Language/Finnish/Grammar/Nouns

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Finnish nouns are written with small initial letter. They don't have gender. They are declined in two numbers (singular and plural) and in 15 (or 14, see below) cases.

Finish this lesson and explore these related pages:How to Use Have, Past Participle in Finnish, Alphabet and Pronunciation & Basic Sentence Structure.

Cases in standard Finnish[edit | edit source]

Example for 'kauppa' ("shop, transaction, commerce"):

Case/Number Singular Plural
Nominative kauppa kaupat
Genitive kaupan kauppojen
Partitive kauppaa kauppoja
Accusative kauppa

kaupan

kaupat
Inessive kaupassa kaupoissa
Elative kaupasta kaupoista
Illative kauppaan kauppoihin
Adessive kaupalla kaupoilla
Ablative kaupalta kaupoilta
Allative kaupalle kaupoille
Essive kauppana kauppoina
Translative kaupaksi kaupoiksi
Abessive kaupatta kaupoitta
Instructive - kaupoin
Comitative - kauppoine

It is disputed, whether accusative really is case or not. Out of 15 (or 14 without accusative) cases, nominative, genitive, partitive, (accusative,) inessive, elative, illative, adessive, ablative, allative, essive and translative are in highly common use, whereas abessive, instructive and comitative are used significantly less and especially abessive and comitative may drop out of use in future, although it seems that new singular comitative case (likely then *kaupankaa, from colloquial 'kaupan kaa', kaa ('kanssa' in std Finnish) means "with") may be developing.

Usage examples[edit | edit source]

  • Koira söi jäätelön ("Dog ate ice cream")
    • 'Koira' in nominative singular and 'jäätelö' in accusative singular (or in genitive if accusative doesn't exist)
  • Tämä on sinun syytäsi! ("This is your fault!")
    • 'Syy' in partitive singular with possessive suffix '-si'
  • [Needs expansion]

Cases in colloquial Finnish[edit | edit source]

Main colloquial variations of noun cases in colloquial Finnish include inessive 'kaupas(SNG)/kaupois(PL)' illative 'kauppaa/kauppoihi', adessive 'kaupal/kaupoil' and translative 'kaupaks/kaupoiks'. Abessive, instructive and comitative, already rare in standard Finnish, have even less use in colloquial Finnish. Other cases are as common (highly common) in both variants.

Other Lessons[edit | edit source]

Contributors

46.132.1.199, Maintenance script and Vincent


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