Finnish is a member of the
Finno Ugric language family which is spoken by about 5.5 million people, mainly in
Finland; there are small Finnish-speaking minorities in the
Sweden,
Norway and
Russia. Finnish is an [agglutinating language]
? that like Hungarian
? always has stress on the first syllables.
Finnish is also an inflected
? language which modifies both noun
? and verb
? forms depending on their role in the sentence
?.
There are quite a few Germanic loanwords in Finnish, for example kuningas from Germanic *kuningaz (cf.
English king).
Writing
The Finnish alphabet consists of 29 letters, which includes the 26 latin letters used in English, as well as Å (A with a ring above), Ä (A with two dots above) and Ö (O with two dots above) which are treated as distinct letters and follow Z in the alphabetical order. Strictly speaking, Å is only used in Swedish person and place names. The writing system is phonological, with very few exceptions.
Phonetics
Originally, Finnish had no initial consonant clusters, this however is changing due to influence from other European language.
Older borrowings from (e.g.) Swedish have had initial consonant clusters eroded. For example "koulu" <- school, "tuoli" <- stool.
More recent borrowings have retained their clusters, for example "presidentti" <- president. However, it is common to hear these clusters eroded in speech ("residentti") particularly, though not exclusively, by Finns who have little or no Swedish/English.
Vowels
Like the
Turkish language, Finnish has vowel harmony, i.e. only certain designated vowels can appear together in a morpheme.
<i> and <e> are neutral vowels, but front vowels <y ö ä> never mix with back vowels <u o a>.
e.g. tyttö is a possible Finnish morpheme (actually it means 'girl') because it has only front vowels, whereas *tytto is impossible because it has both front and back vowels.
Note that in the sections below, wherever 'a' is mentioned, 'ä' should also be understood, depending on vowel harmony.
Vowel phonemes
/a/
/e/
/i/
/o/
/u/
/y/ as in French <but>, Old English and Finnish spelling: <y>
/9/ as in French <deux>, Finnish spelling: <ö>
/}/ as in English <bat>, Finnish spelling: <ä>
Consonants
Consonant phonemes
/k/
/p/
/t/
/d/
Finnish has no voiced plosives - with the exception of /d/ that developed from /D/ (as in English <the>).
Without /d/, Finnish has (in native words) no distinctive voice at all.
/h/
/l/
/m/
/n/
/N/
/r/
/s/
/v/
[S] (as English <sh>) and [f] only appear in non-native words.
Consonant gradation
Consonants preceding the inflection of a word (either noun or verb) is subject to consonant gradation. Broadly, a consonant will adopt a 'strong' form if the following syllable is 'open' - containing a double vowel or not ending in a consonant - and a 'weak' form otherwise.
The following is a partial list of strong -> weak correspondences:
't' -> 'd'
'k' -> ''
'p' -> 'v'
Note that in any given grammatical situation, the consonant can grade either way depending on the word involved. Here are some examples:
'mäki' (hill) -> 'mäen' (genitive form)
'ranta' (shore) -> 'rannan' (genitive form)
'ranne' (wrist) -> 'ranteen' (genitive form)
'tavata' (to meet) -> 'tapaan' (I meet)
'tietää' (to know) -> 'tiedän' (I know)
There are rare exceptions to the general rule, some of which are noted in the noun cases section.
Length
All phonemes except /v, d, N/ have distinctive length.
Minimal pairs:
/tuli/ 'fire' - /tu:li/ 'wind'
- /tulli/ 'customs'
/muta/ 'mud' - /mu:ta/ 'other (partitive sg.)'
- /mutta/ 'but'
Verb? forms
Tenses?
Finnish verbs have present, imperfect, perfect and pluperfect tenses.
- Present: corresponds to English present and future tenses. For the latter, a time qualifier may need to be used to avoid ambiguity.
- Imperfect: corresponds to English past continuous and past simple, indicating a past action which is complete but might have been a point event, a temporally extended event, or a repeated event.
- Perfect: corresponds to the English present perfect ("I have eaten") in most of its usages, but can carry more sense than in English of a past action with present effects.
- Pluperfect: corresponds to the English past perfect ("I had visited") in its usage.
Voices?
Moods?
[Verbs Conjugation]?
Finnish verbs are usually divided into six groups depending on the stem type. All six types have the same set of endings, but the stems undergo (slightly) different changes when inflected.
Type I verbs
These are verbs whose infinitive forms end in vowel + 'a' (or 'ä' for front-vowel containing stems) , for example 'puhua' -> 'to speak', 'tietää' -> 'to know'. This group contains a very large number of verbs. Here is how 'tietää' conjugates:
minä tiedän -> I know
sinä tiedät -> you (singular) know
hän/se tietää -> (s)he/it knows
me tiedämme -> we know
te tiedätte -> you (plural/formal) know
he tietävät -> they know
The personal endings are thus -n, -t, -(doubled vowel), -mme, -tte, -vat. The stem consonant is strong in the third-person forms and weak otherwise. Note that for third person plural, this is an exception to the general rule for strong consonants.
Type II verbs
These are verbs whose infinitive forms end in two consonants + 'a', for example 'menna' -> 'to go'. This is another large group of verbs.
The stem is formed by removing the 'a' and its preceding consonant then adding 'e': menen, menet, menee, menemme, menette, menevät.
Type III verbs
Verbs whose infinitives end in vowel + 'da', for example 'juoda' -> 'to drink', 'syödä' -> 'to eat'. This is a fairly large group of verbs, partly because one way in which foreign borrowings are incorporated into the Finnish verb paradigms is to add 'oida', for example, 'organisoida' -> 'to organise'.
The stem is formed by removing 'da' with no vowel doubling in the third person singular: juon, juot, juo, juomme, juotte, juovat.
Type IV verbs
This, and the following two groups, have infinitives ending in vowel + 'ta'. Most commonly, type IV verbs end with 'ata', 'ota', 'uta', but the other two vowels are possible. Examples are 'tavata' -> 'to meet', 'haluta' -> 'to want', 'tarjota' -> 'to offer'.
To form the stem, drop the 'ta' and add 'a' and change the consonant into its strong form: haluan, haluat, haluaa, haluamme, haluatte, haluavat; tapaan, tapaat, tapaa etc.; tarjoan, tarjoat, tarjoaa etc.
Type V verbs
All the verbs in this groups have infinitives ending in 'ita'. There are not that many of them, the most 'important' being 'tarvita' -> 'to need'
The stem is formed by dropping the final 'a' and adding 'se': tarvitsen, tarvitset, tarvitsee, tarvitsemme, tarvitsette, tarvitsevat.
Type VI verbs
There are not many of these verbs, and don't tend to be be commonly used.
Infinitive?
Noun? forms
The Finnish language does not distinguish gender in nouns or even in personal pronouns: "hän" -> "he" or "she" depending on the referent. This leads Finnish speakers to muddle "he" and "she" when speaking English, which is very confusing for English speakers !
Finnish has fourteen (arguably fifteen or even sixteen) noun cases.
- Nominative
- The basic form of the noun
- Characteristic ending: none
- Example "talo" -> "a/the house", "kirja" -> "book", "mäki" -> "hill"
- Partitive
- characteristic ending: -a or -ta
- The basic meaning of this case is "partialness". It's used in the following circumstances:
- After numbers: "kolme taloa" -> "three houses"
- For incomplete actions and ongoing processes: "luen kirjaa" -> "I'm reading a book"
- After certain verbs, particularly those indicating emotions: "rakastan tätä taloa" -> "I love this house"
- For tentative enquiries: "saanko lainata kirjaa?" -> "can I borrow the book?"
- In places where English would use "some" or "any": "onko teillä kirjoja?" -> "do you have any books ?"
- For negative statements: "talossa ei ole kirjaa" -> "there not a book in the house"
- Genitive
- Characteristic ending: -n added to stem possibly modified by consonant gradation: mäki -> mäen, talo -> talon
- Basically indicating possession, but also the case of the direct object of a completed action. It is used preceding postpositions?.
- "kirjan kuvat" -> "the book's pictures"
- "talon edessä" -> "in front of the house"
- Inessive
- Characteristic ending -ssa added to genitive stem
- The first of the six so-called "local" cases which as their basic meaning correspond to locational prepositions in English. The inessive carries the basic meaning "in": "talossa" -> "in the house"
- Elative
- Characteristic ending -sta added to genitive stem
- The second of the local cases with the basic meaning "out of": "tuli talosta" -> "(he) came out of the house"
- Illative
- The third of the local cases with the basic meaning "into": "meni taloon" -> "(he) went into the house"
- Adessive
- Characteristic ending -lla added to genitive stem
- The fourth of the local cases with the basic meaning "on": Example "mäellä" -> "on the hill"
- Allative
- Characteristic ending -lle added to genitive stem
- The fifth of the local cases with the basic meaning "onto". Example: "mäelle" -> "onto the hill"
- Ablative
- Characteristic ending -lta added to genitive stem
- The sixth of the local cases with the basic meaning "from off of" - a poor English equivalent, but necessary to distinguish it from "from out of" which would be elative.
- Example: "mäeltä" -> "from (off) the hill"
- Essive
- Characteristic ending -na added to genitive stem but with strong consonant gradation
- This case carries the meaning of a temporary state of being, often equivalent to the English "as a ..."
- Example: "läpsi" -> "child", "läpsenä" -> "as a child", "when (I) was a child"
- Translative
- Characteristic ending -ksi added to genitive stem
- This is the counterpart of the essive, with the basic meaning of a change of state. It is also used for expressing "in (a language)". For example "mäki englanniksi on 'hill'"
- Instructive
- Characteristic ending -n
- This has the basic meaning of "by means of". It is a comparatively rarely used case, though it is found in some commonly used expressions.
- For example "omin silmin" -> "with my own eyes"
- It is also used with verbal infinitives to mean "by ...ing", for example "lentaen" -> "by flying", "by air"
- Abessive
- Characteristic ending -tta
- This has the basic meaning of "without". This is a rarely used case, especially in the spoken language, but it is found in some commonly used expressions.
- For example "... lukuun ottamatta" -> "without taking into account..."
- Comittative
- Characteristic ending -ne (plus a posessive suffix for the noun but not any adjectives). This ending is added to the plural stem, even if the noun is singular.
- This is a rarely used case, especially in the spoken language. The meaning is "in company with" or "together with"
- Example: "talo kirjoineen" -> "the house with its books"
- Accusative
- This is the case of the direct object and is sometimes used as a label when the genitive form is used in this role. The accusative role only has a separate form for [personal pronouns]?
- minä -> minut, sinä -> sinut etc.
- Prolative
- This is only found in a few "fosilised" forms in modern Finnish (though it is alive and well in Estonian). Its meaning is "by way of" and the most used examples are "postitse" -> "by post", "puhelimitse" -> "by phone", and "meritse" -> "by sea".