Counting

It's time to learn to count in Finnish. The words for Finnish numbers are very different from the ones in other European languages, and unlike English, the Finnish number system is a true decimal system. The only one that seems to have a link to English is the word for zero, or null - nolla. Here are the rest:

yksi - one
kaksi - two
kolme - three
neljä - four
viisi - five
kuusi - six (it also means fir tree, strangely enough)
seitsemän - seven
kahdeksan - eight
yhdeksän - nine
kymmenen - ten

To get eleven, twelve, thirteen and so on, add the word toistä to the number - yksitoistä, kaksitoistä, kolmetoistä...

The partive¹ for ten, kymmenä, is added after each number to make twenty, thirty, forty, and so on: twenty is kaksikymmentä, and thirty is kolmekymmentä, for example. And twenty-one is kaksikymmentäyksi.

We'll stop in the hundreds - one hundred is sata, and one hundred and one is satayksi. So one hundred and ninety nine would be sataykdeksänkymmentäyhdeksän.

You'll notice that numbers get rather long. The Finns have noticed this too, so it's rare for them to use the full name for each number. Instead, when counting a Finn would say, "Yks, kaks, kol, nel, viis, kuus", dropping the endings of the numbers. After all, they're patient, but not that patient.