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Finnish Lesson #4 - Those Word Endings

5.1.2010 00:00
Mary Nurminen

Kirjoittajan kolumnit

I could make this a very long lesson, since Finnish has a total of 846 word endings you need to know.

Learning them is the first hard thing, after that comes learning in which order they come at the end of the words. But by that time you'll be so baffled that you won't want to hear another word.

Believe me, I've been there.

The basic cases: these include ablative, adessive, inessive, partitive, cursive, prerogative, palliative, and the lunatic case.

I made those last names up, by the way, but I'm sure it doesn't matter because no one remembers such weird things as case names anyway (seriously, who needs that information?)

Or they do like I and most Finns I know have done: I learned them once and managed to remember them as long as I needed to - exactly 12 hours, enough time to finish the test I had which covered them.

These endings are actually pretty logical, they go something like this:

On the table = pöydällä, in the store = kaupassa, off of the table = pöydältä, out of the store = kaupasta, onto the table = pöydälle, into the store = kauppaan

You get the idea. Not bad. There are 2 things you should never do though:

1. Never translate those things directly into English. Because sometimes they make sense and sometimes they don't. Here are some things that have never made sense to me:

Hän istuu pöydässä = He's sitting in the table. Mene itseesi! = Go into yourself! Mihin aikaan? = To what time? Pitkästä aikaa! = From a long some time!

2. Never try to understand the partitive. Never.

It took me a long time to understand even the most basic use of the partitive - to mean "some" like in "maitoa". But all the other weird uses are just way beyond me. Like these:

"Minulla ei ole palloa. Minulla ei ole luistimia."

So, if you have them you use the basic case, and if you don't have them, you use a whole different case. It's just something you don't see in other languages (at least the other languages I know). Here's another good one:

"Minulla on monta autoa, mutta hänellä on paljon autoja."

Don't even try to figure that one out, believe me.

This next thing is something someone made up as a joke, I am quite sure. When you like something in Finnish, for some weird reason you use the "out of" ending (which is actually called the elative but don't worry about that) on the thing you like!

"Minä pidän tuosta."

Now, if you translate that directly, you get: "I like about that". Which makes no sense, as you may have noticed. The problem is that Finns do this all the time anyway, so that they are always asking something like: "What do you like about Finland?"

And you never know what the hell to answer to that.

But here's something even worse. If you like something, you use the elative. If you love something, you use the partitive.

"Minä pidän hänestä, mutta rakastan sinua."

If you ever get to the point where that makes sense to you, then you've been here too long.

Vocabulary: Ending: pääte, Baffled: ällistynyt

Mary Nurminen juhlii 20:ttä vuottaan Suomessa kirjoittamalla sarjaa suomalaisten perusolemuksesta.

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