As indicated in the summary above, the form of the main verb in negative
imperative forms always has boundary gemination in standard Finnish, e.g.
älä sano mitään is pronounced älä sanom mitään. The form is the same as the
normal imperative form in 2nd person singular. In most other persons, the
form consists of the stem (consonant stem when available) and the kOx suf ix.
The 4th person has the combined suf ix ttAkO ~ tAkO, which contains both
the mode suf ix and the person suf ix. The suf ix tAkO is used for verbs that
have a consonant stem, e.g. kävellä : kävel|täkö.
Unlike other 2nd person singular imperative forms, älä lacks boundary
gemination.
Negation of in initives
The I in initive has no negation form, but the negation of an in initive like
tehdä can be expressed with a phrase like olla tekemättä, i.e. using the
in initive olla and the III in initive abessive form of the main verb.
Expressions like ei tehdä are sometimes used, but not accepted in
standard language. However, they have some use even in well-known
translations such as Ollako vai eikö olla (To be or not to be).
Other in initives have no negation forms. The III in initive abessive like
laulamatta (without singing) is itself negative, but it can be used as a
negation of in initives like laulaen or laulamalla in a special sense only.

Negation of participles
As described in section Negative participles, a participle with the suf ix
mAtOn (e.g. kirjoittamaton) acts as a negation for several participles (e.g.,
kirjoitettu, kirjoittava) that have different meanings. In clause equivalents,
participles cannot be negated.

Negation context
As explained in the description of pronouns, some pronouns such as joku
(someone) have negative counterparts such as kukaan, for use when the
sentence has a negation verb or is otherwise negative. Thus, we say Joku
tietää sen (Someone knows it) but Kukaan ei tiedä sitä (Nobody knows it). In
the example, every word of the negative sentence is different from the words
of the positive sentence. Even the form of the object is different, partitive sitä
vs. genitive sen.

Negation verb combined with other words

As described in section Contractions, the negation verb is often contracted
with the preceding word, e.g. että ei is contracted to ettei.
A different combination takes place with the conjunction ja (and).
Normally, e.g. ja ei is replaced by eikä. This is described in section The
connective suf ix kä.
Omission of the negation verb
Due to the special form of the main verb in negation, you might omit the
negation verb and still have the negative meaning understood. Such things
happen in speech in some situations. The colloquial sentence En mä sitä osta
(I will not buy it) might sometimes be shortened to Mä sitä osta. Such
expressions may have a somewhat aggressive tone, which may be enfored by
using the word vittu (very common, but vulgar and aggressive; the literal
meaning is “cunt”), which is often phonetically joined with the next word in
this context: Vittumä sitä osta. This type of expressions has been jocularly
called the aggressive mood, aggressiivi.

Expressions for nobody, nothing, nowhere etc.

Finnish has no single-word counterparts to words like “nobody”. Instead,
negative-context pronouns and adverbs like kukaan, mikään, and missään are
used together with the negation verb. As a simple rule, nobody = ei kukaan,
nothing = ei mikään, nowhere = ei missään. However, the clause structures
are different.
For example, in the English sentence “Nobody knows it”, we have a simple
structure with a subject (nobody), a predicate (knows), and an object (it). In
the corresponding Finnish sentence Kukaan ei tiedä sitä, the predicate is the
negative indicative: ei tiedä. We can use an alternative word order for
emphasis or style, Ei kukaan tiedä sitä.
A slightly different example shows that the negation verb is in lected when
needed: Emme tiedä siitä mitään corresponds to “We do not know anything
about it” or “We know nothing about it”. The Finnish expression is
structurally similar to “do not know anything”; there is no way in Finnish to
have a structure corresponding to “know nothing”.

Other negative expressions

Negation can be expressed in several other ways, too:
The abessive case, with the ttA suf ix. For example, Hän istui kokouksessa
sanomatta mitään (He sat in in the meeting without saying anything, He
sat in the meeting and did not say anything).
The suf ix tOn : ttOmA- used to derive adjectives from nouns, usually with
the meaning “which lacks…”. E.g., from raha (money) we can derive
rahaton : rahattoman (moneyless). Thus, instead of Minulla ei ole
 lainkaan rahaa (I have no money whatsoever), we can say Olen aivan
rahaton (I am entirely moneyless).
The suf ix ttOmUUs : ttOmUUde- used to derive nouns with the meaning
“lack of…”. A combination of the suf ixes tOn and UUs.
The pre ixes ei- and epä-, which are mainly attached to adjectives (rarely
to nouns). They have partly different meanings, but epä- is the normal
pre ix, whereas ei- is used in some contexts to express more objective
negation. For example, epäinhimillinen, from inhimillinen (human), means
“inhuman”, whereas ei-inhimillinen (written with a hyphen) means “non-
human, not human”.

Negative adjectives
As mentioned in the preceding subsection, negative adjectives are formed
mainly in two ways: appending the tOn suf ix to a noun and pre ixing an
adjective with epä. Quite often there are two adjective derivations from a
noun, a positive one with the llinen suf ix and a negative one with the tOn
suf ix, e.g. vaarallinen (dangerous) and vaaraton (harmless, not dangerous)
from vaara (danger).
Words derived with the suf ix tOn usually have a noun as their base, but
some of them have a specialized meaning and may have a somewhat obscure
base word, e.g. hillitön (unrestrained), hävytön (shameless), and tavaton
(unusual, exceptional). The derivation laiton of laki means “illegal, unlawful”,
whereas laittomuus is best understood as based directly on laki, with with
the meanings “lack of law” and “violation of law”.
As a rule, -tOn derivations indicate complete lack of something, e.g.
kalaton järvi means a lake that has no ish at all. However, they are also used,
especially as modern terminology, to indicate that some substance is present
in essentially lower amount than normal. For example, kofeiiniton means
“decaffeinated”, even though decaf coffee contains some caffeine, just
essentially less than normal coffee. However, we distinguish, at least in
formal style, e.g. between laktoositon = lactose-free and vähälaktoosinen =
low-lactose.
In old vocabulary, compound words with vapaa (free) as the second part
appear instead of -tOn derivations, e.g. tullivapaa instead of tulliton (toll-
free). Language authorities have always recommended against such words,
and their use is now mostly limited to a few terms like verovapaa (= veroton,
tax-free).
171. Clause equivalents
Concept of clause equivalent
Clause equivalents are syntactic structures rather than a matter of verb
forms, but they are described here because they are based on participles and
in initives. At the extreme, any participle or in initive could be interpreted as
a clause equivalent.
A clause equivalent is a syntactic construct that is not a clause (it lacks a
predicate verb) but has a meaning that corresponds to a clause. For example,
the word odottaessani is a clause equivalent, corresponding to kun odotan or
kun odotin, “while I am waiting” or “when I was waiting”. The word consists
of the verb stem odotta- (to wait), the 3rd in initive suf ix e, the inessive suf ix
ssa, and the 1st person singular suf ix ni. Thus, it might be described as
somewhat like “in my waiting”.
A clause equivalent is not used alone but as part of a sentence, like a
subclause. For example, the sentence Odottaessani join kahvia (While waiting,
I had coffee) is similar to Kun odotin, join kahvia (When I waited, I had
coffee). In practice, the latter is not quite natural; we would rather write a
little longer, e.g. Sillä aikaa kun odotin, join kahvia.
“Clause equivalent” is not a commonly used term, and it is really just an
imitation of the conventional Finnish term lauseenvastike. (The expression
“clause replacement” has also been used.) Dictionaries may translate it e.g. as
“participial phrase”, but the verb forms used can be in initives, too. Some
modern grammars do not use the term lauseenvastike but just compound
words with rakenne (structure, construct) as the second part, e.g.
temporaalirakenne.
Clause equivalents are used in English, too, though usually not called that
way. For example, the phrase “a chair designed by Alvar Aalto” corresponds
to the expression “a chair that Alvar Aalto designed”, so we can say that
“designed by Alvar Aalto” is a clause equivalent (for a relative clause). In the
Finnish expression, Alvar Aallon suunnittelema tuoli, the word order is
different and so are the grammatical constructs. The clause equivalent Alvar
Aallon suunnittelema consists of a special verb form preceded by an
expression for the agent of the action, in the genitive.
Word order in clause equivalents
Usually a clause equivalent is longer than one word, and in written language
it can be very long—and dif icult even to native speakers to understand. The
core part is always a verb form, namely a participle or an in initive, and there
can be other parts that relate to the verb. For example, odottaessani sinua
eilen is equivalent to the clause “while I was waiting for you yesterday”, so the
verb form has both an object (sinua, for you) and an adverbial of time (eilen,
yesterday). In the example, the word order is the same as in the
corresponding subclause kun odotin sinua eilen, though for reasons of style,
rhythm, or emphasis, another order can be used, e.g. eilen sinua odottaessani.
When the core part is a participle, it is more or less obligatory to put the
related parts before the core part, e.g. Alvar Aallon 1930-luvulla
suunnittelema tuoli (a chair designed by Alvar Aalto in the 1930s). The
adverbial expressing time, 1930-luvulla, is placed before the verb form, in
contrast with an expression with a subclause: tuoli, jonka Alvar Aalto
suunnitteli 1930-luvulla.

Use of clause equivalents

Clause equivalents are often described as typical of Finnish and as having
great expressive power. There is much truth in this, but clause equivalents
often make texts hard to read. Especially when a sentence contains several,
possibly nested clause equivalents, even native speakers may have great
dif iculties in understanding what it says.
Clause equivalents are not used much in free speech. We don’t say
odottaessani sinua eilen but kum mä odotin sua eilen, and in informal
language, we probably write the same way, just using standard Finnish
forms: kun odotin sinua eilen.
However, some clause equivalents are in common use as simple short
phrases. For example, the form odottaessa (without personal suf ix) might be
used to mean “while (someone is) waiting”, and mennen tullen, “on the way
there and back”, literally “going (and) coming”, consists of two clause
equivalents.

Types of clause equivalents

The following table summarizes the types of clause equivalents. The
connective that expresses the type of the corresponding clause is written in
bold here. Note: different descriptions of Finnish present this concept in
somewhat differing ways.
Verb form Example Corresponding English translation
clause
present näen hänen näen, että hän I see that he/she is
participle, syövän syö eating
genitive
past participle, sanoin hänen sanoin, että hän I said that he/she
genitive syöneen on syönyt has eaten
II in initive, istuin syöden istuin siten, että I was sitting so that I
instructive söin was eating
II in initive, syödessäni kun syön/söin while I am/was
inessive eating
past participle, syötyäni kun olin syönyt when (after) I had
passive, 4th eaten
person
I in initive, käskin hänen käskin, että hän I told him to eat
nominative syödä syö
I in initive, syödäkseni jotta söisin in order to eat
translative
III in initive, syömällä sen avulla, että by eating
adessive syön
past participle, syömäni jonka söin that I ate
passive

In clause equivalents, the verb form is always in singular, even if the agent is
in plural, e.g. sanoin heidän syöneen (I sad that they have eaten).
In the following subsections, the different kinds of clause equivalents are
described. The names partly correspond to traditional grammar terms, partly
just re lect the type of the meaning.

Referative clause equivalent (syövän, syöneen)

A referative clause equivalent corresponds to a “that” subclause (että clause
in Finnish), and it is typically used in sentences that describe what someone
observes, thinks, believes, or knows. The verb form used is the genitive
singular of an active participle of the verb. It is in the present tense form, if
the action referred to is simultaneous with (or later than) the action in the
main clause, and in the past tense form, if the referred action is earlier than
in the main clause. Examples:
Tiedän hänen kirjoittavan runoja = Tiedän, että hän kirjoittaa runoja (I
know that he/she writes poems; or: … will write poems)
Tiesin hänen kirjoittavan runoja = Tiesin, että hän kirjoittaa runoja (I knew
that he/she writes poems)
Tiedän hänen kirjoittaneen runoja = Tiedän, että hän on kirjoittanut runoja
or …kirjoitti runoja (I know that he/she has written poems; or … wrote
poems)
Tiesin hänen kirjoittaneen runoja = = Tiesin, että hän oli kirjoittanut runoja
(I knew that he/she had written poems)
Thus, the system of tenses in a referative clause equivalent is simpler than in
a corresponding subclause: the past tense form may correspond to past
tense, perfect, or pluperfect.
Referative clause equivalents can be used in the 4th person, too, but then
the verb form is a passive participle, in the present tense or in the past tense.
Examples:
Tiedän Suomessa kirjoitettavan paljon runoja = Tiedän, että Suomessa
kirjoitetaan paljon runoja (I know that people write a lot of poems in
Finland). Here kirjoitettavan is a passive participle, 4th person, in the
genitive.
Luulen Suomessa kirjoitetun runoja keskiajalla = Luulen, että Suomessa
kirjoitettiin runoja keskiajalla (I think that people wrote a poems in
Finland in the Middle Ages). Here kirjoitetun is a passive participle, 4th
person, in the genitive.
Huomasimme kaupunkiin rakennetun ostoskeskus (We noticed that a
shopping mall had been built in the city). Here the object of the clause
equivalent is in singular. Expressions like this are rare, and they do not
sound quite natural. Note that using the genitive ostoskeskuksen would
change the structure of the sentence, to “We noticed a shopping mall that
had been built in the city”.
Contextual clause equivalent (syöden)
A contextual clause equivalent typically corresponds to a “so that” subclause
(siten, että clause in Finnish), describing things that take place
simultaneously with the action of the main clause. Sometimes it could be
translated with a “while” subclause. The verb form used is the instructive
singular of the II in initive of the verb. This is the conventional grammatical
interpretation; the instructive singular is indistinguishable from the genitive
singular, and the form does not have a typical instructive (instrumental)
meaning here. In some contexts, such a meaning may be present, as in Hän
saapui juosten (He/she arrived running, by running).
A contextual clause equivalent is often mistakenly used to describe some
subsequent action. People may write Joukkue teki heti alussa maalin voittaen
lopulta 3–1 (The team scored a goal at the very start and eventually won 3–
1). This is incorrect, because the team did not win the game when it made the
irst goal. In standard Finnish, a correct expression uses two main clauses
connected with the ja (and) conjunction: Joukkue teki heti alussa maalin ja
voitti lopulta 3–1.

Temporal clause equivalent (syödessä, syötyä)

There are two types of temporal clause equivalent, present tense and past
tense.
A present tense temporal clause equivalent corresponds to a “when” or
“while” subclause (kun clause in Finnish). It describes at what time the action
of the main clause takes place, took place, or will take place. The time is
expressed as being the time of another action, described by the clause
equivalent. The form of the verb is the inessive of the II in initive. Examples:
Hän luki kirjeen syödessään aamiaista = Hän luki kirjeen, kun söi aamiaista
(He read the letter while he had breakfast). This uses the illative of the II
in initive, syödessä, with a possessive suf ix.
Luin kirjeen syödessäni aamiaista = Luin kirjeen, kun söin aamiaista (I read
the letter while I had breakfast). This is similar to the above example, just
in the 1st person singular.
Kirje luettiin syötäessä aamiaista = Kirje luettiin, kun syötiin aamiaista
(The letter was read when having breakfast). This is in the 4th person
form.
 Luen kirjeen syödessäni aamiaista = Luen kirjeen, kun syön aamiaista (I
will read the letter when I will have breakfast). Here the main clause is in
present tense, used to refer to the future, so the clause equivalent also
refers to a future action.

A past tense temporal clause equivalent corresponds to an “after” subclause

(sen jälkeen kun clause in Finnish). It describes that the action of the main
clause is after the time of another action, described by the clause equivalent.
The form of the verb is partitive singular of the past participle. Examples:
Hän luki kirjeen syötyään aamiaisen = Hän luki kirjeen, kun oli syönyt
aamiaisen (He read the letter after having breakfast). This uses the past
participle syöty, in the partitive case and with a possessive suf ix.
Luin kirjeen syötyäni aamiaisen = Hän luki kirjeen, kun oli syönyt aamiaisen
( (I read the letter when having breakfast). The same in 1st person
singular.
Kirje luettiin aamiaisen syötyä (The letter was read when having
breakfast). The same in 4th person. Constructs like this can be dif icult to
understand, and it is debatable whether they are good style.

Temporal clause equivalents have widespread nonstandard usage in some

writing styles. The present tense form is mistakenly used to describe some
secondary action that takes place after the action in the main clause. It is not
uncommon to write Veikko saapui ensimmäisenä maaliin Petterin tullessa
toiseksi, even though by standard rules it means “Veikko reached the goal
irst, at the same time when Petteri made to the second place”. The apparent
purpose is to make the second place less important by demoting it into a
clause equivalent. However, in standard Finnish, a correct expression uses
two main clauses connected with the ja (and) connective: Veikko saapui
ensimmäisenä maaliin, ja Petteri tuli toiseksi.

General clause equivalent (syödä)

A general clause equivalent contains the basic form of a verb, the short form
of the I in initive. It can be regarded as normal use of such forms, and most
grammars do not even classify it as a clause equivalent. A sentence like käskin
hänen syödä (I told him to eat) cannot be naturally transformed to a structure
with a subclause; käskin, että hän syö is somewhat arti icial, like English “I
told that he eat”. Yet, the sentence logically has a clause, hän syö, embedded
into another clause using an in initive construct, hänen syödä.
Such an analysis makes it more understandable that the agent of the
subordinate action is expressed using the genitive—it corresponds to the
structure of other clause equivalents, e.g. pojan syömä leipä (the bread eaten
by the boy; literally: boy’s eaten bread).

Intentional clause equivalent (syödäkseen)

An intentional clause equivalent primarily corresponds to an “in order to” or
“for” subclause (jotta clause in Finnish). The form of the verb is the
translative of the I in initive, always with a possessive suf ix. Examples:
Hän keskeytti kirjeen lukemisen syödäkseen aamiaisen (He paused in
reading the letter in order to have breakfast). This uses the in initive
syödä|kse|en. Clause equivalents like this cannot be replaced by a
subclause in a natural way (jotta söisi aamiaisen would sound arti icial).
Pyysimme pankista lainaa ostaaksemme auton = Pyysimme pankista
lainaa, jotta ostaisimme auton (We asked the bank for a loan in order to
buy a car). Here a jotta clause, with its predicate in the conditional, is a
possible alternative, though not quite natural.
This form cannot be used in the 4th person.
If the predicate of the main clause does not express intentional activity but
rather need for something, such as tarvita (to need) or vaatia (require), the
construct describes a more or less objective requirement. For example,
Yritys tarvitsee lisärahoitusta välttääkseen konkurssin (The company needs
additional funding to avoid bankruptcy) does not as such express
intentionality. We can still call it intentional in a broader sense: additional
funding, if given, would be given for the given purpose.
In some literary styles, the translative of the I in initive is also used to
express simple temporal relations, though usually so that the latter event is
somehow unexpected or contrasts with the former. For example, Hän tuli
paikalle vain havaitakseen, että kaikki olivat jo lähteneet (He arrived just to
observe that everyone had already left). This is not meant say that he arrived
in order to observe that; rather, the observation was unexpected. Such usage
has been frowned upon in language guides, but it is now of icially approved,
though with warnings about potential ambiguity or unintended humor, as in
He menivät naimisiin vuonna 1990 erotakseen vuonna 2005, which could be
read as saying “They married in 1990 in order to divorce in 2005”. It is meant
to say “They married in 1990 but divorced in 2005”, which is naturally
expressed in Finnish by He menivät naimisiin vuonna 1990, mutta erosivat
vuonna 2005.

Instrumental clause equivalent (syömällä)

An instrumental clause equivalent expresses a method used to perform the
action described in the main clause. It may correspond to a “with” or ”by”
expression in English. In Finnish, a siten että (so that) subclause can be used,
though its meaning might be less evident. The verb form used is the adessive
singular of the III in initive.
Example: Voit laihtua syömällä vähemmän = Voit laihtua siten, että syöt
vähemmän (You can lose weight by eating less).
This type is used even in spoken language, though usually in very simple
forms, typically so that the verb form has just a noun as an object, e.g.
lukemalla ohjeet (by reading the instructions). It can be more complicated,
like tekemällä uuden esityksen (by making a new proposal), and in written
language, even much more complicated.

Other case forms of the III in initive as clause

equivalents
Other case forms of the III in initive than the above-mentioned adessive
could be regarded as clause equivalents. For example, in the sentence Hän
istui lukemassa kirjaa (He/she sat reading a book), the construct lukemassa
kirjaa obviously corresponds to a clause (such as ja luki kirjaa). Such use of
the inessive of the III in initive is close to a contextual clause equivalent like
lukien kirjaa, but different emphasis.
The abessive of the III in initive corresponds to a negative clause. For
example, Hän istui tekemättä mitään (He/she sat without doing anything)
corresponds to Hän istui siten, että ei tehnyt mitään.
However, Finnish grammars have a tradition of listing only a certain
limited set of constructs as clause equivalents.

Relative clause equivalent (syömäni, syömäsi…)

Any participle that is used as an attribute before a noun could be classi ied as
a clause equivalent. For example, in the English expression “a stolen car”, the
verb form “stolen” could be replaced by the relative clause “that someone
stole”. Similarly in Finnish, varastettu auto corresponds to auto, joka
varastettiin.
However, Finnish grammars consider only somewhat more complicated
expressions as clause equivalents corresponding to a relative clause.
Basically, the concept applies only if the agent of the action is expressed
somehow. Therefore it does not apply to expressions using 4th person
participles. Instead, it applies to other past tense passive participles.
Examples:
varastamani auto = auto, jonka varastin (the car that I stole)
Hän myi varastamansa auton = Hän myi auton, jonka oli varastanut (He
sold the car that he had stolen)
Thus, a relative clause equivalent corresponds to a relative clause, i.e. a
subclause that starts with the relative pronoun joka (or mikä) in a case form
required by the context. Additional examples:
Tämä on Maijan rakentama talo = Tämä on talo, jonka Maija on rakentanut
(This is a house built by Maija).
Eilen kaupasta ostamasi lohi pitäisi syödä tänään = Lohi, jonka eilen ostit
kaupasta, pitäisi syödä tänään (The salmon that you bought in a shop
yesterday should be eaten today). Here the sentence starts with a clause
equivalent.
Relative clause equivalents are used in spoken language, too. Typically they
are used in a spoken form where a possessive suf ix is not used and a
personal pronoun is used instead, e.g. mun varastama auto or sun eilen
kaupasta ostama lohi.
Similar constructs using present tense participles like varastettava (e.g.
varastettava auto “a/the car that is being stolen or will be stolen”) do not
normally have an agent expressed. However, in phrases like hiiren mentävä
aukko = aukko, josta hiiri menee (a hole that a mouse passes through, i.e. can
go through), the agent is expressed, in genitive (hiiren), so they might be
classi ied as clause equivalents. A similar example is käsin kosketeltava
(concrete) = jota käsin kosketellaan (that is touched by hands) or, by its
meaning, rather jota voi käsin kosketella (that can be touched by hands).

The agent in the genitive

The examples in the table of clause equivalents either do not specify the
agent or specify it with a possessive suf ix. This means that they correspond
to clauses with a personal pronoun as the subject (possibly just implied by
the verb form). However, this is a special case, though a common one.
When a clause equivalent corresponds to a clause with a subject other
than a personal pronoun, the subject is represented by a phrase in the
genitive. For example, in the sentence Tiedän Matin tuntevan sinut (I know
that Matti knows you), the clause equivalent Matin tuntevan sinut
corresponds to the clause Matti tuntee sinut. The subject of this clause, Matti,
is represented by the genitive Matin.
The same principle is applied if the subject of the corresponding clause is
a personal pronoun but refers to a person other than the subject of the main
clause. For example, we say Tiedän hänen tuntevan sinut (I know that he/she
knows you) and Tiedän sinun tuntevan hänet (I know that you know
him/her); the latter could in principle be expressed as Tiedän tuntevasi
hänet, expressing the agent with a possessive suf ix, but this is very rare and
probably sounds odd to most people.
If the predicate of the main clause is in the 3rd person and the agent of the
clause equivalent is a 3rd person pronoun, there is an essential difference in
meaning depending on the use of the genitive hänen or heidän versus a
possessive suf ix:
Matti tietää hänen olevan hyvä näyttelijä (Matti knows that he/she
[someone else than Matti] is a good actor/actress)
Matti tietää olevansa hyvä näyttelijä (Matti knows that he [Matti] is a
good actor)

No negation in clause equivalents

In a clause equivalent, there is no accepted way to have the verb in a negative
form. Sometimes expressions like sanoin en syöneeni are used, but this is
nonstandard and sounds odd. Negating the predicate of the sentence is
possible, e.g. En sanonut syöneeni, but then the meaning is “I did not say that I
have eaten” rather than “I said I have not eaten”. To express the latter, a
subordinate clause instead of a clause equivalent is needed: Sanoin, etten ole
syönyt.

172. In lection types of verbs

As described earlier in this book, both the stem of a word and its suf ixes may
take different forms. To describe the variation, a word may be described by
showing some typical forms (anchor forms, thematic forms) from which all
the other forms can be derived mechanically. Dictionaries of the Finnish
language refer to the forms by numbers, with tables of in lection showing the
meanings of the numbers.
Usually the typical (thematic) forms for a verb are as shown in the
following table. The example words shown are uskoa “to believe” (with no
variation in stem) and nähdä “to see” (with some variation in stem: näh-,
näe-, näk-).
Form Example 1 Example 2
In initive uskoa nähdä
Present tense, 1st person singular uskon näen
Past tense, 3rd person singular uskoi näki
Conditional, 3rd person singular uskoisi näkisi
Imperative, 3rd person singular uskokoon nähköön
Past participle uskonut nähnyt
Past tense, 4th person uskottiin nähtiin

In many contexts, shorter lists of typical forms are used, since they are often
suf icient for constructing other forms. This could mean a list like nähdä,
näen, näki, nähnyt.
There are 45 in lection types for verbs in Finnish according to
Nykysuomen sanakirja, numbered from 1 to 45. There is newer system that
has only 27 types, numbered from 52 to 78, since the numbering covers both
nouns and verbs. The newer system is used in Suomen kielen perussanakirja
and its successor Kielitoimiston sanakirja as well as the online word list
Nykysuomen sanalista. The system uses somewhat different grouping, omits
some outdated in lection types, and uses verbal descriptions for some special
in lections. See appendix In lection classes of verbs.
Particles

173. Prepositions and postpositions

Adpositions: words that can be used as
prepositions or as postpositions
Only a few words are regularly used as prepositions in Finnish, such as ennen
(before). The associated noun is usually in the partitive case, for example
ennen kesäkuuta (before June). Postpositions are more common, mostly used
with the noun in the genitive, e.g. kesäkuun jälkeen (after June).
On the other hand, postpositions can be used as prepositions and vice
versa. We can also say kesäkuuta ennen (with no change in style) and jälkeen
kesäkuun (which is clearly poetic style).
Thus, we can say that Finnish does not have pure prepositions or
postpositions. Instead, it has adpositions, which can be used either as
prepositions or (more often) as postpositions.
Most adpositions in Finnish are originally case forms of nouns, and many
of them are still in use as nouns, too. For example, jälkeen is the illative of
jälki : jäljen (track, trace). Sentence analysis may be needed to decide
whether such a word form is used as a noun or as an adposition.

Adpositions with possessive suf ixes

An adposition used with a pronoun has the corresponding possessive suf ix,
if the pronoun is in the genitive, e.g. meidän jälkeemme (after us). This applies
to standard Finnish; in spoken Finnish, it is common to omit the possessive
suf ix, e.g. meidän jälkeen. Some adpositions can also appear without an
expressed pronoun, with just a possessive suf ix, e.g. jälkeemme.
For adpositions with variant forms such as ali ~ alitse, luo ~ luokse, läpi ~
lävitse, ohi ~ ohitse, taa ~ taakse, yli ~ ylitse, the longer form must be used if a
possessive suf ix has to be added, e.g. luoksemme.
When the pronoun is in a case other than the genitive, no possessive suf ix
is used, e.g. ennen meitä (before us).
Possessive suf ixes are not used with the following adpositions, even
though they are used with the genitive: halki, kesken, poikki, ympäri. Thus, we
say e.g. meidän kesken (between us).

The case of the noun associated with an adposition

The word to which a preposition or postposition relates to is most often in
the genitive. Examples of this most common type of adpositions:
aikana (during), e.g. sodan aikana (during the war)
edessä (in front of), e.g. meidän edessämme (in front of us)
takia (due to, for, because of), e.g. tämän takia (due to this, for this)
These adpositions are normally used as postpositions. Using them as
prepositions, e.g. aikana sodan, is clearly poetic and would look odd in
normal prose.
We will not list all the adpositions that require the associated noun in the
genitive. Instead, we will next describe those adpositions that require some
other case form.

Adpositions used with partitive

The following adpositions are used with the noun in the partitive, whether
used as postposition or as preposition:
alas (down along)
ennen (before)
ilman (without)
kohtaan (to, with respect to)
kohti (towards)
myöten (up to; down to)
paitsi (without; except)
pitkin (along)
päin when meaning “against, towards”
varten (for, for the purpose of)
vastaan (against, opposing; to meet)
vastapäätä (opposing, standing opposite to)
vastassa (waiting for, meeting)
vasten (towards, against)
ylös (up along)
Many of these words are also used as adverbs. For example, alas means most
often just “downwards, down”, but it can also be used as an adposition, with a
noun, e.g. alas Niiliä ~ Niiliä alas (down along the Nile).
Adpositions in two case forms
The case of a noun used with an adposition depends on the adposition, but it
may also depend on word order, i.e. on the use of a word as a preposition vs.
a postposition. To express “in the middle of the village”, we can say kylän
keskellä, using the genitive of kylä (village) when followed by the
postposition keskellä. Alternatively, we can use keskellä as a preposition, and
then we use the partitive: keskellä kylää. There is not much stylistic
difference between these alternatives. Usually postposition use is more
common, except perhaps in some sayings such as keskellä kirkasta päivää (in
broad daylight; literally: in the middle of bright day).
Other adpositions that are used with the genitive as postpositions and
with the partitive as prepositions are keskeltä, keskelle, lähellä (near), läheltä,
lähelle.

Adpositions used with illative or allative

The following adpositions are used with the illative or the allative:
asti (until; up to; down to), e.g. huomiseen asti (until tomorrow), Ouluun
asti (up to Oulu)
päin (towards, in the direction of), as a preposition, e.g. etelään päin (to
south)
The case form used is usually the illative. The allative is used for location
names that generally require outer locational cases, e.g. Tampereelle päin
(towards Tampere), since we say Tampereella (in Tampere).

Adpositions used with nominative

Normal adpositions are not used with the nominative, except for some
foreign prepositions and some use of Finnish prepositions in a way that
imitates foreign expressions. This includes:
à (pronounced aa) from French, used in expressions like 5 à 10 (from 5 to
10), more often written as 5–10
alkaen, a form of the verb alkaa, is widely used in marketing in
expressions like alkaen 42 € ([prices] from 42 € [upwards]) are common;
according to language authorities, such expressions should be replaced by
expressions like 42 €:sta alkaen, using alkaen as a postposition with the
elative, but this opinion has been ignored
 koska in informal style (not accepted in standard language) in
expressions like koska pomo, imitating usage like “because the boss”, used
as short for expressions like “because the boss doesn’t like it”
pro (pronounced proo) from Latin, meaning “instead of”
vastaan (against), used in expressions like Virtanen vastaan Lahtinen;
sometimes the Latin word contra or versus or the abbreviation vs. of the
latter are used instead
Such usage is common in some forms of professional or academic language,
but they are hardly suitable in texts for general audience.
The prepositions alle and yli are used in the nominative or (less often) in
the genitive when they relate to a quantity, e.g. alle viisi ~ alle viiden (less than
ive) and yli viisi ~ yli viiden (over ive, more than ive). When expressing
going below or over something, they always take the noun in the genitive, e.g.
se meni pöydän alle (it went under the table), tien yli (across the street).

Adpositions vailla, vaille, yli

The adpositions vailla and vaille have mixed usage. They can be used to speak
about something being without something or being left without something,
and in such usage, the noun is in the partitive, e.g. vailla rahaa (without
money). They can also express insuf iciency, lack of some speci ic amount. In
such usage, the missing amount is in the partive before the adposition and
the amount “needed” appears after it, in a case form required by the context.
Examples: grammaa vaille kilo (one gram less than a kilogram, i.e. 999
grams), viittä vaille kolme (5 [minutes] to 3 o’clock).
The adposition yli is used in a similar manner to express excess, but the
expression before it is in the nominative and the expression after it is usually
in the genitive, e.g. gramma yli kilon (one gram over a kilogram). When
expressing time of day, the expression after the adposition can also be in the
nominative, e.g. viittä yli kolmen ~ kolme (6 past 3).
The adposition yli is also used in simpler contexts to mean just “over” or
“across”, with the genitive as in sillan yli “over a/the bridge” or with the
nominative when expressing that some amount is exceeded, e.g. yli tuhat
euroa (over a thousand euros).

Adpositions normally used as prepositions

The following adpositions are mostly used as prepositions in normal style, all
with the noun in the partitive:
ennen, e.g. ennen kahdeksaa (before eight o’clock); but kahdeksaa ennen is
possible, too, even in normal style
ilman, e.g. ilman sinua (without you); postposition usage like sinua ilman
is poetic
paitsi when meaning “except”, e.g. paitsi minua (except me); this is rare,
and more often we say paitsi minä, in which case paitsi is interpreted as a
conjunction

Verb forms as adpositions

Several in initive forms of verbs are used in a manner that might be
characterized as adposition use. The associated noun is then in a case form
determined by the verb. For example, the word form riippuen is the II
in initive instructive of the verb riippua (to hang; to depend on), which
requires the use of the elative case (suf ix stA), e.g. Se riippuu säästä (It
depends on the weather). Consequently, when riippuen is used as an
adposition, the noun is in the elative, e.g. riippuen säästä (depending on the
weather).
Adpositions of this type are mainly literary. Many of them are often
criticized in language guides on various grounds; some of this is explained in
the description of clause equivalents. However, many verb-based adpositions
are rather common in written language, especially in formal prose. and also
appear in spoken language. They are normally used as postpositions. Some
examples:
alkaen with the elative, e.g. aamusta alkaen (from the morning); from
alkaa (to start)
johtuen with the elative, e.g. taloudesta johtuen (due to economy); from
johtua (to be derived from or caused by); usually takia is more natural,
e.g. talouden takia
liittyen with the illative, e.g. ohjelmaan liittyen (in the context of the
program; literally “joining with the program”); from liittyä (to join, to get
connected with); frequently used, often in a vague meaning
ottamatta in the phrase lukuun ottamatta, which can be regarded as a
two-word preposition, used with the partitive; e.g. autoja lukuun
ottamatta (except cars; literally “not counting cars”); from ottaa (to take)
 riippumatta with the elative, e.g. tuloista riippumatta (independently of
income); from riippua

Case forms vs. adpositions

As discussed in the descriptions of cases, Finnish often uses cases of nouns in
situations where English uses a preposition. This applies to most uses of
common prepositions like “of”, “to”, and “in”. However, especially for
locational relations, there is often an alternative of using a postposition. For
example, instead of the normal talossa (in a/the house) we can say talon
sisällä; this is emphatic much in the same sense as the English “inside the
house”. It can also be expressed by saying sisällä talossa, where sisällä
(inside) is an adverb, not an adposition.
For locational relations of being below something or above something (as
opposite to being just on it), Finnish uses postpositions: talon alla (under
a/the house), talon yläpuolella (from above the house) etc. In some of such
expressions, the second word can alternatively be described as a noun, such
as yläpuoli (anything above something), so that the expression as a whole is
just an expression like talon yläpuoli in a locational case.

The postposition kanssa

The adposition kanssa typically corresponds to the preposition “with” in
English. It is used with the genitive and always after the main word—it is
hardly used as a preposition even in poetry, though its synonym kera appears
as a preposition in poetic style.
Much of the use of kanssa has been described as inappropriate in language
guides, due to re lecting foreign in luence. In the most puristic approach,
described e.g. in Terho Itkonen’s Uusi kieliopas, the word kanssa should only
be used in adverbial constructs of the form A:n kanssa, meaning “in the
company of A”, so that A and the subject of clause are more or less on an
equal basis. So we can say “Hän saapui vaimonsa kanssa” (He arrived with his
wife), but not “Hän tuli taskulampun kanssa” (He came with a lashlight)—a
purist would instead say “Hän tuli taskulamppu mukanaan”.
As mentioned in the description of the adessive case, both the adessive
and the postposition kanssa are often used to correspond to expressions like
“A with B”, but such usage has been frowned upon in language guides. For
example, to order coffee with milk, it is common to ask for kahvi maidolla,
though some people may prefer saying kahvi maidon kanssa—and purists
might say kahvi ja maito.

174. Conjunctions
Common conjunctions
The most common conjunctions in Finnish are eli (or, in other words), että
(that), ja (and), joko … tai (either … or), jos (if), joskin (although), jotta (in
order to), koska (because), kuin (than; as), kun (when), mikäli (if), mutta
(but), sekä (and), sekä … että (both … and), sillä (since, because), tai (or,
alternatively), vaan (but), vai (or), vaikka (even though; in spite of).

Contractions with the negation verb

Many conjunctions form contractions with the negation verb en : et : ei :
emme : ette : eivät. For example, instead of että ei it is normal to write and say
ettei. This is described in more detain in section Negation verb combined
with other words.
The words ellei and jollei are effectively contractions of jos (if) with the
negation verb in modern language, though not historically. They both mean
“unless” or “if not”. The ei part in them is in lected, e.g. ellen, ellet, so that e.g.
“If we do not accept this” is Ellemme hyväksy tätä or Jollemme hyväksy tätä,
though Jos emme hyväksy tätä is possible. too.

Words for “if”

The words jos and mikäli are normally synonyms. In old usage, mikäli means
in principle “to the extent/amount that…”. In practice, it is mostly used
simply to mean “if”, perhaps for emphasis (since it is longer than jos). The
word pair sikäli mikäli is also used to mean “if”, but it should be regarded as
informal style and used to emphasize conditionality.
In English, the word “if” is also used for subordinate questions, as in “He
asked if the train had arrived”. ) In Finnish, the kO suf ix is used instead, e.g.
Hän kysyi, oliko juna tullut. The suf ix is appended to the key word of the
question. Although the word josko (or just jos) is often used instead, e.g. Hän
kysyi, josko juna oli tullut, such usage is substandard.
Words for “and”
The words ja and sekä have the same meaning, but ja is normal, whereas sekä
is typically used as a “higher level” conjunction: A ja B sekä C ja D means that
A and B are grouped together, and so are C and D. It is also used otherwise to
avoid having the word ja repeated too often. However, sekä is often used
instead of ja for no apparent reason, as a matter of personal style.
The word ynnä is used the same way as sekä, but it is rare. Except for some
phrases like ynnä muuta (and so on), usually abbreviated ym., it is old-
fashioned style.

Words for “but”

The difference between mutta and vaan is contextual: vaan is normally used
after a negative statement, e.g. Hän ei mennyt Turkuun, vaan Poriin “He did
not travel to Turku, but to Pori”. Here, and usually, a vaan statement
complements a preceding negative statement with information on what
actually happens or with a suggestion of what should be done. Example of the
latter: Älä lähde vielä, vaan istu hetki (Don’t leave yet but sit here for a
moment).
In contexts like “I have not eaten anything but an apple”, “but” corresponds
to kuin in Finnish: En ole syönyt muuta kuin omenan.

Expressions for “both … and”

The usual expression for “both … and” is sekä … että, e.g. sekä työssä että
kotona (both at work and at home).
As an alternative to sekä … että, the construct niin … kuin can be used. The
latter part of the expression normally has the kin suf ix, so that the construct
is really niin … kuin …kin. For example, instead of sekä kissat että koirat (both
cats and dogs), we can say niin kissat kuin koiratkin, which might be
translated as “cats as well as dogs”, but there is hardly much difference in
tone. It is nowadays common to omit the kin suf ix here, e.g. niin kissat kuin
koirat, especially if the expression as a whole is long.
The construct paitsi … myös corresponds to “both … and”, but with
emphasis on the second part. E.g. Tätä voi käyttää paitsi työssä myös kotona
more or less takes the työssä part for granted, so the sentence could be
translated “This can be used not only at home but also at work.”
The enclitic -kä conjunction
The connective suf ix kä is logically a conjunction meaning “and”. However, it
is not a separate word but appended to a form of the negation verb, e.g. eikä
(and not). It is normally used instead of ja or sekä when these would be
followed by the negation verb. For example, instead of En tiedä ja en halua
tietää we normally say En tiedä enkä halua tietää (I do not know and I do not
want to know).

Conjunctions corresponding to “or”

As the list above shows, there are three conjunctions in Finnish
corresponding to English “or”:
eli means “in other words” or “by another name”; an alternative, mostly
colloquial form is elikkä
tai separates alternatives in statements or questions; alternative forms:
tahi, which is dated, and taikka
vai is used in questions to separate mutually exclusive alternatives,
implying that exactly one of them is to be selected; alternative form
vaiko is sometimes used in speech for emphasis
These distinctions often make sentences less ambiguous and easier to
interpreter. Consider a question like “Did you meet Peter or Anna?” There are
two possible interpretations, corresponding to the Finnish questions
Tapasitko Peterin tai Annan? (expecting a yes or no answer) and Tapasitko
Peterin vai Annan? (implying that one of them was met and expecting an
answer that tells which one was met).
A word of warning about eli: in spoken language, it is nowadays often used
at the start of a sentence with no real meaning, just as an opening word (a bit
like “well” in English). This can be rather confusing if you expect it to appear
in the literary meaning.

Inclusive and exclusive or

The conjunction tai (or) is normally “inclusive or”. The question Onko sinulla
kissa tai koira (Do you have a cat or a dog) includes the possibility of having
both a cat and a dog. However, it is not uncommon to claim theoretically that
tai is or should be exclusive and to use ja/tai for an inclusive or, imitating the
English expression “and/or”. Such usage has been regarded as substandard
by language authorities, but this has changed to some extent.
 In some contexts, tai is usually understood as exclusive, though somewhat
debatably. For example, the statement Voit saada kahvin tai jäätelöä (You can
have coffee or icecream) might be understood in two ways. The combined
conjunction joko … tai is normally exclusive, corresponding to English “either
… or”, so it can be used for clarity: Voit saada joko kahvin tai jäätelöä excludes
the possibility of having both.
It is normal to ask Haluatko kahvia tai teetä? (Do you want coffee or tea?)
Even though one is in practice expected to select either coffee or tea, we do
not use vai here, since it would be somewhat impolite or pushy. It would take
it for granted that either coffee or tea is to be selected.

The conjunctions että and jotta

In standard Finnish, että is used to start a subordinate clause much like “that”
is used in English, e.g. Sanoin, että tulen huomenna (I said that I will come
tomorrow). Unlike the English “that”, että cannot be just omitted in sentences
like that. On the other hand, a statement starting with että can often be
replaced by a clause equivalent, but this means a major change in the
structure, e.g. Sanoin tulevani huomenna.
The word että also appears as part of some two-word conjunctions, e.g.
siten, että (so that).
The conjunction jotta is used in standard Finnish in a rather speci ic
meaning. Basically it indicates purpose, corresponding to “in order to” or “for
the purpose of”, e.g. Aloin juosta, jotta ehtisin junaan (I started running in
order to catch the train). Such a subclause can usually be replaced by an
intentional clause equivalent, e.g. Aloin juosta ehtiäkseni junaan.
The word jotta is also used to indicate consequence, especially in some
forms of spoken Finnish and in some writing styles. Example: Juoksin jotta
sydän pamppaili (I ran so that it made my heart go pitapat). It is debatable
whether such usage is standard Finnish. In any case, using niin, että instead
of jotta would be safer here.
I dialects, että and jotta are often used in manners that deviate from
standard Finnish. In particular, it is common in many areas to use jotta
generally instead of että, e.g. Sanoin, jotta tulen huomenna.
Except for some special conditions, the conjunctions että and jotta are
preceded by a comma. (This does not apply to the sekä… että construct.)
The conjunctions kun and kuin
The conjunction kun primarily expresses temporal relations, similarly to
“when” in English, whereas kuin expresses comparison of some kind, often
corresponding to “than” or “as” in English. In common spoken Finnish, this
distinction is usually not made; kun or just kux is used for both. The rules of
standard Finnish are somewhat arti icial in this respect, and there are
situations where it is not clear whether temporal relation or comparison is
involved. This explains why native speakers often have problems in using kun
and kuin correctly in writing.
The word kuin corresponds to “as” when expressing similarity and to
“than” when used with a comparative form. Examples:
Paikka näytti tutulta kuin olisin käynyt siellä usein. (The place looked
familiar as if I had been there often.)
Talo oli pienempi kuin muistin. (The house was smaller than I
remembered.)

Multi-word conjunctions with kuin

The word kuin is often used together with another word or other words
before it so that the two form functionally a single conjunction (but still
written as a two words in standard spelling):
ennen kuin (before)
ikään kuin (as if)
niin kauan kuin (as long as)
niin kuin (as, like)
niin pian kuin (as soon as)
samoin kuin (the same way as)
sikäli kuin (to the the extent that; if)
toisin kuin (unlike)

Somewhat illogically, ennen kuin is interpreted as involving comparison, so it

has kuin and not kun, but sitten kun (after) is interpreted as temporal, so it
has kun.

Dif iculties in choosing between kuin and kun

The distinction between kuin and kun is somewhat arti icial. Oldest written
Finnish uses kuin for both purposes, whereas spoken language has done the
same with kun. In the 19th century, the current division was established,
thought some changes have been made to the rules.
It is not always clear whether comparison or time is involved, especially
when combined conjunctions are used. Even native speakers often need to
check language guides in such issues. The most common combined
conjunctions and contexts are the following:
Interpreted primarily as comparison, hence with kuin: aivan kuin,
eri/erilainen kuin, ikään kuin, niin kuin, sama/samoin/samanlainen kuin,
siinä määrin kuin.
Interpreted primarily as temporal, hence with kun: aina kun, heti kun, joka
kerran ku, sen jälkeen kun, siihen/siitä asti kun, siihen aikaan kun, silloin
kun, silloin kun, sillä aikaa kun, sitten kun.
Varyingly comparison or temporal, so either kuin or kun can be used,
depending on emphasis: samaan aikaan kun ~ kuin, samalla kun ~ kuin,
sen aikaa kun ~ kuin, sikäli kuin ~ kun, sitä mukaa kuin ~ kun. The irst
alternatives in this list (e.g. samaan aikaan kun) were earlier
recommended, and they are still more common.

Ambiguities
Some words used as conjunctions have completely different use, too. In
addition to the mixed use of että and jotta described above, the following
words can be ambiguous:
kun may indicate causality or reasoning (“since, because”) in addition to
its temporal meaning (“when”)
sillä can be the adessive form of the pronoun se, in addition to its use as
conjunction
vaan (but) is also the common spoken language version of vain (only)
vaikka is also used as an adverb, meaning “for example” in some contexts,
e.g. Ota vaikka tuo auto (Take that car for example), in addition to its use
as a conjunction, e.g. Ostan tuon auton, vaikka se on kallis (I’ll buy that
car, even though it is expensive)

175. Affective particles

The concept
Particles like “oh”, ”wow”, “er”, and “oops” in English have great practical
impact, but they are dif icult to analyze and describe. Therefore they are
usually described just brie ly in grammars. Dictionaries may have more
detailed explanations, but in language learning, these particles are learned
almost exclusively by listening to how people speak. To some extent, they can
be learned from written dialogs, too.
These particles are described using many different terms like
“interjections”, “discourse particles”, “pragmatic particles”, etc. This book uses
the collective term “affective particles” to re lect their usage. They express
feelings, attitudes, and affections of the speaker—relating to the content of a
sentence, to something in reality outside the language, to the audience, or to
the discussion context, such as a statement just made by someone else. This
is the semantic de inition of an affective particle. Syntactically, an affective
particle appears outside sentence structures. They are not sentence
constituents at all. They are separate signals intermixed with sentences,
though they are often written as if they belonged to sentences, e.g. Ahaa,
ymmärrän (Oh, I see).
An affective particle is usually short, typically one syllable only. It may
have a physiological or phonetic motivation. For example, the English “oh” or
the Finnish oi can be as stemming naturally from opening one’s mouth when
surprised and then breathing out!
Affective particles may also originate from normal words used in special
ways. This applies in particular to curse words.

Classi ication of affective particles

One way to classify affective particles is how they are used with respect to
sentences:
Interjections are typically used alone and might be said to be at a more
primitive level of communication than language. They are usually uttered
more or less spontaneously. We can shout ”Oops!” or Oho!, instead of
formulating a sentence or even a fragment of a sentence. Even though
such an interjection may be immediately followed by a sentence, the
interjection is independent.
Initial particles are words that we use when we start talking, to clear our
throat, to draw attention, or to get started. Thus, they appear before a
sentence or a sequence of sentence. They hardly have any meaning; they
just have a practical effect. In English, we can use e.g. “well”; in Finnish,
 tota noin is common. Often people use sentences or fragments of
sentences instead, e.g. “I’d like to comment that…” or “Attention, please”.
Retraction particles take back something that you just said, e.g. to
correct a word or to formulate an entire sentence again. A common one in
Finnish is eiku or the longer form ei kun. It is left to the listener to igure
out what part is being taken back.
Response particles express reactions to what someone else has just said.
Interjections can be used in such roles. A dedicated response particle is
“aha”, in Finnish ahaa or aha. It can signal different things depending on
context, tone of voice, look on one’s face, etc. It may be used alone or as
followed by a really verbal reaction.
Fill words just ill gaps. They prevent you from losing the loor, so to say:
they tell others that you keep talking even though you are not really
saying anything for the moment. Initial particles are often used as ill
words, too. Typical Finnish ill words are tota (shortened form of tuota),
siis, and niinku (shortened form of niin kuin). It is almost impossible to
speak naturally without any ill words. On the other hand, their overuse
can be very annoying.
Throw-in words express affections and can appear inside or at the start
or beginning of a sentence. Although they are not part of sentence
structure, their position within a sentence may matter, so they are
syntactically not quite purely affective particles. Mostly they express
attitudes that relate to the sentence or the discussion or something else
as a whole. E.g. the words ihan totta (literally “quite true”) might be
thrown in, to convince the listener, like “really” in English. Curse words
can usually be characterized as throw-in words, with some specialties. In
some forms of religious language, words like hallelujaa may appear as
throw-in words.

Interjections
Interjections are typically spontaneous expressions of reactions, though they
can be used consciously, too. The following table summarizes the use of some
common interjections.

Feeling or mood Interjections

annoyance hm, äh, äš (äsh)
 contemplation hmm
contempt höh, pyh
disgust hyi, yäk, ällöö
enthusiasm hihuu, jippii, jess, vau, vautsi
pain ai, aih, auts, oioioi, voi
pleasure ah, aah, mm
relief huh, huhhuh
scare hui, oi
surprise hups, hupsis, häh, kas, ohhoh, oho, oi

Initial particles
Initial particles vary greatly by speaker and context. The particles tota and
tota noin are rather colorless, whereas hei, moi, and kuule (literally “hear!”)
are also greetings of a kind. The word anteeksi often has a similar role, in
addition to or instead of its normal meaning “sorry, excuse me”. The word siis
(literally “so, then, consequently”) is nowadays often used, even in informal
writing, as in initial particle. This may irritate people who expect siis to
express a conclusion.
The word no is very common at the start of a sentence, though it usually
does not work alone as in initial particle, rather in combinations like No hei.
It is also frequently used during a dialog when starting one’s own
contribution, rather than opening a dialog. It is particularly common at the
start of an answer, as in the following start of a dialog:
– No terve, mitä kuuluu? (Hi, how are you?)
– No mitäpä tässä. (Well, nothing special.)
It is also possible to make non-verbal sounds, as if clearing one’s throat, or
actually doing so. I written dialogs, this is often expressed as kröhöm or krhm.
Retraction particles
In addition to ei kun in different variants (eiku, ei ku), possibly followed by
siis, there are not many words that work as retraction particles in Finnish.
The word meinaan (a colloquial verb, “I mean”) or its more formal equivalent
tarkoitan might be used. The word korjaan (I correct) is used in military
service, and this is sometimes imitated, jocularly, in other contexts.

Response particles
Response particles normally have the role of letting another person keep
talking without feeling that he is not being listened to. Some of them have
nominally an af irmative role, more or less accepting what was said, but in
practice they too typically mean at most “I’m listening”. They include aha or
ahaa (may indicate some surprise), aivan, ihanks totta (oh, really?), jaa, jep,
joo, just, juu, mm, niin, okei, vai niin.

Fill words
Even ill words can be characterized as affective particles, even though they
appear to have no content and no associated feelings. They express the
speaker’s affection to his talking, the desire to avoid being interrupted and to
give the impression of continuity. As mentioned, tota (or tota noin) and
niinku (or sit niinku) are commonly used. The words sillai (colloquial form of
sillä lailla “that way”), tavallaan (in a way), and sellanen (like that) are also
common, though they are not alwatys pure ill words: especially sellanen is
normally used with syntactic restrictions, namely only where an adjective
may appear, and with congruence.
The words niin (so, that way) and siis (so, consequently) are also used as
ill words. This may cause some confusion, since they might be taken as
having some meaning.
The word katox, a spoken form of katsox, the imperative of katsoa (to look),
is also a common ill word. It may be regarded as requesting for attention, but
mostly it is about as empty as “you see” in English. It is typically used as in
katox kux, where kux is a spoken form of kun, literally meaning “when”. So
instead of starting a sentence simply Se on… (It is…), you could start with No
siis kato ku se on… [no siis katok kus se on].
 Especially young people often use vittu (literally “cunt”) as a ill word,
rather than as a curse word. Somewhat similarly, common curse words are
used by some people just as ill words, naturally often causing negative
reactions.

Throw-in words
Throw-in words are similar to interjections but less spontaneous. They
express feelings and other things that come into the speaker’s mind while
talking. They are often dif icult to distinguish from ill words—many words
can be used for both purposes. However, a throw-in word has a purpose and
asks to be noticed.
Curse words mainly express feelings, though they are often taken as
offensive. There is great variation by personality. It is widely considered as
vulgar to use basic curse words like helvetti, perkele, and saatana, except
perhaps to express strong feelings that others may ind justi ied. Their
modi ied variants, like helkutti, perhana, and saakeli are much less offensive.
Many people have their favorite personal “curse words” that just express
feelings like annoyance or disappointment, such as oi voi, voihan nenä, voi
harmi.
As mentioned above, vittu is a common curse word, also used as a ill
word, alone or e.g. in the combination voi vittu. It can also be used as part of
sentence structure, in attribute position, in the genitive form vitun, as in Mikä
vitun auto? (possibly expressing just surprise, but often as a nondescript
negative attribute).
A large number of curse words are described in the book Suuri
kirosanakirja.
See notes on the social acceptability of curse words in section “Forbidden”
words.

Word-like suf ixes

176. The nature of word-like suf ixes

Finnish has suf ixes that may appear at the very end of a word and that
correspond to words in their meaning. This means that they have separate
meanings instead of just modifying the meaning of the word they have been
attached to. These suf ixes are therefore called word-like suf ixes in this
book. In linguistics, you may instead ind terms like enclitic particle or just
clitic.
For some use of word-like suf ixes, we can even name a word that they
correspond to. The word eikä, with the suf ix kä, corresponds to ja ei, and
sekin, with the suf ix kin, corresponds to se myös. However, the most word-
like suf ixes do not have such counterparts.
Word-like suf ixes are pronounced as part of the word they are attached
to. This means that the suf ix is always unstressed. There is limited
interaction between the forms of the suf ix and the word:
The suf ix adapts to vowel harmony, e.g. kAAn appended to kala yields
kalakaan, but appended to kylä it yields kyläkään.
The suf ix is comparable to a separate word or a part of a closed
compound in the sense of triggering boundary gemination when
applicable; e.g. tulekin is pronounced [tulekkin].
Assimilation rules apply the same way as inside a word, e.g. tulenpa is
pronounced [tulempa].
The suf ix mostly does not affect secondary stress. This means that
stressing rules apply to the word before the suf ix. For example, the word
tulivatko has no secondary stress, even though a four-syllable word
normally has secondary stress on the third syllable. In a longer word like
tulivatkohan, with two word-like suf ixes, secondary stress may appear:
túlivàtkohan.

Except for kin and kAAn, which can be appended to almost any word in a
sentence, the word-like suf ixes are usually appended only to the irst
member of a sentence. This means typically the irst word, but the irst
member can also consist of a noun and its attribute(s), e.g. Hyvä tuloshan se
on (Well, it’s a good result), where the irst member is the predicative hyvä
tulos (good result).
A word-like suf ix cannot normally be appended to the irst part of a
compound word, only at the end of the entire word. However, kin or kAAn can
alternatively be appended to a irst part that is in the genitive, when the
second part is a derived adjective with the suf ix inen. For example, kin can be
appended to toisenlainen in two ways: toisenlainenkin ~ toisenkinlainen. The
same applies to compound adverbs with päin as the second part, e.g.
eteenpäin: eteenpäinkin ~ eteenkinpäin.
There can be several word-like suf ixes in a word, as in olet|ko|han, but
usually at most two. Larger clusters of such suf ixes are used in contrived
examples of the purported complexity of Finnish.

177. The suf ixes kin and kAAn

Using kin to mean “also”
The suf ix kin is often used for the same purposes as “also” and “too” are used
in English. The word minäkin means “I, too” and could mostly be replaced by
the words minä myös, but the suf ix is a more normal expression in many
contexts, especially when relating to the subject of a sentence.
For example, we can say Kävin Helsingissäkin or Kävin myös Helsingissä, “I
visited Helsinki, too”, with hardly any difference in meaning. But to express “I,
too, visited Helsinki”, the natural way is Minäkin kävin Helsingissä, though
Myös minä kävin Helsingissä would be possible, too.
When used in such a meaning, kin is often more accurate than myös, since
kin is attached to a speci ic word. Compare: Kävin kesällä Tukholmassakin (I
visited Stockholm, too, in summer) vs. Kävin kesälläkin Tukholmassa (I visited
Stockholm in summer, too).

Using kin as a tone particle

When kin is attached to an attribute, it can mean “also”. For example, Hän myi
uudenkin autonsa means “He sold his new car, too” (implying that he sold at
least one other car too). However, in some contexts it has a completely
different meaning. For example, the question Ostitko kalliinkin auton? does
not normally mean “Did you buy an expensive car, too?” but rather asks
whether the car bought is expensive or how much it cost. In such contexts,
kin can be characterized as a tone particle (see the description of the hAn
suf ix) instead of meaning “also”.
When attached to a verb, kin sometimes means “also”, as in Kirjoitin ja
soitinkin asiasta (I wrote about the matter, and phoned too). More often, it is
a tone particle that expresses many different attitudes and feelings, like the
hAn suf ix, but it is not interchangeable with it. Examples:
Pyysin häntä hoitamaan asian, ja hän hoitikin sen nopeasti. (I asked him to
take care of the matter, and he did it fast.) Here the meaning of kin is close
to “also”, but it could also be described as expressing that an expected or
desired thing happened.
Pyysin häntä hoitamaan asian, mutta hoidankin sen itse. (I asked him to
take care of the matter, but I will instead do it myself.) The word mutta
indicates a turn, and the suf ix kin somewhat softens it.
Eikö se ollutkin helppoa? (Wasn’t it easy, really?) A question like this
expects an af irmative answer, much like “It was easy, wasn’t it”, but most
importantly it expects some answer, at least a nod or Joo (Yeah). The same
thing could be expressed using the hAn suf ix in a different statement:
Sehän oli helppoa, eikö vain?
Sieltä Pekka tuleekin. (Oh, there’s Pekka coming.) Here kin has no
particular role, but it connects the sentence with something that has just
been discussed, like Pekka being late. The sentence could be used without
the suf ix, but then it might sound abrupt. Alternatively, we could use hAn,
but on another word: Sieltähän Pekka tulee.

The negative-context kAAn

The suf ix kaan, kään is used in a sentence containing the negation verb, and
it often corresponds to “either”, so that en minäkään tiedä means “I don’t
know either”. We can say that the suf ix kAAn is the negative-context
counterpart of kin. This applies even when kin does not mean simply “also”.
For example, just like Hän onkin jo tullut (Oh, he has come already) uses kin
as a tone particle, the negative statement Hän ei olekaan vielä tullut (Oh, he
has not come yet) uses kaan similarly.
The context need not be negative in form. In particular, kAAn is used in
doubtful questions, possibly expecting a negative answer. For example,
Kannattaako minun tulla? is a neutral question, “Is it worth my while to
come?”, whereas Kannattaako minun tullakaan? expresses serious doubt
about the matter; in English, we might add the word “really” to the question.
The suf ix kAAn is often appended to the word silti (still, yet), with no
particular effect on meaning or style, but siltikään is used especially when the
sentence contains a negation.
Words and phrases with kin
There are many words and sayings that contain the kin suf ix as an integral
part, without the meaning described above. For example, the word kuitenkin
means “however” or “yet”, and the suf ix is really part of the word; kuiten
does not exist as word. Yet, in a negative context, its kin is changed to kaan.
For example, Kuitenkin huomenna sataa means “Yet it will rain tomorrow”,
whereas the negative “Yet it will not rain tomorrow” is formulated as
Kuitenkaan huomenna ei sada.
Similarly, kumpikin heistä (both of them) has the negative counterpart ei
kumpikaan heistä (neither of them).
The negative pronouns mikään and kukaan ave the kAAn suf ix appended
directly to the old pronoun stems ku and mi.

178. The connective suf ix kä

Conjunction attached to negation verb
The suf ix kä can be classi ied as a conjunction. It may be attached to forms of
the negation verb (en, et, ei etc.), and it connects expressions the same way as
the word ja “and”. For example, the sentence Ei sada eikä tuule is like Ei sada,
ja ei tuule “It is not raining, and there is no wind”, except that the latter is not
normal Finnish.
In standard Finnish, the negation verb is in a form required by the subject,
e.g. Te ette syöneet ettekä juoneet (You did not eat or drink). However, it is not
uncommon to use eikä as unin lected, e.g. He eivät syöneet eikä juoneet.
It is more or less automatic to use the suf ix kä rather than the word ja
when ja would start a clause that contains the negation verb. This applies to
all forms of the negation verb, including imperative forms. Thus, normally
enkä is used instead of ja en, and äläkä is used instead of ja älä.
The use of the suf ix kä instead of the word ja is normal even when there
would be a subject between ja and the negation verb. This causes a change of
the word order. For example, instead of ja me emme tiedä we say emmekä me
tiedä, putting the subject after the negation verb.
The suf ix kä can also be used to connect nouns in a negative context. The
sentence En halua kahvia enkä teetä means “I don’t want coffee or tea” or,
expressed more clearly, “I don’t want coffee and I don’t want tea”. The
sentence can be regarded as a shortened form of En halua kahvia enkä halua
teetä.

Special use of -kä to refute an alternative

The -kä conjunction can be used after a positive sentence to clarify it by
refuting an alternative that might otherwise seem possible. For example, the
statement Asun Espoossa enkä Helsingissä (I live in Espoo and not in Helsinki)
is meaningful in a context where someone has shown to believe or suspect
that I live in Helsinki. Using ja en instead of enkä would hardly be possible
here.

Arguing -kä
The suf ix -kä can be used at the start of a sentence when strongly opposing
something that has been said or suggested. For example, when told to write
something, one could say Enkä kirjoita! or Enkä kyllä kirjoita!

Exceptional ja instead of -kä

An expression containing ja can appear in a negative context, when it
expresses close connection. For example, Se ei haittaa opetusta ja tutkimusta
is possible, when opetus ja tutkimus (education and research) is treated as
one concept. Sometimes ja connects synonyms, and one could say Se ei tunnu
ja kuulosta hyvältä, since tuntuu ja kuulostaa (literally “feels and sounds”) is a
phrase used to mean “seems”. However, such usage might be regarded as
incorrect, and Se ei tunnu eikä kuulosta hyvältä might thus be safer.

The “combined conjuction” ei … eikä …

The word pair ei … eikä (and en … enkä etc.), meaning “neither … nor”, is
often presented as a combined conjunction. However, only the kä suf ix is a
conjunction here.
In expressions like Ei Paavo eikä Pekka tiedä sitä (Neither Paavo nor Pekka
knows it), standard Finnish rules require that that the negation verb appears
twice. However, it is not uncommon to omit the irst negation verb at the
start of a sentence: Paavo eikä Pekka tiedä sitä. This can be confusing, since
there is the expression type Paavo, eikä Pekka, tietää sen (Paavo, not Pekka,
knows it). Such a tendency is especially strong in sentences like Kukaan eikä
mikään toimi tässä maailmassa yksin (Nobody and nothing works alone in
this world), since the pronouns kukaan and mikään are always used in
negative contexts and could be seen as carrying a negation; yet, standard
Finnish says Ei kukaan eikä mikään toimi…

The kA suf ix of pronouns

Some grammars describe this suf ix as kA, but all forms of the negation verb
require a front vowel, i.e. the suf ix is kä. However, some pronouns can be
interpreted as having a ka suf ix, which may have a softening effect, e.g.
milloinka instead of milloin (when). Such a suf ix has little in common with
the connective suf ix kä, and it is best analyzed as just variation in the forms
of some pronouns.

179. The arguing or emphasizing pA

The suf ix pa, pä is often used when answering back or even arguing. For
example, if someone says Tämä ei ole kallis (This is not expensive) and you
wish to claim that it indeed is, a natural formulation is Onpa or Onpas. It
could be used alone or as part of a longer sentence, such as Onpas se.
However, the suf ix pA has many other uses, too, and they are dif icult to
describe. We can use Onpa se kallis as a standalone expression, without
arguing, just stating “Oh, it is expensive”. This may express surprise or just
emphasize the observation. This suf ix is a tone particle like hAn, which is
described in the next section, but their usages differ. Generally, pA argues or
emphasizes, hAn states.
However, pA may be used as a rather neutral suf ix, too, just to make a
statement in a more natural way. A statement like Se on kallis could be used
as an answer or comment to something, but if you are just saying something
without relating it to something said earlier, you typically need some opening
phrase. In Finnish, word-like suf ixes may have the role of an opening phrase.
The pA suf ix is often used to “soften” an imperative. For example, the
sentence Avaa ikkuna (Open the window) would be impolite in most
contexts; Avaapa ikkuna is much more acceptable.
In speech, the pA suf ix is often followed by the softening suf ix s, e.g.
avaapas.
180. The multiple-use suf ix hAn
The suf ix han, hän is a tone particle, which means that it expresses things
like feelings, attitudes, and aspects—things that might also be expressed with
tone of voice. It can express iner nuances, or it may change the tone of a
sentence completely.
This suf ix is dif icult to describe; its use is best learned by listening to
how people use it. However, some general notes can be made:
Very often hAn expresses that the content of the sentence is more or less
known to the reader or listener. It may help to avoid the impression of
stating the obvious. If I say Helsinkihän on Suomen pääkaupunki, it sounds
like I am just mentioning this as something known and as a starting point
for some other statement, rather than for giving new information. In
English, we might instead start a sentence with “Well,…” or “You know,…”.´
The hAn suf ix is also used to present instructions and requests, more or
less implying that they will be obeyed, e.g. Odotathan vuoroasi tässä
(Please wait for your turn here). This is intended to sound polite, but it is
not always taken that way.
The hAn suf ix may also have a concessive meaning, as in Onhan se kallis,
mutta hyvä (It is true that it is expensive, but [it is] good).
In questions, hAn asks for con irmation, e.g. Viehän tämä tie Tampereelle?
(This road leads to Tampere, right?) In such a question, hAn replaces the
normal interrogative suf ix kO, creating a question that expects a positive
answer.
Although hAn is usually not used for emphasis, it may express assurance,
e.g. Rakastanhan minä sinua (I do love you).
In questions and requests, hAn generally has a softening effect in some
sense. In a request, as in Avaahan tuo ikkuna, it may convey the idea that a
positive action is expected, maybe even taken for granted. In questions, as
in Onkohan tämä paikka vapaa? (Is this seat free?), there is no such effect;
rather, hAn may make the question sound less intrusive, or it may be
taken just as a “starter”, much like “I wonder if…” in English.
The hAn suf ix can be attached to the irst member of a clause only, except in
poetry. The irst member is not necessarily the irst word; it can be a
combination of words, in which case it is appended to the last one of them.
Example: Tämä uusi tietohan on hyvin yllättävä (This new information is very
surprising).
181. The softening suf ix s
The form Onpas mentioned above contains both the pa suf ix and the s suf ix,
and the latter might be used to soften the statement. Originally, the s suf ix is
a shortened form of the personal pronoun sinä (you), or rather its colloquial
form sä. This origin can still be seen in requests like Tules tänne, which might
be seen as based on Tule sä tänne. In fact, the s suf ix or the pa suf ix or their
combination pas might often be regarded as more or less obligatory for
normal politeness, somewhat like “please” is used in English. A mere Tule
tänne might sound like a direct order.

182. The interrogative suf ix kO

Marking a yes/no question
In any question that expects a yes or no answer, the focus word is marked
with the kO suf ix. The focus word is the one that the question is about. When
the focus word is the predicate, the question is whether the statement is true
or not. Otherwise, the statement is otherwise expected to be true, but the
question is whether it is true even when the focus word is present.
For example, a question that starts with “Do you know…” in English starts
with Tiedätkö,… in Finnish. Here tiedät means “you know”, and it is turned to
the focus word of a question by adding the kö suf ix. Thus, when the kO suf ix
is appended to the predicate of a statement, it turns it to a question “Is it true
that…?”.
When the kO suf ix is appended to a word other than the predicate, the
statement turns to question of the type “Is/was it ... that ...?”. Let us take the
simple statement Liisa osti auton and form different questions by appending
the suf ix to different words: Liisako osti auton? (Was it Liisa who bought a
car?), Ostiko Liisa auton? (Did Liisa buy a car?), and Autonko Liisa osti? (Was it
a car that Liisa bought?). For example, Autonko Liisa osti? more or less
implies that Liisa bought something, and it just asks whether it was a car.
Normally the focus word appears irst in a clause, or at least in the irst
member of a clause. Although it is really the suf ix and not the order that
matters, here other orders would mostly sound odd, or maybe sometimes
poetic. However, small conjunction-like words like siis (so, well) may appear
before the member that has the interrogative suf ix.
Answering yes/no questions
The idiomatic way to answer a yes/no question af irmatively in Finnish is to
use the focus word, with the kO suf ix removed. For example, the af irmative
answer to the question like Ostiko Liisa auton? is Osti. This is described in
detail in Asking and answering questions.

Additional suf ixes

The kO suf ix is often followed by the hAn suf ix, as in Ostikohan Liisa auton?
This is common in speech, to avoid asking a question too abruptly. The hAn
suf ix in this context somewhat corresponds to the English phrase “I wonder
if…”.
Alternatively, the kO suf ix may be followed by the s suf ix. This is common
when asking in 2nd person singular, e.g. Ostitkos sinä auton? (Did you buy a
car), but it may be used otherwise, too. Often such a question more or less
expects the answer to be af irmative and thus asks con irmation for
something that has been heard.

Colloquial form ks
In colloquial language, ks is often used instead of ko or kö, e.g. ostiks instead
of ostiko. Originally, ks is a shortened form of kos or kös, which combines two
word-like pre ixes, and forms like ostikos are also still in use.
When the ks suf ix is appended to a 2nd person singular verb form, the
personal suf ix t is omitted. This means that e.g. ostiks corresponds to both
ostitko and ostiko.
On the other hand, such forms often combine with the personal pronoun
sä (= sinä) after it, so instead of standard Finnish ostitko (or ostitko sinä), one
says ostiksä.

Subordinate questions
A subordinate question (also called indirect question) is a question that is
not actually being aske; instead, the main clause says something about the
question. For example, “I don’t know what to do” contains the subordinate
question “what to do”. In Finnish, we would say En tiedä, mitä tehdä. The
subordinate question is the same as the corresponding real (direct) question,
just written as a subordinate clause and without a question mark. It is always
separated with a comma from the rest of the sentence.
However, for yes/no questions, the situation is different. If a real question
like “Will it rain tomorrow?” is turned to a subordinate question, English
changes the structure: “I don’t know whether it will rain tomorrow” or “I
don’t know if it will rain tomorrow”. Finnish does not change the structure.
The real question would be Sataako huomenna? and the subordinate
question is identical: En tiedä, sataako huomenna.
When the interrogative suf ix kO appears in a subordinate question, it
cannot have the hAn or s suf ix appended to it. It is normal to ask Sataakohan
huomenna?, but it would be ungrammatical to say En tiedä, sataakohan
huomenna.

Mixed question structure

Although Finnish mostly keeps yes/no questions as structurally different
from other questions (see section Asking and answering questions), they can
be mixed in spoken language, especially in some areas. A question like Oletko
mihin aikaan tulossa? starts like a yes/no question, but it also contains the
interrogative pronoun mihin (illative of mikä “what”), and it means the same
as standard Finnish Mihin aikaan olet tulossa? (At what time are you
coming?).

Sentence structure

183. The “free” word order

Word order is often said to be “free” in Finnish. The truth is that one can
often change word order without changing the basic meaning of the
sentence, but the emphasis or side meaning or style typically changes. This
applies primarily to the order of the basic constituents of a sentence:
subject, predicate, and object.
Let us consider an example: the English sentence “Pete loves Anna” and its
Finnish equivalent Pete rakastaa Annaa, where the case suf ix a in Annaa
indicates the grammatical object, no matter what the word order is. We could
put the words of this sentence into any order, still speaking about Pete loving
Anna, but with different purposes and different tones:
Pete rakastaa Annaa. This is the normal word order, the same as in
English.
Annaa Pete rakastaa. This emphasizes the word Annaa: the object of
Pete’s love is Anna, not someone else.
Rakastaa Pete Annaa. This emphasizes the word rakastaa, and such a
sentence might used as a response to some doubt about Pete’s love; so
one might say it corresponds to “Pete does love Anna”.
Pete Annaa rakastaa. This word order might be used, in conjunction with
special stress on Pete in pronunciation, to emphasize that it is Pete and
not someone else who loves Anna.
Annaa rakastaa Pete. This might be used in a context where we mention
some people and tell about each of them who loves them. So this roughly
corresponds to the English sentence “Anna is loved by Pete”.
Rakastaa Annaa Pete. This does not sound like a normal sentence, but it is
understandable.

Adverbials, expressing mode, time, and other circumstances, can be placed

in different places in a sentence, as in English. In Finnish, we can say Eilen
kävin hänen luonaan or Kävin hänen luonaan eilen, just as we can say
“Yesterday I visited him” or “I visited him yesterday”. In Finnish we can even
place the time adverbial eilen (yesterday) right after the predicate: Kävin
eilen hänen luonaan, whereas “I visited yesterday him” would not be
acceptable in English. So in this context, Finnish has more free word order.
This does not mean that the order is irrelevant; it can express emphasis or
tone, or it may be stylistic.
The attributes of a word usually precede it, in Finnish as well as in
English. We say sinun punainen tukkasi, using the same order as in English
“your red hair”. In Finnish, other orders are possible, but poetic. It would be
even more poetic, or just strange, to split phrases e.g. by writing Sinun
muistan tukkasi nyt punaisen instead of the normal Muistan nyt sinun
punaisen tukkasi (I remember now your red hair).
In a sequence of attributes, the longest is usually placed last, especially
in established phrases. This explains why the French motto “Liberté, égalité,
fraternité” is expressed in Finnish with the last two words in the opposite
order: Vapaus, veljeys, tasa-arvoisuus.
184. The normal order subject – verb –
object
Finnish has the same basic word order as English, the SVO order: subject,
verb, object, for example Poikani sai kalan, “My son caught a ish”. It is the
normal, neutral order that does not emphasize any of the words.
If another order is used, for some reason, the case suf ixes usually
distinguish between the subject and the object. For example, in the statement
Matin voitti Pekka, the word Matin is in the genitive and Pekka is in the
nominative, so Pekka is the subject and Matin is the object, i.e. the statement
means “Matti was beaten by Pekka”. The use of this word order instead of the
normal Pekka voitti Matin would be caused by desire to make Matti, who lost,
the theme of the sentence.
However, case forms do not always indicate the subject and the object
unambiguously. In particular, if both the subject and the object are in plural
and a “total” object is used, they are in the same grammatical form. For
example, the sentence Ässät voittivat Jokerit (Ässät beat Jokerit) is
grammatically ambiguous, since both the subject and the object (which are
plurals of nouns used as sports team names, “Aces” and “Jokers”) are in
nominative plural. In such situations, the normal word order is used as a
guideline to decide that the subject comes irst.

185. Presence clauses

Simple presence clauses
A presence clause in the narrow sense says that there is something or
someone present somewhere, e.g. Puutarhassa on kettuja (There are foxes in
the garden). It normally corresponds to a “There is…” or “There are…” clause
in English. The following features are characteristic of presence clauses in
Finnish:
The clause usually starts with an adverbial that describes the context,
typically a place.
The predicate, often on, precedes the subject, deviating from the normal
SVO order.
 The predicate is always in singular, even when subject is in plural, as in
the example.
There are special rules for the cases of the subject. In the example, the
subject kettuja is in partitive plural.
Compare the example with the clause Ketut ovat puutarhassa (The foxes are
in the garden). It refers to some foxes that have been mentioned previously,
and it says something about their current location. In contrast, the presence
clause postulates just the existence of a garden and says that there is
something there, namely some foxes.
When the subject is in singular, only the word order distinguishes a
presence clause from a normal descriptive clause. For example, Puutarhassa
on kettu (There is a fox in the garden) is very different from Kettu on
puutarhassa (The fox is in the garden), which is a statement about a speci ic
fox that has been mentioned.
Presence clauses are usually called “existential” in Finnish grammars. This
is somewhat misleading, since such clauses are not about existence as such—
e.g. not about the existence of foxes but about some foxes being in the garden.
Therefore we will use the term “presence clause” in this book. It refers to a
clause that says that some (unspeci ied) individuals from some set are
present in some situation.

Presence clauses expressing actions

The simplest presence clauses have the predicate on (is), but clauses that also
describe what the subject is doing may be classi ied as presence clauses. For
example, Puistossa leikkii lapsia. means “There are children playing in the
park”. It means the same as Puistossa on lapsia leikkimässä, though the tone
can be slightly different.
In such clauses, the predicate is usually simple, like leikkiä (to play) or
istuskella (to sit around). If the action is expressed in a more complicated
manner, such as pelata jalkapalloa (to play football), the III in initive (mA
in initive) is normally used: Puistossa on lapsia pelaamassa jalkapalloa
(There are children playing football in the park).

Negations of presence clauses

A simple negation of presence is similar to a simple presence clause, just with
the predicate negated the usual way, e.g. Puutarhassa ei ole kettuja. When the
subject is in singular, there is an additional difference: it is in the nominative
in a positive clause, in the partitive in a negative clause, e.g. Puutarhassa on
kettu but Puutarhassa ei ole kettua.

Coming to presence
Clauses indicating that something becomes present somewhere have the
same properties as presence clauses. Examples: Keittiöön tuli hiiri (A mouse
came into the kitchen), Keittiöstä löytyi hiiri (A mouse was found in the
kitchen), and Tästä aiheutui ongelmia (This caused problems; more literally:
of this, problems were caused).

Absence clauses
Clauses that behave grammatically like presence clauses can be used to
express lack of absence or removal. For example, Keittiöstä puuttuu tiskikone
(The kitchen lacks a dishwasher) expresses absence stronger than the simple
negation of a presence clause, Keittiössä ei ole tiskikonetta (There is no
dishwasher in the kitchen). An absence clause may also describe the action of
removal, e.g. Keittiöstä juoksi ulos hiiri (A mouse ran out of the kitchen).

Quantifying presence clauses

Although the subject of a presence clause is essentially inde inite, it can
specify the number of beings that are present, e.g. Puutarhassa on kaksi
kettua (There are two foxes in the garden). Here the subject proper is the
numeral kaksi, in the nominative, and the associated noun is in the partitive
according to general rules for numeral expressions.
A clause like Kettuja on kaksi (The number of foxes is two) can be
classi ied as a presence clause, too. Here the numeral kaksi is grammatically
the subject, so the clause has VS order (verb before subject); the word kettuja
is a predicative.

186. Expressions requiring a non-SVO

order
The following clause types have an order other than SVO order as their basic
order, namely a VS order (a verb and a subject, normally preceded by a
predicative or an adverbial):
Presence clauses, as described in the preceding section, e.g. Keittiössä on
hiiri (There is a mouse in the kitchen). These clauses lack an object, and
they have VS order.
Possessive clauses, corresponding to English clauses with the verb “to
have”. They are similar to presence clauses but also indicate, with the
adessive form (llA suf ix) a person or being that “possesses” the object,
e.g. Minulla on hiiri (I have a mouse). Though minulla in such a statement
is often called “logical subject”, it is grammatically an adverbial.
Possessive clauses containing a noun in the inessive (ssA suf ix). These
clauses do not normally express casual possession but an inherent
relationship of having something as a part, e.g. Makkarassa on kaksi päätä
(A sausage has two ends). These can be characterized as indicating
“permanent presence”.
When answering a yes/no question that has the predicate as the focus
word, with the interrogative kO question, an idiomatic answer starts with
the predicate. Thus, if the subject is also included, the word order is
reversed. Example: Tuliko kirjeeni perille ajoissa? – Tuli se. (Did my letter
arrive in time? Yes it did.) Here the answer could consist of the predicate
tuli (came) alone; but if a subject, here se (it) is included, it is normally
placed after the predicate. However, if the answer starts with kyllä (yes),
normal order is used, e.g. Kyllä se tuli.

187. Deviations from normal order for

emphasis
There are two main reasons for using a word order other than normal in
Finnish: putting the verb or the object irst emphasizes it, and putting the
subject or the verb last indicates it as something new to the reader or the
listener.
For example, Sai poikani kalan emphasizes the predicate. This is typically
used to answer back when some doubt has been presented. Thus, the
sentence repeats something that was said earlier, but in an arguing manner.
The irst word may be additionally emphasized with the pA suf ix: Saipa
poikani kalan. Here the pA suf ix also makes the sentence arguing against an
expressed opinion, not just against assumed doubt.
 Word-like suf ixes like pA have varying usage and need to be interpreted
in context. When appended to a predicate that precedes the subject, they can
express “argumentative emphasis” as described above. More often, however,
they have an special role in making the start of a sentence smoother,
somewhat like a sentence start like “You know,” does in English. It would
sound abrupt to say Sattui aamulla hassu juttu (A funny thing happened in
the morning; literally “Happened in morning funny thing”), but a pA suf ix
makes it normal: Sattuipa aamulla hassu juttu. If the word sattuipa is
pronounced emphatically, the sentence would be arguing; normal
pronunciation makes the sentence a normal statement.
The emphasis expressed by word order is generally not just stress
emphasis. For example, Kalan poikani sai does not simply make kalan more
important; it also carries implications. This sentence implies that my son
caught something and clari ies what he got—for example, a ish, not a boot.
In English, we might say “It was a ish that my son caught”.
Putting the unknown part last typically relates to situations where other
parts of the stament have already been presented. For example, when you
show a ish to someone and perhaps make comments on it, you might add
Kalan sai poikani. Here the ish is assumed to be known, and it was
apparently caught by someone, so the new information is who caught it. In
English we would need to say something like “This ish was caught by my
son.”

188. The “sveticistic” inverted order

In the old times, it was common to put the subject after the predicate in a
sentence that starts with an adverbial, an object, or a subclause. For example,
the Bible translation from the 1930s starts with Alussa loi Jumala taivaan ja
maan (In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth); the current
one, from 1992, starts with Alussa Jumala loi taivaan ja maan.
The inverted order—predicate before subject—was an imitation of the
grammar of Swedish and German. In the 20th century, it was declared as
sveticistic (i.e., being in luenced by the Swedish language) in language guides
and in teaching. It became rare, but this puri ication of the language got
partly overboard. Many people started to think that an inverted word order is
always wrong, or almost always.
 However, there are many situations where an inverted order is better or at
least acceptable. It is normal to use inverted order when the subject refers to
something that has not been mentioned before. For example, Tämän talon
rakensi Jussi (This house was built by Jussi) would change its meaning if the
order were different: Tämän talon Jussi rakensi would mean “This is the
house that Jussi built”. The inverted word order Sodan takia joutuivat
miljoonat ihmiset jättämään kotinsa (Due to the war, millions of people had to
leave their homes) is also normal, even though it is nowadays often avoided
and direct order is used due to the in luence of English.
Inverted word order can also be used for reasons of rhythm and style. In
particular, if the predicate is short, e.g. just on (is), and the subject is long,
inverted order can make the sentence essentially easier to read and
understand. The following example is from the language guide Uusi kieliopas:
the direct order in the main clause in Jos lakiesitys hyväksytään, uusitun
järjestelmän mukaiset korotetut taksat voidaan ottaa heti käyttöön makes the
sentence more dif icult to reader than the inverted order in Jos lakiesitys
hyväksytään, voidaan uusitun järjestelmän mukaiset korotetut taksat ottaa
heti käyttöön (If the bill will be approved, the increased fares of the renewed
system can be taken into use immediately). When the subclause starts with
the predicate voidaan, the structure of the subclause can be understood
earlier.
When inverted word order is used and the predicate contains an auxiliary
verb, only that verb is placed before the subject. Example: Tänään on korkein
oikeus antanut asiasta tuomion (Today the Supreme Court has given a verdict
on the matter). The predicate is the perfect tense form on antanut (has
given), but only the auxiliary verb on is placed before the subject korkein
oikeus.

189. Order of adverbials

Order of adverbials in a clause
The mutual order of adverbials is largely a matter of style and emphasis. The
same applies to the position of adverbials with respect to the predicate. The
basic neutral order puts adverbials after the predicate, e.g. Tapasin hänet
eilen Helsingissä (I met him yesterday in Helsinki).
Order of adverbials related to in initives and
participles
In initive and participle forms of verbs can have adverbials. For example, the
expression tapaamani mies (the man that I met) contains the passive
participle tapaamani, and adverbials can be attached to it: eilen tapaamani
mies (the man that I met yesterday), eilen Helsingissä tapaamani mies (the
man that I met yesterday in Helsinki). That way, a participle can be expanded
to a complicated clause equivalent. In such constructs, the adverbials precede
the verb form. It would be incorrect to write e.g. tapaamani eilen mies.
For example, the words of the sentence Sain tänään kirjeen (I got a letter
today) can, in principle, be put in any order. In contrast, the clause equivalent
tänään saamani kirje (a/the letter that I got today) must have this order,
though in poetic style, the expression kirje, eilen saamani might be possible.
For in initives, the rules are different. The adverbials normally follow the
in initive. For example, Villen tapaaminen eilen Helsingissä (meeting Ville
yesterday in Helsinki) is normal, and it is not even possible to put the
adverbials before the in initive without added words, as in eilen Helsingissä
tapahtunut Villen tapaaminen. Constructs like these often become clumsy,
and subclauses are generally favored instead, especially in speech, e.g. se, että
tapasin Villen eilen Helsingissä (that I met Ville yesterday in Helsinki).
There are additional examples in subsection Word order in clause
equivalents.

190. Order of attributes

Attributes that relate to a noun precede it, e.g. punainen auto (a/the red car).
However, in poetry, the opposite order is rather common. Other exceptions
include epithets of monarchs, e.g. Kaarle Suuri (Charlemagne), Iivana Julma
(Ivan the Terrible).
The mutual order of attributes is normally as shown in the following table.
Type of attribute Example
Pronoun nämä
Genitive Paavon
Numeral kolme
Adjective kaunista
Thus, the order mostly corresponds to the one used in English, except that
English normally uses a trailing “of” expression rather than a genitive
attribute. Thus, nämä Paavon kolme kaunista sisarta would be translated as
“these three beautiful sisters of Paavo”.

191. Marking the object

Need for object marking
The ability to reorder the words of a sentence requires some marking of
some members of a sentence. In the English sentence “Anna loves Pete”, the
word order is essential; the sentence “Pete loves Anna” would have a
different meaning. The Finnish language uses case suf ixes to mark the
object. For the verb rakastaa (to love), the case is the partitive, and we would
say Anna rakastaa Peteä. These words could be put in any order, and the
basic meaning would be the same, though the emphasis and tone may vary.

The four cases for an object

The system of marking the object is somewhat complicated. In Latin, the
subject is always in the nominative and the object is in the accusative. Finnish
lacks a proper accusative, except for a few pronouns, and it uses a total of
three other cases for an object: nominative, genitive, and partitive. Further
confusion is often caused by grammars that call nominative and genitive
collectively “accusative” when used for the object.
The basic rules for the case of an object are:
The partitive is used when the object is “partial”, in the sense of indicating
that the action is or was ongoing or otherwise not completed, e.g. Söin
omenaa (I was eating an apple), Söin omenia (I was eating apples).
The partitive is used with verbs that express feelings and affections, e.g.
Pelkään koiria (I am afraid of dogs), and with many verbs that can be
described as not producing a speci ic result, e.g. Seuraa ohjeita (Follow
the instructions).
The partitive is used when the object denotes an unspeci ied mass of
something or some unspeci ied and inde inite amount of something
(“partial object”), e.g. Söin jäätelöä (I ate ice cream) and Näin joutsenia (I
 saw swans). Compare these with Söin jäätelön (I ate the/an ice cream, i.e.
some portion of ice cream) and Näin joutsenet (I saw the swans, i.e. some
swans that have been discussed), which have a “total” object.
As an exception to the above item, a “partial object” is in the nominative
(or in the accusative if it has such a form), if the predicate is in a 4th
person form or in a 1st or 2nd person imperative form. Examples: omena
syötiin (an/the apple was eaten), syö omena (eat an apple), syökäämme
omena (let us eat an/the apple).
The partitive is used in negative sentences, e.g. En syönyt omenaa (I did
not eat an/the apple), Etkö syönyt omenaa? (Didn’t you eat an/the
apple?).
The nominative is used in a few contexts such as with imperative forms,
e.g. Syö omena! (Eat an/the apple!). This is described later in subsection
Object in nominative.
Otherwise, the object is usually in the genitive when it is singular, in the
nominative when it is plural, e.g. Söin omenan (I ate an/the apple), Söin
omenat (I ate the apples). However, for the personal pronouns and the
interrogative pronoun kuka, the object is in the accusative (if the rules
above do not apply), e.g. Tapasin hänet (I met him/her).
For the verb syödä (to eat), the use of cases of the object can be summarized
as follows, using the verb form söin (I ate/was eating):
Object in singular Object in plural
“Total” object genitive: söin omenan nominative: söin omenat
“Partial” object partitive: söin omenaa partitive: söin omenoita

For the pronouns that have an accusative form, that form is used for a total
object, e.g. näin hänet (I saw him/her), näin heidät (I saw them).
In a question, the object is usually in genitive singular or nominative plural
when it is de inite, e.g. contains the demonstrative pronoun tämä. Examples:
Oletko lukenut tämän kirjan? (Have you read this book?) and Oletko lukenut
nämä kirjat (Have you read these books?). It is possible to use the partitive,
too, but then the meaning or at least the tone changes: Oletko lukenut tätä
kirjaa? expresses doubt and often expects a negative answer, and Oletko
lukenut näitä kirjoja? means “Have you read any of these books?”
The partiality of an object does not exclude the possibility that the action
was completed. Rather, it is often a matter of aspect. We can say kirjoitin
kirjaa even when the book has actually been written now; it largely
corresponds to “I was writing a/the book”, whereas kirjoitin kirjan would
normally be translated as “I wrote a/the book”.

Verbs that require a partitive object

There are many verbs that always take an object in the partitive. Many of
them can be said to express an activity that cannot be brought to completion
(though it can be ended). This includes verbs that describe feelings or
attitudes, e.g. vihata (to hate), miellyttää (to please), and sääliä (to have pity
for). This is why we say rakastan sinua (I love you). However, sometimes such
verbs are exceptionally used to express an idea of an action with a result, e.g.
hän rakasti miehen kuoliaaksi (“she loved the man to death”).
Such affection verbs and many other verbs could be described as
irresultative, i.e. as not producing a speci ic result. They could be described
as inevitably taking a partial object, and the irst rule on the object would
cover them. However, there are also many verbs that always take the
partitive, but cannot be generally characterized as irresultative, e.g. ajatella
(to think), edustaa (to represent), epäillä (to doubt), jatkaa (to continue),
kaivata (to long for), kiinnostaa (to make interested), kiittää (to thank),
onnitella (to congratulate), moittia (to ind fault with), puolustaa (to defend),
seurata (to follow), syyttää (to accuse), tarkoittaa (to mean), uskoa (to
believe someone), verrata (to compare).
For example, we say Hän puolusti Mattia oikeudessa (He defended Matti at
court), even though the defence can be successfully completed. We say Hän
vertasi tuloksia (He/she compared the results), even though this may refer to
a comparison that produces a speci ic result in the form of a report.
It is dif icult to say what these verbs really have in common and how they
differ from other verbs. It might be best to treat this as a lexical issue: some
verbs just take the partitive, and this needs to be learned when learning the
verb, perhaps looking at its description or usage examples in a dictionary.
Sometimes a verb has different meanings so that some of the meanings
require an object in the partitive. The word uskoa is used with the partitive
when the object denotes a person, e.g. Uskon Maijaa (I believe Maija), but it
follows normal object rules otherwise, e.g. Uskon selityksen (I believe the
explanation).
The verb naida means “to marry” in standard language and takes an object
in genitive or accusative or (in plural) in the nominative, e.g. Hän nai nuoren
tytön (He married a young girl). In spoken language, the verb is also used in
vulgar style with an object in the partitive, and then the verb means sexual
intercourse, e.g. Hän nai nuorta tyttöä (He fucked a young girl).

Use of accusative forms

When the object is a personal pronoun (minä, sinä, hän, me, te, he) or the
interrogative pronoun kuka ∼ ken, the accusative (minut, sinut, hänet, meidät,
teidät, heidät, kenet) is used for a total object, e.g. Näin sinut (I saw you) and
He voittivat meidät (They beat us).
For a partial object, the partitive is used as for other words, e.g. En nähnyt
sinua (I did not see you) and He eivät voittaneet meitä (They did not beat us).

Effect of de initeness
In some contexts, the case of an object depends on its de initeness. If I say
Ostan leipää, it means that I will buy some bread, but Ostan leivän means
buying “the bread”. This may mean buying some loaf of bread that has been
discussed, or it may mean all the bread that will be needed on some occasion.
Similarly in plural: Ostan leipiä (I will buy loafs), Ostan leivät (I will buy the
loafs).

Special differences in meaning

For some verbs, the meaning depends on the case of the object. For example,
the verb ampua (to shoot) means shooting at something or someone when
the object is in the partitive, but killing by shooting when the object is in the
genitive (in singular) or in the nominative (in plural):
Hän ampui lintua (He shot at a/the bird)
Hän ampui linnun (He shot a/the bird, killing it)
Hän ampui linnut (He shot the birds)
Such distinctions are lost when the partitive must be used due to the
grammatical rules described above. For example, Hän ampui lintuja can mean
“He shot birds”, but also “He shot at birds”. Similarly, since negation causes
the partitive used, Hän ei ampunut lintua can mean “He did not shoot at a/the
bird”, but also “He did not shoot a/the bird”.

Object in nominative
An object is in the nominative, if any of the following conditions is met:
The verb is in an imperative form or in a 4th person form, the object is in
singular, and the verb is not one that always requires the partitive. For
example, we say Anna omena “Give an/the apple”, whether referring to a
de inite apple or just any apple. (When referring to something de inite, it
is common in speech to use clarifying words, such as a demonstrative
pronoun, e.g. Anna se omena or Anna tuo omena “Give that apple”.) We
also say Omena annettiin kauneimmalle (The apple was given to the most
beautiful). However, verbs that require the partitive do so even in the
imperative, e.g. Usko minua (Believe me!).
The verb is in an imperative form or in a 4th person form and the object
denotes some de inite set. For example, Anna omenat asks for all the
apples in some set implied by the context, whereas Anna omenoita asks
for an unspeci ied amount of apples in general. We say Omenat annettiin
ilmaiseksi (The apples were given for free), referring to a previously
mentioned set of apples, in contrast with Omenoita annettiin ilmaiseksi
(Apples were given for free).
The verb is connected with a modal expression like pitää (must) and the
conditions for a total object are met, e.g. Minun pitää lähettää kirje (I
must send a/the letter) and Minun pitää lähettää kirjeet (I must send the
letters).
The object contains a numeral and a noun and the conditions for a total
object are met, e.g. Söin kolme omenaa (I ate three apples). Here we
interpret kolme omenaa as the object, with the numeral kolme as the
main word, in the nominative, and omenaa as its attribute, appearing in
the partitive. Compare this with the clause Katselin kolmea omenaa (I
was watching at three apples), where the object is partial and the main
word kolmea is thus in the partitive. The numeral yksi (one) is an
exception: when it is used, normal object rules apply, e.g. Söin yhden
omenan (I ate one apple), with the object in the genitive.

Problems with the case of object

In very complicated sentences that contain clause equivalents, even native
speakers have dif iculties in selecting the right form for an object, because it
is partly a matter of arbitrary rules of standard language. The topic is so
dif icult that mistakes in the case of an object are often the only feature that
reveals that Finnish is not the native language of a person who speaks
otherwise perfect Finnish.

Object vs. adverbial

Finnish often expresses the logical object of an action using an adverbial even
when English uses a grammatical object. For example, “You did not answer
the question” has an object, “the question”, but the corresponding Finnish
expressions has an adverbial, in the illative case: Et vastannut kysymykseen.
The verb vastata simply requires the illative when the verb means “to
respond”. Such things are described in dictionaries in entries for verbs. Other
examples:
Pidän sinusta (I like you), using the elative.
Luotan sinuun (I trust you), using the illative.
Nuoli osui maaliin (The arrow hit the target), using the illative.

192. Object-like quanti iers

An adverbial in a case form of an object
In a sentence like Juoksin kilometrin (I ran a kilometer), the expression that
speci ies a quantity could be regarded as an object. Its case form is
determined the same way as the case of an object, e.g. Juostaan kilometri
(Let’s run a kilometer; 4th person, hence the nominative), En juossut
kilometriä (I did not run a kilometer; negative sentence, hence the partitive),
Juoksin useita kilometrejä (I ran several kilometers; inde inite plural, hence
the partitive).
The quantifying expression can also specify time, e.g. Olin siellä viikon (I
was there a week) or number of repetitions, e.g. Tapasimme kolme kertaa (We
met three times). The words kerran (once) and paljon (a lot) are special in
the sense that they are not used in the nominative; the genitive is used
instead of it. Examples: Söin paljon (I ate a lot), Syötiin paljon (A lot was
eaten), En syönyt paljoa (I did not each much).
Although the case rules for the object apply to these expressions, they are
classi ied as adverbials of a special type in grammars. One reason to this is
that they may appear along with a real grammatical object, e.g. Tapasimme
hänet kolme kertaa (We met him/her three times), where hänet is the real
object.

Quantity expression
Normally an object-like quanti ier expresses an amount of length, weight,
money, time, or some other quantity, as in the preceding examples.
Sometimes it expresses an amount less directly, as in Hän itki koko tanssin
(He/she wept through the entire dance). However, it is more natural to make
the expression more clearly quantifying, e.g. Hän itki koko tanssin ajan. Here
the quanti ier is koko tanssin aika, in the genitive form, where aika means
“duration” rather than its most common meaning “time”.

Expressing the amount of change

An object-like quanti ier may also indicate the amount of increase or
decrease, as in Palkka nousi sata euroa (The salary increased by a hundred
euros). The adessive, e.g. sadalla eurolla, is also used in such expressions.
Language guides have often regarded such use of the adessive as foreign
in luence and recommended an object-like quanti ier. However, the opinions
have changed. The use of the adessive is even regarded as the only possibility
or as the better option in some contexts, especially when the predicate
expresses causation and it has a real object, e.g. Palkkaa nostettiin sadalla
eurolla (The salary was raised by a hundred euros) is now preferred over …
sata euroa.
The adessive is also regarded as more natural when the quantity is not a
normal physical or monetary unit but is e.g. henki (person), työntekijä
(worker), or paikka (position; place). It is the only possibility when no unit is
expressed, just a number. Thus, Henkilökunta väheni sadalla hengellä (The
staff decreased by a hundred people) is preferred over Henkilökunta väheni
sata henkeä, and if the word hengellä is omitted, the adessive is the only
possibility. The same applies when the expression relates to a -minen or -Us
noun derived from a verb, e.g. henkilökunnan vähentäminen sadalla hengellä
(decrease of staff by a hundred people).

193. Verbs without grammatical object

Verbs that are intransitive by nature
Verbs that express actions or events that cannot have any particular target
usually do not take a grammatical object at all, i.e. they are intransitive.
Examples: kuolla (to die), pudota (to fall), herätä (to wake up).
Verbs like elää (to live) can be classi ied into this category. Even though
they may be accompanied by an object-like speci ier, e.g. Hän eli pitkän
elämän (He/she lived a long life), such situations might be better analyzed as
containing an object-like quanti ier rather than an object. This was described
in the preceding section.

Verbs that do not use a grammatical object to

specify the target
The verb “to ight” clearly expresses an action with a target, an adversary.
The target can be expressed with an object, e.g. “we fought them”, but also
with a preposition clause, e.g. “we fought against them”. In Finnish, the
corresponding verb taistella cannot have a grammatical object; instead, the
adversary is expressed using the preposition vastaan, with the partitive:
taistelimme heitä vastaan.
Similarly, the verb hyökätä (to attack) does not take an object. Instead, the
postposition kimppuun is used, with the genitive: hyökkäsimme vastustajan
kimppuun (we attacked the enemy). This suggests an attack over an
adversary; in more igurative contexts, the postposition vastaan is normally
used: he hyökkäsivät ehdotusta vastaan (they attacked the proposal).
The verb liittyä (to join, to get connected) does not take an object. Instead,
the postposition seuraan, with the genitive, is used when the target is a
person: Liityin hänen seuraansa (I joined him/her; literally: I joined into
his/her company). When joining a society, the illative is used: Liityin
yhdistykseen (I joined the association).

194. The predicative

The concept and the cases of the predicative
In a sentence like Taivas on sininen (The sky is blue), the last word is called
the predicative instead of the object, since the verb olla (to be) is not
regarding as having an object. The case of the predicative is the nominative,
as in the example above, or the partitive, as in the statement Vesi on kylmää
(The water is cold).
The predicative is in plural, if the subject is in plural form, e.g. Nämä autot
ovat uusia (These cars are new).

Genitive predicative
In addition to normal predicatives, there is also the genitive predicative, as in
Talo on minun (The house is mine). It can be understood as a short form of an
expression like Talo on minun taloni (The house is my house), where the
genitive is an attribute. For this reason, it is natural that the genitive
predicative is in plural according to the number of the “possessor”, not of the
possessed. For example, we say Talot ovat minun (The houses are mine), Talo
on meidän (The house is ours).
If a personal pronoun appears as a genitive predicative, the normal
genitive form is used. Finnish has no distinction such as “yours” versus
“your” in English.

Choice between nominative and partitive

An adjective used as a predicative is in the nominative, e.g. Poika on
surullinen (The boy is sad), unless there is a special reason to use the
partitive, namely one of the following:
The subject is a mass noun, e.g. Alumiini on kevyttä (The aluminium is
light). This applies even when noun refers to some speci ic sample of the
substance, e.g. Kahvi on vahvaa (The coffee is strong). However, when
referring to a speci ic brand, the nominative may be used, e.g. Tämä viini
on nuori ja hedelmäinen (This wine is young and fruity; referring to a
brand being tested).
The subject is a verb in the in initive. In such a construct, the normal
word order is predicate – predicative – subject, e.g. On parasta lähteä (It
is best to leave). In Finnish, the in initive (tavata) is interpreted as the
subject here. Some common adjectives such as hauska, helppo, hyvä, ikävä,
and vaikea are more often used in the nominative in these constructs, e.g.
Oli hauska tavata (It was nice to meet); using the partitive, Oli hauskaa
tavata, is possible, but rare.
 The subject is a subordinate clause, normally an että (that) clause, e.g. On
valitettavaa, että lähdit niin aikaisin (It is unfortunate that you left so
early). The same exceptions apply as for the preceding item, e.g. On hyvä,
että tulit (It is good that you came).
The subject is a name of action, such as kasvaminen or kasvu (growth),
e.g. Talouskasvu oli hidasta (The economic growth was slow). However, if
the subject is regarded as denoting a speci ic process, the nominative is
also possible, e.g. Suhtautuminen on ollut positiivista ∼ positiivinen (The
attitude has been positive). Here the partitive means referring to the way
people have taken attitude, whereas the nominative focuses on people’s
attitudes as a whole.
There is no subject, e.g. Täällä on meluisaa (It is noisy here). However,
when describing the temperature of the air, the nominative is used, e.g.
Täällä on kuuma (It is hot here).
The subject is in plural. This means that the predicative is in plural, too,
e.g. Suomalaiset ovat ujoja (Finns are shy), Nämä kirjat ovat kalliita
(These books are expensive). According to some descriptions, the
nominative is also possible in many expressions of this type (e.g. Nämä
kirjat ovat kalliit), but this is rather theoretical. However, there is a real
exception: the predicative is in the nominative, if the subject is a word
that is always used in plural or has a meaning like “a pair of”, e.g. Tytön
kasvot ovat kauniit (The girl’s face is beautiful), Kengät ovat mustat (The
shoes are black).

When a noun is used as a predicative, it is in the nominative if in singular, but

usually in the partitive if in plural. For example, Hän on tyttäreni (She is my
daughter) but He ovat tyttäriäni (They are my daughters). Similarly, we say
Suomalaiset ovat ujoja (Finns are shy). Foreigners who have learned Finnish
often mistakenly use the nominative (ujot) here, since there does not seem to
be any logical reason for the partitive.
It is also possible to have the subject in singular and the predicative in
partitive plural, e.g. Hän on Maijan tyttäriä (She is one of the daughters of
Maija). This differs in tone from Hän on yksi Maijan tyttäristä, which
emphasizes the “one of” part. These both differ from Hän on Maijan tytär
(She is Maija’s daughter), which does not imply (or deny) the existence of
other daughters.
 The predicative can be in the nominative even in plural, but this changes
the meaning: the predicative then refers to a de inite, known set. For
example, Nämä ovat Maijan tyttäret (These are the daughters of Maija)
means that all daughters of Maija are being referred to, as opposite to Nämä
ovat Maijan tyttäriä (These are daughters of Maija).
The partitive is also used if the predicative is a mass noun, referring to a
substance, such as in Nämä kengät ovat nahkaa (These shoes are made of
leather). The same applies if the subject is a mass noun, e.g. Vesi on kylmää
(The water is cold). Abstract properties and names of actions are also treated
as mass nouns, e.g. Vaikeneminen on kultaa (Silence is golden; literally “Being
silent is gold”). The same applies to demonstrative pronouns when their
meaning is abstract and not a physical entity, e.g. Tämä on hauskaa (This is
fun), but Tämä on älypuhelin (This is a smartphone).
Some nouns can be treated as mass nouns or otherwise. We can say Hänen
elämänsä on vaikeaa (His life is hard) in the partitive, but Hänen elämänsä oli
lyhyt (His life was short), since here elämä does not refer to life in general but
to the duration of a person’s life, lifetime. Similarly, we normally say Tässä on
vettä (Here is [some] water), but when referring to some speci ic amount of
water that has been mentioned, we say Tässä on vesi (Here is the water).

195. Predicative adverbials

As an alternative to a predicative, as in Opettaja on sairas (The teacher is
sick), we can sometimes use a predicative adverbial in Finnish: Opettaja on
sairaana. The use of the essive (-nA case) makes it clear that a temporary
state, not a permanent property, is referred to.
However, most simple expressions of being in a state do not make such
distinctions. For example, we say Olen väsynyt; a predicative adverbial
(väsyneenä) cannot be used here. In addition to a few adjectives like sairas,
nouns in the essive form can be used as predicative adverbials, e.g. Olen täällä
turistina (I am here as a tourist).
In general, a predicative adverbial characterizes the subject, the object, or
an adverbial, often describing temporary state. They can be used with
different verbs. In addition to the essive, predicative adverbials use the
translative (-ksi case), the ablative (-ltA case), or the allative (-lle case).
Examples: Opettaja tuli sairaaksi (The teacher became sick), Tämä leipä
maistuu hyvältä ∼ hyvälle (This bread tastes good).
 Predicative adverbials have special rules for the use of plural, e.g. Kaikki
opettajat ovat nyt sairaana ∼ sairaina (All teachers are sick now).

196. Syntax of causation

Causative verb derivations mostly have the object in the same case form as
for the base verb. For example, we can say Minna korjasi tietokoneen (Minna
repaired the computer) and Jukka korjautti tietokoneen (Jukka had the
computer repaired). In both sentences, tietokoneen is the object, but in the
latter sentence, Jukka did not ix it but had someone else ix it. If we would
like to mention in the latter sentence who actually ixed it, we would use the
adessive (-llA case): Jukka korjautti tietokoneen Minnalla (Jukka had Minna
repair the computer).
However, for some causative verbs, the allative (-lle case) is used instead of
the adessive. This applies to verbs like syöttää and juottaa, from syödä (eat)
and juoda (drink). Thus, we would say Liisa juotti hevoselle vettä (Liisa gave
the horse water). We do not say hevosella here, as we do not think of a horse
as an agent of drinking but rather the recipient of water.
We can also say Liisa juotti hevosen (Liisa let the horse drink, i.e. watered
the horse).

197. Lack of subject

No formal subject
When we say “It is raining” in English, what is this “it”? Well, it is just a formal
subject, used because the English grammar says so. In Finnish, we say simply
Sataa, which is a verb form, corresponding to “rains”. No subject is expressed
or implied, but the verb is still in a personal form, 3rd person singular.
Similarly, in English we say “It is sad that…”, but in Finnish On ikävää, että…,
using the verb form on (is) without a subject. We say “It is warm here”, but in
Finnish it’s just Täällä on lämmintä.
Thus, when a verb expresses an event or state of nature, which is normally
not considered to have an agent of any kind, Finnish simply uses the verb
without a subject.
Somewhat arguably, the verb sataa may have a subject. We can say Sataa
lunta (It is snowing; literally: Rains snow). Here lunta, the partitive of lumi
(snow), can be interpreted as a subject or as an object. In the latter case, the
sentence lacks a subject.
Finnish also uses clauses without a subject to express states of mind or
body. For example, päätäni särkee (I have headache) can be interpreted so
that päätäni (my head; partitive form) is the object, and the predicate särkee
(breaks, hurts) has no subject. Many causative verbs are used this way, e.g.
Minua väsyttää (I am tired).

Presence clauses
In English, presence clauses like “There is an apple on the table” have the
formal construct “there is”, which is somewhat similar to a formal subject. In
Finnish, such constructs are not used, and presence clauses have a different
word order: the thing that is present is mentioned last, as it the new thing:
Pöydällä on omena, literally “on table is apple”. This has the same structure as
an expression for having something; normally the context and meaning
resolve the ambiguity.

Generic subject
There is yet another type of sentences without a subject: those that imply a
generic person, much like English uses the pronoun “you” in a generic
meaning. These are discussed in section Generic statements.

Causative verbs
Verbs that express causation of sensations, feelings, etc., are very often used
without a subject. We can say Minua itkettää (I feel like crying) or simply
Itkettää, implying the object. The verb itkettää is a causative derivation of
itkeä (to cry) and thus means “to make (someone) cry”. It can be used with a
normal subject, expressing what makes someone cry, e.g. Uutinen itketti
minua (The news made me cry). More often, however, the subject is
completely omitted. This does not just avoid mentioning the thing that causes
crying; it also focuses on the effect, someone feeling like crying, rather than
causation.

Subjects implied by verb forms

In literary style, a verb form often implies a subject, e.g. näen (I see) implies
the subject minä. Such sentence do not really lack a subject, they just have it
as implicit.
Somewhat arguably, this applies to 4th person forms like nähdään, too,
though the implied subject is vague.

198. Cases of the subject

Nominative
Normally, the subject is in the nominative, e.g. Lapset leikkivät puistossa (The
children are playing in the park). This is the most common use of the
nominative, but the nominative is used in some other contexts as well.
When the subject is in the nominative and it is placed at the start of the
sentence, it is usually de inite, i.e. we would use the article “the” in English.
Partitive in presence clauses
In a presence clause in a broad sense, the subject is in the partitive, except
when all the following conditions are met:
the subject is in singular
the subject denotes a “countable” thing (something that could appear in
plural, too)
the clause is positive, not negative.
Examples:
Tilalla on hevosia (There are horses in the farm); plural subject
Tilalla on karjaa (There is cattle in the farm); karja (cattle) is treated as
“uncountable”
Tilalla ei ole hevosta (There is no horse in the farm); negative clause
Tilalla on hevonen (There is a horse in the farm); here all the conditions
for using the nominative in a presence clause are met
“Uncountable” things typically express a substance, e.g. Kupissani on teetä, ei
kahvia (There is tea, not coffee, in my cup) and Taskussani on paljon rahaa
(There is a lot of money in my pocket).
In questions asking about presence, the partitive is used even in singular,
e.g. Onko tilalla hevosta? (Is there any horse in the farm?). The question Onko
tilalla hevonen? is possible, too, but has a special meaning: it more or less
implies that there is a horse in the farm, or at least strong evidence on it, and
it expresses surprise about the situation, somewhat like “Oh, is there a horse
in the farm, really?”
Somewhat differently, the question Tuleeko hänestä opettaja is neutral:
“Will he become a teacher?”, whereas Tuleeko hänestä opettajaa expresses
strong doubts about the matter, corresponding to “I wonder if the will ever
become a (real) teacher”. This differs from the preceding type of questions in
being about becoming something, rather than being something.

Genitive in some modal expressions

In some grammars (including Iso suomen kielioppi), expressions like minun
täytyy nyt mennä (I must go now) are analyzed as having the subject, minun,
in the genitive. This may sound natural, but it is more logical to treat them as
subjectless sentences and an expression like minun as an adverbial. Thus, in
the example, minun can be interpreted as meaning “to me”. Note that the
adverbial in genitive, like minun in the example, may be absent, e.g. Nyt täytyy
mennä; this leaves it open (normally to be determined by context) to whom
the statement applies.
There are similar issues with e.g. the verb pitää (must, need) as well as
expressions with on pakko (it is obligatory) and on lupa (it is permitted) and
similar expressions, like on hyvä (it is good/recommended), on paras (it is
best), and on syytä (there is a reason to). Such things are normally described
in good dictionaries in an entry for the verb or (when the expression involves
the verb form on) the adjective or the noun. In expressions like on hyvä, the
verb is always in 3rd person singular form, e.g. meidän on pakko (we have to),
heidän oli pakko (they had to). The reason is that the grammatical subject is
the in initive of a verb, e.g. in miesten oli pakko lähteä (the men had to leave)
the subject is lähteä.

199. Expressions for having something

Lack of a verb for “to have”
Finnish lacks a verb corresponding to “to have” (or “to have got”) in English.
Sometimes the verb omata : omaan (to possess) is used, but it is generally
regarded as substandard style in most situations. The verb omistaa clearly
indicates (legal) ownership and is thus unsuitable for most contexts where
we use “to have” in English.

The X:llä on… construct

The normal way to express a thing like “I have a dog” in Finnish is to use a
construct like minulla on koira. Here minulla is the adessive form of the
pronoun minä (I), on is a form of olla (to be), and the noun koira is in the
nominative. Literally, the sentence could be explained in English as “at me
[there] is [a] dog”.
The predicate is always in 3rd person singular, i.e. on, oli, olisi, lienee, on
ollut, oli ollut, olisi ollut, or lienee ollut, depending on tense and mood.
Example: Heillä on uudet vaatteet (They have new clothes).
The noun Y in an expression like X:llä on Y is regarded as the subject in
most grammars. However, if a personal pronoun appears instead of a noun, it
is in the accusative form: Minulla on sinut. This suggests an interpretation
where the clause has no subject, just a predicate, an object, and at least one
adverbial. Thus, in this special expression type, the verb olla does not have a
predicative but an object.
The case of the noun Y in X:llä on Y is either the partitive or the
nominative, except that instead of the nominative, the accusative is used for
those pronouns that have it. The partitive is used
for mass nouns, e.g. minulla on vettä (I have water)
in negative expressions, e.g. minulla ei ole koiraa (I have no dog)
for nouns in plural when the meaning is inde inite, e.g. minulla on koiria (I
have dogs)
in questions when the meaning is inde inite, e.g. onko sinulla koiraa (do
you have a dog?)
Otherwise, the nominative (or the accusative) is used, e.g.
minulla on koira (I have a dog)
minulla on kaksi koiraa (I have two dogs), where the main word is kaksi
minulla on uudet kengät (I have new shoes)
minulla on Annan liput (I have Anna’s tickets)
The nominative is also used in some negative expressions. In the sentence
Minulla ei ole yhtä hyvä auto kuin sinulla (I do not have as good a car as you
have), the nominative is used because the negation applies to an attribute of
the noun and that attribute expresses comparison. In the sentence Minulla ei
ole lupa puhua siitä (I am not permitted to speak about it), the nominative
lupa is used, because it is part of a phrase on lupa (it is permitted).
This construct is also used in contexts where English has rather different
structure, e.g. minulla on nälkä (I am hungry; literally: I have hunger).
Alternatively, we can say olen nälkäinen, which structurally corresponds to “I
am hungry”, but this is not common, and it would change the style somewhat.
In addition to nälkä (hunger), this structure type is used for jano (thirst),
päänsärky (headache), etc. Example: Onko sinulla jano? (Are you thirsty?).
We also say Minulla on hyvä olo (I’m well; literally: I have good being).

Relevance of word order

In expressions about possession, word order can be more signi icant than in
Finnish in general, changing the meaning completely. The sentence Minulla
on koira corresponds to “I have a dog”, indicating ownership or at least more
or less permanent relation, even though the word form minulla as such
means roughly “in my possession” or “on me”. But the sentence Koira on
minulla refers to some dog, known from the context, and states that he is now
in my possession, under my control—for example, when a dog had been lost
and has now been found, so that we would say “I’ve got the dog” in English.
Some confusion is possible because adessive forms like minulla may also
denote other things. For example, in the statement pihalla on auto the
adessive pihalla of piha (yard) simply denotes location, and the statement
says that there is a car on the yard. But a statement like Pihalla on auto could
also mean “Piha has a car”, where Piha is a person’s name!

Use of X:ssä on… versus X:llä on…

When referring to parts or properties of inanimate things, the inessive is
normally used, e.g. autossa on vain kaksi ovea (the car has only two doors). It
may also be used when the possessor is a living thing. For example, Koiralla
on kirppuja and Koirassa on kirppuja both mean “The dog has leas”, but the
latter has a somewhat different tone: there are leas in the dog.

Use of locational cases about possession

Finnish uses locational cases systematically to express gaining possession,
possessing, and losing possession. Outer cases are used. Examples: Minulle
ostettiin polkupyörä (A bike was bought to me), Minulla on polkupyörä (I have
a bike), Minulta varastettiin polkupyörä (A bike was stolen from me).
Lack of possession is expressed using the ablative in some contexts, e.g.
Minulta puuttuu polkupyörä (I lack a bike).

200. Asking and answering questions

Yes/no questions
In Finnish, a yes/no question has the kO suf ix on some word, which is
normally placed at the start of the sentence. That word can be regarded as
the focus word of the question, as de ined in the description of the kO suf ix.
An af irmative answer to a yes/no question is given idiomatically by
using the focus word without the interrogative suf ix. If the word is a verb, its
person is changed from 2nd to 1st person or vice versa. Thus, you would
answer a question starting with Tiedätkö,… (Do you know…) with Tiedän (I
know), and you would answer the question Autonko Liisa osti? (Was it a car
that Liisa bought) with Auton.
This system means that you really need to listen to what is being asked,
instead of murmuring Kyllä, kultaseni (Yes, darling). It also means that a
discussion where questions are answered positively sounds more varying
than in languages that use just an adverb like “yes” for a positive answer:
– Oletko jo nähnyt elokuvan ”Interstellar”? (Have you already seen the
movie “Interstellar”?)
– Olen. (Yes.)
– Piditkö siitä? (Did you like it?)
– Pidin. (Yes.)
– Suosittelisitko siis sitä minulle? (So would you recommend it to me?)
– Suosittelisin. (Yes.)
However, in common spoken language, such style is rare. Usually just an
af irmative adverb like kyllä or joo is used. It may still be accompanied with
an idiomatic type of answer, in some colloquial form, e.g. Joo, oon mä instead
of Olen. In such expressions, the personal pronoun normally appears after the
predicate.
A negative answer to a yes/no question with the predicate as the focus
word is given idiomatically using the negative form of the predicate or just
the negation verb. If the predicate is in a 1st or 2nd person form, it is changed
to 2nd or 1st person, respectively. Thus, in the dialog example above, the
negative answer to each question would be En ole, En pitänyt, and En
suosittelisi or, shorter, just En to each question.
If the focus word is not the predicate, the shortest negative answer
consists of the word Ei. However, you are normally expected to add
something to it, typically the correct alternative. If the question is Autonko
Liisa osti? and you can answer it negatively, you normally know what Liisa
bought instead, so you can be expected to tell that, e.g. Ei, vaan
moottoripyörän (No, a motorcycle).
Generally, answers to yes/no questions are very often accompanied with
additional information or just additional words, and one-word answer might
be regarded as abrupt, even rude.

Use of kyllä and ei as added adverbs

A positive answer can be accompanied with the word kyllä, which
emphasizes the positiveness of the answer: Tiedän kyllä might be translated
as “Yes, I know well” or “Yes, I do know”. A negative answer may be preceded
by the negation verb, used in an adverb-like manner, always in the 3rd person
singular form in this context, e.g. Ei, en tiedä.

Use of kyllä, ei, and niin as answers

In modern Finnish, the idiomatic answers described above have become less
common. People often answer with just Kyllä or Ei, independently of the form
of the question. Instead of kyllä, the adverb joo or juu is often used in spoken
language, or maybe jep or jees (from English “yes”), or jaa in some contexts
(when voting “yes”).
When the focus word is not the predicate, the word niin is alternatively
used as an af irmative answer, e.g. Huomennako hän tulee? (Is it tomorrow
that he will come?) can be answered with Niin, either alone or as
accompanying the idiomatic answer: Niin, huomenna.
In ill-out forms and similar contexts, the alternatives are typically Kyllä
and Ei. This is so common nowadays that deviating from it might even cause
some confusion. Instead of kyllä, the abbreviation OK (pronounced oo koo) is
used especially in user interfaces of computer programs.
In prose, the old system is still good style, though language authorities
now accept the new style as well. Using Kyllä alone as an answer in a
dialogue may cause ambiguity: in the old system, a mere Kyllä answer is
possible in some contexts, but it may carry a special meaning, when
pronounced with special intonation. For example, with strong raising tone on
the irst syllable, Kyllä expresses astonishment for asking something obvious.

Negative yes/no questions

A question like “Don’t you like garlic?” can be described as a negative yes/no
question. In Finnish, they follow the general pattern of yes/no questions,
with the negation verb as the focus word that gets the kO suf ix, e.g. Etkö pidä
valkosipulista?
Answers are similar to those of other yes/no questions, e.g. En pidä (or
just En) or Pidän.

Choice requests with vai

A question that asks for a choice between two (or more) alternatives using
the conjunction vai looks like a yes/no question, since it has the kO suf ix, e.g.
Tuletko bussilla vai taksilla? (Will you come by bus or by taxi?) Here the
answer is expected to consist of one of the alternatives, e.g. essentially
Bussilla or Taksilla (or maybe e.g. Tulen taksilla).

Other questions
Questions of other types normally start with an interrogative pronoun or
adverb, such as kuka (who), mikä (what, which), millainen (what kind of),
koska (when), or kuinka (how). The answer can be a complete sentence, as in
the following:
– Mitä söit aamiaiseksi? (What did you have for breakfast?)
– Söin voileivän. (I had a sandwich.)

However, conversations like this are common only in language textbooks. We

normally answer with some relevant word or words only. In the example, we
would omit the verb söin (I had, literally: I ate) and say just Voileivän. Note
that the noun is still in the case form that it would have if the answer were a
complete sentence, such as in the genitive (the case of an object) here.
Similarly, the question Missä asut? (Where do you live?) is normally
answered using a place name in an appropriate form, in the inessive or in the
adessive, e.g. Helsingissä or Vantaalla instead of the nominative forms
Helsinki or Vantaa. In language textbooks, you might answer with a complete
sentence, like Asun Helsingissä. In everyday speech, if you ind a mere place
noun as too abrupt, you would say Mä asun Helsingissä.

Connecting questions with entä

The adverb entä can be used at the start of a question, even preceding a word
with the interrogative suf ix kO. It binds the question to a previous question
and its answer, usually a negative answer. In English, you might use “But
what about…” in the same context. An example of a simple dialogue:
Pääsettekö tulemaan lauantaina? (Can you manage to come on Saturday?)
Valitettavasti emme. (Unfortunately not.)
Entä sunnuntaina? (What about Sunday?)
In the example, entä effectively repeats the previous question so that one
part is changed. An entä statement could present a completely new question,
yet related in meaning to the previous one. Example: Entä voisimmeko me
tulla teille? (But could we come to you?)

Use of suf ixes corresponding to “… isn’t it?”

In English, we often use short clauses that are formally questions but in
reality modify a statement, as in “The weather is very nice, isn’t it?” In
Finnish, a structurally similar sentence like Sää on hyvin kaunis, eikö olekin? is
possible but clearly expects an answer; the kin suf ix is here obligatory.
When no answer is expected, a statement with a pA suf ix on the predicate
is often used, e.g. Onpa kaunis sää! or Onpas kaunis sää! Such a statement may
start with the initial particle no: No onpa kaunis sää! Apart from that, the
statement starts with the predicate, e.g. Laulaapa hän kauniisti (He sings
beautifully, doesn’t he?); compare with the normal statement Hän laulaa
kauniisti. In negative statements, the suf ix is appended to the negation verb,
e.g. Eipä se kauan kestänyt (It didn’t last long, did it?).
When the statement mentions something that is expected to be well
known to the listener from experience, the hAn suf ix is used on the irst
word, e.g. Sinähän olet opettaja (You are a teacher, aren’t you).

Questions asking for con irmation

The example Sää on hyvin kaunis, eikö olekin? above illustrates the structure
of question clauses that ask the listener to support the opinion or
observation expressed. The clause eikö olekin is formed from the negative
statement ei ole by adding the question suf ix kO and the word-like suf ix kin.
Note that the “positive” suf ix kin is used here, instead of its normal negative
counterpart kAAn. The expected af irmative answer is On (or, in modern
language, Kyllä), often accompanied with additional words, like On todellakin!
(It indeed is). To express disagreement, the answer needs to explain one’s
own position, e.g. No ei minusta (Well, not in my opinion).
The clause varies by the primary clause, e.g. Tapasimme viime viikolla,
emmekö tavanneetkin? As mentioned above, such formulations request for a
response, as opposite to simple statements like Mehän tapasimme viime
viikolla (which would be a normal translation of English “We met last week,
didn’t we?”). In this example, the short answer Tapasimme would be too
abrupt in most situations; e.g. Niin tapasimme or Tapasimme kyllä is more
normal.
 To ask for a con irmation for a negative statement, we use a clause with
the corresponding positive verb form with the kO suf ix, preceded by the
conjunction vai (or), e.g. Me emme ole ennen käyneet täällä, vai olemmeko?
(We have not been here before, or have we?) The expected answer is Emme
(or, in modern language, Ei). To express disagreement, the answer needs to
be longer and explanatory, e.g. Olemme kyllä, viime vuonna (Oh but we have,
last year).

201. Subclauses
The role of a subclause
A subclause is, by de inition, a constituent of another clause. For example, in
the English sentence “He said that he loves you”, the subclause “that he loves
you” is the object of the main clause “He said …”. The situation is the same in
the Finnish sentence Hän sanoi, että hän rakastaa sinua. Note that in Finnish,
commas are used more often between clauses than in English.

The need for a special device in Finnish

There are differences between languages when English uses a preposition
before a subclause. There is no problem in writing “I inferred it from what I
saw on TV”, where the subclause “what I saw in TV” together with the
preposition ”from” constitutes an adverbial in the main clause “I inferred it
…”.
In Finnish, you cannot use a preposition before a subclause. The
equivalent of “to infer”, päätellä, requires that we use the elative (-stA) case,
which here, as so often, corresponds to “from”. For example, we say Päättelin
sen tästä dokumentista (I inferred it from this document). The problem with a
subclause is that we cannot put an entire clause in a case form. The solution
is to use the pronoun se as a grammatical device, as a word that gets in lected
instead of a subclause that it relates to.

Use of se, mikä

In order to in lect a mikä subclause, we use se, mikä instead of just mikä. By
using different in lected forms of se, like the irregular elative siitä, we can
effectively use a mikä subclause in any case form needed: Päättelin sen siitä,
mitä näin tv:stä.
This way, the word se takes care of being in the grammatical form required
by the main clause. The word mikä is put into the form required by the
structure of the subclause itself, here in the partitive mitä, as needed for the
object.

Other contexts for auxiliary se

The pronoun se is similarly used with other types of subclauses, e.g. in se,
joka and se, että. For example, to express trust in something, we can use the
verb luottaa in Finnish, and it requires the illative case. To express “I trust
that I get my salary tomorrow”, we combine the clauses Luotan and että saan
palkkani huomenna using the illative form of se, i.e. siihen: Luotan siihen, että
saan palkkani huomenna. An example of in lecting an että clause: Tämä
johtui siitä, että talvi oli niin kylmä (This was caused by the fact that the
winter was so cold).

Clause equivalents as an alternative

In literary style, we could often use a clause equivalent instead of a subclause,
e.g. Päättelin sen tv:stä näkemästäni. Here the subclause mitä näin tv:stä has
been replaced by the participial construction tv:stä näkemäni, which can be
in lected. However, this often leads to sentence structures that are more
dif icult to understand.

Required and optional use of auxiliary se

When the sentence context requires a subclause to appear in the
nominative, the use of se is required when the subclause appears at the start
of the sentence.
Se, että tähän rakennettiin tie, vaikutti paljon ratkaisuumme. (The fact
that a road was built here affected a lot on our decision.)
In modern language, se is sometimes omitted (Että tähän vaikutti...), but this
is clearly substandard.
If the subclause appears later, the use of se is optional and mostly a matter
of style. Its use may slightly emphasize the subclause, or it may make the low
of words smoother.
 Ratkaisuumme vaikutti paljon se, että tähän rakennettiin tie.
Ratkaisuumme vaikutti paljon, että tähän rakennettiin tie.
Similar considerations apply to subclauses in contexts where the partitive is
required. This means that a subclause appearing after a main clause may act
in the role of a partitive, even when no partitive suf ix is present. Here the use
of se, in the partitive form sitä, is not common, but possible.
En muistanut, että tänään on vaimoni syntymäpäivä. (I did not remember
that today is my wife’s birthday.)
En muistanut sitä, että tänään on vaimoni syntymäpäivä.
When a subclause appears in the role of an object and the case required is
the genitive, the use of se, in the genitive form sen, is optional. It is mostly
omitted.
Muistatko, että tänään on vaimosi syntymäpäivä? (Do you remember that
today is your wife’s birthday?)
Muistatko sen, että tänään on vaimosi syntymäpäivä?

Poetic features

202. Alliteration
In old Finnish poetry, it is common to use consecutive words that start
similarly. For example, Kalevala, the national epos, starts with the words Vaka
vanha Väinämöinen. This is called alliteration; the Finnish name is alkusointu.
Alliteration can heard in many descriptive phrases that are used even in
everyday language, such as nähdä nälkää (to starve; literally: to see hunger)
and muun muassa (among others). In some combinations, such as such as
hujan hajan (all over the place) and apposen auki (wide open), the irst part
does not mean anything as such and does not appear in any other context; it
is a creation formed just for rhythm and for alliteration. The irst part can
often be described as a word-speci ic intensi ier.
Alliteration is sometimes regarded as a stylistic fault, especially in formal
prose. In Finnish, alliteration is very common in phraseology and in the
formation of new phrases or just casual expressions. However, alliteration
normally appears in two words that relate in meaning, sometimes in three or
even four words. Other types of alliteration may sound less suitable and may
appear as unintended mistakes rather than a nice stylistic device.

203. Reduplication
Alliteration often uses words that are unrelated, just similar in their initial
sounds. However, alliteration is also present in different forms of
reduplication where a word is repeated as such or in different in lected forms
or as derivations.
Phrases that consist of different forms of the same word are often used,
e.g. aika ajoin (from time to time) and päästä päähän (from one end to the
other, literally: from head to head). Lack of prepositions makes such
expressions more alliterative than their English equivalents.
Finnish, like many languages, uses expressions like kuningasten kuningas
(king of kings) and valheiden valhe (lie of lies). This international traditional
type of phrases is in productive use in Finnish especially for names of
properties, such as tyhmyyksien tyhmyys (stupidity of stupidities). The
meaning is normally just emphatic. Although “king of kings” may originally
have been seen as referring to a king (ruler) that rules kings (lower-ranking
rulers), “Song of songs” is just a great song, not a song consisting of songs.
Incidentally, this book of the Bible is called Laulujen laulu (song of songs) in
the modern Finnish translation, but the traditional name is Korkea veisu
(high song).
A similar construct is used for adjectives with the genitive singular, often
written as a compound, e.g. suuren suuri or suurensuuri (very big, “big of
big”), uudenuusi (brand new, “new of new”).
Phrases with stem reduplication, with the same word stem in two
consecutive words, is also common. For example, hän juoksi juoksemistaan
has a form of the verb juosta : juokse- (to run) and its noun derivative
juokseminen : juoksemisen (running), so a very literal translation is “he/she
ran of his/her running” and the meaning is “he kept running”. A longer
version of this phrase type is hän juoksi juoksemasta päästyään, literally “he
ran after getting out of running”.
Other examples of stem reduplication are hyvän hyvyyttään (for the
goodness of his/her heart, literally “of his/her goodness of good)” and
kysymällä kysyin (I intensively asked, literally “by asking I asked”). Generally,
the adessive of the III in initive, used together with another form of a verb,
intensi ies the meaning of that word. There are some exceptional meanings,
too; e.g. tekemällä tehty (“by doing done”) does not simply refer to intensive
doing but to something arti icial, made up.
A more modern, and more colloquial, use of reduplication is the formation
of a compound word by simple repetition. For example, kirjakirja means the
same as kirja (book), but with emphasis on being “a real book” or “a genuine
book”. It might even be used for a printed book as opposite to e-books and
other digital publications, so the reduplication changes the meaning.
Similarly, ruokaruoka might refer to “real food” as opposite to fast food or
snack.

204. Descriptive words

Finnish often uses variation in vowels to express versions and nuances of
descriptive words. For example, both the Finnish verb purskahtaa and the
corresponding English words “spurt” and “squirt” can be heard as imitating
spurting or squirting sounds. Finnish also uses pärskähtää, pirskahtaa, and
porskahtaa in similar meanings, with e.g. so that pirskahtaa refers to smaller
effects—generally, the sound i tends to refer to small things in descriptive
words. Especially in spoken language, you may encounter more variants,
many of which are not in any dictionary but can still be intuitively
understood, partly from their “sound”, partly from their being similar to some
more common descriptive words.
Some descriptive words are clearly onomatopoetic, i.e. they sound like the
thing they stand for, but more often, it is a matter of associations. It requires
some interpretation to hear pärskähtää as sounding like spurting. As the
examples show, different languages have different style for descriptive words.
The English verbs “whizz” and “zip” are descriptive, and so is the Finnish
verb suhahtaa, which means roughly the same, but plays with sounds
differently, so to say.
Due to word in lection, descriptive words in Finnish have parts that are
not descriptive but belong to the grammar, e.g. the personal suf ix in the verb
form suhahta|vat.
Descriptive verbs are often used in colorative constructs: combinations
of a common verb in the I in initive and a descriptive verb in a normally
in lected form. For example, we can say hän käveli kotiin (he walked home),
using just the common verb kävellä, but we can also use the more descriptive
expression hän kävellä löntysti kotiin (he lumbered home). The descriptive
verb löntystää means clumsy, slow walking; there are many other verbs that
mean much the same, like laahustaa, lampsia, köntystää, tallustaa. The
descriptive verb could be used alone, too: hän löntysti kotiin. A colorative
construct paints the picture in steps: it irst uses a common, simple, rather
colorless word like kävellä, then adds color to it using a verb that can be
intuitively understood by its phonetic shape, after you get used to the idea.

205. Poetic language

In poems and songs, the language differs from standard Finnish in several
ways, though unsystematically:
word order very often differs from the normal order, usually without any
speci ic emphasis intended, just for the rhythm
colloquial forms are frequent, e.g. mä instead of minä
in particular, inal vowels are often omitted, e.g. tuoll (often written with
an apostrophe, tuoll’, in old texts) instead of tuolla
rare, old, or dialectal in lected or derived forms are used, especially when
that helps to make the number of syllables suitable, e.g. the genitive plural
kansain instead of the much more common kansojen or the superlative
kaunehin instead of kaunein
words may be used in otherwise different forms, often due to the
requirements of rhythm and phonetic appearance, e.g. oisi instead of olisi,
ma instead of mä, and ompi instead of on
old words are used often; some of them are distinctly poetic now, such as
hurme instead of veri (blood), armas instead of rakas (dear, beloved), and
tuoni instead of kuolema (death).

The following table contains the start of an old melancholic song

(Syyspihlajan alla, “Under the autumn rowan”), the same text in normal prose
style, and an English prose translation.
Song text In prose style Prose translation
Punertaa Pihlajien marjat punertavat Berries of rowans are red
marjat kuin niillä olisi verta. as if there were blood on
pihlajain them.
 kuin verta
niillä ois.
On Kurkiaurat ovat jo The wedges of cranes have
kurkiaurat lentäneet already lown over my head.
lentäneet pois pääni yli.
jo yli pääni
pois.
Mukaansa ei Ne eivät ottaneet minua They did not take me
mua mukaansa kaukaisiin with them to distant lands.
ottaneet maihin.
ne maihin
kaukaisiin.

Saa Siivettömät saavat tyytyä The wingless have to accept

siivettömät kylmän maan kahleisiin. the chains of the cold
tyytyä ground.
maan
kylmän
kahleisiin.

The example demonstrates how the word order can be the most challenging
factor, when you read or listen to poetic Finnish. In the example, the other
deviations from standard Finnish are minor: the old-fashioned plural genitive
pihlajain instead of pihlajien, the colloquial ois instead of olisi, the colloquial
mua instead of minua, the colloquial use of singular verb forms (punertaa, on,
saa) even when the subject is in plural, and the mixed-style ei ottaneet
(instead of standard eivät ottaneet and colloquial ei ottanu).

206. Biblical phrases

Due to long Christian traditions in Finland, biblical phrases are in frequent
use in Finnish, often so that their roots and connections are not known to
many people who use them. The form of the phrases is generally based on
the Bible translation made in the 1930s, rather than the newer (1992)
translation. Both translations are available on the web at
raamattu.uskonkirjat.com, where they can also be compared with some
English and other translations. The new translation also changed the spelling
of some Biblical names, e.g. from Aabel to Abel. The older forms are still much
more widely known.
The form of a Biblical phrase has often undergone some changes; for
example, the phrase heittää helmiä sioille (to throw pearls to swines) does
not appear as such in the Bible; it is based on älkääkä heittäkö helmiänne
sikojen eteen (neither throw your pearls before the swines). Many phrases
are just names that allude to stories of the Bible rather than quotations from
it, e.g. tuhlaajapoika (prodigal son).

Spoken Finnish

207. Characteristics of common spoken

Finnish
By its nature, spoken language varies more than written language. Yet, there
are characteristic features of spoken Finnish that distinguish it from standard
written language. Most of the features described in the sequel have been part
of common spoken language for decades at least in the Helsinki area. The
language of that area is generally used in mass media, and it has affected
spoken language in other areas, too, so that it can even be called common (or
“standard”) spoken Finnish.
In the following descriptions of common spoken language, the arrow “→”
points from the standard written form to a common spoken form. Many of
the phenomena mentioned here are described in more detail elsewhere in
this book.

Pronunciation of voiced stops

Voiced stops g and b (and to some extent d) are pronounced as k and p (and
t), e.g. agentti → akentti. This is perhaps not a particularly colloquial feature:
it is common even when reading aloud text written in standard language.
Shorter forms of words and suf ixes
In the second syllable, a diphthong ending with i loses the i. Examples:
kirjoittaa → kirjottaa, punainen → punanen, sanoi → sano. This takes place
rather systematically, except in plural forms (e.g. in taloille) and in past tense
forms where the i is not inal (e.g. sanoin). The exceptions are
understandable, since in such forms the loss of the i would make plural form
the same as singular and past tense form the same as present tense. A
diphthong in the third or later syllable is retained, e.g. vasaroida.
An a or ä appearing after another short vowel is usually lost as follows:
Usually a short a or ä is lost and the preceding vowel becomes long. E.g.
korkea → korkee, taloa → taloo, poikia → poikii. However, this does not
happen after the irst vowel of a word (e.g. in the word pian) or when the
a or ä belongs to the stem of a noun (e.g. asia), except hopea → hopee,
häpeä → häpee.
However, before the conditional suf ix isi, the a or ä is just lost, with no
lengthening effect, and a diphthong is created, e.g. ha.lu.ai.si → ha.luis
(the dots indicate syllable boundaries here).
A long aa or ää is lost or ä is lost and the preceding vowel becomes long
in the indicative present tense 3rd person singular forms, e.g. haluaa →
haluu.
Partitive forms such as korkeaa are replaced by forms like korkeeta. This
is not based on the standard partitive form; instead, the spoken-language
partitive is formed from the spoken base form korkee, which requires the
ta suf ix due to the long vowel.

Final vowels are often lost, typically in the 2nd person singular possessive
suf ix si (e.g. talosi → talos), in the isi ending of the conditional mood (e.g.
tulisi → tulis), and in the ksi ending (e.g. suureksi → suureks, yksi → yks). In
past tense forms ending with si, the i is often lost (e.g. huusi → huus). The
adessive, elative, and ablative suf ixes may lose their inal vowel (e.g. pihasta
→ pihast, pihalla → pihal, pihalta → pihalt), but this is more of a dialect
feature than common spoken language feature, except for contractions when
followed by a word that begins with a vowel, e.g. minulla on → mullon (mull
on), tästä ei → tästei (täst ei).
Final consonants are often assimilated to the same as the next consonant
or lost (before a vowel or a pause); this is actually boundary gemination. This
is rather regular in basic forms of past participles, ending with t (e.g. sanonut
mitään → sanonum mitään, En ollut! → En ollu!) and common in the suf ixes
kin, kaan, kään, han, hän (e.g. onkin totta → onkit totta).
The inessive suf ix ssa or ssä is usually shortened to ss (e.g. missä → miss).
The double ss here indicates that when followed by a word starting with a
vowel, a double consonant is pronounced, with legato, e.g. miss on is
pronounced misson. When writing spoken language, a spelling like mis is
often used.
The pronouns minä and sinä are shortened so that in is lost (e.g. minä →
mä, minun → mun, sinä → sä).
The pronoun forms tämä, tämän, and nämä are shortened to tää, tän, and
nää.
The pronoun tuo changes: tuo → toi, tuon → ton, tuota → tota etc., nuo →
noi.
The verb stems tule-, mene-, and pane- appear as simpli ied to tuu-, mee-,
and paa- in many forms (e.g. tulen→ tuun, menet → meet, panex → paax). The
consonant combination äe in forms of nähdä is simpli ied to ää (e.g. näet →
näät). The stem ole- of olla is often contracted to oo- in some forms (e.g. olen
→ oon). The form on may even be reduced to o and en to e, especially when
used as a single-word answer.
Many forms of the verb tarvita : tarvitsen (to need) appear as irregularly
changed, e.g. tarvin, tarviin or tartten instead of tarvitsen.

Simpli ied in initives

The illative form of the III in initive is often simpli ied, e.g. puhumaan →
puhuun, olemaan → oleen, katsomaan → katsoon ~ kattoon. This is not just a
shortened form, since the suf ix of the in initive, mA, is missing, and the
illative suf ix is appended directly to the verb stem (like puhu-) and thus
often takes a different form (like un versus an in the standard form).
This does not apply to verbs with a stem of one syllable, e.g. vie|dä :
vie|mään.
The simpli ied form may lack its inal n or have it assimilated, e.g. Tuuk
kattoo (standard: Tule katsomaan), Se alko puhuum mulle (standard: Hän
alkoi puhua minulle).

Shortened numerals
Numerals are often shortened, even strongly, e.g. neljäkymmentäviisi →
nelkytviis. Cardinal numerals generally lose the inal i: yks, kaks, viis, kuus. The
word kymmentä in compound numerals is often shortened to kytä or kyt.
Especially when referring to money, miljoona is often shortened to milli.
In counting, even stronger shortening is common, e.g. yy, kaa, koo, nee, vii,
kuu. Counting may then continue with seittemän, kaheksan, yheksän,
kymmenen, yytoi, kaatoi,…
Instead of the ordinal numerals ensimmäinen and toinen, the words eka
and toka (with no gradation: eka : ekan etc.) are common in speech.

Variation in the interrogative suf ix kO

The interrogative suf ix ko or kö is often replaced by ks (e.g. onko → onks),
and a t before it omitted (e.g. sanotko → sanoks, oletko → ooks). The suf ix
may also be omitted when the personal pronoun sä follows, e.g. oletko → oot
sä (or ootsä), so that a question differs from a statement (sä oot) only by
word order.

Grammatical features
Personal pronouns are used as the subject even in the 1st and 2nd person
(e.g. sanon → mä sanon, voitte → te voitte).
Genitives of personal pronouns are used instead of possessive suf ixes (e.g.
autoni → mun auto) or sometimes in addition to them (e.g. mun autoni).
The 4th person forms are used for verbs instead of 1st person plural (e.g.
tiedämme → me tiedetään).
Instead of 3rd person plural forms of verbs, singular forms are used (e.g.
pojat sanoivat → pojat sanoi or pojat sano).
The pronoun se is used instead of the personal pronoun hän (e.g. Hän
kertoi minulle → Se kerto mulle and hänen kirjansa → sen kirja). Similarly, ne
is used instead of he.

Spoken forms of common words

The descriptions of pronouns (e.g. minä, tämä) in this book show their
common spoken forms, too (e.g., mä, tää). There have been various other
remarks on spoken forms as well, such as the contracted forms of some verbs
(tuun instead of tulen etc.) and numerals. The following table shows a
collection of common small words that often have a different, typically
shorter form in speech. These forms are not accepted in of icial verbal
presentations, but they are normal otherwise.
Literary Common spoken form(s)
esimerkiksi (for example) esmes
että (that, as conjunction) et
itsex (-self) itte x ~ itex
kanssa (with) kans ~ kaa (dialectal)
kiinnix (closed, off) kiix
kuin (as; than) kux
kuinka (how) kuin ~ kuix ~ kui
kun (when) kux
miten (how) mitens ~ mites
mutta (but) mut
nyt (now) nyx
paljon (a lot) paljo
sillä lailla (that way) sillai
sitten (then) sittex ~ sitte ~ sit
takaisin takas
vähän (a little) vähä

Some pairs of words may be read as one word, e.g. ihan kuin → ihankux (just
like), niin kuin → niinkux (“such as”; often used as a ill word), tuota noin →
totanoin ~ totanoi ( ill word), mutta kun → mutkux.
The word mitä (what) can be shortened to tä, but mostly just when used
alone, Tä? This is similar to using the interjection Häh?, i.e. a way to ask
someone to repeat or explain what he just said. A more polite expression for
this is Anteeksi kuinka?

208. Variation in spoken Finnish

The features discussed above are more or less “neutral” in modern Finnish,
even though many of them have their roots in dialects. They can be
characterized as modern urban Finnish, which is also used in dialogs in
literature—except when intentionally describing rural or otherwise local
language.
In contrast, features such as pronouncing the diphthongs ie, uo, yö as iä,
ua, yä (e.g. tua miäs instead of standard tuo mies), though very common in
Western dialects, are markedly substandard in public speech. In some other
dialects, these diphthongs have been changed to long vowels ii, uu, and yy in
some contexts. Such pronunciation is usually recognized as dialectal, but it
often appears as rather neutral in some common words, e.g. tiedän → tiiän.
Features such as ts → tt (e.g. metsä → mettä) depend on the dialect
background of the speaker, though they are common in the verbs etsiä,
katsoa, and viitsiä. The tt here may participate in consonant gradation (e.g.
katsoo → kattoo but katson → katon).
Substitution of d by another sound (e.g. kadun → karun or kavun) is
clearly recognized as a dialect feature. However, omission of d in some
contexts such as kahden → kahen is a common speech feature.
Word-initial consonant clusters are simpli ied to the last consonant by
many speakers, e.g. startata → tartata, treenata → reenata. Outside
communities and contexts where this is common, it may sound uneducated.

209. Dialects of Finnish

The scope of this presentation
This presentation describes some important features of Finnish dialects, in a
coarse classi ication. The main purpose is to help people who read—as
translators or otherwise—dialogs in Finnish literature. Such dialogs do not
usually present genuine dialectal talk but rather a language with some
dialectal features. Local dialects as such would often be too dif icult to
understand well even to native speakers of Finnish from other areas.

The dialect areas

The following map describes the Finnish dialect areas. This presentation
deals with the major areas only and even combining areas 1 and 2 into one.
Map copyright: Institute for the Languages of Finland. CC BY 4.0.
The major dialect areas as described in this presentation are:
1 and 2: Southwestern dialects, lounaismurteet in the broad sense. This
includes the Turku area, where Finnish was created as a written language.
3: Tavastian dialects, hämäläismurteet. The language originally spoken in
the Helsinki area was mainly based on a variant of these dialects.
4: Dialects of Southern Ostrobothnia, Etelä-Pohjanmaan murteet.
5: Dialects of Central and Northern Ostrobothnia, Keski- ja Pohjois-
Pohjanmaan murteet.
6: Dialects of Northernmost Ostrobothnia, Peräpohjolan murteet.
Linguistically, these include meänkieli spoken in Sweden.
7: Savonian dialects, savolaismurteet.
8: Southeastern dialects, kaakkoismurteet. Also called Karelian dialects,
karjalaismurteet, but this term is nowadays seldom used, to avoid
confusion with the Karelian language(s). Most of the population speaking
these dialects had to leave their homes in 1940 and in 1944 and were
scattered around the rest of Finland.

The areas are abstractions. In reality, the occurrence of dialect features varies
greatly and often crosses the borders of the areas. For example, we can say
that the irst person singular pronoun is mie in Eastern dialects and mnää,
mää, minä, or mä in Western dialects, but the areas where each of the form
appears do not match exactly any of the areas in the map.

Eastern vs. Western dialects

Conventionally, the main division of Finnish dialects has been to Eastern
dialects, itämurteet, and Western dialects, länsimurteet. Eastern dialects in
the narrow sense consist of groups 7 and 8, i.e. Savonian and Southeastern
dialects, but groups 5 and 6 have many features in common with them.
The consonant gradation of intervocalic t (as in katu : kadun in standard
Finnish) has often been presented as typical of the division: Eastern dialects
have a loss of consonant or semivowel j or v (e.g. kaun or kavun) whereas
Western dialects have r or l (e.g. karun or kalun). Groups 5 and 6 are Eastern
in this respect. Yet, they are mostly Western e.g. as regards to long vowels aa
and ää in the irst syllable: groups 7 and 8 usually have moa or mua instead
of standard Finnish (and Western) maa.
Eastern and Western dialects have some vocabulary differences, too. The
best-known difference is that most Eastern dialects use the noun vasta,
Western dialects vihta for a sauna bath whisk made of birch twigs. Standard
Finnish accepts both words and has no dialect-neutral alternative. Other
Eastern – Western pairs are ilta – ehtoo (evening), nisu – vehnä (wheat),
paatti – vene (boat), suvi – kesä (summer), and virittää valkea – sytyttää tuli
(set up a ire). For these pairs, old written Finnish used Western words, but
later Eastern words became standard. This explains why such Western words
are now often understood as biblical or poetic and why they appear in
derivations like ehtoollinen (Holy Communion, Lord’s Supper). On the other
hand, for many word pairs, the Western word has remained standard and the
Eastern word is recognized as dialectal or is in special use only.

Notes on the descriptions

The following subsections describe some typical features of each dialect area,
with emphasis on differences from standard Finnish. Expressions of the form
“A → B” are here to be read as “standard Finnish A corresponds to B in the
dialects”, i.e. the arrow points from standard form to dialect form. The
presentation is largely based on the self-study course material Suomen
murteet at the Internetix site; the material includes short samples of dialect
texts.
Some important phenomena have been omitted, since their occurrence
varies greatly even within the areas. For example, words ending with -eA in
standard Finnish have some different form in almost all dialects. Thus, korkea
can be korkee (as in common spoken Finnish) or korkia or, in smaller areas,
korkii, korkki, korkja, or korkie.
Yet another phenomenon not described is that Western dialects often have
a short vowel in the irst syllables in words that Eastern dialects and
standard Finnish have a long vowel, e.g. hiihtää → hihtää, pyyhkiä → pyhkiä.
This varies by word and by dialect. Besides, people may pronounce a half-
long vowel in such words.
In the descriptions, general gemination refers to a phenomenon where a
consonant is doubled between a stressed vowel and a long unstressed vowel
or diphthong, e.g. kesää → kessää, avaimet → avvaimet. Here “stressed”
refers to primary or secondary stress, so the phenomenon also occurs e.g. in
yritetään → yritettään (the third syllable, with e, has secondary stress).

1, 2 Southwestern dialects
The irst syllable, in addition to being stressed as general in Finnish, tends
to have stronger relative strength than in other dialects. This explains
several phonetic changes like loss and shortening of sounds in unstressed
syllables.
d → r, e.g. kadulla → karulla.
ts → tt : t (or tt : tt in some dialects), e.g. metsä → mettä, metsässä →
metässä or mettässä.
uo → ua, e.g. nuori → nuari.
yö → yä, e.g. työ → tyä.
ie → ia or ie, e.g. tieto → tiato, tie → tiä.
i → e when as second vowel of diphthong, e.g. koira → koera.
u → o when as second vowel of diphthong, e.g. nauraa → naora.
y → ö when as second vowel of diphthong, e.g. köyhä → kööhä.
Shortening of long vowels in syllables other than the irst one, often
causing the doubling of the preceding stop (k, p, or t), e.g. kelpaamaan →
kelppaman.
Partitive suf ix often replaced by doubling the consonant k, p, t, or s before
the last vowel, e.g. leipää → leippä.
Double l, m, n, or r often shortened after a long vowel, a diphtong, or an
unstressed syllable, e.g. käännettiin → käänetti, kuollut → kualu,
ymmärrys → ymmärys.
-ssA → -s in inessive suf ix, e.g. maassa → maas.
Half-long pronunciation of a short vowel (denoted here with underlining)
in the second syllable, if the irst syllable is short, e.g. Turussa → Turus.
When writing the dialects, such a vowel is often written with two letters,
e.g. Kyl määki Turuus.
Omission of inal vowel or unstressed vowel inside a word is common, e.g.
palkka → palk, kukkarossa → kukros.
Frequent loss of a inal consonant, e.g. paljon → paljo.
Loss of i as the second component of a diphthong in the second syllable,
e.g. pohjoinen → pohjonen.
Weak grade in consonant gradation before a diphthong ending with i, e.g.
keltainen → kellanen.
Consonant gradation rk : rj and lk : lj before a front vowel, e.g. (härkä :)
härät → härjä.
Original h often preserved after an unstressed syllable, e.g. taloon →
talohon.
 Past tense suf ix i → si or s, e.g. istuin → istusi, sanoi → sanos.
Affected by Swedish more than other dialects are. Some dialects have b, d,
f, and g sounds, and consonant clusters at the start of an old loanword
may have been preserved.

3 Tavastian dialects
d → r or l, e.g. kadulla → karulla or kalulla. Here l used to be typical of
Tavastian dialects, but it has largely lost to r, for prestige reasons.
ts → tt (without consonant gradation), e.g. metsä → mettä, metsässä →
mettässä.
uo → ua, e.g. nuori → nuari.
yö → yä, e.g. työ → tyä.
ie → ia or ie, e.g. tieto → tiato, tie → tiä.
In some dialects, general gemination, e.g. sanoo → sannoo.
Original h often preserved after an unstressed syllable, e.g. taloon →
talohon.
The nk combination is usually not in consonant gradation, e.g. (henki :)
hengen → henken.
Some strongly shortened verb forms like tulex → tux (common spoken
language tuux), panex → pax.
III in initive illative without the in initive suf ix -mA-, e.g. tulemaan →
tuleen.
Pronoun forms like tuo → toi as in common spoken language.
In lection of second person plural pronoun me: meidän → meitin, meitä
→ meittiä etc.
Special imperative-like construct like pas nyt tehren, which would be
panes nyt tehden using standard Finnish form for words and means about
the same as teepäs (a softened form of the imperative tee).

4 Dialects of Southern Ostrobothnia

d → r, e.g. kadulla → karulla.
ts → tt (without consonant gradation), e.g. metsä → mettä, metsässä →
mettässä.
uo → ua, e.g. nuori → nuari.
yö → yä, e.g. työ → tyä.
ie → ia or ie, e.g. tieto → tiato, tie → tiä.
 -ex : -een → -es : -ehen in many nouns (those that originally ended with -
eh), e.g. hamex : hameen → hames : hamehen.
Vowel inserted between consonants in many contexts, e.g. kylmä →
kylymä, kihlat → kihilat.
-ssA → -s in inessive suf ix, e.g. maassa → maas, or → nA in some
contexts, e.g. kädessäni → kärehnäni.
Original h often preserved after an unstressed syllable, e.g. taloon →
talohon.
Vowel sometimes omitted before a preserved h, e.g. otetaan (bases on
older form otetahan)→ otethan.
In syllables other than the irst one, a diphthong ending with i has lost the
i and the remaining vowel has become long, e.g. keltainen → keltaanen (cf.
common spoken language keltanen).
An e at the end of a verb stem has become O when it is long, e.g. tulee →
tuloo.
Special personal suf ixes for 1st and 2nd person plural, with different
suf ixes in present and past tense, e.g. tulemme → tulemma, tulimme →
tulima, tulette → tuletta, tulitte → tulija.

5 Dialects of Central and Northern Ostrobothnia

d → – or j or v or r, e.g. padan → kaulla or kavulla or karulla.
ts → tt : t or tt : t or ht : ht or ht : t or ss, e.g. metsä : metsän → mettä :
mettän or mettä : metän or mehtä : mehtän or mehtä : metän or messä :
messän.
-ssA → -sA in inessive suf ix, e.g. koulussa → koulusa.
Vowel inserted between consonants in many contexts, e.g. kylmä →
kylymä, öljy → ölijy.
In most dialects, general gemination, e.g. sanoo → sannoo, makaa →
makkaa.
The possessive suf ix is -nna in both 1st and 2nd person plural, instead of
standard -mme and -nne, e.g. talomme → talonna, talonne → talonna.
Assimilation of tk to kk in some questions, e.g. oletko sinä → ookkona,
tuletko sinä → tuukkona.

6 Dialects of Northernmost Ostrobothnia

 Original intervocalic h that has been lost in standard Finnish is preserved,
and depending on dialect, the preceding vowel may have been lost and, in
addition, the following vowel may have been prolonged, e.g. taloon →
talohon or talhon or talhoon.
d → – or j or v or r, e.g. kadulla → kaulla or kavulla.
ts → tt : tt , e.g. metsä → mettä, metsässä → mettässä.
General gemination, e.g. sanoo → sannoo.
Double consonants ll, mm, nn, and rr often shortened, especially when
there is a long vowel or a diphthong earlier in the word, e.g. suuremmat
→ suuremat, päälle → pääle, kiinni → kiini, tavallisesti → tavalisesti.
Loss of v between vowels when the latter is u or y, e.g. savu → sau, hyvä →
hyä.
The suf ix -t appended to nominatives of some pronouns: me → met, te →
tet, he → het, ne → net.
3rd person plural suf ix -t instead of -vAt in past tense and conditional,
e.g. antoivat → annoit, antaisivat → antaisit.
2nd person singular possessive suf ix -sti instead of -si, e.g. veljesi →
veljesti.

7 Savonian dialects
d → – or j or v or h, e.g. padan → paan, hidas → hijas, sydän → syvän,
saada → saaha.
ts → ht : t (most widespead) or ss : s or ht : h or ht : ht, e.g. metsä : metsän
→ mehtä : metän or messä : mesän or mehtä : mehän or mehtä : mehtän.
Long vowels aa and ää have become diphthongs oa and eä in the irst
syllable, e.g. maa → moa, pää → peä, in most dialects. In several dialects,
they have further changed to ua and iä.
Many diphthongs ending with i, u, or y have changed their second
component to a more open vowel, possibly turning the diphthong to a
long vowel: ai → ae, oi → oe, äi → äe, au → ao, eu → eo, äy → äö, e.g. laiva
→ laeva, poika → poeka. In Central Savonia, the process has gone farther:
the diphthongs ei, au, ou, öy, äy have turned to long vowels ee, aa, oo, öö,
ää, e.g. leipä → leepä. These changes are very typical of Savonian dialects,
though some of them appear in Southwestern dialects, too.
Vowel inserted between consonants in many contexts, e.g. jalka → jalaka,
silmä → silimä.
General gemination, e.g. sanoo → sannoo.
 Special gemination: a consonant becomes longer before a long vowel or
diphthong, unless the preceding syllable is short and unstressed.
Examples: aikuinen → aekkuune, metsää → mehttää, ollakseen →
ollaksseen. Here the consonant has been written with two letters, but it is
usually only half-long.
Palatalization of consonants, often so that a inal -i has disappeared but in
compensation the consonant before it has been palatalized, e.g. susi → sus
´, koti → kot´, meni → män´, kuori → kuor´, but also paljas → pal´jas.
Palatalization means that in pronunciation, the position of the tongue is
roughly the same as pronouncing Finnish j (English consonantal “y” as in
”yes”). Palatalization is sometimes denoted by an acute accent (´) after a
consonant, as here, or after it, or with an apostrophe (’) after the
consonant. In writing Savonian dialects in newspapers, novels, etc., the
most common notation is probably the letter j, e.g. susj.
The verb mennä has the vowel ä instead of e in most dialects, e.g. mennä
→ männä.
Personal pronouns have special forms in nominative plural: me → myö, te
→ työ, he → hyö.
The past participle suf ix -nUt appears as -nnA (originally an essive form),
e.g. antanut → antanna, saanut → soanna or suanna.
In some dialects, an original word- inal -k has been preserved, e.g. in
imperative forms like otax → otak.
In most dialects, the plural suf ix -i- in most case forms appears as
extended to -lOi-, e.g. taloissa → taloloissa, tytöille → tyttölöille. This
often helps to keep singular and plural separate, as they might otherwise
be similar due to phonetic changes. Note the effect on consonant
gradation: standard Finnish tytöille has weak grade (since a closed
syllable follows), but the Savonian tyttölöille has strong grade (before an
open syllable).
Extensive use of descriptive words, often affective and to be intuitively
understood on the basis of what they sound like, e.g. rötjäke (vague word
with negative associations; cf. standard Finnish descriptive word rutjake,
used about people).

8 Southeastern dialects
These dialects have much in common with Savonian dialects but also some
features of their own, and they lack some Savonian phenomena.
d → – or j or v, e.g. padan → paan, vedän → vejän or veän, sydän → syvän.
ts → ss : ss or tt : t or ht : ht, e.g. metsä : metsän → messä : mesän or mettä :
metän or mehtä : mehtän. Some of these dialects have actually ts as in
standard Finnish, unlike any other dialect!
Long vowels aa and ää have become diphthongs oa and eä in the irst
syllable in some dialects.
General gemination, e.g. sanoo → sannoo.
Suf ix -*t instead of -vAt in present tense 3rd person plural, e.g. tulevat →
tulloot, jättävät → jättäät.
Suf ix -it instead of -vAt in past tense 3rd person plural, e.g. tulivat →
tulliit, jättivät → jättiit.
Palatalization of consonants as in Savonian dialects, e.g. susi → sus´, but
not in all dialects.
The verb mennä has the vowel ä instead of e in most dialects, e.g. mennä
→ männä.
-ssA → -s in inessive suf ix, e.g. maassa → maas or moas.
Personal pronouns minä and sinä are special, e.g. minä : minun : minua →
mie : miun : minnuu. These appear also in many Savonian dialects.
Personal pronouns have special forms in nominative plural: me → myö, te
→ työ, he → hyö.
Possessive suf ixes -ni and -si appear as -in (or -i) and -is, e.g. isäni →
issäin or issäi and isäsi → issäis.
The past participle suf ix -nUt has lost the vowel, e.g. antanut → antant,
saanut → saant or soant.
In most dialects, the plural suf ix -i- in most case forms appears as
extended to -lOi-, e.g. taloissa → taloloissa, tytöille → tyttölöille, as in
Savonian dialects.
Consonant gradation of k in the sk combination, e.g. (koski :) kosken →
kosen.
In initive suf ix -tA and 4th person suf ixes like -tAAn have their t
assimilated after s, e.g. pestä → pessä, juostaan → juossaan ~ juossaa.
Frequent loss of inal vowel, especially A, e.g. yhtenä päivänä → yhten
päivän and suurempi → suuremp.
Special forms like siintä and kotonta instead of siitä and kotoa, and even
using the suf ix -ntA in a case-like manner as a suf ix for “exessive”. These
forms often appear without the inal -A.
 Lack of boundary gemination in some dialects, e.g. tule tänne pronounced
as written, as opposite to standard pronunciation tulet tänne.

Language technology and Finnish

210. Finnish language and localization: a

summary
This information has been compiled mainly for people who make decisions
on localization of software or on translations of texts. They also help people
who implement such decisions. This presentation deals with such features of
Finnish that impose requirements on software design or translation
processes. No previous knowledge about Finnish is assumed here. This
presentation is self-contained and can be read independently. Most items in
this summary are described in more detail elsewhere in this book.

Character repertoire
In addition to the common Latin letters, the letters ä and ö (in uppercase Ä
and Ö) are necessary for Finnish texts. There is no accepted way to replace
them. In situations where they cannot be used, they are usually replaced by a
and o, less often by ae and oe.
The letters š and ž are desirable, as they are part of the of icial
orthography, but in practice (though not of icially) they are often replaced by
sh and zh.

Basic units of texts

A Finnish word may be a compound word and it may contain several suf ixes.
A compound word often corresponds to two or more words in another
language. For example, keskushermosto is “central nervous system”. This
means that an English word, such as “central” or “nervous”, generally cannot
be translated into Finnish without knowing at least some of the context.
 The suf ixes often correspond to prepositions or other small words in
other languages. For example, taloissammekin consists of the base word talo
and four suf ixes (i, ssa, mme, kin) and means “in our houses, too”. Thus, e.g. in
translation from English to Finnish, it is usually necessary to have at least a
few consecutive words to work on, and it is very unrealistic to require “word
to word” translations.
A complete clause (with subject, predicate, etc.) is usually the smallest
feasible unit of translation. When individual words and phrases, such as
menu item texts or button texts, need to be translated, they should be
presented as grouped by context and with suitable explanations.

Word in lection
Finnish has a large number of in lected forms for nouns, adjectives, numerals,
pronouns, and verbs. In general, all the forms cannot be derived from the
basic form alone. Two words may well have the same basic form but different
in lection. Therefore, when storing a word as a vocabulary entry, in lection
information should be stored as part of it.
When translating a word into Finnish, the sentence context is needed for
the selection of a proper form. For example, it is impossible to give a single
translation for the English word form “hats”, since it should be translated as
hattuja when used in an advertisement text like “new hats for sale”, as hattua
when occurring in “I have ive hats”, as hatut when used as a label in a
product catalog, etc.; and the expression “my hats” should be translated as
hattuni.
Word in lection is applied to proper names (including foreign names) and
abbreviations, too, though with some exceptions to normal rules. In
abbreviations, the colon “:” appears before the suf ix, e.g. EU:ssa “in the EU”.
Word division after the colon (as applied by some software) is not acceptable.
If a trade mark symbol is appended to a name, it is placed after the in lected
form, e.g. Coca-Colalla®, Windowsissa™.

Word in lection in software

The in lection of a word is indicated in dictionaries of the Finnish language
such as Kielitoimiston sanakirja. There is an online, machine-readable (XML
format) presentation of in lection, Nykysuomen sanalista, covering 94,100
word entries. It is not of icial, but it has been provided by the Institute for the
Languages of Finland, Kotus..
The use of in lection information requires a lot of code. There are 78
in lection types (counting both noun and verb in lection), and e.g. the
number of different in lection forms for a noun is about 140. In addition,
there are separate rules for modifying the word stem (consonant gradation)
and choice of suf ix variant (vowel harmony). Thus, if an application needs to
generate or recognize just a few in lected forms of a limited set of words, it
can be best to use a table containing just the forms needed for those words,
rather than trying to set up a general in lection algorithm.
There is software available for generating and recognizing in lected forms,
but it can be dif icult to integrate it into other software. There is Joukahainen,
which is a free online vocabulary database, with the ability generate in lected
forms. Voikko is a package of free linguistic software and data for Finnish,
containing a spelling and grammar checker and a hyphenator, with
underlying in lection capabilities. FINTWOL is a morphological analyzer by
Lingsoft.
When patterns such as “from … to …” need to be translated, the translation
process should deal with each pattern as a whole rather than translate just
“from” and “to”. Those prepositions simply have no translations as such in
Finnish; they need to be translated by attaching a suitable suf ix to the next
word. The suf ix depends on the context and on the word, and there may be a
change in the word stem involved. For example, “from Helsinki to Vantaa”
should be translated as Helsingistä Vantaalle and “from Tampere to London”
as Tampereelta Lontooseen.

Spelling, grammar, and style checks

Good spelling and grammar checkers are available for Finnish. However,
in lection of words and compound words make simple, word list based
checking clearly inadequate. Hunspell, the widely used open source spelling
checker, cannot handle Finnish properly either, even though it can deal with
part of the problems. Yet many programs that are advertized as providing
spelling checking for several languages use Hunspell.
The language pack for Finnish in Microsoft Word has an advanced spelling
and grammar checker, with some optional style checks, too. The grammar
and style checks can be con igured; this is little known and poorly
documented, but this book contains a description of the available settings.
 For word processors like LibreOf ice and StarOf ice, the free Voikko
package can be used. It is of good quality and under continuous development.
There is also a web version of the package, Oiko ix.com, which can be used to
check texts via direct input (copy and paste) and to check web pages.
There is also a separate, advanced spelling checker from Lingsoft.
If a spelling checker lets you add words to a custom dictionary, you
probably need to add words to all in lected forms separately. This is not as
bad as it sounds, since typically a word occurs in a text in a few in lected
forms only, and you can add just forms that are actually used in your texts.

Readability measurements
Simple readability measurement indexes for Finnish were developed by
professor Osmo A. Wiio in the 1960s. They have been heavily criticized for
being too technical. However, the main reason why they have not been
commonly used is that code for computing them has not been included in
popular software.
Nowadays, however, the Oiko ix service computes a Wiio index that
predicts the grade level, i.e. number of years of education needed to read the
text. It is based solely on the lengths of words, measured in syllables: the
index is 2.7 + 0.3X, where X is the percentage of long words, with “long”
de ined as consisting of four or more syllables. Thus, if a sequence of 50
words has just one long word (2% of words), the index is 2.7 + 0.3 × 2 = 3.3.
Generally, grade level less than 7 means simple text, 7 to 10 is average text,
and greater than 10 is dif icult.
Of course, actual readability is a very complicated issue. Wiio’s simple
grade level index is just a useful tool for checking that word length does not
make the text excessively dif icult. The limits depend on judgment and on the
purpose and nature of texts. Since the compulsory school education in
Finland is 9 years, we can say that newspaper texts, information given to
general audience on practical matters, and similar texts should be written so
that the index is less than 10.

Hyphenation
Since Finnish words are long in the average and may be very long,
hyphenation is essential to good text formatting. Basic hyphenation is very
simple in Finnish and can be handled algorithmically, without a hyphenation
dictionary. However, compound words and new loanwords cause
considerable extra work and in practice often require manual checking for
perfect results.
Since texts are usually hyphenated fully automatically, incorrect
hyphenations of compound words are common. For typographically
acceptable results, texts to be printed should be proofread at least to check
against such errors, which is relatively fast. For good results, proofreading
needs to pay attention to avoiding incorrect or inferior hyphenation between
vowels (e.g. dividing “kauan” into “kau-” and “an”), since automatic
hyphenators produce such hyphenations. This requires more work and a
proofreader who knows the rules well.

Impact on searching
The importance of word in lection also means that search routines that
simply operate on words as strings are of very limited usefulness for Finnish.
A word may have dozens (even hundreds) of in lected forms. In many
situations, it is more or less suf icient to have the ability to search with
wildcards at the end of a string. For example, “Helsin*”, where “*” is a
wildcard, would ind Helsinki, Helsinkiin, Helsingissä, and all the other
in lected forms.
Google does not support wildcards for referring to words that start with a
given string. Instead, Google makes its own analysis based on the recognition
of some in lected forms, so that if you e.g. search for “Helsinki”, it will also
ind pages where the name appears in other forms only. The details of this
have not been disclosed, but it probably recognizes only relatively frequently
used in lected forms.

Numeric expressions
Expressions like “ ive apples” or “5 apples” pose special problems when
generated programmatically. For English, you can mostly use simple code
that just appends “s” to the noun if the number is not one (1). In Finnish, the
noun must be in a special case form, the partitive, e.g. 5 omenaa versus 1
omena or 5 hevosta versus 1 hevonen. This means that you need a) to store
the partitive forms of all nouns that may appear, in addition to the basic form,
or b) to have a rather complicated algorithm that constructs the partitive
forms.
 If you only store the partitive forms and use them even when the number
is one (e.g., 1 omenaa, 1 hevosta), the result is understandable but odd-
looking and ungrammatical, comparable to a presentation that uses “1
apples” and “1 horses” in English.

Word order
In general, word order cannot be preserved when translating into or from
Finnish. The normal order of parts of a clause is often different from the
order in English. For example, even a simple clause like “A new proposal was
made” must be translated using a different order: Tehtiin uusi esitys, putting
the verb (tehtiin, “was made”) at the start. The reason is that Finnish lacks
articles, and the distinction that English makes by using “a” or “the” must be
made using other means, such as word order.
To take another example, a sentence like “There is a rat in the house”
cannot be reasonably translated so that the order of the words for rat (rotta)
and house (talo) is preserved. The natural Finnish expression is Talossa on
rotta.
Although Finnish is often said to have “free word order”, the order is
signi icant. It just expresses different things than word order in English.
Thus, if a speci ic order is imposed, the meaning or the style may change.
Lengths of expressions
As a rule, the length of a piece of text should be expected to vary greatly when
translated into another language, even doubled or more. For this reason,
ixed width settings on texts should be avoided or set rather liberally. For
example, in user interfaces, a menu item like “Save As” is usually (and
properly) translated into Finnish as Tallenna nimellä.

Abbreviations
When a word needs to be abbreviated, it is cut between a consonant and a
vowel, and a period “.” is appended. For example, the possible abbreviations
of kirjoittanut are k., kirj., kirjoitt., and kirjoittan., though the last one does not
abbreviate much and the irst one is hardly understandable without an
explanation.
In constrast, international identi iers of units, quantities, etc., are written
without periods, e.g. min = minuutti, h = tunti (hour). Following this principle,
abbreviations of units (based on Finnish words, not on international
conventions) are also written without periods, e.g. t = tunti, tlk = tölkki (can).
It has often been proposed that periods be omitted from abbreviations, or
most of them. This has not been accepted by language authorities, but it is an
established practice in the military, where e.g. kenr is used for kenraali
(general), instead of the standard abbreviation kenr. with a period.
An abbreviation normally represents only the stem of a word, and if the
context requires an in lected form, the suf ix is appended so that the period is
replaced by a colon “:”. Thus, for example, the abbreviation s. is commonly
used for sivu (page), but the genitive sivun, when abbreviated, must be
written as s:n.
There is also a set of common abbreviations that differ from the simple
principle. Among them, a few abbreviations of sequences of two more words
are important, such as jne. = ja niin edelleen (and so on), ym. = ynnä
muut/muita (and others), and mm. = muun muassa (among other things).
When reading texts aloud informally, and sometimes in normal speech, these
abbreviations are often spoken by letters, e.g. jii änn ee and yy äm.
Many modern concepts are denoted by initialisms, i.e. by expressions that
take the irst letters of two or more words and use them, often without
periods. In this context, “word” often means a component of a compound
word, too. However, notations vary, and e.g. ALV ∼ alv ∼ alv. are all used and
accepted, for arvonlisävero (value-added tax, VAT). The trend is to use all
lowercase, without any periods (e.g. alv).
There is a large and authoritative list of abbreviations and identi iers used
in Finnish, Lyhenneluettelo by Kotus. However, it cannot cover all
abbreviations, and lists like this tend to be partly outdated (they contain
abbreviations that are no more in use or are used in specialized texts only).
As in other languages, abbreviations are avoided in formal writing.
Newspapers and maganizes may apply the same principle, mainly for
readability, except in technical and scienti ic texts, where identi iers and
abbreviations are often unavoidable.

Capitalization
In the use of capital letters, Finnish generally follows continental European
(e.g. French) tradition rather than English practice. This means that normally
only the irst letter of a sentence (or a sentence-like separate expression) and
the irst letter of each proper noun is in upper case. Derivations of proper
names, such as englanti (English language) and englantilainen (English or
Englishman or Englishwoman), are not treated as proper names.
Capitalizing almost every word in a title of a work, which is common in
English (e.g., “On the Origin of Species”), is de initely incorrect in Finnish.
Capitalizing words for emphasis, as in “Very Important” (Hyvin Tärkeää) is
not normal in Finnish and may make a very childish impression.
If text is written in all upper case, care should be taken to make sure that ä
and ö are capitalized, too.
For business documents, it is a common requirement that some words be
written in all upper case. Typically, the words are company or product names
or terms used in a contract, such as COMPANY and CUSTOMER. Such style
has traditionally not been used in Finnish, and language authorities
recommend against it, but it has become increasingly common.

Collation and sorting

The standard alphabetic order in Finnish is A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q
R S (Š) T U V (W) X Y Z (Ž) Å Ä Ö. Letters in parentheses are treated as
equivalent to the preceding letter. However, it is increasingly common and
now standard to treat W as a letter of its own, placed after V.
 Sorting algorithms designed for English do not sort Finnish words
correctly, since they treat Å, Ä, and Ö as variants of A and O, rather than as
separate letters at the end of the alphabet. This may require careful manual
corrections. On the other hand, sorting tailored for Finnish often treats W as
a variant of V, instead of applying the modern approach.

Punctuation
Finnish uses symmetric quotation marks: ”tekstiä” and (within a quotation)
’tekstiä’. The opening and closing mark are identical and correspond to the
closing mark as used in English, e.g. “text” or ‘text’.

Lack of he/she distinction

Finnish has no separate male or female pronoun. The same pronoun hän is
used for both sexes. This may cause unintended ambiguity in translations. A
common technique to avoid it is to use people’s names instead of pronouns
when needed.

Titles of people
In titles used before names, herra corresponds to “Mr.”, rouva corresponds to
“Mrs.”, and neiti corresponds to “Miss”. There is no word corresponding to
“Ms.”, but the use of rouva and neiti is regarded as outdated by many. This is
somewhat awkward, and it might be safest to use rouva for all adult women.
However, such titles are often avoided in Finnish; a name might be used
without a title. Alternatively, a title describing occupation, education, or
position can be used, e.g. johtaja Virtanen (johtaja means director).
When prompting for personal information, if a title is needed, it is thus
best read as free text input if possible. A menu with alternatives
corresponding to Mr./Mrs./Miss may be regarded as old-fashioned, and the
alternative “Ms.” is untranslateable.

Localization data
Nowadays software industry uses extensively the localization data compiled
in CLDR, Common Locale Data Repository, cldr.unicode.org. It is based on
joint effort of interested parties and directed by the Unicode Consortium.
 To illustrate the idea, consider the localization of a computer program that
contains a menu for selecting a country, among all countries of the world.
Using CLDR, this can often be fully automated so that an extract of CLDR data
is made available to the program, and it can then display any country name in
any language included in CLDR. Even when this is not possible, it is surely
simpler and more reliable to manually copy country names from CLDR into
the program than to have someone try and ind the names from various
sources.
CLDR can help to handle many of the data presentation issues mentioned
in section Notational conventions in Finnish of this book, among other things.
The extent and reliability of data in CLDR varies considerably by language.
For Finnish, the data is extensive and generally reliable, and it has been
composed by the national Kotoistus activity funded by the Ministry of
Education. In addition to data available in CLDR, in the de ined database
format, there are also some prose documents that describe relevant data, in
Finnish, at kotoistus. i/suositukset. It currently includes recommended
names for languages, writing systems, countries and geographic areas, and
currencies.

211. Typing Finnish

The information in this section is intended for anyone who types Finnish
words on a computer, possibly with no prior knowledge about the Finnish
language. The information mainly relates to Microsoft Windows; other
systems have very varying tools for input.

Keyboards
Most keyboards used in Finland are Finnish–Swedish keyboards. The main
difference from US or UK keyboards is the presence of keys for the letters Å,
Ä, and Ö. There is a national standard on keyboards, from year 2008, which
can be characterized as Finnish multilingual keyboard layout. It can be used
on old Finnish–Swedish keyboards, too, and it supports typing most
European languages in a natural way, including the letters š and ž, and also
direct typing of proper punctuation marks, like “smart quotes” and the en
dash (–).
If you need to type Finnish on a normal US keyboard, using Windows,
there are a few alternatives:
 Enable the US-International keyboard layout, which is available as pre-
installed. Using it, AltGr Q produces ä and AltGr P produces ö. Here “AltGr”
denotes the Alt key to the right of the space bar.
Enable the Finnish keyboard layout. You can then use the apostrophe (')
key to produce “ä” and the semicolon (;) key to produce “ö”. There are also
other differences between the physical keyboard and the settings in this
case, so this is not particularly convenient.
Download, install, and enable the Finnish layout for US keyboard,
available from www.cs.tut. i/~jkorpela/ i-us.zip. It uses the “[” and “]”
keys for ”ä” and ”ö”, respectively. To produce “[” and “]”, use these keys
together with the AltGr key.
You can also design your own keyboard layout and implement it using the
free program Microsoft Keyboard Layout Generator, MSKLC. It takes perhaps
15 minutes to learn to use it and then a couple of minutes to implement a
variant of any keyboard layout with some keys assigned to “ä” and “ö”, for
example.

Alt codes
For casual use, such as typing just one Finnish name, you may ind it simpler
to use the Alt codes (on Windows): ä = Alt 0228, ö = Alt 0246, Ä = Alt 0196, Ö
= Alt 0214. Use the left Alt key together with keys in the numeric keypad.

Special codes in Word

In Micorsoft Word, you can alternatively type Ctrl : (press the colon key while
keeping the Ctrl key down) followed by typing “a” and “o” to get “ä” and “ö”,
respectively. This is clumsy but probably easy to remember, since it means
that Ctrl : adds two dots on the next letter.

The importance of language settings

When using a word processor, make sure the language is set to Finnish when
typing Finnish text. This is essential for having spelling checks made properly
if possible, but also for quotation marks. E.g., in Microsoft Word, when the
language is set to Finnish and you type "hei" using the normal way to type
the quotation marks, Word automatically converts the quotation marks as
required by Finnish rules: ”hei”. If the language were set to English, you
would get “hei”, with the opening quote as different from the closing one.
The issue with “-” turning to “–” in Word
Using Word, there is a pitfall with the hyphen “-”. In Finnish, a hyphen may
appear at the start of a word, where it represented an omitted irst part of a
compound. For example, we write syntymäaika ja -paikka instead of the
longer syntymäaika ja syntymäpaikka (date and place of birth). With default
settings, independently of language settings, Word changes the hyphen to an
en dash “–”: syntymäaika ja –paikka. You can immediately ix this with Ctrl+Z
or edit the dash back to a hyphen. You can also prevent such changes by
modifying Word settings.

212. Spelling, grammar, and style checks

How should checkers be used?
Good spelling and grammar checkers are available for Finnish, and letting a
program check your text as you type it or after you have typed it may help a
lot. Some people even let a word processor or other software auto-correct
words. Others may prefer typing undisturbed and check the text separately,
perhaps after all content revision and editing has been completed. This is a
matter of personal preferences and working style.

Available checkers
There are several checkers available, including the following:
Microsoft Word has an advanced spelling and grammar checker, with
some style checking features.
Voikko is free linguistic software for Finnish, including a good spell
checker. It can be integrated into or used in various application programs,
such as
the word processors LibreOf ice and StarOf ice
the Thunderbird e-mail program
the Firefox browser, making it possible to spellcheck e.g. your
contributions to web-based discussion forums
Oiko ix, a web version of Voikko. It can check texts via direct input (copy
and paste, in practice) and also web pages.
Lingsoft Proofreader software, which is used in the Microsoft Word
checker and in other programs, but also available as different other
 solutions. There is an online demo of Lingsoft Proofreader Server, which
lets you use the proofreader in browser-based applications.

The checkers listed above are illustrated below, using the following sample
text, which has two simple misspellings and one grammar error (use of
singular instead of plural):
Ilmaus, jonka mukaan julkiset menot on pian 60 prosenttia
bruttokansantuotteesta, on tarkkaan ottaen virheellinen. Julkiset menot
eivät ole bruttokansantuottteen osa. Tämsällisessä kielenkäytössä olisi
puhuttava julkisten menojen suhteesta bruttokansantuotteeseen.

Microsoft Word
The language pack for Finnish in Microsoft Word has an advanced spelling
and grammar checker, with some style checking features. Its settings are
described in section Style settings for Finnish in Word of this book.
You may have Finnish language support enabled in Word, or you may need
to download and activate it. For instructions on activating the checker, either
“as you type” or as a separate run, consult the documentation of Word, as this
tends to vary from one version to another.
The screen shot below is from Word 2013, English version.

The screen shot illustrates how Word detects both misspellings, one with
three t’s instead of two and one with letters “sm” incorrectly interchanged. It
also suggests the correct spellings when you click on a misspelled word,
though it often shows a list of alternatives.
It does not detect the number congruence error in the irst sentence. In a
simpler sentence, where the incorrect formulation is in a main clause, as in
“Julkiset menot on...”, Word detects this (when con igured to do such
checking) and suggests that “menot on” be corrected to “menot ovat”.

Voikko
Voikko is available from voikko.puimula.org. As mentioned above, it can be
used in different application programs. The screen shot below shows its use
in the Firefox browser (Finnish version), in composing a message to a
discussion forum at WordReference.com. The forum has its own “rich text”
box, but within in, the spelling checks work the same way as in simple text
boxes.

Firefox does not recognize the language of the text being entered. As a user,
you can control its functions by right-clicking on any area where input is
possible and selecting the language from the contex menu. In the example,
you would select Kielet and then the language. The entry Oikolue lets you
select whether spelling checking is enabled.
Voikko detects the same misspellings as Word. It does not detect the
congruence error even if it appears in a simple sentence Julkiset menot on...

Oiko ix
Oiko ix is an online service at Oiko ix.com. The default user interface
language is Finnish, but English can be selected with a button. This makes
American English the default language of the text to be checked, so you need
to select Finnish from a dropdown. In the dropdown menu, “Finnish” means
standard Finnish, general language. You can also select a version of Finnish
with added vocabulary from the natural sciences and medicine and a version
with added vocabulary from dialects and old written language.

Similarly to the use of Oiko ix for analyzing word forms, the user interface is
somewhat special. Instead of irst entering text and then selecting a function,
you need to

irst select function on the left; “Proofread your texts” (Oikolue tekstisi) is
the initial setting, but you may need to click on it if you have used other
functions
then enter text in the text area, typically with cut and paste
and inally activate the checking by clicking on the button “Check
spelling” (Tarkista teksti) above the text area
When you click on a word that Oiko ix has underlined to indicate a potential
problem, it usually shows you one or more suggestions for corrections. Any
corrections you make this way will affect only the copy of your text in the text
area, so to save the corrected text, you need to copy and paste it. Oiko ix also
shows the option “Skip error” (Ohita virhe), which causes the skipping of all
occurrences of this error during the session.
Oiko ix can also check web pages, i.e. it can check just the content, though
it is still not perfect in handling all HTML markup. Click on the button
“Proofread web pages” and enter the URL of the page.

Lingsoft checker
There is an advanced spelling checker available from Lingsoft.

Adding words to a custom dictionary

If a spelling checker lets you add words to a custom dictionary, you probably
need to add words in all in lected forms separately. This is not as bad as it
sounds, since typically a word occurs in a text in a few in lected forms only,
and you can add just forms that you anticipate to be used in your texts.
The frequency of case forms varies greatly, and you might make decisions
based on general information on this. For example, if the word denotes an
abstract concept, you could include just the nominative, genitive, and
partitive forms in singular, at least for a starter.

The vague concept oikoluku

The Finnish noun oikoluku and the corresponding verb oikolukea are used in
varying meanings, with even more variation than the English words
“proofreading” and “to proofread”. Whenever an agreement, legal or informal,
is made about oikoluku, the meaning of the word should be clari ied.
Originally oikoluku means that someone, often the original author,
carefully reads and checks typeset text to see that no text was lost or
distorted in the typesetting process, that word divisions are acceptable, etc.
Nowadays, oikoluku much more often means checking spelling, grammar,
and maybe style. It may well extend to checking the content, perhaps even
focusing on it. In computer software, words like oikolukuohjelma (spellcheck
program) and oikolukutoiminto (spellcheck function) are used, along with
names like kielentarkistus (language checking).
 According to language authorities, the word oikoluku should not be used
at all. Instead, oikaisuluku or korjausluku should be used, in the original
meaning of oikoluku.

213. Typesetting Finnish

Typographic principles
The general principles of typography for Finnish are the same as those for
other languages using the Latin alphabet. However, there are some
specialties, described in this section.
Principles of typography, adapted to Finnish, are presented in Typogra ian
käsikirja. Specialties of digital publishing are described in Verkkojulkaisun
typogra ia.

Long words make hyphenation essential

The main issue in typesetting Finnish texts is usually the need for
hyphenation due to long words. Without hyphenation, you often get
disturbing variation in line length or, if justi ication is applied, disturbingly
large gaps between words.
Finnish hyphenation rules are relatively simple. However, a typesetting
program might lack support to Finnish hyphenation. Moreover, correct
hyphenation of compound words can be dif icult and may require manual
checking and control. The techniques and problems are discussed in the next
section, Hyphenation.

Requirements on fonts
When selecting fonts for texts in Finnish, the most important language-
dependent thing is to make sure that the rendering of ä and ö is acceptable.
They should be manifestly different from a and o, so the dots must not be too
small. On the other hand, the dots should be relatively close to the base
letters and not excessively large; e.g., the Trebuchet MS font has ä and ö as
too prominent to many people’s taste. In addition, letters š and ž should be
available and acceptable.
 Depending on content, other letters can be important, too, as explained in
subsection A closer look at the use of letters in Finnish texts. In particular, if
the text contains Swedish names, the letter å is important. This can be a
problem, because the ring above is dif icult to implement well in font design
(e.g., the å in Verdana is rather grotesque).
The en dash “–” should be clearly wider than the hyphen “-”. In some
fonts, they are of about equal width. The distinction is essential e.g. in book
authorship notations: Virtanen-Lahtinen is one person with a double name,
Virtanen–Lahtinen is two persons.

Spacing
In the following contexts, the space should be non-breaking, i.e. text re low
should never cause the space to be turned to a line break:
number notation using a space as a group separator, e.g. 25 000
quantity notation with a space between a number and a unit identi ier or
abbreviatiob, e.g. 25 €
percentage, e.g. 25 %
indication of omission in a quotation by two dashes with a space
between: – –
In number notations, there are typographic reasons for making the space
narrower than a normal space, e.g. using the thin space character, if possible.
Abbreviations of initials of names are followed by a space in Finnish,
contrary to common English practice, e.g. B. Virtanen, J. K. Paasikivi. There is
no formal recommendation on this, but on typographic grounds, such spaces
should be non-breaking and could be thin.
The methods used to prevent inadequate line breaks vary by the tools of
writing. Quite often, you can use the no-break space character instead of a
normal space.
In date notations like 1.4.2015, no spaces should be used. Small added
spacing after the periods is acceptable and is recommended by typographers.
A closer look at the use of letters in Finnish texts
The letters used in Finnish texts can be classi ied as follows, roughly in
descending order by conventionality and familiarity:
The letters that are needed for writing purely and originally Finnish
words: a, d, e, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, v, y, ä, ö. There is no acceptable
way to dispense with ä and ö in Finnish texts. In particular, the convention
(used in German for example) of replacing them by ae and oe is not
acceptable for Finnish, although this replacement method is generally known
by Finns due to its application in international texts.
Letters that appear often in (relatively new) loanwords: b, f.
Base letters that are conventionally regarded as part of the Finnish
alphabet, yet appear only in words of foreign origin that have preserved their
original spelling and, naturally, in foreign names, and derivations of such
words: c, q, w, x, z, å.
The letters š and ž. They are of icially regarded as part of Finnish
orthography, although they occur relatively rarely and only in loanwords,
foreign names, and their derivations and although they are often omitted
when listing the Finnish alphabet. However, in newspapers, informal texts,
and even in many books, these letters are very often replaced by the letter
pairs sh and zh, respectively.
Letters that appear relatively often in names of foreign origin, their
derivations, or loanwords that have been taken directly from another
language (foreign words). This group is dif icult to specify, but it is probably
adequate to count at least the following letters:
é in names, including Swedish names used in Finland (e.g. Lindén), and
also in foreign words like moiré.
á in names, including Swedish names used in Finland, though less often
(e.g. Collán).
à in the French preposition à, which is sometimes used in Finnish to
indicate a range or a unit price.
ü especially in names and foreign words of German (or Estonian) origin,
including surnames used in Finland, like Schüler.
ñ in foreign (Spanish) words like mañana.
ç sometimes in foreign words like garçon.
ß in German names like Wilhelmstraße; very often replaced by ss.
ë in scienti ic names of organisms, though the dieresis is often omitted.
 The letters æ and ø due to their frequency in Norwegian and Danish
names. Often replaced by ä and ö, respectively.
The letter õ due to its appearance in Estonian names. Often confused with
ö.
Other Latin letters that appear relatively often in names, but hardly in
foreign words. The diacritics used in these letters are omitted far more often
than for the previous group, and readers may fail to notify the diacritics. This
group includes the following Latin letters: ã, í, ó, ú, ý, è, ì, ò, ù, â, ê, î, ô, û, ï, ÿ.
(These are the letters with diacritic that belong to ISO Latin 1 and have not
been listed above. Among these, those commonly used in French and Italian,
such as è, are probably more widely used and recognized than the rest.)
The additional letters used in the Northern Sámi language: č, đ, ŋ, ŧ. They
appear in personal, geographic, and company names in Northern Finland.
Since they are often unavailable in fonts and dif icult to produce on
keyboards, it is common (but not correct) to use simple c, d, n, t instead.
The additional letters used in other Sámi languages spoken in Finland: ʒ
(ezh), ǥ (g with stroke), ǧ (g with caron), k (k with caron), ǯ (ezh with caron).
Letter h (h with caron), which is used in the Romani language as spoken in
Finland. It is rarely used, and fonts often lack it.
The letters ð and þ (used e.g. in Icelandic). They are classi ied as Latin
letters and available in the Latin 1 repertoire, but not widely recognized in
Finland. In Icelandic names, they are often replaced by d (or dh) and th,
respectively.
Combinations of Latin letters a–z with diacritic marks not listed above,
such as ć (c with acute, used e.g. in Croatian). In actual practice in Finland,
these are very often written without the diacritic mark. These, and characters
in the following classes, only appear in proper names and literal quotations.
Among these characters, those that appear in of icial languages of the
European Union (especially Polish, Lithuanian, and Latvian) can be expected
to be, or to become, more common and widely recognized than the rest. The
distinction drawn here between this group and the preceding group is largely
based on technical considerations such as the widespread support to Latin 1
repertoire in software used in Finland.
Other letters classi ied as Latin letters in the broad sense, such as ə (used
in Azeri).
Letters used in non-Latin writing systems, such as Cyrillic or Greek. These
occur basically in scienti ic texts only, mostly in linguistics (in the rare cases
when transliteration or transcription is not used) and in mathematical and
scienti ic notations. The only such letters in common use are the capital
omega Ω, used as the ohm symbol, and the small mu μ, used as micro pre ix
in the international system of units. However, the irst few lowercase letters
of the Greek alphabet, α, β, γ etc., might be seen even in newspaper texts (in
astronomical, chemical, and other terms, e.g. α-tokoferoli = alfatokoferoli).

214. Hyphenation
The nature of Finnish hyphenation
Finnish hyphenation rules are relatively simple, and if a word processor or
other program is reported to support automatic hyphenation for Finnish, it
probably hyphenates most words correctly. However, there are three major
problems:
compound words where the latter part starts with a vowel
division between vowels
new loanwords (and foreign names)
For example, Finnish hyphenation in Microsoft Word sometimes divides a
word between vowels or divides a compound word incorrectly. In contrast,
some programs try to avoid wrong hyphenation of compound words too
eagerly. Thus, some manual tuning may be needed. For high-quality
publications, the inal draft should be proofread to detect wrong
hyphenations.

Basic hyphenation rules

To hyphenate a Finnish word manually, irst consider whether it is a
compound word. If it is, regard the position between the parts as the best
hyphenation point. For example, the word laivamatka (boat trip) is a
compound, and laiva·matka is the best division. Here we use the middle dot
“·” to indicate a permitted word division point.
This analysis requires knowledge about the meanings of words and
therefore sometimes fails in any automatic hyphenation. For example,
autonostaja (car buyer, a person buying a car) is to be analyzed as
auton·ostaja, not as auto·nostaja (although the latter would be an imaginable
compound, too, “car-lifter”). Automatic hyphenation might treat the word as
au·tonos·ta·ja, avoiding incorrect hyphenation, but failing to use the best
hyphenation point, if it cannot decide where the border between the parts is.
This is what the online Webvoikko hyphenator does. In contrast, the online
hyphenator at ushuai.pl produces au-to-nos-ta-ja, an incorrect hyphenation.
Next, ind the syllable breaks in the word or in any component of a
compound word as follows: a break appears before the last consonant in
cluster of consonants (one or more) in any position except the start of a word
(or component). Thus, laiva is divided as lai·va, matka as mat·ka, myrkky
(poison) as myrk·ky and myrsky (storm) as myrs·ky. However, it is never
permitted to separate just one letter of a word to a different line, so e.g. the
word asia has no permitted hyphenation points, even though it has three
syllables, a.si.a.
These rules do not give all syllable breaks, as de ined in conventional
grammars, but they give all acceptable hyphenation points. For example, the
word radiossa (in radio) has the syllable structure ra.di.os.sa, but a division
between vowels (except in a compound at component boundary) is regarded
as more or less unsuitable, so the proper hyphenation analysis is just
ra·dios·sa.
Hyphenation is not based on the division of a word into a stem and
suf ixes. For example, radiossa consists of the stem radio and the suf ix ssa,
but this is ignored in hyphenation.

The rule against breaking between vowels

Hyphenation between vowels is generally forbidden in Finnish typography,
unless the vowels belong to different parts of a compound, as in iso.isä. There
are two reasons to this rule. First, consecutive vowels often belong to the
same syllable, at least in some pronunciations. It would therefore be
inadequate to hyphenate e.g. vapa.udessa. Second, even when there is a
syllable break, such division tends to make reading somewhat less smooth.
In of icial language rules, the rule is not absolute. It is presented as a
recommendation that should be followed as far as possible. The reasonable
interpretation is that the rule shall be followed, except in situations where
breaking it helps to avoid a more serious typographic problem. The exception
mainly applies to special situations in very narrow (e.g. newspaper) columns,
where breaking e.g. asi.oita may help to avoid excessive spacing between
letters for making the column justi ied on both sides.
 In Finnish publications, it is however very common to violate the rule
without such reasons. Automatic hyphenation does not always follow the
rule and manual corrections are often regarded as too expensive and time-
consuming.

Exceptions in loanwords
Loanwords have some exceptions in hyphenation. Especially in older style
and according to old recommendations, they may be divided according to the
structure of the word in the original language. For example, abstrakti might
be divided as abs-trakti (since “abs” is a pre ix in the original Latin word),
and demokratia (democracy) might be divided as demo-kratia (since the
Greek original is a compound word).
Some dictionaries of international words (sivistyssanakirjat) contain
information about hyphenation. It is, however, increasingly common to
hyphenate according to normal Finnish rules, e.g. abst-rakti and demok-ratia.
If the second part of a compound word is a loanword that starts with two
or more consonants, the simple hyphenation algorithm fails. For example, the
simple algorithm analyzes veroprosentti as ve-rop-ro-sent-ti instead of the
correct ve-ro-pro-sent-ti.

215. Speech synthesis and recognition

Due to the mostly regular correspondence between letters and sounds in
Finnish, speech synthesis is relatively simple for Finnish. However, the
correspondence is really between letter and phonemes, and the
pronunciation of a phoneme may vary considerably. For example, if the letter
h is represented by the same sound in all contexts, the result is
understandable, but unnatural. For good results, the synthesis shoukd take
into account the context of a letter.
The most common defect in synthesized Finnish speech—e.g. in the
Acapela online synthesizer—is lack of boundary gemination, e.g. Ota se (Take
it) is pronounced as written and not Otas se, as required by standard
pronunciation. This is understandable, since correct pronunciation requires
understanding of the words and sentence structures, as opposite to simple
conversion of letters to sounds.
Another common problem is that diphthongs are often not pronounced
properly. For example, Kärsämäentie (a compound of the place name
Kärsämäki in genitive and the common noun tie) might be pronounced so
that mä and en are separate syllables. Perhaps the reason is that many
grammars describe words like mäen as twosyllabic, not counting äe as a
diphthong.
Speech recognition is more dif icult than speech synthesis, but it is
managed relatively well in modern technology. You can test it using Google
Voice Input on the Chrome browser, e.g. at www.google.com/?hl= i or at
www.google. i.

216. Automatic translation

Dif iculties in translation
Automatic translation, also known as machine translation, often works rather
well when translating simple prose between languages that are structurally
more or less similar, such as French and Italian or English and German.
Structural differences cause considerable problems, e.g. in translating from
European languages to Korean—or from most European languages to Finnish
or vice versa.
Finnish word forms and compound words cause problems when
translating from Finnish to other languages. A word form often has several
different interpretations as mentioned in section Analyzing a word. The
choice should depend on the context, and it may require understanding the
content. In translation into Finnish, in lected forms need to be generated, but
this is simpler.
In the following, some speci ic translators are tested and compared. Such
software can be under continuous development, so it may well perform
better (or just differently) when tested later.

Google Translate
Despite the problems, automatic translation can be useful even between
Finnish and English or other languages, especially if you know Finnish to
some extent. Let us see what happens if we submit the sample sentence
analyzed earlier in this book to Google Translate:
The translation is not perfect, but understandable. The main problem is that
the translator has not handled the että construct properly: the word “that” is
missing. The reason might be that the translator is too clever. In many
contexts, it is appropriate to have no word corresponding to että in an
English translation—but not here. On the other hand, the translator has
properly used “enter” for kirjoita instead of the simple translation “write”,
and it has translated the word puhelinnumerosi correctly, recognizing the
possessive suf ix si and therefore using the word “your” in English.
If you click on the microphone icon in the box for the Finnish text, Google
Translator will read the sentence, using automatic speech synthesis. The
quality is fairly good. The main problem with it is that it reads kirjoita as
written, instead of properly using boundary gemination (kirjoitap).
The Sunda translator
The Finnish company Sunda has an automatic translator from Finnish to
English and vice versa. It is a commercial product, but it has an online demo
that can be used for short texts. It is in some ways more advanced than
Google Translate. For the sample sentence, it makes somewhat different
mistakes: it produces “If you want to be to you connected, write your
telephone number here.” So it really tries to translate idiomatically instead of
a literal translation, but it is not quite successful. Yet, the result is
understandable.
Let us take a more challenging example: the irst sentence of Seitsemän
veljestä (The seven brothers), the irst realistic novel published in Finnish, by
Aleksis Kivi, irst published in 1870. In a slightly modernized version, the
sentence is: Jukolan talo, eteläisessä Hämeessä, seisoo erään mäen pohjoisella
rinteellä, liki Toukolan kylää. Google Translate says: “Jukola house in southern
Häme, standing on a hill on the northern slope of almost Toukola the village.”
The Sunda translator says: “House of Jukola, in southern Häme one stands on
the northern slope of a hill near village of Toukola.” Both give some idea of
what the sentence says, though both have oddities, too.

The Bing Translator

The translator at www.bing.com/translator/produces a rather good, though
not grammatically quite correct translation from the simple test: “If you want
to, that we will be in touch with you, please enter your phone number here.”
It fails badly with the novel text, because it replaces the proper names
Jukola and Häme with general words, for some odd reason: “Next to the
House, in the South of the province, on the northern slope of a hill, close to
the stands in the Toukola section of the village.”

Word-to-word “translators”
You might encounter “translation programs” that are much more primitive
than those discussed above. At worst, they do not perform any serious
translation but simply substitute words of a language by words of another
language according to a simple dictionary. For reasons that should be obvious
to a reader of this book, this fails miserably for Finnish: in lected forms like
haluat, olemme etc. are not present in any normal dictionary.
 An online “translator” at www.tranexp.com:2000/Translate/result.shtml
gives the following result from our simple test: “If desirous , that purport
yhteydessä thee , essay puhelinnumerosi here.” Yet, “translators” comparable
to that have been used to produce Finnish versions of usage instructions and
other practical texts – apparently nobody who actually knows some Finnish
ever looked at the results.

217. Broken Finnish as a compromise

My irst experience with a car navigator was a simple device that spoke a
limited number of ixed phrases only. This meant that it did not say street
names at all. The next navigator was a pleasant surprise in its ability to say
the names rather well—but at the cost of breaking Finnish grammar. For
example, it says Käänny tielle Vaasankatu, “turn to Vaasankatu”, literally “Turn
to road Vaasankatu”, instead of the correct Käänny Vaasankadulle. The reason
is obvious: implementing in lection of street names would require extra
work, even though only one case form, the allative, would be needed. Since
most languages do not have such problems, in lection was not implemented
in the software.
An expression like tielle Vaasankatu is de initely ungrammatical, but it is
understandable. I must confess that I have used a similar trick in a
localization project: phrases of the form “from A to B”, where A and B are
names of locations, had to be translated as kohteesta A kohteeseen B, instead
of the correct A:sta B:hen.
The Finnish version of Facebook uses the message pattern Tänään on
henkilön NN syntymäpäivä (Today is the birthday of person NN). This is
unnatural, but apparently unavoidable. Using appropriate expressions like
Tänään on Matti Meikäläisen syntymäpäivä would require the ability to form
the genitive of any name, and this would be very dif icult to do completely
correctly, due to irregularities and the possibility of foreign-language names.
Suf ix glossary

218. Notations used in the glossary

This compendium of suf ixes includes in lection suf ixes, possessive suf ixes,
word-like suf ixes, and derivational suf ixes. The following notations are
used:
–A denotes a or ä, depending on vowel harmony

–O denotes o or ö, depending on vowel harmony

–U denotes u or y, depending on vowel harmony

–x (superscript x) indicates boundary gemination (not indicated in normal

writing)
–the bullets “•” separate an example from the short general explanation
before it and comments after it
–the semicolon “:” separates in lected forms of a word

–a suf ix written here with a hyphen “-” after it appears only inside a word,
i.e. before another suf ix
–the arrow “→” indicates that the word after it is derived from the word
before it; e.g. kipu → kipeä means that kipeä is derived from kipu
–the vertical line “|” is in some contexts used to separate a word from a suf ix
for clarity (not used in normal writing)
–a form in parentheses and ending with a hyphen “-” indicates the in lection
stem of the word; e.g., juoda (juo-) means that the stem is juo, as in the
forms juon, juotte etc.
–in the comments, the ellipsis “…” refers to the base word of a derivation

When looking up a suf ix, note that the list is in alphabetic order but
it is in “backwards” order, as in reverse dictionaries, i.e. primarily
according to the last letter, secondarily according to the second last letter,
 etc.
verb suf ixes appear primarily in their in lection stem form, e.g. -Oi-, not
in an in initive form like -OidA as in many other contexts
the front vowels y, ä, ö appear as U, A, O
although some variation in the suf ix by context (allomorphic variation) is
shown and different forms appear as separate entries, this presentation
does not show all the forms that are caused by omission or alteration of a
inal vowel before another suf ix, as in kana → kana|la : kana|lo|i|ssa

219. Using the suf ix glossary

The suf ix glossary is useful to a reader who knows the basics of Finnish.
Without such knowledge, you may need to try many different ways of
analyzing a word and to backtrack to a previous point.
Consider the word jättäisinköhän as an example. If you start from the end
and irst consider whether n alone could be a suf ix here, you need to analyze
whether the rest could be a word, possibly recognizing suf ixes from it, etc.
But if you know Finnish to a suf icient degree, you will irst suspect that hän
could be a suf ix and look it up under -hAn, then consider whether kö (-kO) in
the remaining part might be the fairly common interrogative suf ix, etc., and
you would end up with the analysis jättä|isi|n|kö|hän. Looking up the base
word in a dictionary and the meanings of the suf ixes in this book, you could
then analyze the meaning roughly as “I wonder if I should leave (something
somewhere)”. In this example, even the base word jättä- (in initive jättää) is a
derivation, from jäädä with the suf ix -ttA, but this is an irregular derivation
(due to the shortening of the vowel ää) and dif icult to recognize.

220. The suf ix glossary, in reverse

dictionary order
-x imperative 2nd person singular • juo|da : juo|x • Also used as negation
form, e.g. ei juox.
-A partitive • kala : kalaa.
-A one of the suf ixes for 3rd person singular form in indicative • osta|ax :
osta|a.
-A- : -t- derived verb • kuva → kuva|t|a : kuva|a|n • Usually expresses action
that is typical use for the thing denoted by the base noun or indicates a
change to state expressed by the base noun. These derivations are
contraction verbs.
x
-A I in initive • sanoa (: sano|n).
-Ax one of the suf ixes for 4th person in a negative context in indicative
present tense • osat|ax : osat|ax • Used e.g. in Ei osatax. This variant of the
suf ix coincides with the suf ix of the I in initive.
-kAA imperative 2nd person plural • sano|a : sano|kaa.
-eeraa- : -eerat- verb of foreign origin • briljeerat|a : briljeeraa|n • Adapted
form of a verb ending with “-era” in Swedish, e.g. “briljera”, from French
“briller”.
-dAx I in initive • juoda (: juo|n).
-dAx one of the suf ixes for 4th person in a negative context in indicative
present tense • voi|dax : voi|dax. This variant coincides with the I in initive.
-eA derived adjective or noun • kipu → kipeä • Causes omission of inal vowel
of the base. Often the base is uncertain or does not appear in standard
language. In dialects often -ee or -iA (e.g. kipee, kipiä).
-jA derived noun • puhu|a → puhuja • The base is usually a verb stem. Mostly
indicates a human agent of the action expressed by the verb (very
productive in this meaning), but also used for some devices and in other
meanings. There are also some -jA words probably based on a noun, but
with no clearly identi iable base word, e.g. pihlaja.
-AjA- : -A- derived verb • jyrä- → jyr|ä|tä : jyrä|jä|ä • Partly descriptive verbs
with no apparent base word though e.g. for jyrätä, a theoretical base can
be constructed, since the jyrä- stem appears in other verb derivations too,
e.g. jyrähtää and jyristä. Many verbs are alternative, usually old-fashioned
versions of contraction verbs, e.g. avata : avajaa vs. avata : avaa (to open).
-tsijA noun derived from a verb• isännöi|dä →isännöi|tsijä • Indicates a
human agent that carries out an action, often professionally. In principle,
these words are -jA derivations from verbs like isännöitä : isännöitsen that
have an -itse- suf ix, but such verbs are mostly not used in modern
language; instead, synonymous verbs like isännöidä : isännöin (with the -
Oi- suf ix) are in use.
-kA a suf ix in the nominative and genitive singular forms of a few pronouns •
jo|ka • These are old, special words: joka, kuka, mikä. The suf ix is
invariant; the part before it is in lected, e.g. joka : jonka.
-kä a word-like suf ix appended to the negation verb to mean “and” • ei →
eikä.
-kkA : -kA- derived noun • puna → punakka • Meanings vary considerably.
There is often a vowel change at the end of the base word, e.g. musta →
mustikka, puola → puolukka, Many words ending with -kka are not
derivations but loanwords (e.g. tupakka “tobacco”).
-kkA variant form of a conjunction • eli → elikkä • Only for eli, saati, tai. Does
not change meaning, but may be more emphatic.
-niekka : -nieka- derived noun or compound • äly → älyniekka • Denotes
person. Limited to a few words only. Can be (better) classi ied as a
compound, partly because ie is pronounced as a diphthong.
-nkA : -ngA- derived noun • naama → Naamanka • Place names.
-skA derived noun or adjective • lima → limaska • Base word often not in
modern language or changes irregularly. Also a female suf ix in surnames
in popular language, e.g. Lahtinen → Lahtiska.
-lA derived noun • kana → kanala • Very productive, e.g. kahvi → kahvila,
sairas : sairaan → sairaala. Mostly means “place for …”.
-lAx I in initive • kävellä (: kävele|n)
-lAx one of the suf ixes for 4th person in a negative context in indicative
present tense • tul|lax : tul|lax. This variant coincides with the I in initive.
-llA adessive case • talo : talolla.
-AllA derived adverb • kaikki → kaikkialla • A limited set of words.
Corresponds to the adessive in meaning.
-mAisillA- V in initive • tekemäisilläni • Always with a possessive suf ix.
-mA derived noun; passive participle past tense • kanta|a → kantama • A
noun derived from a verb with -mA usually has a rather specialized
meaning, though in some words, the meaning is close to the meaning of a
participle, e.g. osu|a (to hit) → osuma (hit), and some derivations are
names of actions.
-mA- III in initive • teh|dä : te|kee : teke|mä|ssä : teke|mä|stä : teke|mä|än :
teke|mäl|lä : teke|mät|tä : teke|mä|n.
-lmA derived noun • uni : une|n → unelma.
-nA essive case • talo : talo|na : talo|i|na.
-nA derived noun • haapa → haapana • Many words that may have this
derivational suf ix have no obvious base word. When the base is a verb
(usually a descriptive verb), the derivation is a name of action, e.g. kirku|a
 → kirku|na. When the verb stem has an ise part, the sounds se are
dropped, e.g. hälis|tä : hälise|n → häli|nä.
-nAx I in initive • pan|na (: pane|n).
-nAx one of the suf ixes for 4th person in a negative context in indicative
present tense • pan|nax : pan|nax • This variant coincides with the I
in initive.
-nna derived noun or part of a loanword • keisari → keisarinna • A female
suf ix, of limited use. Mostly part of a loanword (cf. Swedish “kejsarinna”),
-pA a word-like suf ix (enclitic particle) • minä → minäpä.
-pA : -vA- derived noun • syö|dä → syö|pä • Historically a variant of the
participle suf ix -vA. Occurs in some words, which have specialized
meanings.
-rA derived noun • kama → kamara • Base word often does not exist as
separate word.
-rAx I in initive • pur|ra (: pure|n).
-rAx one of the suf ixes for 4th person in a negative context in indicative
present tense • pur|rax : pur|rax. This variant coincides with the I
in initive.
-sA derived adjective or noun • nopea → nop|sa • Only few words. Causes
irregular changes in the base word.
-isA derived adjective (or noun) • kala → kalaisa • Productive. Typically
means “full of…” or “rich in...”.
-nsAx possessive suf ix for the 3rd person • talo : talo|nsa.
-ssA inessive case • talo : talossa.
-tsa derived noun • vaski → vaskitsa • Only in a few words.
-tA partitive case • radio : radio|ta.
-tA- : -ta- / -dA- / -A- / -lA- / -na- / -ra- derived verb • hidas : hidas|ta|a •
One of the most common verb derivation suf ixes. When based on a noun,
often means “to make (more) …”. These derivations are partly irregular,
e.g. hidastaa is based on the nominative and not the noun stem hitaa-, and
säveltää is based on the consonant stem of sävel : sävele-. The exceptional-
looking variation of the suf ix in many verbs is caused by consonant
gradation, e.g. sävel|tä|ä : sävel|lä|n.
-tAx I in initive • vara|ta (: varaa|n).
-tAx one of the suf ixes for 4th person in a negative context in indicative
present tense • sano|ax : sano|tax. This form often coincides with the I
 in initive, e.g. juos|tax : juos|tax.
-AhtA- : -AhdA- derived verb • seiso|a → seis|ahta|a : seis|ahda|n • Typically
the meaning is momentaneous, i.e. it expresses that an action starts, often
to be terminated shortly. Some words of this type are descriptive verbs
with no apparent base word. The inal vowel of the stem is omitted.
-ltA ablative case • talo : talolta.
-AltA derived adverb • kaikki → kaikkialta • A limited set of words.
Corresponds to the ablative in meaning.
-AltA- : -AllA- derived verb • paina|a → pain|alta|a : pain|alla|n • In many
derivations the meaning is momentaneous, but the most common verbs of
this type have different meanings, e.g. uskaltaa (to dare) from uskoa (to
believe).The inal vowel of the stem is omitted.
-ntA : -nnA- derived noun • liittä|ä : liitä|n → liitä|ntä • Usually a name of
action based on a verb, though some derivations have specialized
meanings, e.g. kysyntä (demand) from kysyä (to ask). Among derivations
based on nouns, only in the words isäntä and emäntä and in some place
names are in use.
-ntA- : -nnA- verb derived from a noun or an adjective • suomi : suome|n →
suome|nta|a : suome|nna|n • Often means “to produce…” or “to cause…”.
Can be used to derive verbs meaning “to translate into” from language
names, e.g. englannintaa, italiantaa etc., though these are not used much,
except for suomentaa—more often one says kääntää englanniksi etc.
-läntä derived adjective • lyhyt : lyhyen → lyhyenläntä • Indicates a moderate
amount of a property; formed from a limited set of adjectives. The base is
usually in the genitive form, and vowel harmony does not apply (e.g.
suurenläntä), so these words could also be classi ied as compounds.
-rtA- : -rrA- derived verb • sini : sine|n → sine|rtä|ä : sine|rrä|n • When the
base word is a color or pigment name, means being of that color, at least to
some extent. Other verbs that seem to have this suf ix mostly lack obvious
base word and may be descriptive verbs.
-stA elative case • talo : talosta.
-stA derived noun • keski- → kesku|sta • Mostly mean locations or parts.
-stA- derived verb • kala → kala|sta|a • Often means “to
catch/hunt/collect…”. Derivations like ketustaa (to hunt foxes), from kettu
: ketun (fox), are old popular language and still in some use, but often not
listed in normal dictionaries. Some derivations are based on a verb, e.g.
asustaa from asua.
-istA- derived verb • uusi : uude|n → uud|ista|a • Usually means “to make
(something) …”, but possibly iguratively, e.g. uudistaa, from uusi (new),
means “to reform”.
-ttA- : -tA- derived verb • syö|dä → syö|ttä|ä : syö|tä|n • Very productive.
When the base is a verb, the meaning is usually causative. The meaning
may also be similar to that of the base verb, often more intensive,
sometimes just a synonym, e.g. for koske|a : koske|tta|a → koske|ta|n (to
touch). When the base is a noun, meanings vary, e.g. verottaa (to tax) from
vero (tax), kouluttaa (to give education to; to train) from koulu (school).
-ttA abessive form • raha → rahatta • Rare, except in III in initives like
luke|ma|tta.
-ttA : -tA- derived noun • nauta → navetta • In standard language, only in the
irregular derivation navetta. In dialects also in its synonyms ometta and
karjatta.
-ittA- : -itA- derived verb • raha : raho|itta|a → raho|ita|n • Usually means
“to cause …” or “to give” or “to equip with”. Generally pronounced without
the i; see Spelling problem -oittaa ~ -ottaa.
-UttA- : -UtA- derived verb • odotta|a : odota|n → odot|utta|a : odot|uta|n •
When the base is a verb, the meaning is usually causative; cf. -hdUttA-.
When the base is a noun or an adjective, often means “to make (more) …”,
e.g. nope|utta|a (to speed up) from nopea (fast).
-ahdUttA- : -hdUtA- derived verb • seiso|a → seis|ahdutta|a : seis|ahduta|n •
Can usually be interpreted as being combined derivations with -AhtA- and
-UttA- suf ixes, so that e.g. seisahduttaa is primarily derived from
seisahtaa. But derivations of this type have some behavior of their own,
especially so that the hd part can often be omitted, resulting in -UttA-
derivations, e.g. seisahduttaa = seisauttaa.
-UUttA- : -UUtA- derived verb • levät|ä : lepää|n → lep|uutta|a : lep|uuta|n •
When the base is a verb, the meaning is usually causative.
-vA present participle of a verb • luke|a → luke|va.
-vA derived noun or adjective • maja → majava • A mixed collection of
words, mostly with no obvious base word. These derivations include
several nouns that are originally participles (and often still in participle
use), e.g. etsivä (detective) from etsiä (search).
-tAvA passive participle present tense • juos|ta : juos|tava.
-htAvA derived adjective • harmaa → harmahtava • A few derivations,
usually meaning “somewhat …”. Originally a combination of suf ixes -htA-
 and -vA.
-ttAvA passive participle present tense • sano|a : sano|ttava.
-rvA derived adjective • puna → pune|rva • Only four words: kellervä
(yellowish), punerva (reddish), sinervä (bluish), vihervä (greenish).
-e one of the suf ixes for 3rd person singular form in indicative • tul|la :
tule|e.
-e- II in initive • sano|a : sano|e|n : sano|e|ssa : sano|e|ssa|ni : sano|tta|e|ssa.
-ex : -ee- : -et- : -e- derived noun (or adjective) • nosta|a → noste : nostee|t :
nostet|ta : noste|i|ta. • Causes omission of inal vowel of the base. Meaning
varies greatly. Productive in deriving nouns from verbs; may express e.g.
result or cause of action; sometimes a name of action. Also used to derive
words from nouns and adjectives, e.g. musta → muste : mustee|t : mustet|ta
: muste|i|ta. Many words ending with -ex are loanwords or have obscure
origin.
-he old re lexive form of past tense 3rd person singular • vetä|ä : vet|i :
vet|i|he • In old poetry.
-kex : -kkee- : -ket- : -kke- • derived noun • kaava → kaava|ke : kaava|kkee|n
: kaava|ket|ta : kaava|kke|i|ssa • When the base is a noun, means “small …”
concretely or iguratively. When the base is a verb, often means “that is
used for…”, e.g. eläke (pension) from elää (to live).
-ikex : -ikkee- : -iket- : -ikke- • extended form of -ke • pitä|ä : pidä|n →
pid|ike.
-Ukex : -Ukkee- : -Uket- : -Ukke- • extended form of -ke • lisä → lis|uke.
-lex : -lee- : -let- : -le- • derived noun • kaista → kaistale • Base word often
not part of modern standard language. This group includes words like
askele, which are synonyms of -l : -le- derivations like askel and often used
interchangeably with them.
-le- assimilated form of potential mood suf ix -ne • tul|le|n : tule|n : tul|la •
Rare.
-ele- : -el- verb derived from a verb • souta|a → soud|el|la : sout|ele|n • Often
a frequentative suf ix, i.e. produces a verb indicating (frequently) repeated
action; e.g., from osta|a (to buy) we get ostel|la : ostele|n (to buy things, to
do shopping). Some derivations of this type have special meanings, e.g.
rakastaa means “to love”, but rakastella means “to make love”.
-skele- : -skel- derived verb • ime|ä → ime|skel|lä : ime|skele|n • Usually
frequentative, cf. -ele-. Note: opi|skel|la (to study) from oppi|a (to learn).
-ntele- : -nnel- derived verb • juos|ta : juokse|n → juokse|nnel|la :
juokse|ntele|n • Usually frequentative, cf. -ele-.
-skentele- : -skennel- derived verb • työ → työ|skennel|lä : työ|skentele|n •
Usually frequentative, cf. -ele-. But e.g. teeskennellä from teh|dä : tee|n
means “to pretend”.
-ile- : -il- derived verb • arvat|a → arva|il|la : arva|ile|n • When the base is a
verb, variant of -ele-, used when the base is a contraction verb. When the
base is a noun, often indicates action that is typical use of a thing, e.g.
teltta|il|la : teltta|ile|n (to camp, to go tenting) from teltta (tent).
-llex allative case • talo : talo|lle.
-Alle derived adverb • kaikki → kaikki|alle • A limited set of words.
Corresponds to the allative in meaning.
-mme possessive suf ix for the 1st person plural • talo : talo|mme.
-mme 1st person plural form of a verb • sano|a : sano|mme.
-ne- : -t- derived verb • huono → huonot|a : huono|ne|n • Usually expresses
change, “to become (more) …”. The in lection is exceptional, since this
derivation type is a mix of two distinct types.
-ne- suf ix of the comitative case • puoliso : puoliso|i|ne|en.
-ne- suf ix of the potential mood • syödä : syö- : syö|ne|n.
-nex : -nee- : -net- : -ne- • derived noun • käsi → käsi|ne • Often deminutive
(“small …”) or a name of an accessory or a tool.
-nne possessive suf ix for the 2nd person plural • talo : talo|nne.
-nne- : -nte- stem variants of the -s suf ix of ordinal numerals (e.g. kolma|s :
kolma|nne|n : kolma|nte|na).
-nnex : -ntee- : -net- : -nte- • derived noun • tila → tila|nne : tila|ntee|n :
tila|nnet|ta : tila|nte|i|ssa • Often means place or state.
-nnex derived adverb • tuo → tuo|nne • A few words. Means ”in … direction”.
-re- assimilated form of potential mood suf ix -ne • pur|re|n : puren : pur|ra •
Rare.
-rex : -ree- : -ret- : -re- • derived noun • lampi → lampa|re.
-se- assimilated form of potential mood suf ix -ne • juos|se|n : juokse|n :
juos|ta • Rare.
-ise- : -is- derived verb • helä- → hel|is|tä : hel|is|tä • Mostly descriptive
verbs with no apparent base word, though e.g. for helistä, a theoretical
base can be constructed, since the helä- stem appears in other verb
derivations too, e.g. helähtää.
-Aise- : -is- derived verb • kysy|ä → kys|äis|tä : kys|äise|n • The meaning is
typically momentaneous, indicating started action that is often
intentionally short, or causative. E.g. valaista, from valo (light) means both
“to light up” and “give light to” (as continuous action).
-kse- variant of the translative case suf ix -ksi • talo : talo|kse|ni • Used
before a possessive suf ix.
-tsex derived adverb (prolative) • maa → ma|i|tse • Means “through/via …”.
Usually based on the plural stem, e.g. vesi : vede|n : ves|i|ssä → ves|i|tse.
-itse- : -it- derived verb • naula → naul|it|a : naul|itse|n • The meanings are
more or less continuative, i.e. indicate continuous activity. These verbs
have the following forms based on the -it- stem (possibly with the t
assimilated): potential, imperative other than 2nd person singular, I and II
in initive, and all 4th person forms (e.g. naul|in|ne|n, naul|it|koon,
naul|it|a, naul|it|e|n, naul|in|nut, naul|it|aan, naul|it|tu; but indicative
present tense naul|itse|n, past tense naul|its|i|n etc.).
-tte 2nd person plural form (and polite 2nd person singular) of a verb •
sano|a : sano|tte.
-kAAtte old variant of imperative 2nd person plural • sano|a : sano|kaatte (=
sanokaa).
-Uex : -Uee- : -Uet- : -Ue- • derived noun • joukko → joukk|ue • Usually with a
collective meaning.
-i derived noun (or adjective) • neito → neit|i • Common, with varying
meanings. Some derivations contain this suf ix even though the -i
derivation does not appear as an independently word, e.g. kalma →
kalm|i|sto. The base is often a verb, e.g. kasvaa (to grow) → kasvi (plant).
Also used to adapt loanwords to Finnish, e.g. ilm → ilmi.
-i one of the suf ixes for 3rd person singular form in indicative • etsi|ä : etsi|i.
-i- derived verb • tahra → tahr|i|a • Very common. Indicates continuous
action, but otherwise the meaning varies greatly.
-i- plural suf ix in nouns, adjectives, and numerals • talo : taloi|ssa • In most
case forms.
-kki : -ki- derived noun • lehto : lehdo|n → lehdo|kki : lehdo|kin • When the
base is a noun or an adjective, mostly names of plants or proper names
given to domestic animals (e.g. cow name Mustikki, from musta). When the
base is a verb, meanings vary a lot.
-nki : -ngi- derived noun • juoma → juomi|nki : juomi|ngi|t.
-li derived noun • ukko → ukke|li • Often with obscure origin. Used
somewhat productively to derive affective forms of personal names, e.g.
Jusseli (from Jussi), or names like Haisuli (from haisu “smell”; a Moomin
character). Many words ending with li are loanwords without any
derivational suf ix, e.g. enkeli (angel).
-nomi international word corresponding to “-nomist” in English; sometimes
a derived noun • ekonomi • Also used to create names of degrees in
education from various ingredients, e.g. tradenomi (from English “trade”),
restonomi (from foreign word “restaurant”).
-ismi suf ix in international words, corresponding to “-ism” in English •
nationalismi • Often the base word does not exist in Finnish. Sometimes
also used for native words, e.g. höpsis → höps|ismi.
-ni possessive suf ix for the 1st person singular • talo : talo|ni.
-liini derived noun • laiha → laihe|liini • A few words, denoting people,
partly derogatorily, partly friendly: haisuliini, hassuliini, hupsuliini,
hölmöliini, possuliini, tuhmeliini, tyhmeliini. Somewhat productive.
-Oi- derived verb • esitelmä → esitelm|öi|dä: esitelm|öi|n • Productive, but
many verbs of this type are adapted forms of international words, e.g.
manipuloida (manipulate). Verbs that end with “-ate” in English often
appear as ending with -OidA in Finnish.
-pi old suf ix for 3rd person singular form in indicative • voi|da : voi|pi (= voi)
• In old poetry.
-mpi : -mmA- : -mpA- : -mm- : -mp- comparative suf ix • iso → iso|mpi :
iso|mma|n : iso|mpa|na : iso|mm|i|ssa : iso|mp|i|na.
-ri derived noun • maalat|a : maalaa|n → maala|ri • Common. This suf ix or
an extended version like -Ari is often part of loanword (cf. Swedish måla
→ målare), but it is also used productively in Finnish, especially in slang
and other spoken language. Originally used for names of agents or devices,
now also in other meanings.
-Ari derived noun, extended version of -ri • hiilihydraatti → hiil|ari (carbon
hydrate, colloquial) • Often based on a shortened or otherwise modi ied
version of the stem. Popular in spoken language; used to produce handy
alternatives for long of icial words, e.g. henkilöllisyystodistus → henkkari (I.
D. card), toimitusjohtaja → toimari (CEO).
-Uri derived noun, extended version of -ri • rava|ta → rav|uri • Usually for
names of agents or devices.
-si possessive suf ix for the 2nd person singular • talo : talo|si.
-isi suf ix of the conditional mood • sano|a : sano|isi : sano|isi|n.
-ksi translative case • talo : talo|ksi : talo|i|ksi.
-ksi- derived verb • ime|ä → ime|ksi|ä : i|meksi|n • When based on a verb,
often frequentative. When base on a noun or an adjective, may mean e.g.
“to regard as”, e.g. halpa : halva|n→ halve|ksia (the inal vowel of the base
verb is often changed to e); cf. -ksU-.
-ti derived adverb • ääni : ääne|n → ääne|ti • A few words only. In some
words, very similar to abessive forms like äänettä. In some other words,
expresses manner or extension, e.g. iäti (forever) from ikä : iä|n (age).
According to some descriptions, this suf ix has boundary gemination.
-hti- : -hdi- derived verb • tervex : tervee|n→ terve|hti|ä : terve|hdi|n • Often
based on nouns ending with -ex, using a base ending with short e.
Historically, the h is part of the base word.
-elehti- : -elehdi- derived verb • kääntä|ä → käänt|elehti|ä:
käänt|eleht|hdi|n • Re lexive verbs that indicate the action as repeated and
often intensive. For example, kääntelehtiä means “to turn oneself (around)
repeatedly (and anxiously)” and can sometimes be translated with the
English idiom “to be tossing and turning”.
-lti derived adverb • laaja → laaja|lti • Mostly means “to a … extent”.
According to some descriptions, this suf ix has boundary gemination, but
this is not common in modern language.
-nti : -nni- derived noun • juo|da → juo|nti : juo|nni|n • Usually a name of
action based on a verb.
-stix derived adverb • ruma : ruma|sti • Indicates manner or style or
repetition (see sections Derived adverbs and Adverbs expressing
repetition). Very productive.
-isti suf ix in international words, corresponds to the suf ix “-ist” in English •
Cf. -ismi. The isti suf ix is sometimes appended to words of Finnish origin,
too, and it appears also e.g. in some names of players like huilisti ( lutist,
from huilu “ lute”).
-tti : -ti- noun derived from a verb • suojat|a : suojaa|n → suoja|tti : suoja|ti|n.
-vi old suf ix for 3rd person singular form in indicative • sano|a : sano|vi (=
sanoo) • In old poetry.
-j- plural suf ix in nouns and adjectives in partitive and genitive • talo :
tal|oj|a : talo|j|en.
-l : -le- derived noun • nivoa → nive|l : nive|le|n • A small set of words, usually
with no obvious base word, often synonymous with a -lex derivation, e.g.
 askel = askelex.
-n genitive case • talo : talon
-n instructive case • jalka : jala|n : jalo|i|n • Rare especially in singular.
-n 1st person singular form of a verb • sano|a : sano|n.
-n : -ne- derived noun • joutsi : joutse|n → joutse|n : joutse|ne|n. Many words
that may have this derivational suf ix have no obvious base word. E.g.
joutsi is an old form of jousi.
-An one of the suf ixes of the illative case • kala : kalaan.
-An a variant of the -kAAn suf ix • ketä → ketään • Used for some pronouns.
The combinations have specialized meanings.
-AAn one of the suf ixes for 4th person in indicative • osat|a : osat|aan.
-dAAn one of the suf ixes for 4th person in indicative • voi|da : voi|daan.
-kAAn word-like suf ix (enclitic particle) • tie → tiekään • There are many
words that contain this suf ix as an integral part so that the combination
has a specialiazed meaning, e.g. kumpikaan, ainakaan, joskaan. There are
also words that appear only with this suf ix or the suf ix -kin, i.e. the base
word does not exist as a separate word, e.g. kuitenkaan and kuitenkin.
-lAAn one of the suf ixes for 4th person in indicative • tul|la : tul|laan.
-nAAn one of the suf ixes for 4th person in indicative • pan|na : pan|naan.
-rAAn one of the suf ixes for 4th person in indicative • pur|ra : pur|raan.
-tAAn one of the suf ixes for 4th person in indicative • sano|a : sano|taan.
-kseltAAn derived adverb • harva → harva|kseltaan • A few words only. Cf. -
kseen.
-stAAn derived adverb • viisi → viisi|stään • Means “as a group of ...”.
-hAn word-like suf ix (enclitic particle) • tie → tiehän.
-hAn one of the suf ixes of the illative case • maa : maahan.
-seen one of the suf ixes of the illative case in singular • vene : venee|seen.
-kseen derived adverb • harva → harva|kseen • A few words only.
Historically, translative forms with a possessive suf ix.
-hen one of the suf ixes of the illative case • tie : tiehen.
-tellen derived adverb • yksi → yksi|tellen • A few words.
-nen : -se- : -s- derived noun • kukka → kukka|nen : kukka|se|t : kukka|s|ta •
Very common and productive. Often diminutive, e.g. kirjanen (booklet),
from kirja (book). For this and other suf ixes ending with nen, the base
word always has strong grade in consonant gradation. International words
have often been adapted to this group, e.g. tekninen (technical).
-inen : -ise- : -is- derived adjective (or noun) • lika → lika|inen : lika|ise|t :
lika|is|ta • Productive. Often means “made of…” or “rich in…”. The -i- is very
often omitted in speech (e.g. likanen), except in two-syllable derivations
(e.g. puinen). When the base word is three syllables or longer, this suf ix is
also used instead of the deminutive -nen; e.g. aurinkoinen, from aurinko
(sun), can mean both “sunny” and “little sun”. In such words, the i of the
suf ix is used even in speech.
-iAinen : -iAise- : -iAis- derived noun (or adjective) • laiska → laisk|iainen •
Includes names of animals and plants, surnames (e.g. Rautiainen, from
rauta), names of festivities (e.g. laskiainen, from laskea), etc.
-jAinen : -jAise- : -jAis- derived noun (or adjective) • paina|a → paina|jainen
• Less common variant of -iAinen.
-kAinen : -kAise- : -kAis- derived noun or adjective • neito → neito|kainen •
Common in surnames, e.g. Viljakainen, but often with no apparent base
word.
-kkAinen : -kkAise- : -kkAis- derived adjective • vasta|an → vasta|kkainen •
A small number of words.
-nkAinen : -nkAise- : nkAis- derived noun • leppä : lepä|n → lepi|nkäinen •
Rare.
-lAinen : -ilAise- : -lAis- derived noun or adjective • suku → suku|lainen •
Very productive. Often denotes or characterizes a person. Commonly used
to derive names of inhabitants from place names, e.g. Oulu → oululainen,
and supporters of a person or an idea, e.g. Kekkonen → kekkoslainen. Base
words ending with nen have that ending changed to s, as in compound
words. In some words with a base ending with lA, the lA part is dropped,
e.g. Karjala → karjalainen. Other irregular base changes include Suomi →
suomalainen, Ruotsi → ruotsalainen, Häme → hämäläinen, Venäjä →
venäläinen. When the base word is a foreign word ending with a
consonant, a binding i may or may not be present, e.g. Bauhaus →
bauhausilainen ~ bauhauslainen. See additional notes, including
comparison with compound words with lAinen as the second part, in
section Derived vs. compound words.
-kAlAinen : -kAlAise- derived noun or adjective • me : me|i|dän →
mei|käläinen • Based on plural stem of a pronoun (meikäläinen,
teikäläinen, heikäläinen) or the short form of a pronoun (muukalainen,
täkäläinen, sikäläinen).
-mAinen : -mAise- derived adjective • sika → sika|mainen • Very productive;
can be formed from almost any noun. Has some features of a compound
word. Usually means “like…” or “similar to”, but e.g. in vaistomainen
(instinctive), from vaisto (instinct), the suf ix rather means “based on…” or
“part of…”. Also a verb form, occurring in adessive plural with possessive
suf ix, e.g. kaatu|mais|i|lla|ni, called V in initive. Note that some words
ending with mAinen are of different origin; e.g. kotimainen (domestic) is a
derivation of the compound kotimaa (homeland).
-mmAinen : -mmAise- derived adjective or noun • nuori → nuori|mmainen •
Superlative adjectives or nouns, often based an adverb stems, e.g.
jälkimmäinen (latter).
-nAinen : -nAise- derived adjective • itse → itse|näinen • Not to be confused
with compound words with nainen (woman) as the second part.
-nnAinen : -nnAise- adjective derived from a verb • johta|a : johda|n →
johda|nnainen • Often similar to a participle in meaning, e.g.
käännynnäinen (convert), from kääntyä (to turn; to be converted; etc.) is
similar to the past participle kääntynyt (turned; converted; etc.) but means
speci icially a religious or ideological convert.
-rainen : -raise- derived adjective or noun • pikku → pikka|rainen • A few
words only.
-ittAinen : -ittAise- derived adjective • päivä → päiv|ittäinen • Refers to
regular appearance, e.g. päivittäinen means “daily”. Cf. -ittAin.
-uainen : -uaise- derived noun • muna → mun|uainen • Only a few words:
malluainen, mustuainen, ruskuainen, valkuainen.
-vAinen : -vAise- derived adjective bases on a verb • tyyty|ä → tyyty|väinen •
Means “for which it is typical to …”. A combination of the suf ixes -va and -
inen.
-hinen : -hise- derived adjective or noun • hirsi : hirren → hirte|hinen •
Mostly old-fashioned or otherwise special words.
-llinen : -llise- derived adjective (or noun) • talous : taloude|n →
taloude|llinen • Very productive. Some common meanings: 1) abstractly
“relating to…”, e.g. kaupallinen “commercial” from kauppa “trade,
commerce”; 2) “that has…”, e.g. aseellinen “armed” from ase : asee|n
“weapon”; 3) “the amount that its into…”, e.g. pullollinen ”bottleful”, from
pullo (bottle). There are also specialized derivations, such as päivällinen
(from päivä “day”), which means “dinner” when used as a noun. The suf ix
was previously common in loanword adjectives like teknillinen, which
have now mostly been shortened, e.g. tekninen.
-minen : -mise- noun derived from a verb; IV in initive of a verb • olla : ole|n
→ oleminen • Can be formed from any verb, and could be classi ied as part
of verb in lection.
-koinen : -koise- derived noun or adjective • eri → eri|koinen • Only a few
words, erikoinen (special) and esikoinen ( irst-born). Words ending with
kokoinen are compounds, with the latter part a derivation of koko (size).
-llOinen : -lOise- derived adjective or noun • sairas : sairaa|n →
sairaa|lloinen.
-mOinen : -mOise- derived adjective • sama : saman → saman|moinen •
Indicates similarity. . Has some features of a compound word. The base is
usually the genitive form of a pronoun, except in aikamoinen
 (considerable, largish). When the base has one syllable only, nm is
assimilated to mm even in writing, e.g. tuo : tuon → tuommoinen.
-noinen : -noise- derived adjective • muu : muu|n : mu|i|ssa → mu|i|noinen •
Only a few words, with temporal meaning.
-istinen : -istise- international word corresponding to “-istic” or derived
noun • nationalistinen • Cf. -ismi.
-Uinen : -Uise- derived adjective (or noun) • suuri → suur|uinen • Usually
with an equative meaning, i.e. “of the same…”, e.g. suuruinen “of the same
size”. As an exception, aikuinen means “adult” and is also used as a noun.
-tUinen : -tUise- derived adjective • eri → eri|tyinen • Only a few words,
partly with obscure basis: alituinen, monituinen, omituinen,
vakituinen,vasituinen, yksityinen.
-kkOnen : -kOse- derived noun • nainen : naise|n → nai|kkonen • Only a few
words, with irregular shortening in base word, mies → miekkonen, tuohi
→ tuokkonen, and aakkonen (letter) and ääkkönen (Scandinavian letter å,
ä, or ö), derived from the letter names aa and ää.
-isen derived approximate numeral • kolme → kolmisen.
-ten derived adverb • sama → samaten • Mostly expresses manner or time. A
limited number of words.
-iten derived adverb • paha → pahiten • Means “in the most … way”. Often
alternative to the use of an instructive form of a superlative as an adverb
(e.g. pahiten = pahimmin).
-immiten derived adverb • pika- → pik|immiten • Partly a variant of -iten,
partly with specialized meaning.
-tUsten derived adverb • kasvo|t → kasvo|tusten. Usually means “with …
facing/touching/close to each other”. Cf. -kkAin and -tUksin.
-in : -ime- derived noun, indicating a device or tool • tulostaa → tulost|in :
tulost|ime|n • Common and productive. The base word is a verb. There are
also a few words that may have this suf ix in another meaning, e.g. toutain
: toutaimen (asp, a ish species; of unknown origin).
-in one of the suf ixes of the illative case • piiri : piiri|in.
-in : -immA- : -impA- : -imm- : -imp- superlative suf ix • iso → iso|in :
iso|imma|n : iso|impa|na : iso|imm|i|ssa : iso|imp|i|na.
-kkAin derived adverb • kasvo|t → kasvo|kkain • Usually means “with …
facing/touching/close to each other”. Cf. -tUsten and -tUksin.
-ittAin derived adverb • päivä → päivittäin • Often refers to regular
appearance, e.g. päivittäin means “on a daily basis”. Also answers
 questions like “how much at a time”, e.g. kiloittain (by kilogram). In
modern language, the meaning may have changed; e.g. suomalaisittain can
mean “in a Finnish way”, but more often “from the Finnish perspective”.
For numerals, produces a distributive adverb.
-hin one of the suf ixes of the illative case • pii : pii|hin.
-siin one of the suf ixes of the illative case in plural • vene : vene|i|siin.
-kin a word-like suf ix (enclitic particle) • tie → tie|kin • There are many
words that contain this suf ix as an integral part so that the combination
has a specialiazed meaning, e.g. kumpikin, ainakin, joskin. There are also
words that appear only with this suf ix or the suf ix -kAAn, i.e. the base
word does not exist as a separate word, e.g. kuitenkin.
-llOin derived adverb • muu → muulloin • A few words based on pronouns.
Means “at … time”.
-sin : -sime- derived noun • ala- → ala|sin : ala|sime|n • The base word is a
noun or an adverb stem.
-isin derived adverbial • ilta → iltaisin • Indicates repetition, e.g. iltaisin
means “in the evenings”.
-tUksin derived adverbial • syli → syli|tyksin. Usually means “with …
facing/touching/close to each other”. Cf. -kkAin and -tUsten; less common
than these in standard language.
-Ustin : -Ustime- derived noun • sääri → säär|ystin • A small set of words.
-On one of the suf ixes of the illative case • talo : talo|on.
-hOn one of the suf ixes of the illative case • suo : suo|hon.
-kOOn imperative 3rd person singular • sano|a : sano|koon.
-tAkOOn imperative 3rd person singular • ol|la : ol|takoon. Used instead of -
ttAkOOn for verbs that have a consonant stem.
-ttAkOOn imperative 3rd person singular • sano|a : sano|ttakoon.
-tOn : -ttOma- derived adjective • maku : mau|n → mau|ton : mau|ttoma|t •
A negative expression, indicating lack of the thing expressed by the base
noun. E.g. työtön (plural työttömät) from työ “work, job” means
“unemployed”. Very productive. The base word always has weak grade in
consonant gradation.
-mAtOn : -mattOma- negative participle of a verb • asu|a → asu|maton • A
combination of the suf ixes -mA and -tOn, but with special meanings.
Some of these forms are probably recognized just as adjectives rather than
verb forms, e.g. kokematon (unexperienced).
-Un one of the suf ixes of the illative case • katu : katu|un.
-hUn one of the suf ixes of the illative case • puu : puu|hun.
-O derived noun or adjective • heittä|ä → heitt|o • When based on a verb,
often a name of action or expresses a result. Very common, e.g. ostaa →
osto, huutaa → huuto, kiertää → kierto.
-O one of the suf ixes for 3rd person singular form in indicative • sano|a :
sano|o.
-O- derived verb • talla|ta : tallaa|n → tall|o|a : tall|o|n • Often indicates
repeated or continued action. Base word often not obvious and may not
exist as separate word.
-iO derived noun • valta → valt|io • Common, with greatly varying meanings.
Can also be interpreted as two suf ixes -i and -o. Often -io is not a suf ix
but part of Finnish form of an international word that ends with -ion or -
ium in English, e.g. in laatio (in lation).
-kO interrogative suf ix • Ostat|ko?
-kO imperative form used in negative context • sano|a →sano|ko • E.g. in
Älkää sanoko. This suf ix has boundary gemination in some language
forms.
-ttAkO imperative form used in negative context in the 4th person • sano|a
→sano|ttako • E.g. in Älköö sanottako. This suf ix may have boundary
gemination in some language forms.
-hkO derived adjective (or noun) • iso → iso|hko. Almost exclusively
moderative adjectives, expressing moderate amount of the property
expressed by the based word. Very productive in that meaning, e.g.
kovahko, suurehko, uudehko.
-kkO : -kO- derived noun • kivi → kivi|kko • Very common. Often collective
meaning. Often preceded by an -i- suf ix, e.g. koivu → koiv|i|kko. Cf. -stO.
Many words ending with kko are international words adapted to Finnish
this way, often ending with “-ician” in English, e.g. matemaatikko
(mathematician).
-nkO derived noun • ala- → ala|nko • Typically means place or state.
-skO derived noun or adjective • puoli → puolisko • Base word often not in
modern language or changes irregularly.
-lO derived noun • henki → henki|lö.
-mO derived noun • maalat|a : maalaa|n → maalaa|mo • When the base is a
verb, indicates a place or building, often for professional activity; e.g.
katsomo (auditorium, stand) from katsoa (to watch) and leipomo (bakery)
from leipoa (to bake). In a few words, the end vowel of the stem irregularly
 changes to i, e.g. paahtimo, panimo. Appears in proper names too, e.g. in
place names like Kuusamo and in Tuhkimo (Cinderella).
-rO derived noun • sapa → sapa|ro • Rare. Base word usually not a standard
Finnish word.
-isO derived noun • nuori : nuore|n → nuor|iso • A few words only: puoliso
(spouse) and collective nouns like yleisö (public; audience).
-ntO : -nnO- derived noun • kaiva|a → kaiva|nto • When based on a verb,
may be a name of action but more often a name for a result.
-stO derived noun • saari → saari|sto • Productive. Often based on a plural
stem, e.g. elin : elime|n : elim|i|ssä → elim|i|stö. Usually collective meaning.
-listO derived noun • köyhä → köyhä|listö • A small group of words.
-ttO derived noun • pyhä → pyhä|ttö • A few (rare) words only: epatto,
lähittö, pihatto.
-tAr : -ttAre- derived noun • kreivi → kreivi|tär : kreivi|ttäre|n • Means “wife
of …” or “female …”. Mostly used for a few words only; see section Gender
and sex.
-s a word-like suf ix (enclitic particle) • mene → mene|s • Makes a request or
statement “softer”.
-s : adverbial suf ix • ulko- : ulo- → ulo|s • Only for a small set of adverbs and
for comparison of nouns, e.g. rannemmas.
-s : -kse- derived noun or adjective • jalka : jala|n → jala|s : jala|kse|n • When
the base is a verb, often a name of action, but may also mean target or
result of action, e.g. ostaa → ostos|. Some words with this suf ix are used
only in plural in inner locational cases and denote states, e.g. nuku|ks|i|ssa
(sleepy) from nukku|a : nuku|n (to sleep). Some words, like veljes, are
normally used in plural only (e.g. veljekset), to denote mutual relations.
-s : -nne- : -nte- ordinal numeral • yhdeksän → yhdeksä|s : yhdeksä|nne|n:
yhdeksä|nte|nä.
-s : -*- derived noun or adjective • koira → koira|s : koira|a|n • “*” means that
the inal vowel of the stem is prolonged (doubled).
-iAs : -iAA- derived adjective • udel|la : utele|n → utel|ias : utel|iaa|n • The
base word is mostly a verb (usually frequentative) and the meaning is
usually “for which it is typical to….”. The word vuotias (from vuosi) is
common in compounds like kaksivuotias (two years old).
-liAs : -liAA- derived adjective • uni : une|n → une|lias : une|liaa|n • Usually
indicates a typical property.
-kAs : -kkAA- derived noun or adjective • asia → asia|kas : asia|kkaa|n •
Typically means “one that has …”, though sometimes specialized.
-lAs : -lAA- derived noun or adjective • oppi|a → oppi|las : oppi|laa|n • Nouns
typically denote people.
-nnes : -nnekse- fractional numeral • kolme → kolma|nnes : kolma|nnekse|n.
-is : -ikse- derived noun (usually colloquial) • pissa → pissis : pissikse|n • May
also be based on foreign word that is not used as such in Finnish, e.g. bestis
(best friend), from Swedish “bäst” or English ”best”.
-lis : -lii- noun derived from a verb • saa|da → saa|lis : saa|lii|n • A small set
of words.
-ks common colloquial form of the -kO suf ix • on → on|ks (= onko).
-Os old imperative-like form, optative • osta|a : osta|os • In old poetry.
-lOs variant of optative suf ix -Os • tul|la : tul|los • For verbs with a
consonant stem ending with l.
-Os : -Okse- derived noun • osta|a → ost|os : ost|okse|n • When the base is a
verb, sometimes a name of action, but more often a name of result or
target.
-nnOs : -nnOkse- noun derived from a verb • jää|dä → jää|nnös :
jää|nnökse|n • A few words only, like luonnos, maannos, syönnös, and
saannos (in the compound aikaansaannos).
-Us : -Ute- : -Ude- : -Uks- derived noun • vapaa → vapa|us : vapa|ute|na :
vapa|ude|n : vapa|uks|i|ssa. • Very productive in deriving names of
properties from adjectives or nouns; cf. -UUs. Also used e.g. to derive a
name of action or other noun from a verb.
-Us : -Ukse- : -Uks- derived noun • kaula → kaul|us : kaul|ukse|n :
kaul|uks|i|ssa. When based on a verb, often a name of action.
-mUs : -mUkse- : -mUks- derived noun • katu|a → katu|mus : katu|mukse|n :
katu|muks|i|lla. When based on a verb, often a name of action.
-imUs : -imUkse- : -imUks- derived noun • laiska → laisk|imus :
laisk|imukse|n : laisk|imuks|i|lla • Often an affective noun describing a
person.
-UUs : -UUte- : -UUde- : -UUks- derived noun • sovinnainen : sovinnaise|n →
sovinnais|uus : sovinnais|uute|na : sovinnais|uude|n : sovinnais|uuks|i|ssa. •
For nouns and adjectives as the base, this is a variant of -Us : -Ute- and
used to form names of properties. Very productive.
-ttOmUUs : -ttOmUUte- : -ttOmUUde- : -ttOmUUks- derived noun • työ →
työ|ttömyys • A combination of the suf ixes -tOn and -UUs, but sometimes
 with special meanings. E.g. onnettomuus (accident) is semantically based
directly on onni (luck; happiness) rather than onneton (unhappy).
-isUUs : -isUUte- : -isUUde- : -isUUks- derived noun • oppinut → oppinee|n
→ oppine|isuus • Extended form of -UUs : -Uute- used to derive names of
properties.
-t nominative plural • talo : talo|t.
-t 2nd person singular form of a verb • sano|a : sano|t.
-t accusative • minä : minu|t. • Only in the following forms: minut, sinut,
hänet, meidät, teidät, heidät, kenet.
-At- : -AA- derived verb or an adapted foreign verb • ilmi → ilm|at|ax :
ilm|aa|n • Very productive. See Contraction verbs.
-kOOt imperative 3rd person plural • sano|a : sano|koot.
-vat 3rd person plural form of a verb • sano|a : sano|vat.
-Ut : -Ue- : -U- derived noun or adjective • ehe- → eh|yt : eh|ye|n : eh|y|i|ssä •
Base often not in modern language as such, but e.g. ehe- has other
derivations, such as eheä. There is a limited set of words of this type, and
they have specialties in the illative case.
-hUt : -hUe- : -hU- derived noun • tie → tie|hyt : tie|hye|n : tie|hy|i|ssä • Rare.
Does not always change meaning, e.g. kuuhut is poetic synonym for kuu.
-lUt : -lee- past participle, assimilated variant of -nut • tul|la → tul|lut :
tul|lee|n.
-nUt : -nee- past participle • sano|a → sano|nut : sano|nee|n • Some
participles are also used as adjectives or nouns, e.g. oppinut (learned,
scholar).
-rUt : -ree- past participle, assimilated variant of -nut • pur|ra → pur|rut :
pur|ree|n.
-sUt : -see- past participle, assimilated variant of -nut • lakais|ta → lakais|sut
: lakais|see|n.
-U one of the suf ixes for 3rd person singular form in indicative • valu|a :
valu|u.
-U- derived verb • estä|ä → est|y|ä • Very common. Usually passive or
re lexive. When the base is a noun or adjective, often means “to become …”,
e.g. kuiv|u|a (to get dry) from kuiva (dry). Some common verbs like asua
(to dwell) and istua (to sit) historically have this suf ix, but the base verb
has disappeared.
-U derived noun • kaiva|a → kaiv|u • Causes loss of the end vowel of the
stem. When based on a verb, often a name of action, but may also denote
 result of action. For example, laulu, from laulaa (to sing), can mean both
“(act of) singing” and “song”.
-pU- : -vU- derived verb • saa|da → saa|pu|a : saa|vu|n • A small set of
words: elpyä, haipua, häipyä, juopua, luopua, saapua, suopua, syöpyä,
taipua, toipua, uupua, vaipua, viipyä, voipua, yöpyä, partly with unknown
base words.
-sU derived adjective or noun • hupa → hup|su • Only few words. Causes
irregular changes in the base word.
-ksU- verb derived from an adjective or a noun. • hyvä → hyvä|ksy|ä • Usually
means “to regard as” or “to take as”. E.g. paha (bad) → paheksua (to
disapprove); this verb (like a few others) has an irregular change of a to e.
at the end of the base word. Cf. -ksi-.
-tU- derived verb • varjel|la → varjel|tu|a : varjel|lu|n • Passive or re lexive.
The t in the suf ix participates in consonant gradation by normal rules, e.g.
lt : ll.
-tU- : -dU- passive participle, past tense • luo|da : luo|tu : luo|du|n • Variant of
-ttU, used after a long vowel or diphthong.
-tU- : -lU- passive participle, past tense • nuol|la : nuol|tu : nuol|lu|n • Variant
of -ttU, used after the consonant r.
-tU- : -nU- passive participle, past tense • men|nä : men|ty : men|ny|n •
Variant of -ttU, used after the consonant n.
-tU- : -rU- passive participle, past tense • pur|ra : pur|tu : pur|ru|n • Variant
of -ttU, used after the consonant l .
-tU- : -tU- passive participle, past tense • halkais|ta : halkais|tu : halkais|tu|n •
Variant of -ttU, used after a consonant other than l, n, or r.
-htU- : -hdU- derived verb • men|nä : mene|n → mene|hty|ä : mene|hdy|n • A
rather small set of words, mostly with no obvious base word.
-itU- : -idU- derived verb • vaurio → vaurio|itu|a : vaurio|idu|n • Can often,
but not always, be interpreted as a combination of the suf ixes -ittA- : -itA-
and the passive or re lexive suf ix -U- (so that e.g. vaurioitua is a derivation
of vaurioittaa). May cause the inal vowel of the base word to change to o,
e.g. hankala → hankaloitua, so that we could alternatively regard -OitU- as
the suf ix.
-*ntU- : -*nnU- derived verb • kääri|ä → kääri|inty|ä kääri|inny|n • The
symbol * denotes repetition of the preceding vowel. These derivations can
usually be seen as passive derivations of verbs. In older language, the
suf ix also often appeared in the form -UntU-, e.g. hajauntua = hajaantua.
 Many of these verbs have synonym with the -UtU- suf ix, e.g. kääriintyä =
kääriytyä.
-stU- derived verb • hermo → hermo|stu|a • Typically indicates a change of
state.
-istU- derived verb • varma → varm|istu|a • Can be interpreted as a
combination of the suf ixes -istA- and -U, usually with a passive (or
re lexive) meaning with respect to the immediate base verb like varmistaa.
-ttU : -tU- passive participle, past tense • sano|a : sano|ttu : sano|tu|n • Under
certain conditions, the vowel before this suf ix is changed to e, e.g. osta|a :
oste|ttu : oste|tu|n, but this is regarded as stem variation, not part of the
suf ix. There are derivations such as julmettu and kovettu that look like
participles but lack a base verb, so they are just analogous.
-ttU- : -tU- derived verb • kylmä → kylme|tty|ä : kylme|ty|n • Often indicates
change of state and may sometimes be interpreted as a passive derivation,
with the suf ix -U-, from a verb like kylmettää with the -ttA- suf ix. Usually
changes the inal vowel of the stem to e. May partly be interpreted as -tU-
derivations of verbs like kylmet|ä : kylmene|n.
-UtU- : -UdU- derived verb • peri|ä → peri|yty|ä : peri|ydy|n • Productive.
Usually passive or re lexive.
-UU derived noun • hakat|a : hakkaa|n → hakk|uu. Causes loss of the end
vowel of the stem. When based on a verb, often means action or result.
Effectively a variant of -U, used for contraction verbs.

221. Endings of international words

The following table presents English and Finnish endings of international
words. They are mostly not suf ixes in either language but rather parts of
words taken from other languages, mostly Latin or Greek. Both English and
Finnish have adapted the endings to their own word structure, their own
ways. Some notes on the table:
The table is in reverse dictionary order, i.e. sorted primarily according to
the last letter, secondarily according to the second last letter, etc.
Finnish often differs from English and most other languages by writing a
long vowel with two letters or by adding an -i to make the word end in a
vowel. For example, “propane” is propaani in Finnish.
 Writing a long or short vowel mainly depends on the vowel length in
Swedish and on the rules of Finnish orthography. This makes it somewhat
unpredictable to others than educated native speakers, and this is one of
the main reasons for composing this table.
Many of the Finnish example words are in more limited use than the
English examples, e.g. in specialized texts only. Thus, the table should be
read only as showing the relationships between word forms.
The table generally shows only the most common Finnish equivalent.
When alternatives are given, the choice often depends on the origin and
meaning of the word.
When the table contains alternatives with and without a -nen part, the
one with it is used as an adjective, the one without it usually as a noun.
For example, “active” as an adjective is aktiivinen, whereas aktiivi is a
noun, which may mean active tense in linguistic or an active person
(activist).
General correspondences between letters and letter combinations in
English and Finnish are explained in section International words in
Finnish.

English ending Finnish ending English example Finnish example

-oma -ooma carcinoma karsinooma
-ic -inen / -iikki cyclic syklinen
-adic -adinen dyadic dyadinen
-philic - iilinen hydrophilic hydro iilinen
-genic -geeninen psychogenic psykogeeninen
-atic -aattinen static staattinen
-etic -eettinen hypothetic hypoteettinen
-otic -oottinen psychotic psykoottinen
-ad -adi triad triadi
-id -idi arid aridi
-nd -ndi operand operandi
-rd -rdi milliard miljardi
-be -bi microbe mikrobi
-nce -nssi
variance varianssi
-de -di oxide oksidi
-age -aasi arbitrage arbitraasi
-able -aabeli parable paraabeli
-ible -iibeli reversible reversiibeli
-cle -kkeli particle partikkeli
-ile -iili percentile persentiili
-ule -uuli / -uli module moduuli / moduli
-ane -aani / -aaninen methane metaani
-ene -eeni acetylene asetyleeni
-ine -iini morphine mor iini
-one -oni ozone otsoni
-scope -skooppi telescope teleskooppi
-sphere -sfääri biosphere biosfääri
-ate -aatti / -oida sulphate sulfaatti
-logue -logi epilogue epilogi
-ar -aari / -aarinen bipolar bipolaarinen
-aire -ääri millionaire miljonääri
-ure -uuri / -uura / -yyri culture kulttuuri
-ase -aasi lactase laktaasi
-use -uusi diffuse diffuusi
-ate -aatti nitrate nitraatti
-ite -iitti apatite apatiitti
-ette -etti briquette briketti
-ute -uutti acute akuutti
-phyte -fyytti hydrophyte hydrofyytti
-que -ki grotesque groteski
-ave -aavi concave konkaavi
-ive -iivi / -iivinen passive passiivi /
passiivinen
-ize -isoida modernize modernisoida
-lith -liitti cystolith kystoliitti
-al -aali / -aalinen / -elli exponential eksponentiaalinen
-logical -loginen biological biologinen
-nomical -nominen astronomical astronominen
-ol -oli alcohol alkoholi
-yl -yyli ethyl etyyli
-em -eema / -eemi problem probleema
-om -ooma / -omi axiom aksiooma / aksiomi
-ism -ismi solipsism solipsismi
-ium -ium / -io / -iumi / -i calsium kalsium
-arium -aario aquarium akvaario
-torium -torio auditorium auditorio
-ian -iaani / -iaaninen Gregorian gregoriaaninen
-ician -ikko obstetrician obstetrikko
-in -iini globulin globuliini
-on -oni electroni elektroni
-ion -io ission issio
-asion -aasio abrasion abraasio
-esion -eesio lesion leesio
-ision -isio television televisio
-osion -oosio implosion imploosio
-usion -uusio fusion fuusio
-ation -aatio in lation in laatio
-ization -isaatio / -isointi modernization modernisaatio
-etion -eetio secretion sekreetio
-ition -itio ambition ambitio
-otion -ootio emotion emootio
-ution -uutio convolution konvoluutio
-ar -aarinen interstellar interstellaarinen
-ier -jee atelier ateljee
-meter -metri tachymeter takymetri
-nter -ntteri decanter dekantteri
-izer -isaattori ozonizer otsonisaattori
-or -ori / -ööri sensor sensori
-ator -aattori dictator diktaattori
-ics -iikka physics fysiikka
-etes -etes (: -eteksen) diabetes diabetes
-asis -aasi / -asis psoriasis psoriaasi
-esis -eesi hypothesis hypoteesi
-osis -oosi psychosis psykoosi
-lysis -lyysi analysis analyysi
-itis -iitti appendicitis appendisiitti
-cious -siöösi pernicious pernisiöösi
- -mor inen polymorphous polymor inen
morphous
-crat -kraatti aristocrat aristokraatti
-et -eetta / -etti prophet profeetta
-nt -ntti / -nttinen intolerant intolerantti
-ment -mentti instrument instrumenti
-ist -isti journalist journalisti
 -logist -logi psychologist psykologi
-lyst -lyytikko analyst analyytikko
-ot -ootti patriot patriootti
-y -ia anarchy anarkia
-cracy -kratia democracy demokratia
-ify -i ioida modify modi ioida
-logy -logia biology biologia
-scopy -skopia cystoscopy kystoskopia
-ary -aari(nen) / binary binaarinen
-ääri(nen)
-ory -orio / -orinen laboratory laboratorio
-ity -iteetti volatility volatiliteetti

In lection types

222. In lection types of noun-like words

The following tables show the thematic forms of in lection types (classes) of
nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and numerals as described in Kielitoimiston
sanakirja. For practical reasons, the presentation is divided into two tables,
one for singular forms, one for plural forms, though the latter also contains
the base form (nominative singular) for reference.
Singular
# Nominative Genitive Partitive Illative
1 valo valon valoa valoon
2 palvelu palvelun palvelua palveluun
3 valtio valtion valtiota valtioon
4 laatikko laatikon laatikkoa laatikkoon
5 risti ristin ristiä ristiin
6 paperi paperin paperia paperiin
7 ovi oven ovea oveen
8 nalle nallen nallea nalleen
9 kala kalan kalaa kalaan
10 koira koiran koiraa koiraan
11 omena omenan omenaa omenaan
12 kulkija kulkijan kulkijaa kulkijaan
13 katiska katiskan katiskaa katiskaan
14 solakka solakan solakkaa solakkaan
15 korkea korkean korkeaa, korkeata korkeaan
16 vanhempi vanhemman vanhempaa vanhempaan
17 vapaa vapaan vapaata vapaaseen
18 maa maan maata maahan
19 suo suon suota suohon
20 ilee ileen ileetä ileehen,
ileeseen
21 rosé rosén roséta roséhen
22 parfait parfait’n parfait’ta parfait’hen
23 tiili tiilen tiiltä tiileen
24 uni unen unta uneen
25 toimi toimen tointa, toimea toimeen
26 pieni pienen pientä pieneen
27 käsi käden kättä käteen
28 kynsi kynnen kynttä kynteen
29 lapsi lapsen lasta lapseen
30 veitsi veitsen veistä veitseen
31 kaksi kahden kahta kahteen
32 sisar sisaren sisarta sisareen
33 kytkin kytkimen kytkintä kytkimeen
34 onneton onnettoman onnetonta onnettomaan
35 lämmin lämpimän lämmintä lämpimään
36 sisin sisimmän sisintä sisimpään
37 vasen vasemman vasenta, vasempaan
(vasempaa)
38 nainen naisen naista naiseen
39 vastaus vastauksen vastausta vastaukseen
40 kalleus kalleuden kalleutta kalleuteen
41 vieras vieraan vierasta vieraaseen
42 mies miehen miestä mieheen
43 ohut ohuen ohutta ohueen
44 kevät kevään kevättä kevääseen
45 kahdeksas kahdeksannen kahdeksatta kahdeksanteen
46 tuhat tuhannen tuhatta tuhanteen
47 kuollut kuolleen kuollutta kuolleeseen
48 hame hameen hametta hameeseen
49a askel askelen askelta (askeleen)
49b askele askeleen askeletta askeleeseen
50 isoäiti isoäidin isoäitiä isoäitiin
51 nuoripari nuorenparin nuortaparia nuoreenpariin
Plural
# Nom. sg. Nominative Genitive Partititive Illative
1 valo valot valojen valoja valoihin
2 palvelu palvelut palvelujen, palveluja, palveluihin
palveluiden, palveluita
palveluitten
3 valtio valtiot valtioiden, valtioita valtioihin
valtioitten
4 laatikko laatikot laatikkojen, laatikkoja, laatikkoihin,
laatikoiden, laatikoita laatikoihin
laatikoitten
5 risti ristit ristien ristejä risteihin
6 paperi paperit paperien, papereja, papereihin
papereiden, papereita
papereitten
7 ovi ovet ovien ovia oviin
8 nalle nallet nallejen, nalleja nalleihin
(nallein)
9 kala kalat kalojen, kaloja kaloihin
(kalain)
10 koira koirat koirien, koiria koiriin
(koirain)
11 omena omenat omenien, omenia, omeniin,
omenoiden, omenoita, omenoihin
omenoitten, (omenoja)
(omenojen),
(omenain)
12 kulkija kulkijat kulkijoiden, kulkijoita kulkijoihin
kulkijoitten,
(kulkijain)
13 katiska katiskat katiskoiden, katiskoita, katiskoihin
katiskoitten, katiskoja
katiskojen,
(katiskain)
14 solakka solakat solakoiden, solakoita, solakkoihin,
 solakoitten, solakkoja solakoihin
solakkojen,
(solakkain)
15 korkea korkeat korkeiden, korkeita korkeisiin,
korkeitten, korkeihin
(korkeain)
16 vanhempi vanhemmat vanhempien, vanhempia vanhempiin
(vanhempain)
17 vapaa vapaat vapaiden, vapaita vapaisiin,
vapaitten (vapaihin)
18 maa maat maiden, maita maihin
maitten
19 suo suot soiden, soitten soita soihin
20 ilee ileet ileiden, ileitä ileihin, ileisiin
ileitten
21 rosé rosét roséiden roséita roséihin
22 parfait parfait’t parfait’iden parfait’ita parfait’ihin
23 tiili tiilet tiilien tiiliä tiiliin
24 uni unet unien, unten unia uniin
25 toimi toimet toimien, toimia toimiin
tointen
26 pieni pienet pienten, pieniä pieniin
pienien
27 käsi kädet käsien, käsiä käsiin
(kätten)
28 kynsi kynnet kynsien, kynsiä kynsiin
(kyntten)
29 lapsi lapset lasten, lapsien lapsia lapsiin
30 veitsi veitset veitsien, veitsiä veitsiin
(veisten)
31 kaksi kahdet kaksien kaksia kaksiin
32 sisar sisaret sisarien, sisaria sisariin
sisarten
33 kytkin kytkimet kytkimien, kytkimiä kytkimiin
 kytkinten
34 onneton onnettomat onnettomien, onnettomia onnettomiin
(onnetonten)
35 lämmin lämpimät lämpimien, lämpimiä lämpimiin
(lämpimäin)
36 sisin sisimmät sisimpien, sisimpiä sisimpiin
sisinten,
(sisimpäin)
37 vasen vasemmat vasempien, vasempia vasempiin
vasenten,
(vasempain)
38 nainen naiset naisten, naisia naisiin
naisien
39 vastaus vastaukset vastausten, vastauksia vastauksiin
vastauksien
40 kalleus kalleudet kalleuksien kalleuksia kalleuksiin
41 vieras vieraat vieraiden, vieraita vieraisiin,
vieraitten (vieraihin)
42 mies miehet miesten, miehiä miehiin
miehien
43 ohut ohuet ohuiden, ohuita ohuisiin,
ohuitten ohuihin
44 kevät keväät keväiden, keväitä keväisiin,
keväitten (keväihin)
45 kahdeksas kahdeksannet kahdeksansien kahdeksansia kahdeksansiin
46 tuhat tuhannet tuhansien, tuhansia tuhansiin
(tuhanten)
47 kuollut kuolleet kuolleiden, kuolleita kuolleisiin,
kuolleitten kuolleihin
48 hame hameet hameiden, hameita hameisiin,
hameitten hameihin
49a askel askelet askelien, askelia askeliin
askelten
49b askele askeleet askeleiden, askeleita askeleisiin,
askeleitten askeleihin
 50 isoäiti isoäidit isoäitien isoäitejä isoäiteihin
51 nuoripari nuoretparit nuortenparien, nuoriapareja nuoriinpareihin
nuorienparien

Notes
Parentheses around a form indicate it as rare (and often poetic).
Classes 18–22 differ primarily in the type of stem change before the plural suf ix i
rather than suf ixes, such as the aa : ai variation versus the uo : oi variation.
Type 22 (type word: parfait) contains only foreign words and new loanwords, and
in it, the in lection is based on pronunciation. It differs from type 21
orthographically, due to the use of an apostrophe between the stem and the suf ix.
In types 21 and 22, containing only new loanwords and foreign words, the illative
suf ix is h*n with a vowel (*) that corresponds to the inal vowel in pronunciation,
not spelling. Thus, we have rosé [rosee] : roséhen [roseehen] but cowboy [kauboi] :
cowboyhin [kauboihin].
Types 49a and 49b are described as a single class in Kielitoimiston sanakirja, with
two sets of alternative forms. In practice, forms from both sets are often used in a
mixed manner.
Types 50 and 51 are for compound words, describing two kinds of in lection, with
the irst part unin lected and with the irst part in lected. The in lection of the
components varies and needs to be checked from the dictionary entries for them.
For example, including nuoripari in type 51 means just that both nuori and pari are
in lected; their in lection needs to be checked from the entries for those words.

223. In lection types of verbs

The following tables show the thematic forms of in lection types of verbs as described
in Kielitoimiston sanakirja. For practical reasons, the presentation is divided into two
tables. The irst table contains four common forms: I in initive, present tense 1st
person singular, past tense 3rd person singular, and conditional 3rd person singular.
The second table contains four other forms: potential 3rd person singular, imperative
3rd person singular, past participle, and past tense 4th person. However, for ease of
use, the second table also contains the base form (I in initive).
The online service verbix.com (non-authoritative, but reliable) shows almost all
in lected forms of a verb, as described in Summary of in lected forms of verbs.

Common forms
# In initive Present tense Past tense Conditional
52 sanoa sanon sanoi sanoisi
53 muistaa muistan muisti muistaisi
54 huutaa huudan huusi huutaisi
55 soutaa soudan souti, sousi soutaisi
56 kaivaa kaivan kaivoi kaivaisi
57 saartaa saarran saarsi, saartoi saartaisi
58 laskea lasken laski laskisi
59 tuntea tunnen tunsi tuntisi
60 lähteä lähden lähti, (läksi) lähtisi
61 sallia sallin salli sallisi
62 voida voin voi voisi
63 saada saan sai saisi
64 juoda juon joi joisi
65 käydä käyn kävi kävisi
66 rohkaista rohkaisen rohkaisi rohkaisisi
67 tulla tulen tuli tulisi
68 tupakoida tupakoin, tupakoi, tupakoisi,
(tupakoitsen) (tupakoitsi) (tupakoitsisi)
69 valita valitsen valitsi valitsisi
70 juosta juoksen juoksi juoksisi
71 nähdä näen näki näkisi
72 vanheta vanhenen vanheni vanhenisi
73 salata salaan salasi salaisi
74 katketa katkean katkesi katkeaisi, (katkeisi)
75 selvitä selviän selvisi selviäisi
76 taitaa taidan taisi taitaisi
77 kumajaa kumaji kumajaisi
78 kaikaa kaikaisi

Other forms
# In initive Potential Imperative Participle 4th p. past t.
52 sanoa sanonee sanokoon sanonut sanottiin
53 muistaa muistanee muistakoon muistanut muistettiin
54 huutaa huutanee huutakoon huutanut huudettiin
55 soutaa soutanee soutakoon soutanut soudettiin
56 kaivaa kaivanee kaivakoon kaivanut kaivettiin
57 saartaa saartanee saartakoon saartanut saarrettiin
58 laskea laskenee laskekoon laskenut laskettiin
59 tuntea tuntenee tuntekoon tuntenut tunnettiin
60 lähteä lähtenee lähteköön lähtenyt lähdettiin
61 sallia sallinee sallikoon sallinut sallittiin
62 voida voinee voikoon voinut voitiin
63 saada saanee saakoon saanut saatiin
64 juoda juonee juokoon juonut juotiin
65 käydä käynee käyköön käynyt käytiin
66 rohkaista rohkaissee rohkaiskoon rohkaissut rohkaistiin
67 tulla tullee tulkoon tullut tultiin
68 tupakoida tupakoinee tupakoikoon tupakoinut tupakoitiin
69 valita valinnee valitkoon valinnut valittiin
70 juosta juossee juoskoon juossut juostiin
71 nähdä nähnee nähköön nähnyt nähtiin
72 vanheta vanhennee vanhetkoon vanhennut vanhettiin
73 salata salannee salatkoon salannut salattiin
74 katketa katkennee katketkoon katkennut katkettiin
75 selvitä selvinnee selvitköön selvinnyt selvittiin
76 taitaa taitanee, tainnee taitakoon tainnut, taitanut taidettiin
Notes
Parentheses around a form indicate it as rare.
Classes 77 and 78 have very defective in lection: only some 3rd person
forms are in use.

Compositive forms of verbs

Compositive forms are forms of words used as the irst part of a compound
word (closed compound). Compositive forms of verbs can be noun
derivations or special forms. The following table covers the most common
verbs. Notes:
When several compositives are given, they may relate to different
meanings of the verb.
Some of the example words are mostly historical or otherwise rare.
Compositives of passive verbs are often not included, when the same
compositive can be used both for an active verb and for a passive verb.
For example, esto- can be used as compositive for both estää (to prevent)
and estyä (to be prevented).
Compositives are mostly not given for verbs ending with -oida, since they
usually have regular compositives -ointi- and -oimis-, the latter being less
common; e.g. for tilastoida, the compositives are tilastointi- and
tilastoimis-.
For almost all verbs, a compositive form ending with -mis- (the
compositive form of a -minen derivation) can be used. However, it is often
less common than other alternatives. The -mis- form is mentioned in the
table when it is relatively common.
For some verbs (e.g. uskoa), it is common to use a noun in the genitive
(e.g. uskon) instead of a compositive proper. Such forms are given in
parentheses.

Verb Compositives Examples of compounds

aavistaa aavistus- aavistuslähtö
aidata aitaus-, aituu- aitauskustannukset, aituupuut
aiheuttamisperiaate,
aiheuttaa aiheuttamis-, aiheutus- aiheutusperiaate
aikoa aie-, aikomus- aiesopimus, aikomustaso
aistia aisti-, aistin- aistiharha, aistinsolu
ajaa ajo- ajokoira
ajatella ajattelu-, ajatus- ajattelutapa, ajatuskoe
alentaa alennus- alennusmyynti
alistaa alistus alistussuhde
alkaa alku-, alkamis- alkuhetki, alkamisaika
allekirjoittaa allekirjoitus- allekirjoitustilaisuus
aloittaa aloitus-, aloittamis- aloituspaikka, aloittamisilmoitus
ampuma-, ammunta-, ampumapaikka, ammuntalaji,
ampua ampumis-, ampu- ampumispaikka, ampuhaukka
anoa anomus- anomuslomake
ansaitsemis-, ansio-, ansaitsemistarkoitus, ansiokeino,
ansaita ansainta- ansaintalogiikka
antaa anto-, antamis-, anti- antolainaus, antamispäivä, antilahja
arvata arvaus-, arvuu- arvausleikki, arvuukauppa
arvella arvelu- arveluaika
arvio-, arvioimis-, arviohinta, arvioimiskulut,
arvioida arviointi- arviointikysymys
arvostaa arvostus- arvostuskysymys
asennoitumiskysymys,
asennoitua asennoitumis-, asenne- asennevamma
asentaa asennus- asennustarvike
asettaa asetus- asetuslaite
askarrella askartelu- askarteluhuone
astua astin-, astuin-, astuma-, astinlauta, astuinlauta, astumajalka,
astumis-, astunta- astumisaika, astuntapinta
asuin-, asumis-,
asua asumus- asuintalo, asumisoikeus, asumusero
auttaa auttamis-, apu- auttamiskeino, apuneuvo
avaus-, avaamis-, avausmaksu, avaamisaika,
avata avajais- avajaisistunto
avautua avautumis- avautumisvaihe
avustaa avustus-, avustamis- avustustyöntekijä, avustamismenot
edetä etenemis- etenemisvauhti
edistyä edistys-, edistymis- edistysaskel, edistymishalu
edistää edistämis-, edistys- edistämispyrkimys
edustaa edus-, edustus- eduskunta, edustusjoukkue
ehdottaa ehdotus- ehdotusoikeus
ehkäistä ehkäisy- ehkäisykeino
ehtiä ehtimis- ehtimismahdollisuus
ehtyä ehtymis- ehtymisaika
ei epä-, ei- epätoivo, ei-sosialistinen
eksyä eksymis- eksymismahdollisuus
elin-, elo-, elämä- (elon-, elinaika, elokuva, elämäkerta
elää elämän-) (elonmerkki, elämäntapa)
ennakoida ennakko- ennakkoilmoitus
ennustaa ennustus-, ennus- ennustustaito, ennusmerkki
epäillä (epäilyksen-) (epäilyksenalainen)
erehtyä erehtymis- erehtymisvaara
erikoistua erikoistumis-, erikois- erikoistumisilmiö, erikoisala
eristää eristys-, eristämis eristysaine, eristämismenetelmä
erota eroamis-, ero- eroamisikä, eroahdistus
erottaa erotus-, ero- erotusaita, erotuomari
esiintyä esiintymis- esiintymislava
esitellä esittely- esittelytilaisuus
esittää esitys-, esittämis- esitysaika, esittämisaika
estää estämis-, esto- estämiskeino, estomahdollisuus
etsiä etsintä-, etsikko- etsintäpartio, etsikkoaika
haastaa haaste- haastemies
haastatella haastattelu- haastattelukierros
haavoittua haavoittumis- haavoittumismerkki
haitata haitta- haittakohta
hajaantua hajaantumis- hajaantumiskäsky
hajota hajoamis- hajoamisilmiö
hajottaa hajotus-, hajottamis- hajotuskyky, hajottamisoikeus
hakata hakkuu-, hakkaus- hakkuutähde, hakkausasento
hakea haku- hakukone
hallita hallinta-, hallitsemis- hallintaoikeus, hallitsemiskyky
haluta halu- haluruoka
hangata hankaus- hankaussähkö
hankkia hankinta-, hankkimis- hankinta-aika, hankkimiskustannus
harjata harjaus- harjauskone
harjoittelukenttä,
harjoitella harjoittelu-, harjoitus- harjoitusvastustaja
harjoittaa harjoittamis-, harjoitus- harjoittamislupa, harjoitusaika
harkita harkinta-, harkitsemis- harkinta-aika, harkitsemiskyky
harpata harppaus- harppausaskel
harrastaa harrastus- harrastuspiiri
hautaustoimisto,
haudata hautaus-, hautaamis- hautaamiskustannukset
havaita havainto-, havaitsemis- havaintoaika, havaitsemiskyky
hehkua- hehku-, hehkumis- hehkulamppu, hehkumistila
heittää heitto- heittoasento
hengittää hengitys- hengityskone
herättää herätys- herätyskello
herätä heräämis- heräämisaika
hiihtää hiihto- hiihtokilpailu
hirttää hirtto- hirttopuu
hoitaa hoito- hoitoaika
houkutella houkutus-, houkuttelu- houkutuslintu, houkuttelukeino
huoltaa huolto- huoltoliike
huomauttaa huomautus- huomautussarake
huumata huumaus- huumausaine
huutaa huuto- huutokauppa
hylkiä hylkimis- hylkimisreaktio
hylkäys-, hylky-, hylkäyspäätös, hylkyprosentti,
hylätä hylkäämis- hylkäämisperuste
hymyillä hymy- hymyhuulin
hypätä hyppy-, hyppäys- hyppytorni, hyppäysliike
hyväksyä hyväksymis- hyväksymispäätös
hyökätä hyökkäys- hyökkäyskäsky
häiritä häirintä-, häiritsemis- häirintätuli, häiritsemisammunta
hävittää hävitys-, hävittämis- hävitysretki, hävittämishalu
hävitä häviö- häviöasema
ihastua ihastus-, ihastumis- ihastushuuto, ihastumiskohde
ilmaista ilmaisu- ilmaisukeino
ilmestyskirjallisuus,
ilmestyä ilmestys-, ilmestymis- ilmestymispäivä
ilmoittaa ilmoitus-, ilmoittamis- ilmoitusasia, ilmoittamisvelvollisuus
iloita ilo- ilojuhla
imettää imetys- imetysaika
imeä imu-, imemis- imupilli, imemisliike
irrottaa irrotus-, irrottamis- irrotuskytkin, irtoamisnopeus
irvistää irvi-, irvistys- irvinaama, irvistysilme
iskeä isku- iskukykyinen
istuma-asento, istuinluu,
istua istuma-, istuin-, istunta- istuntavalta
istuttaa istutus- istutusaika
itkeä itku- itkuvirsi
jakaa jako-, jakamis- jakoehdotus, jakamisoja
jatkaa jatko- jatkoaika
johtaa johto-, johtamis- johtotehtävä, johtamiskyky
joutaa jouto- joutoaika
juhlia juhla-, juhlimis- juhlakunto, juhlimishalu
julistaa julistus-, julistamis- julistuskirja, julistamispaikka
julkaista julkaisu-, julkaisemis julkaisusarja, julkaisemiskielto
juomapaikka, juomishimo,
juoda juoma-, juomis-, juonti- juontitapa
juopua juopumus- juopumustapaus
juosta juoksu- juoksuaika
järjestää järjestys-, järjestämis- järjestysluku, järjestämistyö
jättää jättö- jättöaika
jäämä-, jäänne-, jäämäluettelo, jäännemuoto,
jäädä jäännös- jäännöspari
jäätyä jäätymis-, jäätymä- jäätymisilmiö, jäätymäpiste
kaataa kaato- kaatoallas
kaatua kaatumis-, kaatuma- kaatumissuunta, kaatumatauti
kadehtia kade- kademieli
kadota katoamis-, kato- katoamispiste, katomuoto
kaivutyö, kaivinkone,
kaivu-, kaivin-, kaivamiskustannukset,
kaivaa kaivamis-, kaivaus- kaivauspaikka
kalastaa kalastus- kalastuslupa
kammata kampaus- kampaustakki
kantaa kanto- kantokahva
karkaus-, karku-, karkauspäivä, karkumatka,
karata karkaamis- karkaamistapaus
kastehelmi, kastamispäivä,
kastaa kaste-, kastamis-, kasto- kastojuotto
kasvu-, kasvin-, kasvukausi, kasvinkumppani,
kasvaa kasvamis-, kasvanta- kasvamisaika, kasvantaväärä
kasvattaa kasvatus- kasvatusoppi
katkaista katkaisu-, katko- katkaisuhoito, katkosaha
katsella katselu- katselukulma
katsomis-, katsoma-, katsomistapa, katsomapaikka,
katsoa katse-, katsanto- katsekontakti, katsantokanta
kattaa kate-, kattamis- kateaine, kattamistapa
kehitellä kehittely- kehittelyjakso
kehittää kehitys-, kehittämis- kehityskeskustelu, kehittämiskeskus
kehottaa kehotus- kehotushuuto
keitto-, keitin-, keittokatos, keitinastia,
keittää keittämis-, keite- keittämisaika, keitevesi
keksiä keksimis-, keksintä- keksimistyö, keksintäkyky
kerjätä kerjuu- kerjuusauva
kerrata kertaus- kertauskurssi
kertoa kerto-, kertoma-, kertomerkki, kertomakirjallisuus,
kertomis-, kerronta- kertomiskyky, kerrontatyyli
keruu-, keräys-,
kerätä keräämis- keruuaika, keräyslupa, keräämistapa
keskeyttää keskeytys- keskeytysvakuutus
keskittyä keskittymis- keskittymiskyky
keskittää keskitys- keskitysleiri
keskustella keskustelu- keskusteluhetki
kesto-, kestämis-, kestovaippa, kestämisaika,
kestää kestävyys- kestävyysjuoksija
kieltäytymis-, kieltäytymisoikeus,
kieltäytyä kieltäymys- kieltäymysviikko
kieltää kielto-, kieltämis- kieltolaki, kieltämispäätös
kiertää kierto-, kiertämis- kiertoilmaus, kiertämistapa
kiihdyttää kiihdytys- kiihdytyskaista
kiihtyä kiihtymys- kiihtymystila
kiilua kiilu- kiilusilmä
kiitää kiito- kiitolinja
kiittää kiitos-, kiittämis- kiitossana, kiittämistapa
kiivetä kiipeämis- kiipeämisköysi
kilpailla kilpa-, kilpailu- kilpasoutaja, kilpailuaika
kiristää kiristys- kiristysruuvi
kirjata kirjaus- kirjauslanka
kirjautua kirjautumis- kirjautumislomake
kirjoittaa kirjoitus-, kirjoittamis- kirjoituskone, kirjoittamishalu
kiusaamis-, kiusa- kiusaamislaulu, kiusapuhe
kiusata (kiusan-) (kiusanhenki)
koettaa koe-, koetus-, koetin- koeajo, koetusaika. koetinkivi
kohdata kohtaamis-, kohtaus- kohtaamispaikka, kohtauspaikka
kohdistaa kohdistus- kohdistusammunta
koho-, kohoamis-, kohoasento, kohoamisnopeus,
kohota kohonta- kohontahyppy
kohottaa kohotus-, kohottamis- kohotusaine, kohottamispyrkimys
kokea kokemus-, kokemis- kokemusperäinen, kokemistapa
kokeilu kokeilu-, koe-, kokeiluaika, koeaika
kontata konttaus-, konttaamis- konttausasento, konttaamisikä
kokooma-, kokoamis-, kokoomateos, kokoamispaikka,
koota kokoomis-, kokoomus- kokoomispaikka, kokoomushallitus
korjaus-, korjuu-, korjauskustannus, korjuuaika,
korjata korjaamis- korjaamistapa
korostaa korostus- korostuskynä
korottaa korotus- korotuskulma
korvata korvaus-, korvike- korvaushakemus, korvikeaine
koskettaa kosketus-, kosketuskohta
kouluttaa koulutus- koulutusaika
kuivata kuivaus-, kuivaamis- kuivaushuone, kuivaamismenetelmä
kuljettaa kuljetus- kuljetuskustannus
kulkea kulku- kulkulupa
kulua kulumis-, kuluma- kulumiskestävyys, kulumapinta,
kuluttaa kulutus-, kuluttamis- kulutuspinta, kuluttamisinto
kunnioittaa kunnia- kunniamerkki
kuolin-, kuolemis-, kuolinvuosi, kuolemistapa,
kuolo- (kuoleman-, kuolovuodet (kuolemansairas,
kuolla kuolon-) kuolonkalpea)
kutsua kutsu-, kutsuma- kutsuhuuto, kutsumanimi
kuulla kuulo-, kuulemis- kuuloalue, kuulemistilaisuus
kuulua kuuluvuus- kuuluvuusalue
kuunnella kuuntelu- kuunteluoppilas
kuvailla kuvailu-, kuva- kuvailutulkkaus, kuvailmausem
kuvata kuvaus- kuvaustaito
kuvitella kuvittelu- kuvittelukyky
kyetä kyky- kykymies
kylpeä kylpy- kylpyamme
kylvö-, kylvämis-, kylvökone, kylvämisaika,
kylvää kylvin- kylvinvakka
kyntää kyntö-, kyntämis kyntöaika, kyntämiskilpailu
kypsennys-,
kypsentää kypsentämis- kypsennysaine, kypsentämistapa
kypsyä kypsymis- kypsymisaika
kypsyttää kypsytys- kypsytyslämpö
kysellä kysely- kyselyikä
kysyä kysymys-- kysymysmerkki
kytkentä-, kytkin-, kytkentäkaavio, kytkinakseli,
kytkeä kytky- kytkykauppa
kärsiä kärsimys-, kärsimis- kärsimysnäytelmä, kärsimiskyky
käsitellä käsittely- käsittelyaika
käsittää käsitys- käsityskyky
käskeä käsky- käskyvalta
kätkeä kätkö-, kätkemis- kätköpaikka, kätkemisrikos
kävellä kävely- kävelykatu
käynti-, käymis-, käyntiaskel, käymisastia,
käydä käymä- käymäpaikka
käyttäytyä käytös-, käyttäytymis- käytöshäiriö, käyttäytymistiede
käyttöesine, käyttöjännite,
käyttää käyttö-, käytin-, käyte- käytinratas, käyteaine
kääntyä kääntymis- kääntymiskohta
 käännös-, kääntämis-, käännöstiede, kääntämistapa,
kääntää käänteis- käänteisarvo
käärin-, kääre-, käärinliina, käärepaperi,
kääriä käärimis- käärimiskone
laajentaa laajennus-, laajentamis- laajennusosa
laajentua laajentumis- laajentumispyrkimys
laajeta laajenemis- laajenemisilmiö
laatimiskustannus,
laatia laatimis-, laadinta- laadintakustannus
lahjoa lahjonta-, lahjomis- lahjontatapaus, lahjomisyritys
lahjoittaa lahja-, lahjoitus- lahjavero, lahjoitusmaa
laina-, lainaus-, laina-aika, lainausmerkki,
lainata lainaamis- lainaamismahdollisuus
laittaa laitto- laittoaika
lakkautus-,
lakkauttaa lakkauttamis- lakkautusuhka, lakkauttamispäätös
lamaantua lamaannus-, lama- lamaannustila, lama-aika
lasku-, laskemis-, laskukone, laskemistapa,
laskea laskenta- laskentataulukko
laskeutua laskeutumis-, lasku- laskeutumisalue, laskuteline
laukata laukka- laukka-askel
laulaa laulu- laulutaito
lausunta-, lausunto-, lausuntaesitys, lausunto-oikeus,
lausua lausumis-, lausuma- lausumisharjoitus, lausumatapa
leikkaus-, leikkuu-, leikkaushoito, leikkuuväki,
leikata leikkaamis-, leikko- leikkaamistapa, leikkokukka
leikkiä leikki-, leikkimis- leikkikenttä, leikkimishalu
leivin-, leivonta-, leivinuuni, leivontamargariini,
leipoa leipoma-, leipomis- leipomakone, leipomishetki
leiriytyä leirintä-, leiri-, leirintäalue, leiripaikka,
leiriytymis- leiriytymiskielto
lelliä lelli- lellivauva
lentää lento-, lennin- lentomatka, lenninsiipi
levittää levitys-, levittämis- levityskone, levittämistapa
levitä leviämis-, levintä- leviämissuunta, levintäala
levätä lepo- lepohetki
liike-, liikkuma-, liikesuunta, liikkuma-ala,
liikkua liikunta-, liikkumis- liikuntaelin, liikkumisvapaus
liitto-, liittymä-, liittovaltio, liittymäkohta,
liittyä liittymis-, liityntä- liittymismaksu, liityntäliikenne
liitto-, liittämis-, liittoalue, liittämistapa,
liittää liittännäis-, liitos- liitännäisosa, liitosalue
liota liko- likomärkä
liottaa liko-, liotus- likovesi, liotusallas
lisääntyä lisääntymis- lisääntymisalue
lisäilma, lisäysehdotus,
lisätä lisä-, lisäys-, lisäämis- lisäämiskeino
liuku-, liukuma-, liukukytkin, liukumapinta,
liukua liukumis- liukumiskitka
liuottaa liuotus-, liuottamis- liuotusaine, liuottamiskyky
lohduttaa lohdutus-, lohtu- lohdutuspalkinto, lohtusyöminen
lohkaista lohko-, lohkaisu- lohkotaltta, lohkaisupinta
lohkoa lohkomis- lohkomistoimitus
lopetus-, loppu-, lopetusuhka, loppusoitto,
lopettaa lopettamis- lopettamismerkki
loukata loukkaus- loukkauskivi
loukkaantumis-, loukkaantumisvaara,
loukkantua loukkaus- loukkausvamma
lukea luku-, lukemis- lukupää, lukemisharjoitus
lukita lukitus-, lukko- lukituslaite, lukkomutteri
lunastaa lunastus, lunastamis- lunastuslauseke, lunastamisehto
luoda luonti-, luomis-, luoma- luontihetki, luomistyö, luomakunta
luottaa luotto-, luottamus- luottotoimittaja, luottamusasema
luovuttaa luovutus-, luovuttamis- luovutusvoitto, luovuttamisehto
luulla luulo- luulotauti
luvata lupaus- lupaustodistus
lyödä lyönti-, lyömä- lyöntitiheys, lyömäase
lähestyä lähestymis- lähestymiskielto
lähettää lähetys-, lähettämis- lähetysaika, lähettämiskustannukset
lähteä lähtö- lähtöjuhla
lämmitys-, lämmitysenergia,
lämmittää lämmittämis- lämmittämiskustannukset
löytää löytö- löytöpaikka
maalata maalaus- maalaustaide

maata makuu- makuuhaava

madella matelu- mateluvauhti

mahtaa mahti-, mahto- mahtimies, mahtotapa

maksaa maksu-, maksamis- maksukortti, maksamisperuste

marssia marssi- marssijärjestys

masentua masennus- masennuskausi
matkustaa matkustus-, matkustusluokka,
matkustamis- matkustamiskielto§
menestyä menestys- menestyskirja
menetellä menettely- menettelytapa

menettää menettämis-, menetys- menettämisseuraamus

mennä
meno- menokyyti
merkitä merkintä-, merkintätapa, merkitsemisoikeus
merkitsemis-
miettiä mietintä-, miettimis- mietintäaika, miettimisaika

mitata mittaus-, mittaamis-, mittaustapa, mittaamiskoje, mitta-

mitta- alue
moittia moittimis-, moite- moittimisaika, moitekanne

muistaa muisti-, muisto-, muistisääntö, muistolause,

muistin- muistinaika
muistella muistelma- muistelmateos

muistuttaa muistutus- muistutuskirje

muodostaa muodostus-, muodostustapa, muodostamistapa

muodostamis-
muodostua muodostumis- muodostumisaika

murtaa murto-, murtamis- murtojälki, murtamisyritys

murtua murtuma-, murtumis- murtumakohta, murtumislujuus
muuntaa muunto-, muuntamis- muuntorangaistus, muuntamiskaava
muuttaa muutto-, muutos-, muuttokuorma, muutosvastarinta,
muuttamis- muuttamisjärjestys
muuttua muuttumis- muuttumiskyky
myydä myynti-, myymis-, myyntiaika, myymiskielto,
myymä- myymähinta
myöntää myöntämis-, myöntö- myöntämispäivä, myöntövaltuus

määritellä määrittely- määrittelykysymys

määrittää määritys- määritystapa

määrätä määräys-, määräämis-, määräysvalta, määräämisoikeus,

määrä- määrätunti
naida naima-, naimis-, nainti- naimaikä, naimiskauppa, nainti-ikä
naulata naulaus- naulauskone

nauraa nauru- naurukohtaus

nauttia nautinto-, nautinta- nautintoaine, nautintaoikeus

neuvoa neuvonta-, neuvomis- neuvontatoimisto, neuvomishalu

neuvotella neuvottelu- neuvottelukysymys

nimittää nimitys-, nimittämis- nimitysoikeus, nimittämistapa

nojata noja- noja-asento

nostaa nosto-, nostamis- nosto-oikeus, nostamispäivä
nousta nousu- noususuunta
noutaa nouto-, noutamis- noutopöytä, noutamiskyky

nukkua nukkumis-, nukkuma-, nukkimisaika, nukkumapaikka,

nukunta- nukuntapuu
nähdä näkö-, näkemis-, näköaisti, näkemiskyky, näkemäväli
näkemä-
näkyä näkymä-, näkyvyys- näkymäala, näkyvyysalue
näytellä näyttelemis-, näyttely- näyttelemistaide, näyttelypöytä

näyttää näyttö- näyttöaika

odottaa odotus-, odottamis- odotusaika, odottamisaika

ohittaa ohitus- ohitustie

ohjata ohjaus- ohjausliike

oikaista oikaisu-, oiko- oikaisupyyntö, oikotie

oikeuttaa oikeuttamis-, oikeutus- oikeuttamisperuste,

oikeutusperuste
oikoa oikomis- oikomishoito
ojentaa ojennus- ojennusliike

oksettaa oksetus- oksetustauti

olla olo-, olin-, olemis- olotila, olinpaikka, olemismuoto

omaksua omaksumis- omaksumisnopeus

omistaa omistus-, omistamis- omistusoikeus, omistamishalu

ommella ompelu- ompelurasia

onkia onkima-, onkimis-, onkimapaikka, onkimisaika,

onki-, onginta- onkiretki, ongintakalastus
onnistua onnistumis- onnistumismahdollisuus
opettaa opetus- opetussuunnitelma

opiskella opiskelu- opiskelupaikka

oppia oppi-, oppimis- oppiaika, oppimishalu

osallistua osallistumis - osallistumismahdollisuus

osata osaamis- osaamiskartoitus

osoittaa osoittamis-, osoitus- osoittamistapa, osoitustaulu

ostaa ostopaikka, ostoskeskus,

osto-, ostos-, ostamis- ostamishalu
osua osumis-, osuma- osumiskohta, osumatarkkuus
ottaa otto-, ottamis- ottolapsi, ottamishalu
paeta pako-, pakenemis- pakomatka, pakenemisyritys
painaa paino-, painamis-, painokone, painamismenetelmä,
painin- paininterä
painua painumis- painumisilmiö

paistaa paisto-, paistin-, paistopussi, paistinpelti,

paistamis- paistamislämpö
paisua paisunta-, paisumis- paisuntasäiliö, paisumisrako
pakata pakkaus- pakkausmateriaali
pakottaa pakotus-, pakko- pakotustaltta, pakkokeino

palaa palo-, palamis- palovamma, palamisaika

palata paluu- paluumatka
palauttaa palautus- palautuspallo

palautua palautumis- palautumisaika

paljastaa paljastus-, paljastamis- paljastuskirja, paljastamistilaisuus

paljastua paljastumis- paljastumisriski

palkita palkinto-, palkitsemis- palkintomatka.

palkitsemisjärjestelmä
palvella palvelu-, palvelus- palveluhenkinen, palveluskunta

paneutua paneutumis- paneutumisaika

panna pano-, panenta- panopaikka, panentamieli

parantaa parannus- parannuskeino

parantua parantumis- parantumisaika

parsia parsin-, parsima-, parsinneula, parsimalanka,

parsimis-, parsinta- parsimiskehys, parsintatyö
peittää peitto-, peittämis-, peittokyky, peittämisaine,
peitin-, peite- peitinhöyhen, peiteväri
pelastaa pelastus-, pelastamis- pelastusraketti, pelastamistyö

pelastua pelastumis- pelastumistie

pelätä pelko- pelkotila

perintätoimisto, perimysjärjestys,
periä perintä-, perimys-, peri- perikunta
perustaa perustus-, perustamis-, perustus, perustamisvuosi,
perus- peruskivi
perustella perustelu- perustelumuistio

peruuttaa peruutus-, peruuttamis- peruutuspeili, peruuttamisilmoitus

pesiä pesimä-, pesintä-, pesimäpaikka, pesintäalue,
pesimis- pesimisaika
pestä pesu-, pesin- pesukone, pesinvesi
pettää petos-, petto-, pettämis- petosyritys, pettolapsi,
pettämisyritys
pidetä pitenemis- pitenemiskerroin
pidentää pidennys-, pitennys- pidennysaika, pitennysaika
pidättää pidätys-, pidätin- pidätyskyky, pidätinköysi

pienentää pienennys- pienennysmuoto

piirtää piirto-, piirtämis- piirtopuikko, piirtämismenetelmä

pilata pilaamis- pilaamiskielto
piristää piristys- piristysruiske
pistää pisto-, pistin- pistohaava, pistinmiekka
pitää pito- pitokausi, pitovaatteet
pohtia pohdinta-, pohtimis- pohdinta-aika, pohtimisaika
poiketa poikkeus- poikkeusolot

poimia poiminta- poimintahakkaus

poistaa
poisto- poistomyynti
poistua
poistumis- poistumistie
polkea polku- polkuhinta
polttaa poltto-, poltin-, polttopuu, poltinkarva, polttiaiseläin
polttiais-
potkaista potku-, potkaisu- potkusuunta, potkaisusuunta
potkia potku-, potkimis- potkukelkka, potkimistapaus
pudota putoamis- putoamisliike

pudottaa pudotus- pudotuspeli

puhaltaa puhallus- puhallusmenetelmä

puhdistaa puhdistus-, puhdistusaine, puhdistamislaite

puhdistamis-
puhjeta puhkeamis- puhkeamisaika

puhua puhe-, puhumis- puhekeskus, puhumiskyky

puida puima-, puinti- puimakone, puintiaika
pukea pukemis- pukemistila
pukeutua puku-, pukeutumis- pukukoppi, pukeutumistila

puolustaa
puolustus- puolustusministeri
puristaa puristus-, puristin-, puristussuhde, puristinkone,
puriste- puristelasi
purkaa
purku-, purkamis- purkutyö, purkamisaika
purkautua purkaus-, purkautumis- purkausaukko, purkautumiskyky
purra puru-, purema-, puruluu, puremakohta,
purenta-, puremis- purentapinta, puremisvaihe
puuttua puute-, puutos-, puuteluettelo, puutostauti,
puuttumis- puuttumisilmoitus
pyrkiä pyrkimys- pyrkimysperä
pystyttää pystytys- pystytystarkastus
pysyä pysyväis- pysysäismääräys
pysähtyä pysähdys-, pysähtymis- pysähdyspaikka, pysähtymiskäsky

pysäyttää pysäytys-, pysäyttämis- pysäytyslaite, pysäyttämismerkki

pyyhkiä pyyhe-, pyyhin-, pyyhekumi, pyyhinliina,

pyyhkimis- pyyhkimistyö
pyytää pyyntö-, pyynti-, pyyntörukous, pyyntiaika,
pyytämis- pyytämiskynnys
pyöriä pyörimis-, pyörintä- pyörimisakseli, pyörintänopeus
pyöräillä pyöräily- pyöräilyasu

päästä pääsy-, pääsemis-, pääsymaksu, pääsemiskysymys,

pääsin- pääsinpäivä
päästää päästö- päästöuuni

päätellä päättely-, päättelemis- päättelykyky, päättelemistapa

päättää päättämis-, pääte-, päättämisaika, päätepiste,

päättö-, päätös-, päättötutkinto, päätösasia,
päätäntä-, päätäntö- päätäntävalta, päätäntöoikeus
päättyä päättymis- päättymispäivä

rahoittaa rahoitus-, rahoittamis- rahoituslaitos, rahoittamispäätös

raivota raivo- raivokohtaus

rajoittaa rajoitus-, rajoittamis- rajoitusmääräys,
rajoittamispyrkimys
rakentaa rakennus-, rakentamis- rakennusaika, rakentamismääräys

rakastaa rakkaus-, rakastamis- rakkaussuhde, rakastamistaito

ratkaista ratkaisu-, ratkaisemis- ratkaisuvaihe, ratkaisemistapa

ratsastaa ratsastus- ratsastuskoulu

rauhoittaa rauhoitus-, rauhoitusaika, rauhoittamispäätös

rauhoittamis-
rekisteröidä rekisteröimis-, rekisteröimispakko,
rekisteröinti- rekisteröintipäivä
repäistä repäisy- repäisykorkki

rientää riento- rientomarssi

riippua riippu-, riippuma- riippuliito, riippuma-asento

riisua riisumis- riisumispakko
riisuuntua riisuuntumis- riisuuntumisesitys
riistää riisto-, riistämis- riistokäyttö. riistämisteoria
rikkoa rikkomis-, rikko- rikkomispeli, rikkomenetemä
rukoilla rukous- rukoushetki

ryhtyä ryhtymis- ryhtymiskynnys

rynnätä rynnäkkö- rynnäkkötikkaat
räjähtää räjähdys-, järähtämis- räjähdysaine, järähtämispiste
räjäyttää räjäytys-, räjäyttämis- räjäytyspanos, räjäyttämistyö
saada saantitodistus, saamisoikeus,
saanti-, saamis-, saama- saamavekseli
saapua saapumis-, saavunta- saapumisilmoitus, saavunta-aika

saattaa
saatto- saattoalus, saattomatka
saavuttaa saavuttamis- saavuttamistapa

sairastua sairastumis- sairastumisriski

sallia sallimis- sallimisajatus

sanoa sanonta-, sanoma-, sanontatapa, sanomakello,
sanomis- sanomistapa
seisoa ~ seisonta-, seisoma-, seisontavakuutus, seisomapaikka,
seistä seisomis- seisomisaika
sekoittaa sekoitus-, seka- sekoitussuhde, sekakahvi

selittää selitys-, selittämis- selitysteos, selittämishalu

selostaa selostus-, selostamis- selostuspaikka, selostamistapa

selvitellä selvittely- selvittelytili

selvittää selvitys- selvitysmies

selvitä selviämis- selviämisasema

selviytyä selviytymis- selviytymispakkaus

seurata seuraamis-, seuranta- seuraamiskaavio, seurantalaite

siepata sieppaus-, sieppaamis- sieppaustapa, sieppaamistapaus

sietää sieto-, sietämis- sietokynnys, sietämiskyky

siirtyä siirtymis-, siirtymä-, siirtymisaika, siirtymäkausi,
siirryntä- siirryntäikä
siirtää siirto-, siirtämis-, siirtolohkare, siirtämislaite, siirros-
siirros-, siirre- linja, siirreistutus
sijaita sijainti- sijaintipaikka
sijoittaa sijoitus-, sijoittamis- sijoituspaikka, sijoittamismuoto

sijoittua sijoitttumis- sijoittumisjärjestys

sisältää sisällys- sisällysluettelo

sitoa sitomis-, sidonta-, sitomiskyky, sidontapaikka,

sitoma- sitomakone
sitoutua sitoutumis- sitoutumisaika

siunata siunaus-, siunaamis- siunauskappeli, siunaamiskaava

sivellä sively- sivelyaine

sivuuttaa sivuuttamis- sivuuttamishetki

soittaa soitto- soittoaika

solmia solmimis- solmimismuoto
sopia sopimis-, sovinto-, sopimisoikeus, sovintoratkaisu,
sopu- sopupeli
soveltaa sovellus-, sovellutus-, sovellusala, sovellutusala,
soveltamis- soveltamisala
soveltua soveltuvuus- soveltuvuustesti

sovittaa sovitus-, sovittamis- sovituskoppi, sovittamisajatus

suhtautua suhtautumis- suhtautumiskysymys

suipeta suippo- suippokaali

sukeltaa sukellus-, sukeltamis- sukellusvene,

 sukeltamismahdollisuus
sulkea sulku-, sulkemis-, sulkutuli, sulkemisaika,
sulkeis- sulkeisharjoitus
suojata suoja-, suojaus-, suojajoukot, suojaustaso,
suojaamis- suojaamistehtävä
suojella suojelu- suojelumääräys

suorittaa
suoritus-, suorittamis- suoritusaika, suorittamisaika
suosia suosikki-, suosinta-, suosikkihevonen, suosintatulli,
suosimis- suosimiskielto
suositella suositus-, suosittelu- suosituskirje, suosittelukirje

suostua suostumus-, suostunta- suostumuslomake, suostuntavero

supeta suppenemis- suppenemissäde

supistaa supistuma-, supistus- supistumamuoto, supistusnippa

surmata surma-, surmaamis- surmapaikka, surmaamisaikomus

suunnata suuntaus-, suuntaamis- suuntauslaite, suuntaamistapa

suunnitella suunnittelu-, suunnittelutoimisto,

suunnitelma- suunnitelmatalous
suuntautua suuntautumis- suuntautumisvaihtoehto

suuttua suuttumis-, suuttumiskynnys

synnyttää synnytys-, synnyttämis- synnytyslaitos, synnyttämistapa

syntyä syntymä-, synty-, syntymäaika, syntyperä,

 synnyin-, syntymis- synnyinmaa, syntymisnopeus
syttyä syttymis- syttymistapa
sytyttää sytytys-, sytyttämis-, sytytyslanka, sytyttämistapa,
sytytin- sytytinlaite
syventyä syventymis- syventymisharjoitus

syventää syvennys-, syventämis- syvennystyö, syventämistyö

syyttää syyttämis-, syyte-, syyttämispäätös, syyteharkinta,
syyttö- syyttömenetelmä
syödä syönti-, syömä-, syöntiomena, syömävahinko,
syömis-, syönnös- syömishäiriö, syönnöstie
syöksyä syöksy-, syöksymis- syöksynopeus, syöksymisnopeus

säilyttää säilytys-, säilyttämis- säilytyspaikka, säilyttämisaika

säilyä säilymis- säilymisaika

säilöä säilöntä-, säilömis-, säilöntäaine, säilömistapa, säilörehu
säilö-
särkeä särkemis- särkemispeli
säästää säästö-, säästämis- säästötili, säästämishalu

säätää säätö-, säätämis-, säätönuppi, säätämisvuosi,

säädäntä- säädäntätapa
taata takuu-, takaus- takuutodistus, takausvelka
tahtoa tahto- tahtotila
taistella taistelu- taistelujoukot

taitaa taito- taitolaji

tajuta tajuamis-, tajunta- tajuamiskyky, tajuntakyky
takoa tako-, takoma-, takorauta, takomavasara,
 takomis-, taonta- takomistyö, taontakelpoinen
tanssia tanssi-, tanssimis- tanssiesitys, tanssimisinto

tapahtuma-, tapahtumahetki,
tapahtua tapahtumis- tapahtumisjärjestys
tapella tappelu- tappelukohtaus
tappaa tappo-, tappamis- tappoase, tappamiskyky

tarjota tarjous-, tarjontamäärä, tarjoushinta, tarjontamäärä,

tarjoamis- tarjoamisvelvollisuus
tarkastaa tarkastus-, tarkastamis- tarkastuspiste,
tarkastamisvelvollisuus
tarkastella tarkastelu- tarkastelukulma

tarkistaa tarkistus-, tarkistamis- tarkistusmenetelmä,

tarkistamisvelvollisuus
tarkkailla tarkkailu- tarkkailuluokka

tarkoittaa tarkoitus- tarkoitusperä

tarttua tarttumis-, tartunta- tarttumisote, tartuntavaara

tarvita tarve- tarveharkinta

tasoittaa tasoitus-, tasoittamis- tasoitusajo, tasoittamistyö

tavata :
tapaan tapaamis- tapaamisoikeus
tavata :
tavaan tavaus- tavaustaito, tavaamisharjoitus
tavoittaa tavoittamis-, tavoite- tavoittamiselin, tavoitehinta
tavuttaa tavutus- tavutusohjelma
tehdä teko-, tekemis- tekotapa, tekemisinto
tehostaa tehostus-, tehostamis-, tehostuskeino, tehostamiskeino,
tehoste- tehosterokotus
teljetä telki- telkihaka
tervehtiä tervehdys-, tervehtimis- tervehdyskäynti, tervehtimistapa

tiedustella tiedustelu- tiedusteluretki

tietää tieto-, tietämis- tietokyky, tietämiskyky

tihkua tihku- tihkusade
tilata tilaus-, tilaamis- tilaussauna, tilaamispäätös
todeta toteamis- toteamisraja
todistaa todistus-, todistamis- todistusvoima, todistamismenettely

toimia toimi-, toiminta-, toimilupa, toimintaohje,

toimimis- toimimismahdollisuus
toimittaa toimitus-, toimittamis- toimituskulut, toimittamisaika

toistaa toisto-, toistamis- toistokoe, toistamispakko

toivoa toive-, toivomus-, toivo- toivekappale, toivomusponsi,
toivomieli
torjua torjunta- torjuntareaktio
totella tottelemis-, tottelemisvelvollisuus,
tottelevaisuus- tottelevaisuuskoe
toteuttaa toteutus-, toteuttamis- toteutustapa, toteuttamisaste

tottua tottumis-, tottumus-, tottumiskysymys, tottumuskysymys,

totunnais- totunnaistapa
tuhota tuho-, tuhoamis- tuhovoima, tuhoamisvimma
tuijottaa tuijotus- tuijotuskilpailu

tukea tuki-, tuenta-, tukemis- tukijalka, tuentakalusto,

tukemistapa
tulkita tulkinta-, tulkitsemis- tulkintakysymys, tulkitsemispalvelut
tulla tulo-, tulemis- tulosatama, tulemisaika
tunkea tunkemis- tunkemisinto

tunkeutua tunkeutumis- tunkeutumissyvyys

tunnustaa tunnustus- tunnustuspalkinto

tuntea tunto-, tuntemis-, tuntoaisti, tuntemisvelvollisuus,

tuntema- tuntematapa
tuoda tuonti-, tuomis- tuontilupa, tuomistapa
tuomita tuomio-, tuomitsemis- tuomioistuin, tuomitsemisoikeus

tuottaa tuotto-, tuotanto-, tuottokyky, tuotantokustannus,

tuottamis- tuottamisvastuu
turvata turva-, turvaamis- turvajärjestely, turvaamistoimi

turvautua turvautumis- turvautumiskeino

tutkia tutkimis-, tutkimus-, tutkimishalu, tutkimuskeino,

tutkinta-, tutkinto- tutkintakomissio, tutkintovankeus
tutustua tutustumis- tutustumistarjous

tyydyttää tyydytys- tyydytystapa

tyytyä tyytymis- tyytymiskysymys

työntää työntö- työntövoima
työskennellä työ-, työskentely- työtapa, työskentelymuoto
tähdentää tähdennys- tähdennyskeino

tähdätä tähtäys-, tähtäämis- tähtäyssuunta, tähtäämisasento

täydentää täydennys-, täydennysosa,

täydentämis- täydentämismahdollisuus
täyttää täyttö-, täyttämis- täyttöaukko-, täyttämisohje

täytyä täytymis- täytymiskysymys

törmätä törmäys-, törmäämis- törmäysvoima, törmäämisvaara
uhata uhka-, uhkaus- uhkakuva, uhkauskirje
uida uima-, uinti-, uimis- uima-allas, uintimatka, uimisliike
unohtaa unohtamis-, unohdus- unohtamistaipumus, unohdusasia

uskaltaa uskaltamis-, uskallus- uskaltamiskysymys, uskallusasia

uskoa uskomis-, uskomus- uskomistaipumus, uskomushoito

(uskon-) (uskonasia)
uudistaa uudistus-, uudistamis- uudistusmielinen, uudistamishanke

uusia uusimis-, uusinta- uusimistarve, uusintakierros-

vaalia vaalimis- vaalimistapa
vaatia vaatimus-, vaatimis- vaatimustaso, vaatimistaakka
vaeltaa vaellus-, vaeltamis- vaellusretki, vaeltamistaipumus

vahvistaa vahvistus-, vahvistamis- vahvistussana, vahvistamispäätös

vaieta vaikenemis- vaikenemismerkki

vaihdella vaihtelu- vaihteluväli

vaihtaa vaihto-, vaihtamis- vaihtoaitio, vaihtamisoikeus

vaihtua vaihtumis-, vaihtuma- vaihtumisnopeus, vaihtuma-alue

vaikuttaa vaikutus-, vaikuttamis- vaikutusvalta, vaikuttamiskeino

vaivata vaivaus-, vaivaamis- vaivauskone, vaivaamisaika

vakiintua vakiintumis- vakiintumisikä

vakuuttaa vakuutus-, vakuuttamis- vakuutusyhtiö,

vakuuttamisvelvollisuus
valaa valu-, valanta-, valamis- valurauta, valamislämpötila,
valantakelpoinen
valaista valaistus-, valaisu- valaistustekniikka, valaisuetäisyys

valehdella valehtelu-, valehtelutaipumus ,

valehtelemis- valehtelemistaipumus
valita valinta-, valitsemis- valintamyymälä, valitsemiskomitea
vallata valtaus- valtauspyrkimys
vallita vallinta- vallintaoikeus
valmistaa valmistus-, valmistusaine,
valmistamis- valmistamiskustannukset
valmistautua valmistautumis- valmistautumisaika
valmistella valmistelu- valmisteluvaihe

valmistua valmistumis- valmistumisvuosi

valua valumis-, valuma- valumisaukko, valuma-alue

valvoa valvonta-, valvomis-, valvontakomissio, valvomiskeino,
valve- valveuni
vanheta vanhenemis- vanhenemisaika

vapauttaa vapautus-, vapauttamis- vapautusliike, vapauttamispäätös

vapautua vapautumis- vapautumishetki

vastaanottaa vastaanotto-, vastaanottovirkailija,

vastaanottamis- vastaanottamistodistus
vastata vastaus-, vastaamis-, vastausaika-, vastaamisvuoro,
vastaavuus- vastaavuussuhde
vastustaa vasta-, vastustus-, vastalause, vastustusasenne,
vastustamis- vastustamishalu
varata varaus, varaamis-, vara- varausnumero, varaamisaika,
varakone
varmistaa varmistus, varmistuskeino, varmistamiskeino
varmistamis-, varmuus- varmuusvarasto
varoa varo-, varovaisuus-, varotoimi, varovaisuusohje,
varomis- varomisvelvollisuus
varoittaa varoitus-, varoittamis- varoitusvalo, varoittamisvelvollisuus

varttua varttumis- varttumisaika

varustaa varus-, varustus-, varuskunta, varustusmenot,

varustelu-, varustelumenot,
varustautumis- varustautumismenot
vedota vetoamis-, vetoomus- vetoamisfunktio,
vetoomustuomioistuin
velvoittaa velvoite-, velvoittamis-, velvoiteoikeus, velvoitustapa,
velvoitus- velvoittamisoikeus
verottaa verotus-, verottamis- verotusarvo, verottamisoikeus

verrata vertaus- vertauskuva

vertailla vertailu- vertailukohta

vetäistä vetäisy- vetäisynauha

vetäytyä vetäytymis- vetäytymistaistelu

vetää veto-, vetämis- vetokoukku, vetämistapa

viedä vienti- vientimahdollisuus,
vierailla vierailu- vierailupäivä

viettää viettämis-. vietto- viettämistapa, viettoaika

vihata viha- vihapuhe

vihkiä vihki-, vihkimis-, vihkipari, vihkimisoikeus,
vihkimä- vihkimäjuhla
viihtyä viihtymis-, viihtyvyys- viihtymisongelma, viihtyvyysasia

viipyä viipymis- viipymisaika

viitata viittaus- viittaussuhde
viitsiä viitsimis- viitsimiskysymys
viljellä viljely- viljelyala
virkata virkkuu-, virkkaus- virkkuukoukku, virkkauslanka

voida vointi- vointikysymys

voittaa voitto-, voittamis- voittotahto, voittamishalu
vähentää vähennys-, vähentämis- vähennyslasku. vähentämisjärjestys

väijyä väijy-, väijymis-, väijypaikka, väijymispaikka,

väijymä-, väijys- väijymäpaikka, väijyspaikka
väistää väistö-, väistämis- väistöliike, väistämisvelvollisuus
väittää väite-, väittämis-, väitelause, väittämistaakka,
väitös- väitöslause
välittää välitys-, välittäjä-, välitysliike, välittäjäaine,
välittämis- välittämislupaus
välttää välttämis- välttämiskeino
väsyä väsymys- väsymyskohtaus
yhdistää yhdys-, yhdistys-, yhdysupseeri, yhdistyskappale,
yhdistämis- yhdistämissääntö
yhteyttää yhteyttämis- yhteyttämistulos
yhtyä yhtymis-, yhtymä- yhtymispaino, yhtymäkohta
ylistää ylistys- ylistyslaulu
ylittää ylitys-, ylittämis- ylityskohta, ylittämisoikeus
yllättää yllätys-, yllättämis- yllätyshyökkäys,
yllättämismahdollisuus
ymmärtää ymmärtämis-, ymmärtämisvaikeus, ymmärryskyky
ymmärrys
yrittää yritys-, yrittämis- yrityshalu, yrittämishalu
yskiä (yskän-) yskänkohtaus
äänestys-, ääni-, äänestystulos, äänioikeus,
äänestää äänestämis- äänestämismahdollisuus
Proper names
The following table presents forms of foreign names used in Finnish, with
their English equivalents and some explanations. Note in particular that
many of the correspondences given apply in limited contexts only, as noted in
the third column. For example, the Finnish word Paavali is used for Apostle
Paul, for popes with Paul (Latin Paulus) in their name, and for Russian czars
Paul (Russian Pavel). Otherwise Paavali is just a Finnish name, and e.g. Paul
or Pavel as a British or Russian name is used as such in Finnish. (However,
important persons in Finland’s history have often had their irst name
adapted, e.g. using Paavali instead of the Swedish name Paul or its Latinized
version Paulus. The practices are varying now, e.g. Paavali ~ Paulus ~ Paul
Juusten.)
The table is based on information compiled by the author originally for the
Finnish book Vierasnimikirja. Due to different purposes of the books, the
material has been rearranged and modi ied. In particular, the table is in
alphabetic order by Finnish form.
Some expressions that are derivations of proper names in Finnish have
been included, due to their treatment as proper names in English and other
languages.
Names have been included for different reasons:
Some names have a special form in Finnish, different from any other
language, e.g. Kööpenhamina for Copenhagen.
Some names appear in Finnish in the original form but in English in some
other form. E.g. for Munich, Finnish uses the German form München.
Some names, though spelled as in the original language, have special
pronunciation or in lection in Finnish. The irst column of the table
contains pronunciation information in brackets and, when relevant, the
genitive form to describe the in lection. For geographic names, the
locational case inessive or adessive is shown, to indicate whether inner or
outer cases are used.
The table does not contain names that appear in different forms when such
variation does not speci ically relate to Finnish, e.g. the question whether to
use Burma or Myanmar. Neither does the table contain general variation in
transliterations, e.g. the use on pinyin versus older systems for Chinese, as in
Mao Zedong versus the older Mao Tse-tung. Regarding Finnish
transliterations of Russian and Greek names, only some common names are
given here.
The table is in modern Finnish alphabetic order (a, b, ..., v, w, x, y, z, å, ä, ö).

In Finnish In English Notes

Aabel Abel Biblical. Abel in 1992
translation.
Aabraham Abraham Biblical. Abraham in 1992
translation.
Aachen [aahhen] Aachen German name.
Aadam Adam Biblical. Popular language
form is Aatami.
Aadolf Adolph Kings of Sweden (Adolf).
Aajoki Lielupe In history. Now Lielupe.
Aamos : Aamoksen Amos Biblical.
Aasia Asia
Aataminhuippu : Adam’s Peak
Aataminhuipulla
Abélard, Pierre [abelaar Abelard, Peter French philosopher.
piäär]
Abessinia Abyssinia Now Etiopia (Ethiopia).
Abhasia Abkhazia
Abimelek Abimelech Biblical.
Abruzzit [abrutsit] ~ Abruzzo ~
Abruzzo [abrutso] Abruzzi
Accra [akra] Akkra ~ Accra The form Akkra has also
been used in Finnish.
Addis Abeba Addis Ababa
Aden [aaden] : Aadenissa Aden
Adrianmeri Adriatic Sea
Adrianopoli Adrianople Now Edirne.
Adrianus : Adrianuksen Adrian Popes.
Adygeia Adygea
Adžaria Adjara
Aëtius [aeetius] : Aetius
Aëtiuksen
Afganistan Afghanistan
Afrikansarvi Horn of Africa
Afrikka : Afrikassa Africa
Afrodite [afrodite ~ Aphrodite
afrodiite]
Agathon Agatho Pope.
Agios Nikolaos ~ Ajos Agios Nikolaos
Nikolaos
Agulhasinniemi Cape Agulhas
[aguljasinniemi]
Ahmedabad ~ Ahmadabad Ahmedabad
Ahvenanmaa : Åland
Ahvenanmaalla
Ahvenanmeri Åland Sea
Ahvenanrauma South Kvarken
Aias : Aiaksen ~ Aiaan Ajax ~ Aias Mythological.
Aiginanlahti Saronic Gulf Same as Saroninlahti.
Aikakirja Chronicles Biblical. 1 Chronicles = 1.
Aikakirja.
Aiolia Aeolia ~ Aeolis
Aiskhylos : Aiskhyloksen Aeschylus
Aisopos : Aisopoksen Aesop ~ Esop
Aisopos : Aisopoksen Esop
Akaba Aqaba
Akabanlahti Gulf of Aqaba
akhaialainen Achaean
akhemenidi ~ akhaimenidi Achaemenid
Akhilleus : Akhilleuksen Achilles The form Akilles is used in
the phrase Akilleen
kantapää and on
compounds like
akillesjänne.
Akko : Akkossa Acca ~ Acco
Akropolis : Akropoliilla Acropolis
Aktaion Actaeon
Akvitania Aquitaine ~
Aquitania
Aladdin Alladin ~ The form Alladin is
Aladdin sometimes used in
Finnish.
Alaivuoret Alay Mountains
~ Alai Mountains
Alamaa Lowlands Scottish Lowlands.
Alankomaat : the Netherlands
Alankomaissa
Alankomaiden Antillit : Netherlands Now historical.
Alankomaiden Antilleilla Antilles
Alarik Alaric
Ala-Saksi Lower Saxony
Alattio Alta
Albrekt Albert of
Mecklenburgilainen Sweden
Aleksandria Alexandria
Aleksanteri Alexander Monarchs.
Aleksanteri Nevski Alexander In orthodox usage Pyhä
Nevsky Aleksanteri Nevalainen.
Aleksanterinsaari Alexander Island
Aleksei Alexey Russian irst name
Aleksei Alexis Czars.
Aleutit : Aleuteilla Aleutian Islands
Alexandersaaristo ~ Alexander
Alexandersaaret Archipelago
Alfa Centauri ~ α Centauri Alpha Centauri Similarly for other names
[alfa kentauri] of stars.
Alfeus : Alfeuksen Alphaeus Biblical
Alfonso Afonso Monarchs.
Alfred Suuri Alfred the Great
Alger [alžee] : Alger’ssa : Algiers City.
Alger’hen
Algeria Algeria Country.
Alkaios : Alkaioksen Alcaeus
Alkestis : Alkestiksen Alcestis
Alkibiades : Alkibiadeen Alcibiades
allting Althing
Alpit : Alpeilla the Alps
al-Qaida [al kaida] Al Qaeda ~ Al
Qaida
Alsace [alsas] (: Alsacessa Alsace
[alsasessa])
Altai : Altailla Altai ~ Altay
Amadeus : Amadeuksen Amadeo Monarchs.
Amazon [amatson] Amazon River.
Amazonia [amatsonia], Amazonia Older form in Finnish:
Amazonin alue Amazonas.
Ambomaa : Ambomaalla ~ Ovamboland ~
Ambomaassa Owamboland
Ambrosius : Ambrosiuksen Ambrose Father of the Church.
Amerikan the Confederate
konfederoituneet valtiot ~ States of
Etelävaltiot ~ America
Konfederaatio
Amerikka : Amerikassa America Often refers to the USA,
but may also refer to the
Americas,
Amerikka ~ Amerikan the Americas
manner
Amudarja Amu Darya Earlier spelling Amu-
Darja.
Anakreon Anacreon
Anastasia ~ Anastasija Anastasia ~ Russian irst name.
Anastasiya
Anatolia Anatolia In Turkish: Anadolu.
Andalusia Andalusia In Spanish: Andalucía.
Andalusian vuorimaa Baetic
Mountains
Andamaanit Andaman
Islands ~
Andamans
Andit : Andeilla Andes, the
Andreas : Andreaan Andrew Biblical. In lected Andreas
: Andreaksen in the new
 (1992) translation.
Androclus : Androcluksen Androcles ~
Androclus
Andronikos Kyrroslainen Andronicus of
Cyrrhus
Ankyra Ancyra Now Ankara.
Anna Itävaltalainen Anne of Austria
Anna Kleveläinen Anne of Cleves
Anna Maria Anne-Marie Queen.
Anna Stuart Anne, Queen
Antaios : Antaioksen Antaeus
Antarktis : Antarktiksella ~ Antarctis Cf. Etelämanner.
Antarktiksessa
Antigua ja Barbuda : Antigua and
Antigua ja Barbudassa Barbuda
antikristus : antikristuksen Antichrist
Antikythera Antikythera
Antillit : Antilleilla Antilles
Antiokia Antiochia ~
Antiochea
Antonius : Antoniuksen Anthony In ancient Rome.
(la)
Antrea Kamennogorsk Now in Russia.
Antwerpen [antverpen] : Antwerp The form Antverpen is
Antwerpenissa ~ now rare in Finnish.
Antwerpenissä
Aostanlaakso Aosta Valley
Apatiitti : Apatiitissa Apatity
Apenniinit : Apenniineillä Apennines, the
apokry ikirjat Apocrypha
Apollon : Apollonin Apollo Ancient god. The form
Apollo is also used in
Finnish.
Apostolien teot Acts A book of the Bible.
apostolinen Apostles’ Creed
uskontunnustus
Appalakit Appalachian
Mountains
Arabianmeri Arabian Sea, the
Arabiemiraatit the Arab
Emirates
Arafuranmeri ~ Arafura Sea
Arafurameri
Aragonia Aragon
Araljärvi Aral Sea
Ardennit : Ardenneilla the Ardennes
Areios : Areioksen Arius
Argentiina Argentina
Argoliinlahti Argolic Gulf
Argolis : Argoliin Argolis
Aristarkhos Samoslainen Aristarchus of
Samos
Aristofanes : Aristofaneen Aristophanes
aristoteelinen Aristotelian
Aristoteles : Aristoteleen : Aristotle The philosopher.
Aristoteleeseen
Arizona [aritsona] Arizona
Arkadia Arcadia In Greece.
Arkangeli Archangel
Arkansas : Arkansasissa Arkansas
Arkhimedes : Archimedes
Arkhimedeen
Arktinen saaristo Arctic
Archipelago
Arktis : Arktiksessa ~ Arctic, the
Arktiksella
Arnheminmaa : Arnhem Land
Arnheminmaassa
Artakserkses : Artaxerxes
Artakserkseen
Asasel Azazel
Ascension [əsénšən] Ascension Island
Ašgabat ~ Aşgabat Ashgabat ~ Earlier form (from
[ašgabat] Askhgabad Russian): Ašhabad.
Ashmoren- ja Ashmore and
Cartier’nsaaret [äšmooren Cartier Islands
ja kartjeen saaret]
Asklepios : Asklepioksen Aesculapius
Asklepios : Asklepioksen Asclepius
Asova Azov
Asser Asher Biblival.
Assuan Aswan ~ Assuan
Astrahan Astrakhan Earlier form Astrakan
also used.
Asturia Asturias
Ateena Athens City in Greece.
Athanasios [atanaasios] ~ Athanasius
Athanasius [atanaasius]
Athene [atene] Athene ~ Athena Goddess.
Athos Mount Athos Ks. Athos.
Atlantti : Atlantilla the Atlantic
Atlas (: Atlaksella) ~ Atlas Mountains
Atlasvuoret
Atlas : Atlaksen ~ Atlaan Atlas Mythological.
Attika Attica
Augeias : Augeiaan Augeas ~
Augeias
Augustinus : St Augustine
Augustinuksen
Aunus : Aunuksessa Olonets In Russia.
Aurelianus [aureliaanus] : Aurelian
Aurelianuksen
Aurora [auroora] Aurora
Australasia Australasia The term is rarely used in
Finnish.
australialainen alue Australasian
ecozone
Australian Kordillieerit Great Dividing
Range
Aventinus : Aventinuksella Aventine Hill
Averroës : Averroëksen Averroes ~
Averroës
Azerbaidžan Azerbaijan
Azorit [asorit ~ atsorit] : Azores
Azoreilla
Baabel ~ Babylon Babel ~ Babylon Baabel in 1933 Bible,
Babylon in 1992.
Babylonia Babylonia
Baf ininlahti Baf in Bay
Baf ininsaari Baf in Island Earlier Baf ininmaa.
Bagdad Baghdad
baha’i [bahaaii ~ bahai] : Bahá’í Faith
baha’in : baha’ihin
[bahaaiihin]
Bahama (: Bahamalla ~ Bahamas, the
Bahamassa) ~
Bahamasaaret (:
Bahamasaarilla)
Bahrain Bahrain ~
Bahrein
Baijeri Bavaria
Baikal Baykal ~ Baikal
Baikalin–Amurin rata Baikal-Amur
Main Line
Bakkhos (: Bakkhoksen) ~ Bacchus Same as Dionysos.
Bacchus [bakkus] (:
Bacchuksen)
Baleaarit : Baleaareilla Balearic Islands
~ Baleares
Balkan : Balkanilla Balkans
Balkaš Balkhash ~
Balqash
Baltia ~ Baltian maat Baltic countries
~ Baltics
Baltian; balttilainen; Baltic
Itämeren
Baluchistan [-utši-] ~ Balochistan ~
Belutšistan Baluchistan
Banat ~ Baanaatti (: Banat
Baanaatissa)
Barbados : Barbadoksella Barbados
(~ Barbadoksessa ~
Barbadosilla ~
Barbadosissa)
Barentsinmeri Barents Sea
Bartolomeus : Bartholomew Biblical.
Bartolomeuksen
Basel [baasel] Basel ~ Basle
Basileos Suuri Basil the Great
Baskimaa : Baskimaassa Basque Country
Bastilji Bastille
Baškiria ~ Baškortostan Bashkiria ~
Bashkortostan
Bastilji Bastille
Beelsebub Beelzebub In the Bible Beelsebul
(1938) ~ Belsebul (1992).
Beetlehem Bethlehem Biblical. Betlehem in 1992
translation.
Beetsaida Bethsaida Biblical. Betsaida in 1992
translation.
Beettiset vuoret Baetic
Mountains
Belgia Belgium
Belgrad ~ Beograd Belgrade
Benedictus : Benedict Popes.
Benedictuksen
Bengali Bengal
Bengasi Benghazi ~
Banghazi
Berliini Berlin
Bermuda : Bermudalla ~ Bermuda ~ the
Bermudassa Bermudas
Bern Berne ~ Bern
Bernhard Bernard Saints.
Betelgeuze [betelgeuse] Betelgeuse
Betšuanamaa Bechuanaland
Bioko Bioco ~ Bioko Former Fernando Póo.
Biskajanlahti Bay of Biscay
Bismarckinsaaret Bismarck
Archipelago
Bodenjärvi [boodenjärvi] Lake Constance
Boiotia Boeotia
Bolšoi-teatteri Bolshoi Theater
Bonifatius : Bonifatiuksen Boniface Popes.
Booas : Booaan Boaz Biblical. Boas in 1992
translation
Bosnia-Hertsegovina (: Bosnia and
Bosnia-Hertsegovinassa) ~ Herzegovina ~
Bosnia ja Hertsegovina (: Bosnia-
Bosnia ja Hertsegovinassa) Herzegovina
Bospori Bosphorus ~
Bosporus
Bourgogne [burgonje] Burgundy
Bouvet’nsaari Bouvet Island
[buveensaari]
Brahe [braahe], Tyko ~ Brahe, Tycho
Tycho [tyko]
Brasilia Brazil Country.
Brasília Brasilia City.
Braunschweig Brunswick ~ In Germany.
[braunšvaig] Braunschweig
Brazzavillen [bratsavillen] Congo-
Kongo Brazzaville
Breslau Wrocław In history; otherwise
Wrocław.
Bretagne [bretanje] Brittany
Brežnev [breežnev] Brezhnev
Brisbane [brisbein] Brisbane
Britannia Britain
Britteinsaaret : British Isles
Britteinsaarilla
Brittiläinen kansainyhteisö British Nyk. Commonwealth of
Commonwealth Nations.
Brittiläinen Kolumbia British Columbia
Brugge Bruges
Bryssel Brussels
Buhara Bukhara
Bukarest Bucharest
Burgundi Burgundy Especially in history;
otherwise often
Bourgogne.
Burjatia Buryatia
Bysantti : Bysantissa Byzantium ~
Byzantian
Empire
Böhmerwald [böömervald Bohemian Forest
~ böömervalt]
Böömi Bohemia
Cádiz [kaadis] Cadiz
Caelius [keelius] : Caelian Hill
Caeliuksella
Caesar [keesar] Caesar ~ Cæsar
Calabria ~ Kalabria Calabria
Calais [kalee] : Calais’ssa : Calais
Calais’hen
Calais’nsalmi Dover Strait ~
[kaleensalmi] Strait of Dover
Calais’nsalmi Strait of Dover ~
[kaleensalmi] Dover Strait
Calixtus : Calixtuksen Callistus Popes.
Calvin [kalvin ~ kalvään], Calvin, John
Jean [žaan]
Campagna [kampanja] Campagna Campagna di Roma.
Capitol Hill ~ Capitol- Capitol Hill In the USA.
kukkula ~ Capitolkukkula
Capitolinus : Capitoline Hill In Rome.
Capitolinuksella
Caymansaaret Cayman Islands
[keimänsaaret ~
keimansaaret]
Celestinus [kelestinus ~ Celestine Popes.
selestinus] : Celestinuksen
Celsius [selsius] Celsius Degree Celsius =
celsiusaste.
charolais [šarolee] : Charolais Cattle breed.
charolais’n
Charolais [šarolee] : Charolais Area in France.
Charolais’ssa :
Charolais’hen
charollais [šarolee] : Charollais Sheep breed.
charollais’n
Chennai [tšennai] ~ Chennai Still often known as
Madras Madras.
Chile [tšiile] Chile
Chişinǎu [kišinau] Kishinev Earlier Kišinov ~ Kišinev.
Code Napoléon [kod Napoleonic Code
napoleon] ~ Code civil
[kod sivil]
Colorado [kolorado ~ Colorado But koloradonkuoriainen.
koloraado]
Colosseum Coliseum ~ In Rome.
Colisseum ~
Colosseum
Columbian piirikunta ~ District of
Columbian liittopiirikunta Columbia
Comojärvi [koomojärvi] ~ Lake Como
Lago di Como [laago di
koomo]
Cyprianus [kypriaanus] : Cyprian
Cyprianuksen
Daakia Dacia
Daan Dan Biblical. Dan in 1992
translation.
Daavid David Biblical.
Dagestan Dagestan ~
Daghestan
Daidalos : Daidaloksen Daedalus
dalai-lama Dalai Lama
Damaskos : Damascus
Damaskoksessa
Dardanellit : Dardanelleilla Dardanelles
Dareios : Dareioksen Darius Monarchs.
Darwin [darvin] Darwin
darwinismi ~ darvinismi Darwinism
Debora Deborah Biblical.
Diina Dinah Biblical. Dina in 1992
translation.
Dinaariset Alpit ~ Dinaric Alps ~
Dinaariset alpit Dinarides
Dinaariset vuoret Dinaric
Mountains,
Diocletianus Diocletian
[diokletiaanus] :
Diocletianuksen
Dnepr [dnjeepr] Dnieper
Dnestr [dnjeestr] Dniester
Dobrudža Dobruja ~
Dobrudja
Dodekanesia the Dodecanese
Doggermatalikko Dogger Bank
Dojranjärvi ~ Doiranjärvi Dojran Lake
Dolomiitit the Dolomites
Dominikaaninen tasavalta the Dominican
Republic
Domitianus [domitiaanus] Domitian
: Domitianuksen
Don Quijote [don kihote ~ Don Quixote ~
don kihoote] Don Quijote
Donets Seversky Donets
Donin allas Donets Basin ~
Donbass ~
 Donbas
Donin Rostov ~ Rostov-na- Rostov-on-Don
Donu
Dostojevski, Fjodor Dostoyevsky,
Fyodor
Douro Duero ~ Douro
Drakon Draco Personal name in
antiquity.
Drava [draava] Drava ~ Drave
Dunkerque [dunkerkue] Dunkirk
Dušanbe Dushanbe
Eeden Eden Biblical.
Eerik Eric Kings.
Eerik Pommerilainen Eric of
Pomerania
Eerik Voittoisa Eric the
Victorious
Eesti Estonia Viro is more common and
recommended name.
Eesau Esau Biblical. Esau in 1992
translation.
Eeva Eve Biblical.
Efesolaiskirje Ephesians Epistle to the Ephesians,
Kirje efesolaisille.
Efesos : Efesoksessa Ephesus Old form Efeso.
Egeanmeri ~ Aigeianmeri Aegean Sea
Edvard Edward Kings.
Egypti Egypt
Eleusis : Eleusiissa Elefsina ~
Eleusina ~
 Eleusis
Elias : Eliaan Elias ~ Elijah Biblical. Elia in 1992
translation.
Elisabet Elizabeth Biblical. Also queens.
Elsass Alsace Mostly in history only,
otherwise Alsace.
Eläinrata : Eläinradan the Zodiac
Emajoki : Emajoen Emajõgi
Emiraatit : Emiraateissa the Emirates
Englannin kanaali the (English)
Channel
Englanti : Englannissa England Often used to denote
Great Britain.
Enso Svetogorsk Now in Russia.
Eoliset saaret Aeolian Islands Same as Liparisaaret.
Epeiros : Epeiroksessa Epirus ~ Epeirus
Epidauros : Epidaurus
Epidauroksessa
Epiktetos : Epiktetoksen Epictetus
Erebos : Ereboksen Erebus Ancient god.
Erzgebirge [ertsgebirge] the Ore
Mountains
Espanja Spain
espanjalainen Spanish
Esquilinus : Esquiline Hill
Esquilinuksella
Esra Ezra Biblical.
Etelä-Georgia ja Eteläiset South Georgia
Sandwichsaaret and the South
[sändwitšsaaret]
 Sandwich
Islands
Eteläinen jäämeri Southern Ocean
~ Antarctic
Ocean
eteläinen napapiiri Antarctic Circle
Eteläiset Sandwichsaaret South Sandwich
[sändwitšsaaret] Islands
Etelä-Kiinan meri South China Sea
Etelämanner : Antarctica Often synonymous with
Etelämantereella ~ Antarktis, but may be
used so that islands are
excluded.
Etelän Kolmio Triangulum
Australe
Etelän Kruunu Corona Australis
~ Corona
Austrina
Etelän risti ~ Etelänristi Southern Cross Constellation.
~ Crux
Etelänapa South Pole
Etelä-Tiroli Alto Adige ~
South Tyrol
Etelävaltiot the Confederacy
Etiopia Ethiopia
Etna Aetna ~ Etna
Etu-Aasia Southwestern
Asia
Etu-Pommeri Cispomerania ~
Hither
Pomerania
Euboia Euboea
Eufrat Euphrates
Eugenius : Eugeniuksen Eugene Popes.
Eukleides : Eukleideen Euclid
euklidinen Euclidean
Euraasia Eurasia
Euripos : Euripoksessa Euripus
Euroopan hymni Anthem of Cf. Oodi ilolle.
Europe
Euroopan unioni European Union
Eurooppa : Euroopassa Europe
Europe Europa Goddess.
Fabianus : Fabianuksen Fabian Pope.
Fahrenheit [faarenhait] Fahrenheit Degree Fahrenheit =
fahrenheitaste.
Falklandinsaaret Falkland Islands
Faros : Faroksessa Pharos
Feidias : Feidiaan Phidias ~
Pheidias
Fennoskandia Fennoscandia ~
Fenno-
Scandinavia
Fes Fes ~ Fez In Morocco.
Fidži : Fidžissä (~ Fidžillä) Fiji
Filemon Philemon Biblical.
Filip Philip Monarchs.
Filippiinit : Filippiineillä the Philippines
Filippiläiskirje Philippians Book of the Bible.
Filippos : Filippoksen Philip Kings of Macedonia.
Filippus : Filippuksen Philip Biblical.
Filistea Philistia
Firenze [ irentse] Florence
Fjodor Feodor ~ Fyodor Russian irst name.
Flanderi Flanders
Flaviuksen; Flaviusten Flavian
Flaviusten am iteatteri Flavian Same as Colosseum.
Amphitheatre
Fobos : Foboksen Phobos Ancient god.
Foinikia Phoenicia
Franciscus [fransiskus] Francis of Assisi
Assisilainen
Franken Franconia
Frans Francis ~ Franz Monarchs.
Frans Joose in maa Francis Joseph’s
Land ~ Franz
Josef Land
Fredrik Frederick Monarchs.
Freija ~ Freyja [freija] Freyja
Friisein saaret Frisian Islands
Friisein saaret Wadden Islands
~ Wadden Sea
Islands
Friisinmaa ~ Friesland Friesland As historical area
[friisland] Friisinmaa, as modern
province Friesland.
Fryygia Phrygia
Fudži ~ Fuji [fudži] Fuji Still often Fudžijama ~
Fujiyama.
Fyn [fyyn] Funen
Färsaaret [fäärsaaret] Faroe Islands
Gaad Gad Biblical. Gad in 1992
translation.
Galápagossaaret Galapagos
Islands
Galatalaiskirje Galatians Epistle to the Galatians,
Kirje galatalaisille-
Galaţi [galatsi ~ galati] Galati In Romania.
Galatia Galatia Ancient province in Rome
(now part of Turkey).
Galicia [galisia] Galicia In Spain.
Galilea Galilee
Galitsia Galicia ~ Galizia In Eastern Europe.
~ Halychyna
Gallia Gaul Historical area.
gallialainen Gaul Name for a member of an
ancient people
Ganges Ganga ~ Ganges
Gardajärvi Lake Garda
Gascogne [gaskonje] Gascony
Geneve Geneva In Switzerland.
Genevenjärvi ~ Lake Geneva ~ Genevenjärvi is
Genevejärvi Lake Léman recommended.
Genesaret Gennesaret In Bible translations
Gennesaret.
Genova Genoa ~ Genua In Italy.
Gent Ghent
Gilgameš Gilgamesh
Golfvirta Gulf Stream
Golgata : Golgatalla Calvary ~
Golgotha
Golgata : Golgatalla Golgotha
Goljat Goliath
Goog Gog Biblical. Gog in 1992
translation.
Gorbatšov Gorbachev
Gordianus [gordiaanus] : Gordian Emperors-
Gordianuksen
Gordionin solmu Gordian Knot
Gotlanti : Gotlannissa Gotland
Graubünden [graudynden] Grisons ~
Graubünden
gregoriaaninen Gregorian
Gregorius : Gregoriuksen Gregory Popes.
Gregorius Toursilainen Gregory of Tours
Gruusia Gruzia Former name; now
Georgia.
Grönlanti [gröönlanti] : Greenland
Grönlannissa
Guayana [guajana] Guiana Contains Guyana,
Suriname and Ranskan
Guayana.
Guyana [gujana] Guyana Former British Guiana.
Guyenne [gijen] : Guienne ~ In France.
Guyennessa (~ Guyenne
Guyennessä) [gijennessä]
Götanmaa [jöötanmaa] : Gothland ~
Götanmaalla Götaland
Göteborg [jööttebori] Gothenburg ~
Goteborg
Haades : Haadeksen : Hades
Haadeksessa
Haag the Hague
Haam Ham Biblical.
Haaparanta : Haparanda In Sweden. In lection
Haaparannalla ~ Haaparannalla is
Haaparannassa recommended.
Hadrianus [hadriaanus] : Hadrian Emperor.
Hadrianuksen
Hagia So ia Hagia Sophia
Hakassia Khakassia
Halikarnassos : Halicarnassus Now Bodrum.
Halikarnassoksessa
Halland ~ Hallanti (: Halland The form Hallanti is rare.
Hallannissa)
Hampuri Hamburg
Hania ~ Chania Chania, Khania,
Xania
Hannover Hanover
hansa- Hanseatic
hansa ~ hansaliitto Hanse ~ Hansa
Harinkurkku : Hari kurk
Harinkurkussa
Harkova Kharkiv ~
Kharkov
Harmagedon Armageddon Biblical. Harmageddon in
1992 translation.
Hatšaturjan Khachaturian
Hatšepsut Hatshepsut ~
Hatchepsut
Havaiji : Havaijilla Hawaii
Havanna Havana
Heard ja McDonaldinsaaret Heard Island
[həəd ja and McDonald
mäkdonaldinsaaret] ~ Islands
Heard ja
McDonaldinsaarilla
Hebridit Hebrides
Heinätori Sennaya Square
Helena ~ Helene Helen In antiquity.
Helgoland Heligoland Earlier also Helgolanti.
Helgoländer Bucht Heligoland Bight
[helgolender buht] ~
Helgolandinlahti
Hellas : Hellaan Hellas Poetic name for Greece.
Helleenien tasavalta Hellenic Greece.
Republic
Hellespontos : Hellespont Now Dardanellit.
Hellespontoksessa
Helsingør [helsingöör] Elsinore City in Denmark.
Henrik Henry Monarchs and princes.
Heprealaiskirje Hebrews A book in the Bible.
Herakles (: Herakleen) ~ Hercules ~ In compounds Herkules,
Herkules (: Herkuleen) Heracles e.g. herkuleskuoriainen.
Herodes : Herodeksen Herod
Herodotos : Herodotoksen Herodotus
Hersonisos (: Chersonissos ~
Hersonisoksessa) ~ Hersonissos
Hersonissos
Hertsegovina Hercegovina ~
Herzegovina
Hesekiel Ezekiel Biblical.
Hesiodos : Hesiodoksen Hesiod
Hessen Hesse ~ Hessia Part of Germany.
Hieronymus : St. Jerome
Hieronymuksen
Hiidenmaa : Hiidenmaalla Hiiumaa In Estonia.
Himalaja the Himalayas
Hindukuš Hindu Kush ~
Hindukush
Hippokrates : Hippocrates
Hippokrateen
Hiroshima ~ Hirošima Hiroshima
Hoek van Holland [huk fan Hook of Holland,
holland] the
Hollanti : Hollannissa Holland Generally used instead of
Alankomaat.
Horatius : Horatiuksen Horace
Houtskari Houtskar
Hovanštšina Khovanshchina
Hruštšov Khrushchev
Huippuvuoret : Svalbard
Huippuvuorilla
Hymettos : Hymettoksen Hymettus
Hyväntoivonniemi Cape of Good
Hope
Häme : Hämeessä Tavastia
Händel [hendel] Handel Composer.
Härkä : Härän the Bull ~ Taurus Constellation. In
horoscope contexts,
written in lowercase in
Finnish.
Iason Jason Mythological.
Iberian niemimaa Iberian Suomessa aik. yl.
Peninsula Pyreneiden niemimaa.
Idavuori Ida ~ Mount Ida
Iisak Isaac Biblical.
Iisakinkirkko Saint Isaac’s In St. Petersburg.
Cathedral
Iivana Ivan Czars.
Iivana Julma Ivan the Terrible
Ikaros : Ikaroksen Icarus Mythological.
Ilias : Iliaan Iliad
Ilmestyskirja ~ Apocalypse, A book of the Bible.
Johanneksen ilmestys Revelation
Indokiina Indochina
Indus : Induksen Indus
Ingušia Ingushetia
Inkeri : Inkerissä ~ Ingria
Inkerinmaa :
Inkerinmaalla
Inkoo Ingå In Swedish-speaking are
of Finland.
Innocentius [innokentius ~ Innocent Popes.
innosentius] :
Innocentiuksen
internet (~ Internet) : the Internet
internetin : internetiin
[internettiin ~ internetiin]
Intia India
intiaani American Indian
intialainen Indian Relating to India.
Intian niemimaa Indian
subcontinent
Irak Iraq
Irakin; irakilainen Iraqi
Iravadi ~ Irawadi Ayeyarwady ~
Irrawaddy
Irlannin; irlantilainen Irish
Irlanninmeri Irish Sea
Irlanti : Irlannissa Ireland
Irtyš Irtysh
Isabella Isabella Queens.
Isaskar Issachar Biblical.
Isis : Isiksen Isis
Islanti : Islannissa Iceland
Ismael Ishmael Biblical.
Iso-Britannia : Isossa- Great Britain Britannia is preferred.
Britanniassa
Iso kanava Grand Canal In China.
Iso Karhu Great Bear ~ Constellation.
Ursa Major
Iso Karhujärvi : Isolla Great Bear Lake
Karhujärvellä
Iso Orjajärvi Great Slave Lake
Iso Suolajärvi Great Salt Lake
Iso-Belt : Isossa-Beltissä Great Belt, the
Iso-Syrtti : Isossa-Syrtissä Great Sirte ~
Great Syrtis
Iso-Syrtti : Isossa-Syrtissä Gulf of Sidra ~
Gulf of Sirte
Isot Sundasaaret Greater Sunda
Islands
Isot-Antillit : Isoilla- Greater Antilles
Antilleilla
Istanbul [istambul] Istanbul
Ithaka Ithaca
Itä-Ghatit : Itä-Ghateilla ~ Eastern Ghats ~
Itä-Ghats : Itä-Ghatsissa Eastern Ghauts
Itä-Götanmaa East Gothland ~
[itäjöötanmaa] : Itä- Östergötland
Götanmaalla
Itä-Kiinan meri East China Sea
Itämeri the Baltic (Sea)
Itävalta Austria
Itävalta-Unkari Austro-
Hungarian
Empire
Itä-Virumaa : Itä- Ida-Viru ~ Ida-
Virumaalla Virumaa
Jaafet Japhet ~ Japheth Biblical. Jafet in 1992
translation.
Jaakko : Jaakon James Kings.
Jaakob Jacob ~ James Biblical.
Jaakobin kirje James Book of the Bible.
Jaava : Jaavalla Java Island.
Jahve Yahweh
Jakutia ~ Saha Yakutia ~ Sakha
Jakutsk Yakutsk
Jalopeura Leo ~ Lion Constellation. Cf. leijona.
Jalta : Jaltalla ~ Jaltassa Yalta
Jalujoki Yalu River
Jamaika Jamaica
Jangtse Chang Jiang,
Yangtze, Yangzi
Japani Japan
Japaninmeri East Sea ~ Sea of
Japan
Jeanne d’Arc [žan dark] Joan of Arc
Jedda [jedda ~ džedda] Jeddah ~ Jedda ~
Jiddah ~ Jidda
Jeesus : Jeesuksen Jesus
Jeesus Nasaretilainen Jesus of
Nazareth
Jehova Jehovah Used in Finnish mostly by
Jehova’s wittnesses only.
Cf. Jahve.
Jekaterinburg Yekaterinburg
Jeltsin Yeltsin
Jemen Yemen
Jenisei Yenisei ~ Yenisey
Jeremia Jeremiah Biblical.
Jerevan Yerevan
Jeriko Jericho
Jesaja Isaiah Biblical.
Jevgenia ~ Jevgenija Evgenia ~ Russian irst name.
Evgeniya ~
Yevgeniya ~
Yevgenia
Johanna Joanna Queens.
Johanneksen ilmestys Apocalypse, A book of the Bible.
Revelation
Johanneksen kirje John Books in the Bible.
Johannes : Johanneksen John Biblical persons, popes,
and Byzantine emperors.
Johannes Kastaja John the Baptist
Jokanga Iokanga,
Yokanga
Jokimukka : Jokimukassa Jokkmokk Also Jokkmokk.
Jokohama Yokohama Also Yokohama.
Joonia Ionia
Joonian; joonialainen Ionian
Joonianmeri Ionian Sea
Jooniansaaret ~ Joonian Ionian Islands
saaret
Joosef Joseph Biblical persons and
monarchs.
Joosua Joshua Biblical.
Jordan Jordan River.
Jordania Jordan Country.
Josif Stalin Joseph Stalin
Joškar-Ola Yoshkar-Ola
Joulupukki Santa Claus ~
Santa
Joulusaari : Joulusaarella Christmas Island
(~ Joulusaaressa)
Jousimies : Jousimiehen Archer ~ Constellation. In
Sagittarius horoscope contexts,
written in lowercase in
Finnish.
Jovianus [joviaanus] : Jovian
Jovianuksen
Jugoslavia Yugoslavia
Juhana John Monarchs.
Juhana Maaton : Juhana John Lackland
Maattoman
Jukatan ~ Yucatán Yucatan Peninsula.
Jukatanin kanaali ~ Yucatan Channel
Yucatánin kanaali
Julia [juulia ~ julia] Juliet In Romeo and Juliet.
juliaaninen; Juliuksen Julian
Juliaaniset Alpit ~ Juliset Julian Alps
Alpit
Julianus [juliaanus] : Julian Emperors.
Julianuksen
Juliusten–Claudiusten suku Julio-Claudian
dynasty
Juppiter Jove Ancient Roman god.
Justinianus : Justinian Emperors.
Justinianuksen
Justinus : Justinuksen Justin Emperors.
Juuda Judah Biblical.
Juudas : Juudaksen ~ Jude Biblical.
Juudaan
Juudas Iskariot Judas Iscariot
Juudea ~ Juuda Judea
Juutinrauma Øresund
Juvenalis [juvenaalis] : Juvenal
Juvenaliksen
Jyllanti : Jyllannissa Jutland Earlier also Juutinmaa.
Jällivaara Gällivare In Sweden.
Jämtlanti [jemtlanti] (: Jämtland In Sweden.
Jämtlannissa) ~ Jämtland
[jemtland]
Jäämeri ~ Pohjoinen Arctic Ocean ~
jäämeri Arctic Sea
Kaarasjoki Karasjok In Sweden.
Kaaresuvanto : Karesuando In Sweden.
Kaaresuvanto
Kaarina Maununtytär Karin
Månsdotter
Kaarle Charles Monarchs.
Kaarle Suuri Charlemagne
Kabardi-Balkaria Kabardino-
Balkaria
Kain Cain Biblical.
Kairo Cairo
Kaksoisvirranmaa Mesopotamia Old historical name.
Kaksoset : Kaksosten Gemini ~ Twins Constellation. In
horoscope contexts,
written in lowercase in
Finnish, usually in
singular: kaksonen.
Kalastajasaarento : Rybachy
Kalastajasaarennossa ~ Peninsula
Kalastajasaarennolla
Kalat : Kalojen the Fish ~ Pisces Constellation. In
horoscope contexts,
written in lowercase in
Finnish, usually in
singular: kala.
Kaledonian kanava Caledonian
Canal
Kaledonidit : Caledonides
Kaledonideilla
Kalifornia California
Kalifornian niemimaa Baja California
Peninsula ~ Baja
Peninsula
Kalifornianlahti Gulf of California
Kalkutta (: Kalkutassa) ~ Calcutta
Kolkata
Kallas : Kallaksen ~ Kallas In lected Kallaksen as
Kallasin Finnish name, Kallisin as
Estonian name.
Kalliope Calliope Muse.
Kalliovuoret Rocky
Mountains
Kalliovuorten aika Mountain
Standard Time
Kalmukia Kalmykia
kalvinismi Calvinism
Kambodža Cambodia
Kamerun Cameroon
Kamtšatka Kamchatka
Kanaalisaaret Channel Islands
Kanaalitunneli ~ Kanaalin Channel Tunnel
tunneli
Kanaan Canaan Biblical person.
Kanaaninmaa ~ Canaan Biblical area.
Kaanaanmaa ~ Kaanaa
Kalabria Calabria Also spelled Calabria.
Kanada Canada
Kanariansaaret Canary Islands Colloquially Kanaria :
Kanarialla.
Kannas : Kannaksella Karelian Common short form of
Isthmus Karjalankannas.
Kansainliitto League of
Nations
Kansainyhteisö Commonwealth
of Nations
Kantabria Cantabria
Kantalahti : Kantalahdessa Kandalaksha
Kanton Canton Same as Guangzhou.
Kap Horn Cape Horn
Kap Verde : Kap Verdessä Cape Verde
(~ Kap Verdellä)
Kapkaupunki Cape Town
Kapmaa : Kapmaassa : Cape Colony
Kapmaahan
Karaganda Karaganda ~
Karagandy
Karatšai-Tšerkessia Karachai-
Cherkessia
Karavankit : Karavankeilla Karavanke
Karhumäki : Karhumäessä Medvezhyegorsk
Karhunvartija Bootes ~ Boötes
Karhusaari Bear Island In Svalbard.
Karibia : Karibialla the Caribbean
Karibianmeri Caribbean Sea
Karjala Karelia
Karjalankannas : Karelian Previously, and still in
Karjalankannaksella Isthmus common use, Karjalan
kannas.
Karlsbad [kaarlsbaad] Carlsbad Mostly a historical name.
Now Karlovy Vary.
karoliini Carolean In history of Sweden.
Karoliinit Caroline Islands
karolinginen Carolingian
Karpaatit Carpathians ~
Carpathian
Mountains
Karpato-Ukraina ~ Carpatho-
Karpatorutenia Ukraine
Karthago [kartago] Carthage
Kasan Kazan Now mostly written
Kazan.
Kašgar ~ Kashi [kaši] Kashgar ~ Kashi
Kaskadit ~ Kaskadivuoret Cascade Range ~
~ Kaskadivuoristo Cascades
Kašmir Kashmir More often Kashmir.
Kastilia Castile
Kasubia Kashubia
Katalauniset kentät Catalaunian
Plains
Katalonia Catalonia
Katariina Catherine Monarchs.
Katmandu Kathmandu Also Kathmandu.
Kaukasia Caucasia
kaukasialainen Caucasian Relating to the Caucasus
region. As ethnicity name,
Caucasian is e.g.
valkoihoinen or europidi.
Kaukasus : Kaukasuksella Caucasus
Kaukoitä : Kaukoidässä Far East
Kaunas : Kaunasissa Kaunas ~ Kovno
Kauriin kääntöpiiri Tropic of
Capricorn
Kauris : Kauriin Capricorn ~ Constellation. In
Capricornus horoscope contexts,
written in lowercase in
Finnish,
Kazakstan [kasakstan] Kazakhstan
Keelingsaaret Keeling Islands Same as Kookossaaret.
[kiilingsaaret]
Keltainenjoki Yellow River Same as Huang He.
Keltainenmeri Yellow Sea
Kemiö Kimito In Swedish-speaking area
in Finland.
Kenia Kenya
Kertš Kerch
Kesarea Caesarea
Keski-Afrikan tasavalta Central African
Republic
Keskilänsi Midwest ~
Middle West
Khaibarsola [kaibarsola] ~ Khyber Pass
Khybersola [kaibersola]
Kharon Charon In Greek mythology;
moon of Pluto.
Khartum [kartum] Khartoum
Khios : Khioksella (~ Chios Also Chios.
Khioksessa)
Kiestinki : Kiestingissä Kestenga In Russia.
Kiina China
Kiinan muuri Great Wall of
China
Kiiruna Kiruna In Sweden.
Kilikia Cilicia
Kilimandžaro Kilimanjaro Also Kilimanjaro.
[kilimandžaaro]
Kinshasan [kinšasan] Congo-Kinshasa Formerly Zaire.
Kongo
Kioto Kyoto
Kiova Kiev
Kirgiisiaro ~ Kirgiisienaro Kazakh Steppe ~
Kirghiz Steppe
Kirgisia ~ Kirgistan ~ Kyrgyzstan
Kirgisistan
Kirje Filemonille Philemon Book in the Bible.
Kirje Tiitukselle Titus Book in the Bible. The
1992 translation uses the
spelling Titukselle.
Kirje Timoteukselle Timothy Books in the Bible.
Kirkkoniemi : Kirkenes In Norway
Kirkkoniemessä
Kiušu Kyushu Also Kyushu.
Kleio Clio Muse.
Klemens Clement Popes.
Kleopatra Cleopatra
Knossos : Knossoksessa Cnossus ~
Knossus
Knuut Canute, Cnut Kings.
Koblenz [koblents] Coblence ~
Coblenz
Kohtla-Järvi : Kohtla- Kohtla-Järve In Estonia.
Järvessä
Koillisväylä Northeast
Passage
Koivisto Primorsk Now in Russia.
Kolmio Triangulum Constellation.
Kolossalaiskirje Colossians Book in the Bible.
Kolumbia Columbia Country.
Kolumbus, Kristofer Columbus,
Christopher
Komorit : Komoreilla the Comoros
Konfederaatio the Confederacy
Konfutse ~ Kungfutse Confucius
Kongo Congo
Konstantinopoli Constantinople Now Istanbul.
Konstantinos : Constantine Byzantine emperors.
Konstantinoksen
Konstantinus : Constantine Roman emperors.
Konstantinuksen
Konstanz [konstants] Constance City in Germany.
Kookossaaret ~ Cocos Islands ~ Same as Keelingsaaret.
Keelingsaaret Keeling Islands
[kiilingsaaret]
Koraani Koran ~ Quran
Kordillieerit : Cordilleras
Kordillieereilla
Korfu : Korfulla (~ Kerkyra ~ Corfu
Korfussa)
Korintti : Korintin Corinth In old Bible translations
Korintto : Korinton.
Korinttolaiskirje Corinthians Books in the Bible. The
1992 translation uses the
form Korinttilaiskirje.
Korkea veisu Canticle of Book in the Bible. Cf.
Canticles ~ Laulujen laulu.
Canticles ~ Song
of Solomon ~
Song of Songs
Korpilompolo Korpilombolo In Sweden.
Korppoo Korpo In Swedish-speaking part
of Finland.
Korsika Corsica
Kos : Kosilla [kossilla ~ Kos
kosilla]
Kotšinkiina Cochinchina
Koutokeino Kautokeino In Sweden.
Krakova Cracow ~
Krakow
Krapu : Kravun Crab ~ Cancer Constellation. Cf. rapu.
Kravun kääntöpiiri Tropic of Cancer
Kreeta : Kreetalla (~ Crete
Kreetassa)
Kreikka : Kreikassa Greece Ylätyylissä myös Hellas :
Hellaan.
Kreml Kremlin
Krim : Krimillä Crimea
Kristian Christian Monarchs.
Kristiina Christina Queen.
Kristiinankaupunki Kristinestad In Swedish-speaking area
of Finland.
kristillinen Christian Adjective.
kristitty Christian General noun..
Kristoffer Christopher Monarchs.
Kristus : Kristuksen Christ
Kroatia Croatia
Kroisos : Kroisoksen Croesus
Kronstadt [kronstat] Kronstadt Ks. Cronstadt.
Kronstadt [kronstat] Cronstadt ~ Earlier form Kronstatti .
Kronstadt
Kruunupyy Kronoby In Swedish-speaking
area of Finland.
Ksantippa : Ksantip(p)an ~ Xanthippe Wife of Socrates.
Ksanthippa ~ Ksanthippe
Ksenofon Xenophon
Kserkses : Kserkseen Xerxes
Kublai-kaani Kublai Khan
Kuibyšev Kuybyshev ~
Kuibyshev
Kujawy Kujawy ~ In Poland.
Kuyavia ~
Cuyavia
Kultainen sarvi Golden Horn
Kultarannikko Gold Coast Now Ghana.
Kuningatar Maudin maa (: Queen Maud
maalla ~ maassa) Land
Kuola Kola
Kuollutmeri : Dead Sea
Kuolleessameressä
Kuressaari : Kuressaaressa Kuressaare
Kuriilit Kuril Islands
Kustaa Gustav Kings.
Kustaa Vaasa Gustav Vasa
Kuuba Cuba
Kuurinhaf i Curonian
Lagoon
Kuurinkurkku : Kuurinkurkussa Irbe Strait ~
Irben Strait
Kuurinmaa Courland
Kykladit : Kykladeilla Cyclades
Kypros : Kyproksella (~ Cyprus
Kyproksessa)
Kyrenaika Cyrenaica ~
Kyrenaika
Kyrillos : Kyrilloksen Cyril Saints.
Kyrillos Aleksandrialainen Cyril of
Alexandria
Kythera Cythera
Kyyros : Kyyroksen Cyrus Monarchs.
Käkisalmi : Käkisalmessa ~ Priozersk Now in Russia.
Käkisalmella
Kärnten [kernten] Carinthia
Kölivuoristo ~ Köli ~ Skandit Kolen Same as Skandit.
Mountains
Köln Cologne
Kööpenhamina Copenhagen
Laaban Laban Biblical. Laban in
1992 translation.
Laatokka : Laatokalla Lake Ladoga
Lago di Como [laago di koomo] Lake Como
Lakedaimon Lacedaemon Ancient god.
Lakedaimon Lacedaemonia Same as Lakonia.
Lakkadiivit : Lakkadiiveilla Laccadive
Islands
Lakkadiivit : Lakkadiiveilla Lakshadweep
Lakonia Laconia
Laotse Lao Tse ~ Laozi
Lappi : Lapissa Lapland
Larnaka Larnaca
Latakia Latakia ~
Lattakia
Latgallia Latgalia
Latinalainen Amerikka Latin America
Laukaa ~ Luga Luga In Russia.
Laukaanjoki Luga River
Laukaanlahti Luga Bay
Laulujen laulu Canticle of Book in the Bible in
Canticles ~ the 1992
Canticles ~ Song translation. Earlier
of Solomon ~ name Korkea veisu.
Song of Songs
Lavansaari Moshchny Now in Russia.
Island
Leea Leah Biblical. Lea in 1992
translation.
Leevi Levi
Le kas : Le kaksessa Le kada ~
Leucas ~
Leucadia
leijona Leo ~ Lion In horoscope
contexts. Cf.
Jalopeura.
Lemmijoki : Lemmijoella (~ Lakselv Also Lakselv in
Lemmijoessa) Finnish.
Lenin [lenin ~ leenin] Lenin
Leninski prospekt ~ Leninin Leninsky
valtakatu Avenue
Lepontiset Alpit ~ Lepontisilla Lepontine Alps
Alpeilla
Lesbos : Lesboksessa ~ Lesbos
Lesboksella
Leviatan Leviathan
Libanon Lebanon
Libau [liibau] Liepāja In history. Now
Liepāja.
Lidia ~ Lidija Lidia ~ Lidiya Russian irst name.
Liettua Lithuania
Liinahamari Liinakhamari
Liivinmaa : Liivinmaalla Livonia
Limassol Lemesos ~
Limassol
Limvuono Lim jord
Linné [linnee] : Linnén : Linnaeus, Only Linné when the
Linnéhen, Carl von [kaarl fon] Carolus surname is used
alone, e.g. Linnén
järjestelmä
(Linnaean system).
Linnunrata : Linnunradan Milky Way
Liparisaaret ~ Lipariset saaret Lipari Islands Same as Eoliset
saaret.
Liparisaaret ~ Lipariset saaret ~ Lipari Islands ~
Eoliset saaret Aeolian Islands
Lissabon Lisbon
Livorno Leghorn ~
Livorno
Lofootit : Lofooteilla Lofoten
Lohikäärme Draco Constellation.
Lombardia Lombardy
Lontoo : Lontoossa : Lontooseen London
Lorraine [loreen] : Lorrainessa Lorraine Lothringen mostly
[loreenessa] ~ Lothringen used in history.
[lotringen]
Lucanus : Lucanuksen Lucan
Lucian [lusian] päivä Saint Lucy’s Day
Ludvig Louis Kings.
Lukianos : Lukianoksen Lucian
Lumikki : Lumikin Snow White
Lumpari Lumparn
Luoteisterritoriot Northwest
Territories
Luoteisväylä Northwest
Passage
Luoto : Luodossa Larsmo In Swedish-speaking
area of Finland.
luterilainen Lutheran
Luther [lutter], Martti : Martin Luther, Martin
Luukas : Luukkaan Luke Biblical persons and
popes.
Luulaja Luleå In Sweden.
Luxemburg Luxembourg Country.
Luxemburg ~ Luxembourg Luxembourg ~ City.
Luxembourg
City
Luzern [lutsern] Lucerne
Lykabettos (: Lykabettoksen) ~ Lycabettus
Likavittos (: Likavittosin)
Lüneburginnummi Luneburg Heath
[lyyneburginnummi] ~ Lunenburg
Heath
Lyon [lioon] Lyon ~ Lyons
Lyydia Lydia Ancient country.
Lyypekki : Lyypekissä Lubeck ~ German Lübeck.
Luebeck
Lähi-itä : Lähi-idässä Middle East ~
Near East
Länsi-Ghatit : Länsi-Ghateilla ~ Sahyadri ~
Länsi-Ghats : Länsi-Ghatsissa Western Ghats
Länsi-Götanmaa Västergötland ~
[länsijöötanmaa] : Länsi- West Gothland
Götanmaalla
Länsi-Intia West Indies
Länsipohja Västerbotten In Sweden.
Länsi-Virumaa : Länsi- Lääne-Viru ~ In Estonia.
Virumaalla Lääne-Virumaa
Länsivuono Vest jord
Maagog Magog Biblical. Magog in
1992 translation.
Maalahti : Maalahdessa Malax In Swedish-speaking
area of Finland.
Maarianhamina Mariehamn In Swedish-speaking
area of Finland.
Maas Meuse ~ Maas River.
Madagaskar : Madagaskarissa ~ Madagascar
Madagaskarilla
Madagaskarin; Malagasy
madagaskarilainen
Magalhães, Fernão Magellan,
Ferdinand
Magalhãesin pilvet Magellanic
Clouds
Magalhãesinsalmi Strait of
Magellan
Maggiorejärvi [madžoorejärvi] ~ Lake Maggiore
Lago Maggiore [laago
madžoore]
Makedonia Macedonia
Makkabealaiskirja Maccabees Apocrypha. 1
Maccabees = 1.
Makkabealaiskirja.
Maksimilian Maximilian Monarchs.
Malaija Malay
Malaijien saaristo Malay
Archipelago
Malakansalmi Strait of Malacca
Malakka : Malakassa Malacca
Malediivit : Malediiveilla Maldives
Malesia Malaysia
Mallorca [majorka] : Mallorcalla Majorca ~
Mallorca
Mansaari [mansaari ~ mänsaari] Isle of Man Inner locational
: Mansaarella ~ Mansaaressa cases (e.g.
Mansaaressa)
recommended.
Mantova Mantua
Mantšuria Manchuria
Marathon [marathon ~ maraton] Marathon In Greece. In
igurative usage
maratonjuoksu,
maraton.
Marche [marke] the Marches In Italy.
Marcus Antonius : Marcus Mark Antony
Antoniuksen
Maremmit : Maremmeilla Maremma
Margareeta Margret ~ Queens.
Margretha ~
Margrethe
Margareeta Margaret Queens, regents,
saints.
Mari ~ Marin tasavalta Mari El ~ Mariy An area in Russia.
El
Maria Mary Biblical persons and
Queens.
Maria ~ Marija Maria Russian irst name.
Maria Magdaleena Mary Magdalene Biblical. Magdalan
~ Mary of Maria in 1992
Magdala translation.
Maria Teresia Maria Theresa
Mariaanien hauta Mariana Trench
Mariaanit : Mariaaneilla Mariana Islands
~ Marianas
Marienburg Malbork Historical. Now
Marbork.
Markus : Markuksen Marcus Pope.
Markus : Markuksen Mark Biblical.
Marmaranmeri ~ Marmarameri Marmara Sea
Sea ~ Sea of
Marmora
Marokko : Marokossa Morocco
Marrakech [marrakeš] Marrakech ~ Previously also
Marrakesh Marrakeš.
Marseille [marsej] : Marseillessa Marseille ~
[marsejissa] : Marseilleen Marseilles
[marsejiin] ~ Marseille [marsei]
: Marseillessa [marseissa] :
Marseillehin [marseihin]
Marseljeesi Marseillaise, la
Marshallinsaaret Marshall Islands
[maršallinsaaret] ~ Marshalls
Martialis [martiaalis] : Martial Ancient poet.
Martialiksen
Martinus : Martinuksen Martin Popes.
Maskareenit Mascarene
Islands ~
Mascarenes
Masqat [maskat] Muscat Previously Muskat
or Maskat.
Matarenki : Matarengissa Matarengi
Matteus : Matteuksen Matthew Biblical.
Maunu Magnus Kings.
Maunu Ladonlukko : Maunu Magnus
Ladonlukon Barnlock
Maustesaaret Spice Islands Now Molukit.
Medina Madinah ~
Medina
Meedia Medes ~ Mede Historical country.
Mekka : Mekassa Mecca
Meksiko Mexico
Meksikonlahti Gulf of Mexico
Mem is : Mem iissä : Mem iiseen Memphis In ancient Egypt.
Memphis [mem is] : Memphisiin Memphis Modern cities.
: Memphisissä
Merenkurkku Kvarken Between Finland
 and Sweden.
Merkurius : Merkuriuksen Mercury Planet and god.
Messias : Messiaan Messiah
Mestari Eckhart Meister Eckhart
Methodios : Methodioksen Methodius
Metsäpirtti ~ Zaporožskoje Zaporozhskoye Now in Russia.
Metusalem Methuselah Bible translations
have Metusalah and
Metuselah, but
common language
form is Metusalem.
México [mehiko ~ meksiko] ~ Mexico City Mexico City also
Ciudad de México [siudad de commonly used.
mehiko]
Midas : Midaksen ~ Midaan Midas
Mihail Michael Czars.
Mihail Mikhail Russian irst name.
Miikael Michael Biblical. Mikael in
1992 translation.
Mikael Michael Emperors.
Milano Milan
Milon Venus : Milon Venuksen Venus de Milo Sometimes
Meloksen Afrodite.
Mokka : Mokassa Mocha ~ Mokha In Yemen.
Moldau Vltava Vltava is now
recommended.
Molukit : Molukeilla Maluku ~
Moluccans
Molukit : Molukeilla : Molukkien Moluccan
Islands ~
 Moluccans
1. Mooseksen kirja ~ Genesis : Genesis Book of the Bible.
Genesiksen
2. Mooseksen kirja ~ Exodus (: Exodus Book of the Bible.
Exoduksen)
3. Mooseksen kirja ~ Leviticus : Leviticus Book of the Bible.
Leviticuksen
4. Mooseksen kirja ~ Numeri Numbers Book of the Bible.
5. Mooseksen kirja ~ Deuteronomy Book of the Bible.
Deuteronomium
Mooseksen kirjat Pentateuch Same as Toora.
Mooses : Mooseksen Moses Blblical.
Mordva Mordvinia ~
Mordovia
Mosambik Mosambique ~
Mozambique
Mosel [moosel] Moselle
Moskova Moscow
Moskvajoki [maskváajoki] ~ Moscow River
Moskovanjoki
Muhammed Muhammad ~ The prophet.
Mohammed Muhammad also
used nowadays.
Muhammed ~ Mehmed ~ Mehmed ~ Sultans of Turkey.
Mehmet Mehmet
Munamäki (: Munamäellä) ~ Suur Munamägi In Estonia.
Suuri Munamäki (: Suurella
Munamäellä) ~ Suur Munamägi
(: Suur Munamägissä)
Murmansk [muurmansk] ~ Murmansk Muurmanni only in
Muurmanni some contexts:
 Muurmannin rata,
rannikko, legioona.
Mustameri : Mustallamerellä Black Sea
Mustasaari : Mustasaaressa Korsholm In Swedish-speaking
area of Finland.
Mykene Mycenae
mykeneläinen; Mykenen Mycenaean
München [mynhhen] : Munich
Münchenissä
Münchhausen [mynhhausen] Munchausen
Myrtoonmeri Myrtoan Sea
Määri Moravia
Naatam Nathan Biblical. Natan in
1992 translation.
Naavuono Kvaenangen Biblical.
Naftali Naphtali
Nagoya [nagoja] Nagoya Sometimes Nagoja.
Naissaari : Naissaaressa Naissaar
Napoli Naples
Narvanjoki : Narvanjoen Narva River
Narvanlahti Narva Bay
Nasaret Nazareth
Natalia ~ Natalija Natalia ~ Russian irst name.
Nataliya
Natalja Natalya Russian irst name.
Nauvo Nagu
Navarra Navarre
Nebukadnessar Nebuchadnezzar Nebukadnessar in
[nebukadneessar]~ the Bible. In new
Nebukadressar history books,
Nebukadressar.
Nehemia Nehemiah Biblical.
Neitsyt : Neitsyen Maiden ~ Virgo Constellation. In
horoscope contexts,
written in lowercase
in Finnish.
Neitsyt Maria : Neitsyt Marian Virgin Mary
Neitsytsaaret Virgin Islands
Neptunus : Neptunuksen Neptune Planet and god.
Neuvostoliitto Soviet Union
Neva ~ Nevajoki Neva River
Nevski prospekt ~ Nevan Nevsky Avenue
valtakatu
New York [nyy jork] New York
Niemen Neman ~ River.
Nemunas ~
Niemen
Niili Nile
Nikobaarit Nicobar Islands
~ Nicobars
Nikolai Nicholas Czars.
Nikolaus : Nikolauksen Nicholas Popes.
Nikosia Nicosia
Nizza [nitsa] Nice
Njassamaa Nyasaland Now Malawi.
Nooa ~ Nooak Noah Biblical.
Nordkapp [nuurdkap] : Nordkapp ~ Earlier Finnish
Nordkappissa ~ Nordkapissa North Cape spelling: Nordkap.
Nordrhein-Westfalen [nordrain North Rhine-
vestfaalen] Wesphalia
Norja Norway
Norlanti : Norlannissa Norrland ~
Northland
Normandia Normandy
Norsunluurannikko Côte d’Ivoire ~
Ivory Coast
Novaja Zemlja [noovaja zemljaa] Novaya Zemlya
: Novaja Zemljalla
Nubia Nubia Also Nuubia,
especially in
nuubiankissa.
Nürnberg [nyyrnberg] Nuremberg
Närpiö Närpes In Swedish-speaking
area in Finland.
Näätämö Neiden In Norway.
Occam ~ Okkam Occam ~
Ockham
Octavianus [oktaviaanus] : Octavian
Octavianuksen
Odessa Odessa ~ Odesa
Odysseia Odyssey
Odysseus : Odysseuksen Ulysses
Ofotvuono [uufuutvuono] ~ Ofot jord
Ofotinvuono [uufuutinvuono]
Ohotanmeri Sea of Okhotsk
Oidipus : Oidipuksen Oedipe ~
Oedipus
Oinas : Oinaan Aries Constellation. In
horoscope contexts
 in lowercase in
Finnish.
Olavi Olaf Kings.
Olavi Sylikuningas Olof Skötkonung
Olhava Volkhov
olympialaiset ~ olympiakisat Olympic games
Olympos Olympus Mountain.
Oodi ilolle Ode to Joy Symbol of the EU,
of icially Anthem of
Europe.
Oolanti Åland Historical name for
Ahvenanmaa.
Oostende Ostend
Oranje Orange In South Africa.
Oravainen : Oravaisissa : Oravais In Swedish-speaking
Oravaisiin area in Finland.
Orjol Orel In Russia.
Origines : Origineen Origen
Orjajärvi Slave Lake
Ortlesin Alpit ~ Ortlerin Alpit Ortler Alps
Oseania Oceania
Osiris : Osiriksen Osiris
Oskar Oscar Kings.
Oslonvuono Oslo jord
Otava Big Dip ~ Plough Constellation
Otto : Oton Otto Monarchs.
Ovidius : Ovidiuksen Ovid
Paavali Paul Apostle, popers,
monarchs. But e.g.
 St. Paul’s Cathedral
(not translated).
paavi the Pope ~ the
pope
Padova Padua
Pagasainlahti Pagasetic Gulf
Palatinus : Palatinuksella Palatine Hill
Palatsiaukio Palace Square In St. Petersburg.
Paleohora ~ Paleochora Paleochora
Palestiina Palestine
Panama Panama
Panamá [panamaa] : Panamássa Panama City Also Ciudad de
: Panamáhan Panamá.
Panthéon [pãteõõ ~ panteon] : Pantheon In Paris.
Panthéonin
Papua-Uusi-Guinea [ginea] : Papua New
Papua-Uudessa-Guineassa Guinea
Parainen : Paraisilla : Paraisille Pargas In area of Finland
with Swedish-
speaking majority.
Pariisi Paris
Parnassos : Parnassoksella Parnassus Mountain.
Paros : Paroksessa ~ Paroksella Paros
Patras : Patraksessa ~ Patrasissa Patras
Pegasos : Pegasoksen Pegasus Mythological.
Peipsijärvi Lake Peipus
peloponnesolaissota Peloponnesian
War
Peloponnesos : Peloponnese ~
Peloponnesoksella ~ Peloponnesus
Peloponnesoksessa
Penniinit : Penniineillä Pennines, the
Pentateukki : Pentateukin Pentateuch Same as Toora and
Mooseksen kirjat.
perkele Satan In Finnish (incl. the
Bible) usually even
in lowercase, even
when used as a
proper name.
Pernaja Pernå In Swedish-speaking
are of Finland.
Persianlahti Persian Gulf
Peru Peru
Perämeri Bay of Bothnia
Perämeri Bothnian Bay
Petroskoi Petrozavodsk
Petsamo Pechenga
Petseri Pechory
Petserimaa : Petserimaassa ~ Petseri County
Petserinmaa : Petserinmaalla
Petšora Pechora River
Pfalz Palatinate In Germany.
Phobos [fobos] : Phoboksen Phobos Moon of Mars.
Picardie [pikardii] : Picardiessa : Picardy
Picardiehin
Piemonte Piedmont
Pienet Sundasaaret Lesser Sunda
Islands
Pienet-Antillit : Pienillä- Lesser Antilles
Antilleilla
Pieni Emajoki : Pienen Emajoen Väike Emajõgi
Pieni Orjajärvi Lesser Slave
Lake
Pietari Peter Apostle and
monarchs.
Pietari Saint Petersburg
Pietarin kirje Peter Book of the Bible.
Pietarinaukio St. Peter’s In Rome.
Square
Pietarinkirkko St. Peter’s In Rome.
Basilica
Pietarin–Paavalin linnoitus Peter and Paul
Fortress
Pietarsaari : Pietarsaaressa Jakobstad In Swedish-speaking
area of Finaland.
Pihkova Pskov
Pihkovanjärvi Lake Pihkva
Piitime Piteå In Sweden.
Pikku Jalopeura Leo Minor Constellation.
Pikku Karhu Little Bear ~ Constellation.
Ursa Minor
Pikku-Otava Little Dipper, the
Pilatus : Pilatuksen Pilate
Pindos Pindus ~ Pindos
~ Pindhos
Pireus : Pireuksessa Piraeus
Pirunsaari : Pirunsaarella Devil’s Island
Pjongjang Pyongyang Also Pjöngjang.
Plataiai Plataea ~
Plataeae
Platon Plato
Platonin; platoninen Platonic
Plejadit : Plejadien Pleiades
Plinius : Pliniuksen Pliny
Pohjan Kruunu Corona Borealis
Pohjanlahti Gulf of Bothnia
Pohjanmaa : Pohjanmaalla Ostrobothnia
Pohjanmeri North Sea,
Pohjantähti Polar Star
pohjoinen napapiiri Arctic Circle
Pohjoiskalotti : Pohjoiskalotilla Cap of the North
Pohjoismaat ~ Pohjola Nordic
countries, the
Pohjoisnapa North Pole
Polykarpos : Polykarpoksen Polycarp Saint.
Pommeri Pomerania
Pompeius : Pompeiuksen Pompey Historical person.
Pompeji ~ Pompeiji Pompeii City.
Pontiset saaret ~ Ponzasaaret Pontine Islands
[pontsasaaret]
Pontiset suot Pontine Marshes Now Agro pontino.
Pontiset vuoret Pontic
Mountains
Porsanginvuono Porsanger jord ~
Porsangen
Porto Oporto
Porto-Novo Porto Novo ~
Porto-Novo
Portugali Portugal
Potjomkin ~ Potemkin Potemkin Usually Potemkinin
[patjómkin ~ potemkin] kulissit,
Panssarilaiva
Potemkin.
Praha Prague
Preussi Prussia
Pripet ~ Pripetjoki Pripyat River ~
Pripetin suot Pinsk Marshes ~
Pripyat Marshes
Prževalski, Nikolai ~ Przewalski Przewalski ~
[pševalski], Nikołaj Przhevalsky,
Nikolai
przewalskinhevonen Przewalski’s
[pševalskinhevonen] Horse
Ptolemaios : Ptolemaioksen Ptolemy
Pulmanki : Pulmangissa Polmak
Pultava Poltava
Punainen Puolikuu Red Crescent
Punainen Risti Red Cross
Punainenmeri : Red Sea
Punaisellamerellä
Punainentori : Punaisellatorilla Red Square In Moscow. In
practice mostly
written Punainen
tori.
Puola Poland
Puškin Pushkin
Putin [puutin] Putin
puunilainen Punic
puunilaissota Punic War
Pyhä Henki Holy Ghost ~
Holy Spirit
Pyhä istuin Holy See
Pyhä Laurentius (: Pyhän Lawrence of Pyhä Lauri when
Laurentiuksen) Rome referring e.g. to
churches in Finland
named afte him.
Pyhä Lucia [lusia] Saint Lucy ~
Saint Lucia
Pyhä Yrjö ~ Pyhä Yrjänä Saint George ~
St. George
Pykeija ~ Pykeijä Bugoynes
Pyreneet : Pyreneillä Pyrenees, the
Pyreneiden niemimaa Iberian Now more often
Peninsula Iberian niemimaa.
Pyrros : Pyrroksen ~ Pyrrhos Pyrrhus ~ Pyrrhos is more
[pyrros] Pyrrhos common.
Pähkinälinna Shlisselburg
Pähkinäsaaren rauha Treaty of
Nöteborg ~
Treaty of
Oreshek
Päijät-Häme : Päijät-Hämeessä Päijänne-
Tavastia
Päiväntasaajan Guinea [ginea] Equatorial
Guinea
Pääsiäissaari : Pääsiäissaarella Easter Island
Pölläkkälä Baryshevo
Quebec [kebek] ~ Québec Quebec
[kebék]
Quintilianus [kvintiliaanus] : Quintilian
Quintilianuksen
Quirinalis : Quirinaliksella Quirinal Hill
Raakel Rachel Biblical.
Raamattu : Raamatun Bible
Raisi Nordreisa
Rangoon [ranguun] ~ Yangon Rangoon Ks. Yangon.
Rangoon [ranguun] ~ Yangon Yangon Yangon on Burman
[jangon] nyk. hallituksen
käyttämä nimiasu.
Ranskan akatemia l’Académie
française ~ the
French Academy
Ranskan Guayana [guajana] French Guiana
Rapu : Ravun Cancer ~ Crab Constellation. In
horoscope contexts
in lowercase in
Finnish.
Rautaportti Iron Gate
Rebekka : Rebekan Rebekah Biblical.
Reims [rä̃ä̃s] : Reimsissä Rheims ~ Reims
Rein Rhine
Reininmaa : Reininmaassa Rhineland
Rethymnon [retimnon] Rethymno
Retusaari Kotlin Island
Riad Riyadh
Riemukaari Arc de Triomphe In Paris.
Riesengebirge [riisengebirge] Giant
Mountains,
Krkonose
Riianlahti Gulf of Riga ~
Bay of Riga
Riika : Riiassa : Riikaan Riga
Rikhard Richard Kings.
Rikhard Leijonamieli Richard the
Lionheart
Rimini : Riminissä Rimini
Riukiusaaret Ryukyu Islands
Rodopi Rhodope
Rodopit : Rodopeilla Rhodope
Mountains
Rodos [roodos ~ rodos]: Rhodes Island.
Rodoksella (~ Rodoksessa)
Romania Romania ~
Rumania
Rooma Rome
Roomalaiskirje Romans Book of the Bible.
Rossinmeri Ross Sea
Ruanda Rwanda
Rubikon Rubicon
Ruija Finnmark When referring to
administrative unit
of Norway, Finnmark
is used.
Ruotsi Sweden
Ruotsi-Suomi Sweden Used in Finland to
refer to Sweden
when it included
Finland (until 1809).
Rutenia Ruthenia
Ruuben Reuben Biblical.
Ruut Ruth Biblical.
Saadok Zadok Biblical. Sadok in
1992 translation
Saara Sarah Biblical.
Saarenmaa : Saarenmaalla Saaremaa In Estonia.
Saarland ~ Saarin alue ~ Saarland Saarland, kun
Saarinmaa tarkoitetaan Saksan
osavaltiota.
Saarnaaja Ecclesiastes Book of the Bible
and its author.
saatana Satan In Finnish (incl. the
Bible) usually even
in lowercase, even
when used as a
proper name.
Sabinianus : Sabinianuksen Sabinian Pople.
Saha Sakha Same as Jakutia.
Sahalin Sakhalin
Saint Paulin katedraali ~ St. St. Paul’s
Paul’s [sənt pools] Cathedral
Saint Vincent [seint vinsent] ja Saint Vincent
Grenadiinit : Saint Vincent ja and the
Grenadiineilla Grenadines
Sajan Sayan
Mountains
Sakarias : Sakariaan Zacharias Biblical.
Sakarius : Sakariuksen Zachary Pope.
Saksa Germany
Saksi Saxony
Sallustius : Sallustiuksen Sallust
Salomo Solomon Biblical. In some
contexts Salomon.
Salomonin saaret Solomon Islands
~ Solomons
Saloniki Salonica ~ Now Thessalonika.
Salonika
Sambesi Zambezi
Sambia Zambia
Samoasaaret Samoan Islands
Sanaa : Sanaassa : Sanaahan Sana’a ~ Sanaa Capital of Yemen.
Sananlaskut Proverbs Book of the Bible.
Šanghai Shanghai Also Shanghai.
Sankt Bernhardin sola St Bernard Pass
Sansibar Zanzibar
Sapfo Sappho
Saroninlahti Saronic Gulf
Saturnus : Saturnuksen Saturn
Saudi-Arabia Saudi Arabia
Savo Savonia
Savoiji Savoy Historical area.
Schelde [šelde] Scheldt ~
Schelde
Schwaben [švaaben] Swabia ~ Suabia
~ Svebia
Schwarzwald [švartsvald] the Black Forest In Germany.
Sebedeus : Sebedeuksen Zebedee Biblical. In popular
language Sepeteus :
Sepeteuksen.
Sebulon Zebulun Biblical.
Seem Shem Biblical.
Seet Set ~ Seth ~ Biblical. Set in 1992
Sheth translation.
seireeni Siren Mythological.
Seiskari : Seiskarissa Seskar Now in Russia.
seleukidi; seleukidien Seleucid
Seleukos : Seleukoksen Seleucus Monarchs.
Selkämeri Bothnian Sea Formely
Raumanmeri.
Semgallia Zemgale ~ Historical. Also
Semigalia ~ Zemgale.
Semigallia
Seulaset : Seulasten Pleiades Constellation
Seurasaaret Society Islands
Sevennit : Sevenneillä Cevennes
Sevilla [sevilja] Seville
Seychellit [seišellit] : Seychelles
Seychelleillä
Sharja [šardža] Sharjah Also Šardža.
Shetland [šetland] ~ Shetlanti : Shetland E.g. shetlanninponi.
Shetlannissa
Siaminlahti Gulf of Thailand
sibylla Sibyl Oracular women.
Sidon Sidon ~ Saïda Formerly also Siidon.
Siinai Sinai
Siion Zion
Sikstuksen ~ Sixtuksen Sistine ~ Sixtine
Sikstus (: Sikstuksen) ~ Sixtus (: Sixtus Poper
Sixtuksen)
Simson Samson Biblical.
Sininen luola ~ Sininenluola Blue Grotto
Siperia Siberia
Siperian rata ~ Trans-Siperian Trans-Siberian
rata Railway
Sirak ~ Siirak Sirach In Apocrypha. In
popular language
Siirakki : Siirakin.
Sisilia Sicily
Sisä-Mongolia Inner Mongolia
Sjælland ~ Själland [šelland] ~ Zealand ~ In Denmark. Various
Sjellanti (: Sjellannissa) Sealand other forms,
including Sjelland,
are in use in Finnish.
Skandinavia Scandinavia
Skandit Scandinavian Same as
Mountains ~ Kölivuoristo.
Scandes
Skorpioni Scorpio ~ Constellation. In
Scorpion horoscope contexts
in lowercase in
Finnish.
Skotlannin Alamaa Scottish
Lowlands
Skotlannin Ylämaa Scottish
Highlands
Skotlanti : Skotlannissa Scotland
Skoone ~ Skåne [skoone] Scania Skåne is
recommended.
Sleesia Silesia
Slesvig Schleswig
Småland [smooland] ~ Smaland
Smoolanti (: Smoolannissa)
So ia Sophia Goddess.
Sognevuono [songnevuono] Sogne jord
Sokotra Socotra ~
Soqotra
Sokrateen; sokraattinen Socratean
Sokrates : Sokrateen : Socrates
Sokrateeseen (~ Sokrateehen)
Solovetskinsaaret Solovetsky
Islands
Šostakovitš Shostakovich
Sotši Sochi
Soul Seoul
Sparta Sparta
spartakisti Spartacist
Sporadit the Sporades
Stalin [stalin ~ staalin], Josif ~ Stalin, Joseph Josif is commonly
Stalin, Iosif used, but Iosif would
be the correct
transliteration.
Stefanus : Stefanuksen Stephen Biblical person and
popes.
Steiermark [štaiermark ~ Styria
staiermark]
Stettin Szczecin Historical. Now
Szczecin.
Strasbourg [strasbur ~ Strasbourg Formerly Strassburg,
strasbuur] now Strasbourg is
 recommended.
Sudeettialueet ~ Sudeetit Sudetenland
Sun Jat-sen Sun Yat-sen
Sundasaaret Sunda Islands
Suomenlahti : Suomenlahdella Gulf of Finland
Suomi : Suomessa Finland
Surabaja Surabaya
Suriname ~ Surinam Suriname Surinam old form,
still common.
Suur väin ~ Suursalmi Suur Strait
Suuret järvet : Suurilla järvillä the Great Lakes May need
clari ication:
Amerikan Suuret
järvet.
Suurkirkko ~ Helsingin Helsinki
tuomiokirkko Cathedral
Suur-Lontoo Greater London
Suursaari : Suursaaressa ~ Gogland, Now in Russia.
Suursaarella Hogland
Sveanmaa [sveeanmaa] ~ Svea Svealand ~
[sveea] Swealand
Sveitsi Switzerland
Swazimaa [svasimaa] : Swaziland
Swazimaassa
Syrakusa Syracuse In Italy.
Syrdarja Syr Darya Formerly Syr-Darja.
Syrt ~ Sirt ~ Surt Sirte ~ Sirt ~ In Libya.
Surt ~ Syrte
Syväri Svir In Russia.
Syyria Syria
Taalainmaa : Taalainmaalla Dalarna ~ In Sweden,
Dalecarlia ~ the
Dales
Tabriz ~ Täbriz Tabriz
Taddeus : Taddeuksen Thaddaeus Biblical.
Tadžikistan Tajikistan ~
Tadzikhistan
Tahiti : Tahitilla ~ Tahitissa Tahiti
Taivaallisen rauhan aukio Tiananmen Also Tiananmen-
Square aukio, Tiananmen.
Tajo [taahho] Tagus
Taka-Intia Farther India
Tallinna Tallinn
Tallinnanlahti Tallinn Bay
Tammisaari : Tammisaaressa Ekenäs In Swedish-speaking
area of Finland.
Tanganjika Tanganyika
Tanger : Tangerissa : Tangeriin Tangier ~
Tangiers
Tansania Tanzania
Tanska Denmark
Tanskan salmet the Danish
straits
Tanskansalmi Denmark Strait Between Greenland
and Iceland.
Tantalos : Tantaloksen Tantalus
Tapani Stephen Kings.
Tartto : Tartossa Tartu
Taškent Tashkent
Teheran Tehran
Teili Delet
Teksas : Teksasin Texas Also (and somewhat
more often) Texas.
Telemakhos : Telemakhoksen Telemachus
Telesforus : Telesforuksen Telesphorus Pope.
Teneriffa : Teneriffalla Tenerife
Teno ~ Tenojoki : Tenojoen Tana
Teo ilus : Teo iluksen Theophilus Biblical. Teo ilos in
1992 translation.
Terentius : Terentiuksen Terence Ancient author.
Terijoki : Terijoella Zelenogorsk Now in Russia.
Terpsikhore Terpsichore Muse.
Tertullianus [tertulliaanus] : Tertullian
Tertullianuksen
Tessalonikalaiskirje Thessalonians Books in the Bible.
Thaimaa [taimaa] : Thaimaassa : Thailand Frequent incorrect
Thaimaahan illative:
Thaimaaseen.
Theba [theeba ~ teeba] Thebes In ancient Egypt.
Theba [theeba ~ teeba]; Thiva Thebes In Greece. Thiva
when referring to
present-day town.
Thebe Thebe Mythological
person.
Theodorus [teodorus] : Theodore Popes.
Theodoruksen
Thermopylai Thermopylae
Thessalia [tessalia] Thessaly
Thessalonika [tessalonika] ~ Thessaloniki ~
Tessalonika ~ Thessaloniki Thessalonika
Thüringen [tyyringen] Thuringia
Thüringer Becken [tyyringer Thuringian
bekken] ~ Thüringenin Basin
[tyyringenin] allas
Thüringer Wald [tyyringer vald] Thuringian
Forest
Tiberias : Tiberiaassa Tiberias ~ City.
Tiveria ~ Tverya
Tiberius : Tiberiuksen Tiberius Emperor.
Tienšan Tian Shan ~ Tien
Shan
Tigris : Tigrisin ~ Tigriksen ~ Tigris
Tigriin
Tihvinä Tikhvin
Tiibet Tibet
Tiitus : Tiituksen Titus Biblical. Titus in
1992 translation. Cf.
Titus.
Timoteus : Timoteuksen Timothy Biblical.
Tiroli Tyrol
Tizian [titsian] Titian Painter.
Tobit : Tobitin ~ Tobias : Tobiaan Tobias ~ Tobit In the Apocrypha. In
~ Tobia : Tobian popular language
Topias : Topiaan.
Tokio Tokyo
Tolstoi, Leo ~ Lev Tolstoy, Leo
Tonava Danube
Tonkin Tongkin ~
Tongking ~
 Tonkin ~
Tonquin
Toora Torah Same as Pentateukki.
Topelius : Topeliuksen, Sakari ~ Topelius, Zachris
Zachris
Torino Turin In Italy.
Toscana Tuscany In Italy.
Traakia Thrace
Trajanus : Trajanuksen Trajan Emperor.
Transilvania Transylvania
Trento Trent ~ Trento
Trier [triir] Treves ~ Trier
Trinidad ja Tobago : Trinidad ja Trinidad and
Tobagossa Tobago
Tripoli Tripoli In Libya, in Lebanon.
Tripolis : Tripoliissa : Tripoliihin Tripoli In Greece.
Troija Troy
troijalainen Trojan Also iguratively
about malware.
Tromssa Tromsø
Trotski, Lev Trotsky, Leon
Tšad Chad
Tšaikovski Tchaikovsky
Tšehov Chekhov Russian author.
Tšekki (: Tšekissä) ~ Tšekinmaa Czech ~ Czechia
(: Tšekinmaassa) ~ Czech
Republic
Tšekkoslovakia Czechoslovakia
Tšeljabinsk Chelyabinsk
Tšernobyl : Tšernobylissä (~ Chernobyl
Tšernobylissa)
Tšetšenia Chechnya
Tšiang Kai-šek Chiang Kai-shek
Tšingis-kaani Genghis Khan
Tšuktšien niemimaa Chukchi
Peninsula ~
Chukotka
Peninsula ~
Chukotski
Peninsula
Tšuktšienmeri Chukchi Sea
Tšuvašia ~ Tšuvassia Chuvashia
Tuhkimo Cinderella
Tukholma Stockholm
Tulimaa : Tulimaassa Tierra del Fuego
Tuomarien kirja Judges A book of the Bible.
Tuomas : Tuomaan ~ Thomas Biblical.
Tuomaksen
Tuomas Akvinolainen St Thomas
Aquinas
Tuomas Kempiläinen Thomas à
Kempis
Turkki Turkey
Turks- ja Caicossaaret : Turks- ja Turks and
Caicossaarilla Caicos Islands
Tuuloma Tuloma
Türkmenabat Chardzhou ~ Formerly Tšardžou.
Charjew
Tyros : Tyroksessa Tyre Also Tyyro.
Tyrrhenanmeri Tyrrhenian Sea
Tytärsaari Bolshoy Tyuters
Tyynimeri (: Tyynenmeren) ~ Paci ic Ocean ~
Tyyni valtameri ~ Iso valtameri Paci ic
Täräntö : Tärännössä Tarendo
Uhtua : Uhtualla ~ Kalevala : Kalevala In East Karelia.
Kalevalassa
Ukraina Ukraine
Ulriika Eleonoora ~ Ulrika Ulrica Eleonor ~
Eleonora [ulriika eleonoora] Ulrika Eleonora
Unkari Hungary
Uplanti (: Uplannissa) Uppland Also Uppland.
Upsala Uppsala Also Uppsala (now
recommended).
Urbanus : Urbanuksen Urban Pope.
Uudet-Alankomaat : Uusissa- New Netherland
Alankomaissa
Uumaja Umeå
Uusi-Englanti : Uudessa- New England
Englannissa
Uusi-Guinea [ginea] : Uudessa- New Guinea
Guineassa
Uusikaarlepyy : Nykarleby In Swedish-speaking
Uudessakaarlepyyssä part of Finland.
Uusi-Kaledonia : Uudessa- New Caledonia
Kaledoniassa
Uusimaa : Uudellamaalla Newland ~ In Finland.
Uusimaa
Uusi-Meksiko : Uudessa- New Mexico More often New
Meksikossa Mexico.
Uusi-Seelanti : Uudessa- New Zealand
Seelannissa
Vaaka : Vaa’an Libra ~ the Constellation. In
Scales horoscope contexts
in lowercase in
Finnish.
Vaasa Vaasa City in Finland.
Vaasa Vasa ~ Wasa Dynasty in Sweden.
Val di Femme : Val di Femmessä Fiemme Valley ~
Val di Fiemme
Valakia Wallachia ~
Walachia
Valentinus [valentiinus]: Valentine Valentine’s day
Valentunuksen earlier only
Valentinuksen päivä,
now commonly
ystävänpäivä.
Valerianus [valeriaanus] : Valerian Emperors.
Valerianuksen
Valitusvirret Book of A book in the Bible.
Lamentations,
Valkeavuori White Mountain Near Prague.
Valkoinen talo the White House Recommended form
is Valkoinentalo.
Valko-Venäjä : Valko-Venäjällä Belarus ~
Belorussia
Vallonia Wallonia
Varsinais-Suomi Finland Proper Southwestern
historical province.
Varsova Warsaw
Vasili Vasiliy ~ Vasily Russian irst name.
Vatikaani Vatican
Vatikaanivaltio Vatican City
State
Vattimeri Wadden Sea
Veda-kirjat Vedas, the
Veiksel Vistula
Veikselinhaf i Vistula Lagoon
Venetsia Venice
Venezia Giulia [venetsia džuulia] Julian March
Venezuela [venetsuela ~ Venezuela
venetsueela]
Venäjä : Venäjällä Russia
Vergilius : Vergiliuksen Vergil ~ Virgil
Verikirkko Church of the
Savior on Blood
Versailles [versaj] : Versailles
Versaillesissa : Versaillesiin ~
Versailles [versai] :
Versailles’ssa : Versailles’hin
Vesikäärme Hydra Constellation.
Vesimies : Vesimiehen Aquarius ~ Constellation. In
Water-Bearer horoscope contexts
in lowercase in
Finnish.
Vesisaari : Vesisaaressa Vadsø In Norway. Also
Vadsø.
Vespasianus [vespasiaanus] : Vespasian
Vespasianuksen
Viena White Sea Also Vienan Karjala.
Karelia
Vienanjoki Northern Dvina
River
Vienanlahti Dvina Bay
Vienanmeri White Sea
Vietnam Vietnam ~ Viet
Nam

Viipuri Vyborg Now in Russia.

Viktor Victor Kings, popes.
Viktor Amadeus (: Amadeuksen) Victor Amadeus
Viktor Emanuel Victor Emanuel
Viktoria Victoria Queen. Written
usually with c in
geographic names,
e.g. Victorianjärvi,
Victorian putoukset,
Victoriansaari.
Viktoriajärvi ~ Viktorianjärvi ~ Lake Victoria Recommended form
Victorianjärvi ~ Victoriajärvi is Victorianjärvi.
viktoriaaninen; viktoriaani Victorian
Viktorian husaari ~ Viktoria ja Victoria and Her
hänen husaarinsa Hussar
Viktorian risti Victoria Cross,
the
Vilhelm Wilhelm Emperors of
Germany.
Vilhelm William Kings.
Vilhelm Occamilainen (~ William of
Okkamilainen) Ockham
Vilhelm Sabinalainen William of
Modena ~
 William of
Sabina
Vilhelmiina Wilhelmina Queen.
Viljandi : Viljandissa Viljandi Previously Viljanti.
Vilna Vilnius
Viminalis : Viminaliksella Viminal Hill
Viro Estonia
Višnu Vishnu
Vitalianus : Vitalianuksen Vitalian Pope.
Vladislav Ladislaus ~ Kings of Poland.
Wladyslaw
Vogeesit : Vogeeseilla the Vosges
Vuoreija Vardø In Norway.
Vuorisaarna Sermon on the
Mount
Vähä-Aasia : Vähässä-Aasiassa Asia Minor Historical. Now
Anatolia.
Vähä-Belt : Vähässä-Beltissä Little Belt
Vähä-Syrtti : Vähässä-Syrtissä Gulf of Gabès ~
Lesser Syrtis
Vähä-Syrtti : Vähässä-Syrtissä Lesser Syrtis
Väike väin ~ Piensalmi Väike Strait
Väinäjoki Daugava
Välimeri Mediterranean
Sea
Värmlanti (: Värmlannissa) ~ Värmland Vermlanti
Vermlanti (: Vermlandissa) ~ established in some
Värmland contexts, e.g.
Vermlannin
savolaismurteet.
Västerås [vesteroos] West Aros ~
Västerås
Västmanland ~ Västmanlanti (: Västmanland
Västmanlannissa) ~
Vestmanlanti (: Vestmanlanti)
Väinänlinna Daugavpils Historical;
otherwise
Daugavpils.
Vöyri Vörå In Swedish-speaking
area in Finland.
Westfalen [vestfaalen] Westphalia
Wien [viin] Vienna
Wightsaari [waitsaari] : Isle of Wight
Wightsaarella ~ Wightsaaressa
Wilhelm [vilhelm] Tell William Tell
Wul ila Ul ilas ~ Ulphilas
Yhdistyneet arabiemiirikunnat United Arab
Emirates
Yhdistyneet kansakunnat United Nations Abbreviated YK.
Yhdistynyt kuningaskunta United Kingdom
Yhdysvallat : Yhdysvalloissa : United States Abbreviation USA (:
Yhdysvaltain (~ Yhdysvaltojen) USA:ssa) used in
Finnish, too.
Yhdysvaltain itärannikon aika Eastern
Standard Time
Yhdysvaltain keskiosan aika Central Standard
Time
(Yhdysvaltain) länsirannikon Paci ic Standard
aika Time
Yhdysvaltain pienet erillissaaret United States
Minor Outlying
 Islands
Yhdysvaltojen itsenäistyminen American
Revolution
Yhdysvaltojen vapaussota American
Revolutionary
War
Ülemistejärvi Lake Ülemiste
Yläjärvi Lake Superior
Ylämaa Highland In Scotland.
Ylämaiden; Ylämaan Highland Highland regiment =
Ylämaan rykmentti.
Yrjö George Kings.
Yykeä ~ Jyykeä Lyngen
Žalalabad ~ Jalalabad Jalalabad In Kirgisia.
[džalalabad]
Zaporožje Zaporizhia ~
Zaporozhye
Zaragoza [saragoosa ~ saragosa] Saragossa ~
Zaragoza
Zarathustra [tsarathustra] Zoroaster
zarathustralaisuus Zoroastrianism
[tsarathustralaisuus]
Zeeland Zeeland ~ In the Netherlands.
Zealand
Zenon [tsenon] Zeno Ancient
philosophers.
Živago Zhivago
Zugjärvi [tsuugjärvi] ~ Lake Zug
Zuginjärvi [tsuuginjärvi]
Zürich [tsyyrih] Zurich
Åbenrå [oobenroo] : Åbenråssa : Aabenraa ~
Åbenråhon Åbenrå
Ålborg [oolbori] : Ålborgissa Aalborg But e.g. Aalborg
Jubilæums Akvavit.
Århus [oorhuus] Aarhus Also Aarhus.
Ääninen : Äänisellä ~ Äänisjärvi Lake Onega
Äänisjoki ~ Onegajoki Onega
Äänislahti ~ Oneganlahti Onega Bay
Äänislinna Petrozavodsk Used 1941–1944;
now Petroskoi.
Öljymäki : Öljymäellä Mount of Olives
Öölanti : Öölannissa Öland An island in Sweden.
Abbreviations
The following table describes common abbreviations used in Finnish. The following
notations are mostly excluded here (but can partly be found in Lyhenneluettelo by
the Institute for the Languages of Finland):
international identi iers, such as identi iers of units and chemical elements, e.g. V
for the volt, C for carbon; they are, or should be, the same across languages,
though their pronunciation may vary
initialisms that denote organizations, products, etc., such as SAK
initialisms for academic degrees such as OTL = oikeustieteen lisensiaatti, intended
for limited use in catalogs and similar contexts, though often used even in prose
text
In the Notes column, the note “Usually read by letters” means that the abbreviation
is commonly read by saying the letter names, e.g. alv as aa äl vee, though this is not
always accepted in very formal presentations. The note “Sometimes read by letters”
suggests that such pronunciation is even more colloquial.
Abbr. Expanded Meaning Notes
aik. aikaisempi; earlier; adult
aikaisemmin; aikuinen
alk. alkaen; alkujaan from (price); Common in ads.
originally
alv ~ arvonlisävero value-added tax Usually read by
ALV letters. Colloquially
as word: alvi.
ao. asianomainen the (referred) Sometimes read by
letters.
ap. aamupäivällä; AM; car parking place;
autopaikka; alemman of lower salary class
palkkausluokan
apul. apulainen, apulais- assisting
ark. arkisin; arkisto on weekdays; archive
art. artikla; artikkeli article
as. asunto; asukas; asema apartment;
 inhabitant; station
ASP asuntosäästöpalkkio apartment savings
reward
aspa asiakaspalvelu customer service Informal.
atk ~ automaattinen automatic data Somewhat dated.
ATK tietojenkäsittely processing Read by letters.
av ~AV audiovisuaalinen audiovisual Usually read by
letters.
avi aluehallintovirasto Regional State In Finland. Often
Administrative read as avi.
Agency.
ay ammattiyhdistys; labor union; general Often read by letters.
avoin yhtiö; ayrshire partnership; ayrshire
(cow)
bilj. biljoona(a) trillion(s) (US) A million millions.
BKT ~ bruttokansantuote gross national income Often read by letters.
bkt
dipl. diplomi diploma
e euro(a) euro(s)
eaa. ennen ajanlaskun Before Common Era
alkua
ed. edellinen; edellä; previous; previously;
edustaja representative
eKr. ennen Kristusta Before Christ
ely elinkeino-, liikenne- ja business, traffic, and In Finland. In the
ympäristö- environmen compound ely-keskus
(Centre for
Economic
Development,
Transport and the
Environment an
administrative unit).
Usually read as ely.
em. edellä mainittu the mentioned Sometimes read by
letters.
emt. edellä mainittu teos op. cit. Previously
mentioned work.
ent. entinen former
esim. esimerkiksi for example Sometimes
pronounced esim (in
informal speech).
EU Euroopan unioni European Union Usually read by
letters.
h tunti; henkeä; huone hour; person(s);
room(s)
hetu henkilötunnus personal id Usually pronounced
hetu.
hevi hedelmä ja vihannes fruits and vegetables Usually pronounced
hevi.
hlö henkilö person
HO hovioikeus Court of Appeal In Finland.
huom. huomautus; huomaa remark; note! Sometimes
pronounced huom.
hv hevosvoima horsepower
ilm. ilmestynyt; ilmoitus published;
announcement
ins. insinööri engineer
ip. iltapäivällä PM Rare, since 24 h clock
used.
IT ~ it informaatiotekniikka information
technology
jaa. jälkeen ajanlaskun Common Era
alun
jKr. jälkeen Kristuksen Anno Domini
jne. ja niin edelleen and so on Sometimes read by
letters.
joht. johtaja director, manager
k. kuoli, kuollut; katu died; street
kand. kandidaatti bachelor Degree. Earlier also
master’s degree.
kd. kristillisdemokraatti member of Suomen When indicating
Kristillisdemokraatit af iliations to
political parties. In
historical texts “kd.”
may mean
“kansandemokraatti”,
member of a left-
wing party.
ke keskiviikko(na) (on) Wednesday
kesk. keskustalainen member of Suomen When indicating
Keskusta (the Center af iliations to
Party) political parties.
kirj. kirjoittanut; kirjataan written by; registered
kk kuukausi, kuukautta month(s) As a unit of time.
kko kirkko church In maps and signs.
KKO korkein oikeus Supreme Court In Finland.
kkp kahvikupillinen, coffee-cupful(s) 1.5 dL.
kahvikupillista
klo kello o’clock
ko. kyseessä oleva the (discussed) Sometimes read by
letters.
KO käräjäoikeus District Court In Finland. Former
kihlakunnanoikeus.
kok. kokoomuslainen member of When indicating
Kansallinen af iliations to
Kokoomus (a political parties.
conservative party)
kpl kappale(tta) piece(s) As a unit.
kpl. kappale(tta) paragraph
kr kruunua(a) crown(s) Currency unit.
krs kerros; krossi(a) loor; gross (144 1. krs = ground loor.
pieces)
ks. katso see
käänt. kääntänyt; kääntäjä translated; translator
l~L litra(a) liter(s) International
identi ier.
l. eli or, in other words
la lauantai(na) (on) Saturday
lis. lisensiaatti licentiate Acad. degree
between master and
doctor.
lk. luokka class
lkm. lukumäärä number, amount
luki luku- ja kirjoitus- reading and writing Usually read as luki.
In lukihäiriö
(dyslexia).
lyh. lyhenne, lyhennettynä abbreviation,
abbreviated
läh. lähettäjä; lähemmin sender; more closely
ma maanantai(na) (on) Monday
ma. määräaikainen ixed-period
mahd. mahdollinen, possible, possibly
mahdollisesti
maist. maisteri master Academic degree.
miel. mieluummin, preferably
mieluiten
milj. miljoona(a) million(s)
ml ~ mL millilitra milliliter International
indenti ier.
ml. mukaan lukien including
mm millimetri(ä) millimeter(s) International
indenti ier.
mm. muun muassa among other things
mrd. miljardi(a) billion(s) (US) A thousand millions.
mt. mainittu teos op. cit. Previously
mentioned work.
myöh. myöhempi, later
myöhemmin
n. noin; netto about, approximately;
net (amount)
nimim. nimimerkki pseudonym
nk. niin kutsuttu so called
nro ~ numero number
n:ro
ns. niin sanottu so called Sometimes read by
letters.
nyk. nykyinen; nykyään present; now
oh. ohjehinta suggested retail price
oik. oikea(lla); oikeastaan (on the) right; actually
op. opettaja; opisto; teacher; educational
osuuspankki institution;
cooperative bank
opisk. opiskelija student
os. osoite; osasto address; department
o.s. omaa sukua born Maiden name.
ovh. ~ ohjevähittäishinta suggested retail price Often read by letters.
ovh
oy ~ oy. osakeyhtiö incorporated Usually read by
company letters.
oyj ~ oyj. julkinen osakeyhtiö public incorporated Usually read by
company letters.
p. puhelin; painos; telephone; printing;
päivä(ä); piste(ttä) day(s); point(s)
par. paremmin better, preferably
pe perjantai(na) (on) Friday
per. perustettu, perustanut established (by)
pj. puheenjohtaja chairman, president
pkt paketti(a) package(s) As a unit.
pl pullo(a) bottle(s) As a unit.
PL postilokero P.O. Box
po. puheena oleva; pitää the (discussed); shall
olla be (read as)
prk purkki(a) can(s) As a unit.
prof. professori professor University professor.
pros. prosentti(a) per cent
ps pussi(a) bag(s) As a unit.
ps. perussuomalainen member of When indicating
Perussuomalaiset (a af iliations to
populistic party) political parties.
psta puolesta on behalf of
ptk. pöytäkirja minutes (of a
meeting)
puh. puhelin telephone
puh.joht. puheenjohtaja chairman, president
pv päivä(ä) day(s) As unit of time.
pvm. päivämäärä; date; local network
paikallisverkkomaksu charge
r. ruotsalainen member of When indicating
Ruotsalainen af iliations to
kansanpuolue political parties.
(Swedisg People’s
Party)
rak. rakennettu, built (by)
rakentanut
rek. rekisteröity; rekisteri registered; register
rkl ruokalusikallinen spoonful 15 ml.
rpl rupla(a) ruble(s)
ry ~ ry. rekisteröity yhdistys registered association Usually read by
letters.
s sekunti(a) second(s)
s. sivu; syntynyt page; born
s:a sama the same
sd. sosiaalidemokraatti member of Suomen When indicating
Sosialidemokraattinen af iliations to
Puolue political parties.
sh. suositushinta suggested retail price
siht. sihteeri secretary
sit. sitoutumaton independent As a political
concept.
snt sentti (euro)cent 0.01 €.
s.o. se on that is, i.e.
some sosiaalinen media social media Usually read as some.
sote sosiaali- ja social welfare and Usually read as sote.
terveydenhuolto- health care In soteuudistus.
sotu sosiaaliturvatunnus personal ID Still used, but hetu is
now the correct
term.
su sunnuntai(na) (on) Sunday
suht. suhteellisen relatively Colloquially as a
shortened word.
suom. suomeksi; in Finnish; translated
suomentanut; into Finnish; Finnish
suomalainen
svh. suositettu suggested retail price
vähittäishinta
synt. syntynyt; syntyään born; by birth
t tonni; tunti (metric) ton; hour
t. tai; tuhat(ta) or; thousand(s)
tark. tarkastettu; inspected (by);
tarkastanut; tarkastaja inspector
tekn. tekniikan, tekninen; technical,
teknikko technological;
technician
ti tiistai(na) (on) Tuesday
til. tilattu; tilaus; tilavuus ordered; order;
volume
tj. ~ TJ toimitusjohtaja CEO Sometimes read by
letters.
tl teelusikallinen teaspoonful 5 ml.
tms. tai muuta sellaista or things like that
tn tonni (metric) ton
to torstai(na) (on) Thursday
toht. tohtori doctor Academic degree.
toim. toimittanut; toimittaja edited by; editor
tri tohtori doctor Academic degree.
ts. toisin sanoen in other words
tuh. tuhat(ta) thousand(s)
tuom. tuomari judge
tus tusina(a) dozen(s)
tv ~ TV televisio television Usually read by
letters.
us. usein often
v vuosi, vuotta year(s) As unit of time.
v. vuosi, vuonna (in) year E.g. as “v. 2015”.
va. väliaikainen temporary
vars. varsinkin; varsinainen especially; ordinary
vas. vasen, vasemmalla; (on the) left; member
vasemmistoliittolainen of Vasemmistoliitto
(Left Alliance)
vast. vastaus; vastaavasti answer; respectively
vihr. vihreä member of Vihreät When indicating
(the Green Party) af iliations to
political parties.
viim. viimeinen last
vk ~ vko viikko week
 vk. viime kuun last month
vm. viimeksi mainittu; the last mentioned;
vuosimalli annual model
Vp. vastausta pyydetään a reply is requested R.S.V.P.
vrk vuorokausi day As unit of time.
vrt. vertaa compare
vs. viransijainen; vastaan deputy; versus
vsk. vuosikerta annual volyme
vt. virkaatekevä acting
vv. virkavapaa on leave (from of ice)
wc ~ WC vee see (water closet) toilet Read by letters.
yhd. yhdistys association
yht. yhteensä; yhteinen in total; joint, shared
yl. yleensä; yleinen, usually; common(ly)
yleisesti
ym. ynnä muuta and others Sometimes read by
letters.
yms. ynnä muuta sellaista and others like that
yo ylioppilas student
yo. ylioppilas; ylläoleva student; the above
ÄO ~ äo älykkyysosamäärä Intelligence Quotient Often read by letters.

Style settings for Finnish in Word

224. Proo ing tools in Word

There is a extensive support to spelling, grammar, punctuation, and style checking
for Finnish in Microsoft Of ice Word, especially in version 2007 and newer.
Depending on version, you might have Finnish support pre-installed or you might
need to download and install it separately. The checks are largely customizable, too.
However, documentation of the settings is dif icult to ind, and the names of the
settings are partly rather cryptic.
In Word, the bottom of the window normally contains a language indicator such
as “English”, in the user interface language of Word. If you select a segment of text
(possibly all the text with Ctrl+A), you can next click on the language indicator to
open a language setting menu. The choice made there sets the proo ing language (if
supported) as well as some editing features, such as changing vertical quotation
marks (") to language-speci ic quotes.
The following compilation of the settings is meant to help users of Word to work
with the settings for Finnish and to make the best use of them. It also has some
general value, since it re lects typical mistakes that people (mainly native speakers)
tend to make, at least according to the judgement of the authors of this software.

225. The style classes

To access the settings, set the document language to Finnish and open Word
Options, then select Proo ing. You can then see the dropdown menu “Writing Style”,
with the button “Settings” on the right of it. At the simplest, you can just use the
dropdown to select one of the following:
Tiukka (strict) for formal style. Suitable for articles, books, formal letters, etc.
Normaali (normal) for literary style, with some requirements relaxed.
Vapaa (free) for informal style. May be suitable for personal letters, messages
posted to discussion forums, and presentations of dialogues.
It is usually best to start with Tiukka and drop some requirements if they turn out to
be unsuitable for your style or purposes. Instead of just switching to Normaali or
even Vapaa, consider clicking on Settings and just turning off (or on) the individual
settings. The Settings button opens the Grammar Settings window with a set of
checkboxes. You can this way change the meanings of Tiukka, Normaali, and Vapaa
in your copy of Word. You can alternatively select the fourth option in the dropdown
menu, Omat asetukset (Own settings), and tune them as desired. The button Reset
All sets all the options to their default values, for the writing style being used.

226. Descriptions of individual settings

The following description shows the settings in Word 2013, in the order they appear
in the Grammar Settings window. For each option, the description contains
the name of the option (which is in Finnish)
an explanation of the option name in English
the sets of options where this option is selected by default are listed (in
parentheses)
some comments by the author of this book
The name of an option normally presents an error or style feature that will be
reported if detected, but some of them name just the type of checks made.

Irrallinen sivulause
Isolated subclause
(Tiukka)
The checks are rather limited and catch only some types of subclauses (such as
jos clauses) used as sentences. Such use of subclauses is not accepted in formal
prose, but they often appear in casual style. If you see what I mean.

Pääverbi puuttuu
Main verb is missing
(Tiukka, Normaali)
This means that a clause lacks a predicate. Such issues are not always reported
even if this option is selected, because Word often classi ies an expression as a
name for something (e.g. Seitsemän veljestä) and as acceptable in a heading or
caption. It tends to report the issue when there is something in the text that
suggests that it was meant to be a sentence but isn’t (e.g. Seitsemän veljestä
iloisesti). Thus, having this option checked means that you may get false alarms
about some headings and captions, but it is useful in detecting real errors in text
(a verb was unintentionally omitted or misspelled). Sometimes this option causes
an incorrect error message, because Word does not recognize the predicate as a
verb form but treats it as a noun.
Pääverbien määrä
Number of main verbs [is too large]
(Tiukka, Normaali)
This means that a clause has more than one verb form that is interpreted as a
predicate, e.g. Minä kävin vierailin heillä. (Errors like this occur typically when
text is edited and you just add a new verb without removing the old one.) The
checks often fail to catch issues of this type even when the option is checked.

Tyyli: rinnastuskonjunktiolla alkava virke

Style: a sentence beginning with a co-ordinating conjunction.
(Tiukka)
In formal prose, a sentence should not begin with a conjunction like ja, tai, or
mutta. This is a purely stylistic issue.

Kongruenssi: subjektin ja predikaatin mukautuminen

Congruence: adaptation of the subject and the predicate
(Tiukka, Normaali)
This refers to mismatches like Pojat juoksee (instead of Pojat juoksevat), with the
subject in plural, predicate in singular. They are common in speech, but
substandard in writing.

Kongruenssi: eräitä erikseen huomattavia tapauksia

Congruence: some special issues
(Tiukka, Vapaa)
This refers to speci ic types of mismatch between a subject and a predicate, such
as Kumpikin menivät kotiinsa (instead of the correct Kumpikin meni kotiinsa or
Molemmat menivät kotiinsa).

Kongruenssi: sanalla ”ja” tai ”sekä” yhdistetyt subjektit

Congruence: subjects connected with ja or sekä
(Tiukka, Normaali)
This refers to a situation where the subject is plural in meaning, since it consists
of two or more parts connected with ja or sekä, but the predicate is incorrectly in
singular, e.g. Espoo ja Vantaa on kaupunkeja (the predicate must be ovat, not on).

Kongruenssi: adjektiiviattribuutin taipuminen pääsanan mukaan

Congruence: adaptation of an adjective attribute according to the main word
(Tiukka)
This refers to mismatches in case or number between an adjective and a noun, as
in suurissa juhlassa (instead of suuressa juhlassa or suurissa juhlissa). However,
this message may be caused by incorrect syntax analysis in Word. For example,
 the sentence Tiedotamme vanhemmille asiasta (We will inform parents about the
matter) triggers it, probably because Word regards vanhemmille as an adjective
attribute, not as a noun.

Vertailumuodot
Comparison forms
(Tiukka, Vapaa)
This causes errors like mitä suuremmassa (instead of mitä suurimmassa), using
the comparative instead of the superlative, to be detected.

Tyyli: sanan ”kaikista” käyttö superlatiivin yhteydessä

Style: the use of the word kaikista in a superlative context
(Tiukka)
This refers to the common colloquial use of kaikista (of all) as emphasizing a
superlative, e.g. kaikista suurin. The accepted alternative is kaikkein, e.g. kaikkein
suurin.

Tyyli: liitepartikkelien turha käyttö tai toisto

Style: unnecessary use or repetition of enclitic particles
(Tiukka)
This refers to repeated or redundant use of the kin or kAAn or other word-like
suf ixes like ko. This option often causes diagnostic messages when such suf ixes
are close to each other or look redundant due to the presence of a word like myös.
This option often helps to detect stylistic problems, but the checks might be too
picky; two occurrences of kin in the same clause is seldom a big issue. In
particular, Word recommends against the words myöskin and etteikö, but they are
now accepted by language authorities.

Konjunktio ”josko” epäsuorassa kysymyslauseessa

The conjunction josko in a subordinate question
(Tiukka, Normaali)
This refers to colloquial use of josko instead of the kO suf ix, e.g. En tiedä, josko
hän tulee instead of the correct En tiedä, tuleeko hän. According to current rules,
josko is accepted, though not in “neutral style”.

Tyyli: ”ja” kieltosanan yhteydessä

Style: ja used with a negation word
(Tiukka)
This refers to the use of ja at the start of a clause that contains the negation verb,
e.g. Asia vain on niin, ja ei sille voi mitään instead of the normal Asia vain on niin,
eikä sille voi mitään. This is a stylistic issue, and ja ei can be acceptable as a way of
 emphasizing negation. Word detects simple constructs like ja ei, but e.g. ja sille ei
voi mitään passes the check, even though here, too, eikä sille voi mitään is more
normal.

Tyyli: paljon sivulauseita

Style: a lot of subclauses
(Tiukka, Normaali)
This generally points out that a sentence contains several subclauses, possibly
making the sentence more dif icult to read and understand. As a rule, you should
reformulate the sentence, typically splitting it to two (or more) sentences. The
message may also be caused by subclauses embedded in other subclauses,
breaking their low, rather than the mere number of subclauses.

Verbirakenteet: kieltomuodot
Verb structures: negation forms
(Tiukka, Vapaa)
According to the documentation, this indicates that a negation form is
incomplete, e.g. Kirjuri tiennyt laskusta instead of the correct Kirjuri ei tiennyt
laskusta. However, such issues seem to be covered by the option Pääverbi puuttuu.

Verbirakenteet: aikamuodot
Verb structures: tenses
(Tiukka, Normaali, Vapaa)
This refers to errors in the use of composite tenses like the perfect, e.g. Juoksijat
ovat tiennyt uusista säännöistä instead of the correct Juoksijat ovat tienneet
uusista säännöistä.

Verbirakenteet: muita verbirakenteita

Verb structures: other verb structures
(Tiukka, Vapaa)
This refers to speci ic issues with the forms required by some verbs. In particular,
a construct like alkaa tekemään is lagged as an error if this option is checked.
However, the construct is now accepted by language authorities (though this has
been heavily debated), as an alternative to the old standard construct alkaa tehdä.

Verbirakenteet: kaksoispassiivi
Verb structures: double passive
(Tiukka, Normaali)
The “double passive” means the use of 4th person form in the auxiliary verb in
perfect and pluperfect, e.g. Talot ollaan rakennettu. Such expressions are normal
in spoken language but traditionally not accepted in standard language, where
 you should instead use Talot on rakennettu (The houses have been built).
However, modern rules are less strict: negative “double passive” forms such as ei
oltu rakennettu are not entirely unsuitable, though forms like ei ollut rakennettu
are still recommended.

Verbirakenteet: lienee-muodon käyttö

Verb structures: use of the lienee form
(Tiukka)
Refers to incorrect use of lienen, lienet, lienee etc., the potential forms of the verb
olla. For example, Minä lienen tarkoitan sitä (instead of Minä tarkoittanen sitä).
However, Word detects only a small part of such issues.

Yhdyssanat
Compound words
(Tiukka, Normaali, Vapaa)
Refers to some errors where a closed compound is written as an open compound
or vice versa. This check does not detect most errors of these kinds, only some
expressions like eteen päin instead of eteenpäin. Instead, writing an open
compound as closed (e.g. sen tähden as sentähden) usually causes the word to be
lagged as misspelled, and Word usually does not suggest the correct spelling.
Writing a closed compound as open (e.g. kesäaika as kesä aika) is usually not
detected at all. Note: the Autocorrect feature in Word may cause an expression
like eteen päin to be corrected to eteenpäin as you type it. Some of the rules in
Word 2013 are now outdated. In the following expressions, the second alternative
is now accepted, too, but Word lags it as incorrect or autocorrects it: päinvastoin
∼ päin vastoin, itsestään selvä ∼ itsestäänselvä.

Numeroiden tarpeettomat sijapäätteet

Unnecessary case suf ixes for numbers
(Tiukka, Normaali, Vapaa)
This refers to writing a case suf ix after a number written with igures, e.g. 7:ssä,
in situations where the suf ix need not be written, since the case is inferred from
the next word, as in 7 tapauksessa. It is somewhat debatable whether 7:ssä
tapauksessa is an error; the suf ix part :ssä is redundant, but might be regarded as
accepted.

Tyyli: arkikielinen tai murteellinen sana

Style: colloquial or dialectal word
(Tiukka)
This refers to words that may be quite suitable for informal texts, such as kiva
(nice), but not recommended for formal prose. General opinion and of icial
 recommendations on such matters may vary by time. For example, Word does not
lag the verb liisata (to lease), but people may still regard it as colloquial (or
jargon). Note that there is a separate setting for jargon words (see below). Most
colloquial and dialectal words are lagged independently of this setting, as
misspelled, because Word does not recognize them at all.

Tyyli: alatyylinen tai halventava sana

Style: vulgar or disparaging word
(Tiukka, Vapaa)
Often this option does not cause even the most vulgar words to be lagged. It is
possible that the functionality has been disabled due to being too debatable. It
may also depend on version of Word.

Tyyli: ylätyylinen tai vanhahtava sana

Style: exalted or dated word
(Tiukka)
This refers to words that are not used in modern language, except in poetry, in
very elevated style, and jocularly, e.g. ylkä instead of the normal-style sulhanen
(bridegroom).

Tyyli: slangisana
Style: slang word
(Tiukka)
This refers to words that are unsuitable in formal texts due to being jargon. E.g.
orkut (orgasm) is classi ied as jargon in this context. Most jargon words are
lagged independently of this setting, as misspelled, because Word does not
recognize them at all. On the other hand, Word treats some jargon words like
serveri as normal-style words and does not lag them, no matter what options are
set.

Välilyönnit
Spaces
(Tiukka, Normaali, Vapaa)
This refers to incorrect or redundant use of spaces, such as two spaces between
words—a common typing mistake, which is dif icult to notice otherwise, since it
usually causes just a little extra spacing.

Välimerkit
Punctuation
(Tiukka, Normaali, Vapaa)
 This relates to some use of hyphens, dashes, quotation marks, and parentheses,
e.g. mismatched parentheses in the expression (2014]. Basic punctuation with
periods and commas is checked independently of this checking. When this option
is set, Word lags all expressions enclosed in single quotation marks, as in ’hei’,
except for quotations inside quotations. This helps to detect a very common
mistake, but the message is disturbing in texts (typically linguistic texts) that
correctly use single quotes when giving the meaning of a word.

Lyhenteet
Abbreviations
(Tiukka, Normaali, Vapaa)
When this option is selected, Word lags some old-fashioned spellings of some
common abbreviations such as j. n. e. (with spaces) instead of jne. as incorrect.

Numeroiden ryhmittely
Grouping of digits
(Tiukka, Normaali, Vapaa)
This should relate to grouping of digits in large numbers and other expressions.
However, Word seems to accept both correct Finnish grouping as in 1 000 000
and ungrouped numbers like 1000000 and even English-style 1,000,000. It
detects some digit sequences as possible phone numbers and may suggest e.g.
changing 0505500168 to 050 5500 168, which is appropriate. It may suggests
changing the apparent landline phone number 098882675 to (09) 888 2675,
which conforms to the old Finnish standard and ITU recommendations, but the
current Finnish standard recommends 09 888 2675 without parentheses.

Iso alkukirjain
Capitalization
(Tiukka)
This indicates that the irst letter of a sentence is not capitalized.

References
This section lists some material on Finnish in Finnish that was used in writing this
book and that you might ind useful. Most of the material requires good basic
understanding of Finnish, so you probably wish to use it when you have studied the
language for some time. Bibliographic information about the books mentioned can
be found in Fennica, the online national bibliography, which has a user interface in
English, too.
The web page www.cs.tut. i/∼jkorpela/ i.html8 contains a search form that can be
used to access many of the online resources listed below. It links to another page
containing links and descriptions of other services mentioned here and some
additional services.

227. Dictionaries and glossaries

Nykysuomen sanakirja. The largest dictionary of Finnish (about 200,000 entries).
Published irst in 1951–1961. It mostly describes the language as it was in the 1930s
and 1940s, with limited amount of somewhat newer material included. All
subsequent publications are identical with the original in content and even layout.
Originally Nykysuomen sanakirja was published in six volumes, later in three
volumes. In 1973, a dictionary of international words, Nykysuomen sivistyssanakirja:
vierasperäiset sanat, was published. It was later republished carrying the additional
title Nykysuomen sanakirja 4, as if it were a new volume continuing the three-volume
series. Further confusion has been caused by the publication of a book titled
Nykysuomen sanakirja 5 in 1980, which is actually four previously published books
bound to one volume: Uudissanasto 80 (newer words from the 1960s and 1970s),
Slangisanat = Nykyslangin sanakirja (dictionary of slang), Lyhenteet (dictionary of
abbreviations), and Ulkomaiden paikannimiä (foreign place names). These
publications can still be useful, but normative information in them may be outdated.
Suomen kielen perussanakirja. Consists largely of an abridged version of
Nykysuomen sanakirja, but with new material added, with a total of about 100,000
entries. Published in 1990–1994.
Kielitoimiston sanakirja. Basically a modernized version of Suomen kielen
perussanakirja. First published in 2004. Several newer versions exist and are
available as printed and in digital form. The dictionary was published online free of
charge in 2014, at www.kielitoimistonsanakirja. i.
Oikeeta suomee – suomen puhekielen sanakirja contains about 7,000 words and
sayings commonly used in spoken Finnish. Published in 2006.
The web site Joukahainen contains information about in lection of nouns,
adjectives, and verbs. Though unof icial, it can be useful, since it contains words that
are not yet covered in of icial dictionaries. Address: joukahainen.puimula.org
Suomalainen fraasisisanakirja. A phrase dictionary, irst edition in 1974, sixth
corrected version in 1985. Over 7,000 phrases.
Suurella sydämellä ihan sikana: suomen kielen kuvaileva fraasisanakirja. A phrase
dictionary, published in 2008. Relatively small set of phrases, with longish
explanations.
 Suomen murteiden sanakirja (SMS). Intended to be an extensive dictionary (with
350,000 entries) of dialects of Finnish,. However, only 8 printed volumes, covering
a–kurvottaa, were published, in 1985–2008. It was decided in 2010 that publication
proceeds online only. As of 2015, the online version of SMS contains only entries
from the range ja–käävätä.
Slangi.net sanastot. A compilation of slang (jargon) dictionaries, especially about
the Helsinki slang. Available at www.slangi.net/slanginet/. Confusingly organized.
Yleinen suomalainen asiasanasto (YSA). An online compilation of terminology as
an ontology, without explanations but with structural references to other terms and
recommendations on preferred terms. Available at into. i/ysa/.
Finto, a thesaurus and an ontology service on Finnish and Swedish. The user
interface is partly available in English, via into. i/en/. Finto contains several
different vocabularies and ontologies, with varying level of maturity and reliability.
For example, the Finnish Corporate Names, Suomalaiset yhteisönimet, contains a
large number of recommended form of the names of Finnish companies, institutes,
etc. However, this means just “Finto recommended”; some the principles applied
differ from those set by language authorities.
IATE, the multilingual term base of the EU, with words in the of icial languages of
the EU, including Finnish. Voluminous, of varying quality of terminological data, but
with classi ication according to reliability. Available at iate.europa.eu, with user
interface selectable in different languages.
Webxicon.org or its Finnish-language interface sanakirja.org. A multilingual
dictionary based on Wiktionary. With a good user interface that works even in very
small devices. A large amount of data, but with no guarantee of reliability or quality,
and usually very short explanations.
For serious study of Finnish, you need large bilingual dictionaries in both
directions, typically with English, Swedish, German, or French as the other language.
They are available in printed form (to some extent even via Amazon) and in digital
form (e.g. MOT dictionaries from Kielikone via sanakirja. i).

228. Etymological dictionaries

Nykysuomen etymologinen sanakirja. An etymological dictionary with about 6,000
entries, written for general audience. The partly more extensive and more detailed
Suomen sanojen alkuperä was mainly written for linguists and was published 1992–
2000.
The older Suomen kielen etymologinen sanakirja was published in 1955–1958 and
1975–1981; it is dif icult to ind now.
There is also Sanojen synty by Veijo Meri, irst published in 1982; written in
enjoyable style, but mixes valid etymologies with iction.
 Etymologinen viitetietokanta. Data base of etymological references. Does not
contain etymologies but references to (printed) publications about etymologies of
words.
There is an online version of the etymological dictionary of Estonian, a relative of
Finnish: Eesti etümoloogiasõnaraamat (ETY) at www.eki.ee/dict/ety/. The user
interface is in Estonian. Using a Finnish word as the search word is often successful.

229. Of icial language guides

The following books, by the Institute for the Languages of Finland, can be regarded
as authoritative:
Kielitoimiston kielioppiopas (2015). Grammar guide, addressing issues like
in lection, sentence structure, and use of pronouns.
Kielitoimiston oikeinkirjoitusopas (8th edition 2012). Spelling and punctuation
guide.
Kielitoimiston nimiopas (2008). Guide to writing and in lecting proper names,
including the use of foreign names.

Kielitoimiston ohjepankki. A database of recommendations of the Institute for the

Languages of Finland. Available at www.kielitoimistonohjepankki. i.

230. Other material and resources

Iso suomen kielioppi. A voluminous collection of articles on Finnish grammar (1698
pages in printed form). Also freely available as a web version, Verkko-ISK, VISK. It is a
descriptive (not normative) grammar, written in a more or less academic style.
Suomen kielen rakenne ja kehitys. A monograph on the history and structure of the
Finnish language. Last modi ied edition published in 1979.
Kielikello. A periodical published by the Institute for the Languages of Finland,
from 1968. Most of the archive, excluding issues of the current year and previous
year during the irst quarter, is freely available online at Kielikello. i. Includes both
practical guidance to Finnish usage and articles on the language.
Toimielinten yhteiset tekstinlaadinnan ohjeet. A multilingual guide (English
version: Interinstitutional style guide) for documents of the EU administration.
Largely useful as a general style guide too, but also contains some rules that violate
national standards and rules. Contains conventions common to all (of icial EU)
languages and language-speci ic conventions; the latter are presented only in the
language itself. Currently available at publications.europa.eu/code/.
Korp, at korp.csc. i, is a search system for texts in Finnish, containing 129 corpora,
with close to 5 billion word occurrences. Though it has user interface in English, too,
its use requires better than elementary understanding of Finnish, some patience,
and some experience with the system. In searching for occurrences of a rare word in
contexts, it can be valuable. However, it only shows short fragments of texts, with no
access to the corpora as such.
Nykysuomen sanalista is a word list with 94,110 records in simple XML format,
with in lection information. It can be used as test material for linguistic software, for
example.
Verbix.com shows all in lected forms of a verb.
Oiko ix, at oiko ix.com, is a free online spelling checker and word analyzer. The
analysis shows the morphological structure of a word using Finnish grammar terms.
HFST, at www.ling.helsinki. i/cgi-bin/omor/omordemo.bash, is a different word
analyzer. Its analysis uses abbreviations of English terms for Finnish grammar
construct.
A sample analysis by HFST as well as by Oiko ix is shown in section Analyzing a
word.

231. Discussion forums

Online forums for discussing the Finnish language:
Wordreference.com, Language forums, forum Suomi (Finnish). Advanced
discussion, partly in English, partly in Finnish. You can ask a well-formulated
question about Finnish and expect it to be answered in a useful way.
Facebook group Let’s learn Finnish language. Does not require any particular
level of understanding Finnish, but some of the discussions take place in Finnish.
Suomi24. i, Kielet ja käännökset. Unmoderated, with much noise, mostly in
Finnish.
Kotus-blogi. A blog by the Institute for the Languages of Finland, with a
possibility to send comments (in a moderated manner) and suggest topics.

Finnish grammar terms

The following table presents Finnish-language terms used in Finnish grammars, in
Finnish alphabetic order.
Words designated as “old term” are synonyms for international words, e.g. alus =
subjekti (subject). They were originally developed for use at school, but the Latin-
based terms were always normal in linguistic literature. The old terms are rarely
used nowadays and may even sound comic (e.g. alus normally means a vessel).
However, you may still encounter them in language processing software and as used
by Finnish language enthusiasts. Some terms have been indicated here as “dated”,
because they are now rare in all contexts.

Finnish term English term Notes

abessiivi abessive old term: vajanto
ablatiivi ablative old term: ulko-eronto
adessiivi adessive old term: ulko-olento
adjektiivi adjective old term: laatusana
adverb adverbi old term: seikkasana
A-in initiive I in initive same as I in initiivi
aikamuoto tense also known as tempus
ajatusviiva en dash the character “–”; in some older usage em
dash “—”
akkusatiivi accusative meaning varies; see section Accusative
aktiivi active
alistuskonjunktio subordinating
conjunction
allatiivi allative old term: ulkotulento
alus subject old-fashioned synonym for subjekti
apusana particle old-fashioned synonym for partikkeli
apuverbi auxiliary verb
asemo pronoun old-fashioned synonym for pronomini
aspiraatio boundary misleading term still in use; also means
gemination aspiration when referring to other
languages
astevaihtelu consonant
gradation
attribuutti attribute synonym: määrite
ehtotapa conditional old-fashioned synonym for conditional
E-in initiive II in initive same as II in initiivi
eksistentiaalilause presence also called “existential clause” in English
clause
elatiivi elative old term: sisäeronto
entispäättymä pluperfect dated synonym for pluskvamperfekti
epäsuora subordinate
kysymyslause question
erisnimi proper name synonym: propri
essiivi essive old term: olento
etusana preposition old-fashioned synonym for preposition
etuvokaali front vowel in Finnish, e, i, y, ä, or ö
futuuri future tense
gemena lowercase synonyms: pieni kirjain, pienaakkonen
letter
genetiivi genitive old term: omanto
heikko aste weak degree in consonant gradation
heittomerkki apostrophe the character |’|
illatiivi illative old term: sisätulento
imperatiivi imperative old term: käskytapa
imperfekti past tense
indikatiivi indicative old term: tositapa
inessiivi inessive old term: sisäolento
in initiivi in initive old term: nimitapa
instruktiivi instructive old term: keinonto
iso kirjain capital letter synonyms: suuraakkonen, versaali
johdin derivative
suf ix
johdos derived word
jälkisana postposition old-fashioned synonym for postpositio
kaasus : kaasuksen case rare; usually sija(muoto) is used instead
kaksoiskonsonantti double
consonant
keinonto comitative old-fashioned synonym for comitative
kerake consonant old-fashioned synonym for konsonantti
kertoma past tense dated synonym for preteriti
kestämä present tense dated synonym for preesens
kieltomuoto negation form
kieltopartisiippi negative
participle
kieltosana negation
word
kieltoverbi negation verb
kohdanto accusative old-fashioned synonym for akkusatiivi
komitatiivi comitative old term: seuranto
komparatiivi comparative dated synonym: voittoaste
konditionaali conditional old term: ehtotapa
kongruenssi congruence
konjunktio conjunction less common synonym: sidesana
konsonantti consonant old term: kerake
korrelaatti antecedent
kysymysliite interrogative -ko or -kö
suf ix
käskytapa imperative old-fashioned synonym for imperatiivi
laatusana adjective old-fashioned synonym for adjektiivi
laatutaoa participle old-fashioned synonym for partisiippi
lause clause often used to mean a sentence, virke
lauseenvastike clause
equivalent
liitepartikkeli word-like usually called “enclitic particle” in English
suf ix
loppuhenkonen boundary misleading term still in use
gemination
luku number as a grammatical category (singular vs.
plural)
lukusana numeral more common than numeraali
lyhenne abbreviation
mahtotapa potential old-fashioned synonym for potentiaali
mood
maine predicate old-fashioned synonym for predikaatti
MA-in initiive III in initive same as III in initiivi
modus mood old term: tapaluokka
monikko plural
määrite attribute still in use
neljäs persoona fourth person not in common use; usually called passiivi
nimentö nominative old-fashioned synonym for nominatiivi
nimisana noun old-fashioned synonym for substantiivi
nimitapa in initive old-fashioned synonym for in ininitiivi
nominaalimuoto nominal form in initive or participle
nominatiivi nominative old term: nimisana
nomini noun-like noun, adjective, pronoun, or numeral
word,
nominal
numeraali numeral rare; usually lukusana is used instead
olento essive old-fashioned synonym for essiivi
omanto genitive old-fashioned synonym for genetiivi
omistusliite possessive synonym for possessiivisuf iksi
suf ix
osanto partitive old-fashioned synonym for partitive
paikallissija locational also called “local case”
case
partikkeli particle old term: apusana
partisiippi participle old term: laatutapa
partitiivi partitive old term: omanto
passiivi passive; 4th meaning varies; see section Passive
person
perfekti perfect tense
persoona person
perusaste positive old-fashioned synonym for positiivi
perusmuoto basic form
pienaakkonen lowercase synonyms: pieni kirjain, gemena
letter
pluskvamperfekti pluperfect
tense
positiivi positive dated synonym: perusaste
possessiivisuf iksi possessive synonym for omistusliite
suf ix
postpositio postposition old term: jälkisana
potentiaali potential old term: mahtotapa
mood
predikaatti predicate old term: maine
preesens present tense
prepositio preposition old term: etusana
propri proper noun synonym: erisnimi
pääte suf ix
päättymä perfect tense dated synonym for perfekti
rajakahdennus boundary various other terms are in use, too
gemination
rektio rection
rinnastuskonjunktio co-ordinating
conjunction
sana word
sanaliitto connected e.g. an open compound
words
sanaluokka part of speech classes such as nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc.
sane word particular occurrence of a word in text
occurrence
seikkasana adverbi old-fashioned synonym for adverb
seuranto comitative old-fashioned synonym for comitative
sidesana conjunction more common synonym: konjunktio
sidevokaali binding vowel
sija case also sijamuoto for clarity; sometimes
kaasus
sijapääte case suf ix
sisäeronto elative old-fashioned synonym for elatiivi
sisäolento inessive old-fashioned synonym for inessiivi
sisäsija inner more often sisäpaikallissija; in English also
locational “internal local case”
case
sisätulento illative old-fashioned synonym for illatiivi
sivulause subclause
substantiivi noun old term: nimisana
superlatiivi superlative dated synonym: yliaste
supistumaverbi contraction
verb
suuraakkonen capital letter synonyms: iso kirjain, versaali
taivutus in lection
takavokaali back vowel in Finnish, a, o, or u
tapaluokka mood old-fashioned synonym for modus
tavuviiva hyphen the character “-” when added by a
hyphenator
tekijä person; agent
tempus : tempuksen tense also known as tempus
teonsana verb old-fashioned synonym for verbi
tositapa indicative old-fashioned synonym for indikatiivi
translatiivi translative old term: tulento
tukisubstantiivi supporting
noun
tulento translative old-fashioned synonym for translatiivi
ulkoeronto ablative old-fashioned synonym for ablatiivi
ulko-olento adessive old-fashioned synonym for adessiivi
 ulkosija outer more often ulkopaikallissija; in English also
locational “external local case”
case
ulkotulento allative old-fashioned synonym for allatiivi
vahva aste strong degree in consonant gradation
vajanto abessive old-fashioned synonym for abessive
vartalo stem
verbi verb old term: teonsana
versaali capital letter synonyms: iso kirjain, suuraakkonen
vertailumuoto comparison positiivi, komparatiivi, or superlatiivi
form
virke sentence consists of one or more clauses, lause
voittoaste comparative dated synonym for komparatiivi
vokaali vowel old term: ääntiö
vokaalisointu vowel
harmony
välilyönti space
(character)
yhdysmerkki hyphen the character “-”; often called yhdysviiva
yhdysosamuoto compositive
form
yhdyssana compound closed compound
word
yleisnimi common a noun that is not a proper name
noun
yliaste superlative dated synonym for superlatiivi
yksikkö singular
ääntiö vowel old-fashioned synonym for vokaali

The following table explains the origin of the names of cases in Finnish. This is
mostly a matter of curiosity, though the origin may help to remember the names and
their meanings. The names are based on past participles of Latin verbs, using the -
ive suf ix (-iivi in Finnish, -ivus in Latin), with the exception of names ending with
“essive”, which are based on the in initive. The verbs are shown in the second
column, in in initive form, present tense 1st person singular form, and past
participle form (if it exists), masculine gender.
# Name Latin verb Meaning of the verb
1 nominative nominare : nomino : nominatus name, call; nominate
2 genitive gignere : gigno : genitus beget, bear, produce; cause
3 essive esse : sum be
4 partitive partire : partio : partitus share, distribute, divide
transferre : transfero : bring across, transport,
5 translative
translatus transfer
6 inessive inesse : insum be in, be on; belong to
7 elative efferre : effero : elatus bring out, carry out
8 illative inferre : infero : illatus carry in, bring to, put on
9 adessive adesse : adsum be present
10 ablative auferre : aufero : ablatus take away, carry away
11 allative adferre : adfero : adlatus bring, carry to,
12 abessive abesse : absum be away, be absent
13 comitative comitare : comito : comitatus accompany
14 instructive instruere : instruo : instructus erect, build up; equip, provide
15 accusative accusare : accuso : accusatus accuse, prosecute

Colophon
This book was written using Microsoft Word and converted to ebook formats using
the Calibre software.
The cover was designed by Minna Sarakontu in cooperation with the author. It
depicts a stylized ish, speci ically a perch, with the word kalastettavissa written on
it in an analyzed form: kala|ste|ttav|i|ssa. The red vertical lines divide the word to
constituents: base word kala ( ish), verb derivation suf ix ste, and different word
in lection suf ixes. This speci ic word type is described in the book in subsection
Passive participle, present tense, -t(t)AvA.
Index
The purpose of this index is to give quick access to places in this book where some
concepts and principles are primarily described. Therefore it mostly covers
grammatical terms in order to help the reader ind the de inition and basic
description of each term. For information on individual Finnish words, please use
the search function of your e-book reader.
The index is sorted according to English sorting order. This means that ä and ö
are treated as variants of a and o, respectively.
-hAn
-kAAn
-kO
-pA
-s
a
å
ä
A in initive
abbreviations
executive summary
abessive
in adverbs
ablative
absolute comparative
absolute nominative
absolute superlative
accusative
usage for object
acronyms
addressing people
adessive
in adverbs
adjective
adpositions
adverb
affective particles
af inity
agglutinative language
aggressive mood
agreement
all caps text
allative
alliteration
alphabet
alphabetic order
ampersand \&
analytic language.
antecedent
apostrophe, apostrophe
approximate numbers
articles
asking questions
aspiration
as wrong description of boundary gemination
lack of
assimilation
asterisk *
automatic translation
auxiliary verb
b
back vowel
bahuvrihi, bahuvrihi
base word
basic form
in gradation
biblical phrases
binding vowel
in abbreviations
boundary gemination
c
in international words
capitalization, capitalization
cardinal numeral
concept
in lection and use
case
causation
causative verb
centuries
character repertoire
clause
clause equivalents
CLDR
clitic
closed compound
closed syllable
collation
colon
colorative constructs
comitative
comma
common spoken Finnish
comparative
comparison forms
of adjectives
of adverbs
comparison of quantities
compositive form
compound word
conditional mood, conditional mood
congruence
conjugation
conjunctions
consonant gradation
summary
consonant stem
of verb
consonants
contextual clause equivalent
contraction
contraction verb
copulative compound
country names
currencies
d
dagger †
dashes
date notations
dative
decades
decimal number
decimal separator
declension
demonstrative pronoun
derivation
derivation-like compound
derivations of proper names
derived word
vs. compound word
descriptive words
determinative pronouns
dialects of Finnish
dictionaries
dieresis
diphthong
distributive adverbs and adjectives
division sign ÷
dots in ä and ö
double consonant, double consonant
in loanwords
dual pronouns, dual pronouns, dual pronouns, dual pronouns, dual pronouns
e
e in initive
Eastern dialects
ei
elative
ellipsis
em dash
en dash
enclitic particle
eng sound
English
pronounced by Finns
entä
eräs
essive
Estonian, Estonian
että
exclamation mark
exessive
existential clause, existential clause
f
factitive verb
false friends
family relationships
ill words, ill words
Finnic languages
Finnish-Swedish alphabet
loor numbering
focus word
focus word of question
footnote references
forbidden words
foreign names
pronunciation
foreign word
fourth person
vs. passive verbs
fraction
frequentative verb
front vowel
future tense
g
gender
general gemination
generic statements
genitive
genitive predicative
geographic names
glossaries
glottal stop
Google Translate
[See consonant gradation]
gradation
grammar terms
grammatical cases
group separator
grouping digits
guillemets
h
hän
having
he
history of Finnish
Hungarian language
Hunspell
hyphen
hyphenation
i
illative
imperative mood, imperative mood
incongruence, incongruence
inde inite pronoun, inde inite pronoun
indicative mood, indicative mood
indirect question
inessive
in initive
I (basic)
II (e)
III (mA)
IV (minen)
V (mAisillA)
in lection types of verbs
in lection types
of nouns
in lection
executive summary
initial particles, initial particles
initialisms
inner cases
instructive
 in adverbs
of II in initive
instrumental clause equivalent
intensi iers, word-speci ic
intentional clause equivalent, intentional clause equivalent
interjections, interjections
international words
endings
interrogative pronoun
intonation
intransitive
inverted order
ISO 8601
italic
j
ja/tai
joka
as relative pronoun
as universal pronoun
jokainen
jokin
joku
jompikumpi
jos
jotta
Joukahainen, Joukahainen, Joukahainen
k
k in consonant gradation
kaikki
Karelian
Karelian dialects
Karelian language
ken
as relative pronoun
keyboards
Kielitoimiston sanakirja
kin
kirjakieli
kuin
kuka
as relative pronoun
kukaan
kukin
kumpi
kumpikaan
kumpikin
kun
kveeni
l
language authorities
language guides
language names
language technology
lative, lative
legato
letter names
letters, letters
letters in Finnish
lexicalization
lists
llative
loanword
localization
localization data
locational adverb
locational cases, locational cases
long vowel, long vowel
m
mA in initive
machine translation
mAisillA- in initive
marginal cases
mathematical expressions
me
meänkieli
mikä
as relative pronoun
mikään
mikäli
minä
minen in initive
minimal pair
molemmat
monetary quantities
moods
morpheme
muu
muuan
n
name-like words
names of actions
names of numbers
nasal vowels
negation
negative adjectives
negative participles
negative pronoun
neutral vowels
new loanwords
noin
nominals
nominative
notational conventions
noun
noun phrase
number congruence
number notations
number sign #
numeral
Nykysuomen sanakirja
o
ö, ö
object
object-like quanti iers
objective
objective genitive
Oiko ix
readability analyzer
spelling checker
spelling checker
word analyzer
oikoluku
old loanword
olla
as auxiliary verb
in lection
used for perfect and pluperfect
open compound
open syllable
optative
ordinal numeral
concept
in lection and use
ordinal numerals
written with digits
Ostrobothnian dialects, Ostrobothnian dialects
outer cases
p
palatalization
paragraph sign ¶
participles
particles, particles
parties
partitive
used with adpositions
parts of speech
passive
passive participles, passive participles
passive verbs
past perfect
past tense
percentage
perfect
period
personal forms of verbs
past tense
personal names
foreign
personal pronoun
phoneme
phoneme principle
deviations
physical quantities
pluperfect
plural
plural stem
plural
of noun
plurale tantum
poetic features
points of compass
positive form
possessive genitive
possessive pronouns
possessive suf ix
postal addresses
postpositions
potential mood, potential mood
predicative
predicative adverbial
pre ixes
prepositions
presence clause, presence clause, presence clause
present tense
productive suf ix
prolative
pronoun
pronunciation
practicing
proper names
case in lection
list
punctuation
q
in international words
qualitative gradation
quantifying pronoun
quantitative gradation
question mark
questions
quotation marks
quotations
r
readability measurements
reciprocal pronoun
rection
reduplication
referative clause equivalent
re lexive forms
re lexive pronoun
re lexive verb
vs. passive verb
registered sign ®
regulation of Finnish
relative clause equivalent
relative pronoun
relatives of Finnish
response particles, response particles
restrictive relative clause
retraction particles, retraction particles
Roman numeral
romanization
root words
s
š
sama
Sámi languages
letters
sandhi
Savonian dialects, Savonian dialects
scopes of words
se
searching
secondary stress
section sign §
sentence
sentence structure
serial comma
sex
SFS 4175
SFS-EN 13710
shortened word
simple tenses
sinä
singular
sinuttelu
slangs
sorting, sorting
Southeastern dialects, Southeastern dialects
Southwestern dialects, Southwestern dialects
spaced dots
special characters
speech recognition
speech synthesis
spelling alphabet
spelling checks
spoken Finnish
standard Finnish
standard spoken Finnish
stative cases
stem
of verb
stop
stress
strong grade
subclause
subject
cases of
lack of
subjective genitive
subjunctive
subordinate question
suf ix
glossary
suf ixes
suf ixes, order of
Suomen kielen perussanakirja
superlative
supporting noun
suspended compound
SVO order
syllable
synthetic language
t
tai
tämä
Tavastian dialects, Tavastian dialects
te
tehdä
teitittely
telephone numbers
temperatures
temporal clause equivalent
tenses
thousands separator
throw-in
throw-in words
tietty
time expressions
time of the day
titles and congruence
titles
executive summary
toinen
as ordinal numeral
as quantifying pronoun
as reciprocal pronoun
tone particle
trade mark sign ™
transitory sounds
translative
of I in initive
transliteration
triphthong
truncation
tulla
as auxiliary verb
in tehdyksi/tehneeksi
use in III in initive
with -mAstA
tuo
two-syllable word structure
typesetting Finnish
typing Finnish
typography
u
unin lectable expressions
units, physical
universal pronoun
unspaced dots
unvoiced stop
Uralic languages
v
vai
variation of stem
verb
Verbix.com
vocabulary
voiced stop
Voikko, Voikko
vowel harmony
vowel length
in loanwords
vowel stem
of verb
vowels
w, w
weak grade
Western dialects
Wiio
word derivation
word order
word stem
word-like suf ixes
word-speci ic intensi iers
Word
style settings
x
as superscript
in international words
y
in international words
yes/no questions
yleiskieli
z
ž
z
in international words