Vocab list - the family

Here are some words concerning family:

perhe - family
isä - father
äiti - mother
sisko - sister
veli - brother
täti - aunt
setä - uncle
tytär - daughter
poika - son (also boy)

Interestingly, you put the words for aunt and uncle after the person's name, so Uncle Tomi would be Tomi-setä, for example.

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.

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.

Superlatives

Finnish has a reasonably regular structure for the generation of superlatives. You take the adjective X, and add -empi if it is more X, and -in if it is most X.

suuri - large
suurempi - larger
suurin - largest

pieni - small
pienempi - smaller
pienin - smallest

But is it always that regular? Firstly, one of the most common adjectives is almost totally irregular, so you just have to learn it. Here it is:

hyvä - good
parempi - better
paras - best

Then you'll find that a lot of adjectives ending in vowels see the ending vowel change, for example:

paha - bad
pahempi - worse
pahin - worst

Here you loose the ending a on the "most bad" superlative. With the next example we see the first occurrence of the pesky "consonants change" rule - p becomes v:

halpa - cheap
halvempi - cheaper
halvin -cheapest

And with this one the end vowel isn't lost:

iso - big
isompi - bigger
isoin - biggest

So there isn't an easy catch-all rule for superlatives, but they're fairly regular. In fact, they're regularer than English superlatives. Or, to put it another way, Finnish is still ...

helppo - easy
helpompi - easier
helpoin - easiest