The Adessive Case

By now you've probably forgotten the names of the other cases we've studied so far, but don't worry - you don't really need to know what they are called, just how they are formed and what they mean. So lets press on with a new case: the adessive, or "on" case. If you want to say something is on somewhere, you add -lla or -llä to the end of the word. So, for example:

lattia - the floor
lattialla - on the floor

pöytä - the table
pöydällä - on the table

katu - the street
kadulla - on the street (although in English you would say "in the street")

Those last two emphasises a second thing - when adding a case ending a single letter t changes to a d. This is known as one of the consonant gradation rules, which we'll be dealing with later.

The adessive case doesn't just mean "on" though, it can mean "with the aid of" or "using". For example:

kynä - a pen
kynällä - with a pen

kone - machine
koneella - with a machine

Incidentally, a major Finnish manufacturer and exporter of elevators and escalators is called Kone - keep an eye out in shopping centers and offices and you might see some of their products in use...

Vocab list - the forest

The forest is a big part of Finland - about 70% in fact. Here is a list of words to do with the forest and what you can find in it:

metsä - forest
puu - tree
sieni - mushroom
karhu - bear
peura - deer
poro - reindeer
ilves - lynx
suo - swamp
järvi - lake
lampi - pond/small lake
joki - river

Vocab list - confusable words

Here is a list of a couple of similar sounding words that I often mix up, and the techniques I use to keep them apart:

suola - salt
suoli - guts, intestines

A popular Finnish snack is pickled gherkins, which are called suolakurkku, or salt-cucumbers. You don't want to call them intestine-cucumbers. So I make a mental note that salt contains the letter a, as does the Finnish word suola.

vähän - a little
vanha - old

If you wanted to say "a little more", like Oliver Twist, you would ask for vähän lisää, so it's a useful word. As for not accidentally asking for "old more" - I have a friend who has an old van, so it's the word starting with "van" that means old. It's not a particularly sophisticated mnemonic, but it works for me.