Inessive<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\nFor each of these examples, we will use the classic example that’s used in every beginner Finnish textbook, or article and that is the word talo<\/em>, which is the Finnish word for “house”.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNominative \/ Nominatiivi<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\nSo, let’s start with the nominative case. The nominative case, nominatiivi<\/em>, is known as the base form of a word. It’s the word you find in the dictionary. <\/p>\n\n\n\nIt should come as no surprise the word talo<\/em> is the nominative form of that word. It is the exact word we would look up in the dictionary should we wish to know what talo<\/em> means.<\/p>\n\n\n\nGenitive \/ Genitiivi<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\nThe genitive case, genitiivi<\/em>, indicates possession. When a word appears in the genitive it tells us it owns the object that follows it.<\/p>\n\n\n\nTo form the genitive form of a word, we simply take the word stem (a concept I will likely cover in another article) and append -n<\/em> to the end. So, the genitive form of talo<\/em> is talon<\/em>. The sentence talon ovi<\/em> translates to “the door of a\/the house”.<\/p>\n\n\n\nInterestingly, if there are determiners, or pronouns indicating ownership of the object, the genitive case gets applied to them, so if we wanted to say “the door of this house” we would say t\u00e4m\u00e4n talon ovi<\/em>, where the word t\u00e4m\u00e4<\/em> translates to “this”. Since the ovi<\/em> belongs to the talo<\/em> and that word t\u00e4m\u00e4<\/em> belongs with the talo<\/em>, it must take the same case. Since talon<\/em> is the genitive case, t\u00e4m\u00e4<\/em> becomes t\u00e4m\u00e4n<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis is a great example of how cases are applied in general. In many cases, determiners and adjectives will take on the same form of the nouns they are grouped with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remember the first time I realized this was during a lesson on Duolingo where I was asked to translate the phrase puu on isossa vanhassa mets<\/em>\u00e4<\/em>ss\u00e4<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMy first reaction to seeing this sentence was legitimately WTF?! That is, until I realized that I actually recognized the word stems of those last three words: iso <\/em>(big), vanha <\/em>(old) and mets<\/em>\u00e4<\/em> (forest). I also knew that the word puu<\/em> meant “tree”.<\/p>\n\n\n\nInessive \/ Inessiivi<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\nIt just so happens that last sentence is also an example of how the inessive case works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The -ssa<\/em>, or -ss\u00e4<\/em> case ending is the inessive case indicates something is inside something else. So, going back to the talo<\/em> example, the inessiivi<\/em> form of talo<\/em> is talossa<\/em>, which means something is inside the house.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor example, if I wanted to say “the dog is in the house”, I would say koira on talossa.<\/em> If I wanted to say “the big dog is in the big house”, I would say iso koira on isossa talossa.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nHere we see the same thing we saw earlier. The word iso<\/em> appears twice in this sentence, but it’s in different cases (nominative and inessive) because it’s taking on the case of the words it’s describing. <\/p>\n\n\n\nSince koira<\/em> is in the nominative case, iso<\/em> must be in the same case in that part of the sentence. Likewise, since talo<\/em> is in the inessive case, iso<\/em> must, again, take the same case in that part of the sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSo, going back to the other sentence again – <\/em>puu on isossa vanhassa mets<\/em>\u00e4<\/em>ss\u00e4<\/em> – I think we now know enough to translate this sentence to english: “the tree is in the big, old forest”.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFinnish cases, though there are many of them, are relatively simple to learn because they all follow very simple rules and the rules are pretty consistent in their application, with very few exceptions (that I know of).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is just simple introduction. Personally, I’m still learning about cases and how to use them. I understand what the cases endings I’ve encountered do to the word, but how that translates to English isn’t always clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example, the phrase minulla on kuuma<\/em> which, translated literally means “hot is at me”, or “I have hot”. However, it is colloquially translated to mean “I am hot”. <\/p>\n\n\n\nIt’s the same thing with being hungry, or thirsty. Finns have hunger (minulla on n\u00e4<\/em>lk\u00e4<\/em>) and thirst (minulla on jano<\/em>). It’s not a state.<\/p>\n\n\n\nStrange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyway, I hope that makes sense. Hopefully, I will get around to doing an article that covers each of the cases and their uses in more detail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Until then – kiitos ja n\u00e4kemiin!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cases. What are cases and why does Finnish have 15 of them and what does that mean for those of use trying to learn Finnish? I’m glad you asked! Let me try to tell you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[143,25],"tags":[145,147,144,146],"class_list":["post-989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finnish","category-rantings","tag-finnish","tag-grammatical-cases","tag-languages","tag-suomi"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2FJaA-fX","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kellytehuna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kellytehuna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kellytehuna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kellytehuna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kellytehuna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=989"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kellytehuna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":995,"href":"https:\/\/kellytehuna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989\/revisions\/995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kellytehuna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kellytehuna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kellytehuna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}