The Genitive Case

In English we can indicate possession in two ways - using the word "of" or putting an apostrophe-s on the end of the possessor. So for example we say, "the Gulf of Finland" or "Peter's book". Deciding which to use is easy for a native English speaker. There are even situation when either works - you can say "the roof of the house" or "the house's roof".

So in English we can modify a noun to indicate possession, which means it is a case. In fact, it's called the Genitive Case.

In Finnish the genitive case is made by adding an -n to the end of the noun:

talo - house
talon - of the house, for example talon katto - the house's roof, or the roof of the house

Leena - popular Finnish woman's name
Leenan - Leena's, for example Leenan auto - Leena's car.

suomi kieli - the Finnish language
suomen kielen - of the Finnish language, for example suomen kielen fonetiikka - the phonetics of the Finnish language

Note that in the last example, the i at the end of each word turned into an e. This is just something that happens to words ending in i that are put in the genitive, and has to be learnt.

The Inessive Case

Back in August we covered the Essive Case, or as I like to call it, the "As" case. You simply stuck an -na or -nä on the end of a noun, which modified it to mean "as a noun".

Another common case is the Inessive Case, or as I like to call it, the "In" case. You stick an -ssa or -ssä on the end of a noun, which modifies it to mean "in a noun". Finnish doesn't have a separate word for "in" - they use the Inessive Case instead. So, for example:

talo - house
talossa - in the/a house

pää - head
päässä - in the/a head

kaapi - cupboard
kaapissa - in a/the cupboard

laatikko - box
laatikossa - in the/a box

Ah, in that last one we lost a k. When you stick new endings on words that end in double-k followed by a vowel, you remove one of the k's. It's called consonant gradation, and I'm going to avoid talking about it for quite a while yet, because it's one of the more difficult (some would say annoying) "features" of Finnish.