Jonne

Before cases you should know something about vowels.
There are three vowel groups in finnish;
back vowels, 'middle' or 'neutral' vowels and 'front vowels'

Back vowels include A O U Å, as they are pronounced in the back of your mounth.

Middle vowels include E and I.

And front vowels include Y Ä Ö.

A single word CAN'T have both front and back vowels there..

auto, kissa, matka, aikuinen, päivä..


then the cases!


CASES

Soo.. there are 15 of them in finnish.. In English you use prepositions. We don't. We add something to the word and voila
we'll learn three VERY important cases now.



NOMINATIVE - NOMINATIIVI

the basic form of a word.. eg. house, dog, cat, letter etc.


GENETIVE - GENETIIVI

well, it's a genetive.. as dog's, hanna's, house's..
you can do it by adding a -n to the nominative.
Examples:
House - Talo
House's - Talon

Laura
Laura's - Lauran

etc.

BUT as an exception, there are the words ending with -e.. they'll get the ending -en.. as
vene - veneen

veery easy so far, isn't it

NOW how would you say "Laura's house" ??


...


If you were thinking of "Lauran talo", you're correct!



INESSIVE - INESSIIVI

Now, this is very easy.

when you want to say that something is IN something, you add -ssa or -ssä to the place.

Finland - Suomi
In Finland - Suomessa

House - Talo
In house - Talossa

Bread - Leipä
In bread - Leivässä (IRREGULAR this is called the gradation.. or 'consonant changes'..we'll learn about this later as well )

"How do i know when to add -ssa and when to add -ssä?"

If the word has any back vowels, it's -ssa
If the word has only middle vowels, it's -ssä
If the word has any front vowels, it's -ssä

And if the word ends with -e, it'll get the ending -essä.
Vene - veneessä

btw btw, if the word you're working with has a double consonant as a last consonant (mitta, tyttö...), you'll have to DELETE the other of the consonants before adding the ending.. tyttö would become tytö--.. get it? girl's = tytön. NOT tyttön!!!


WORD ORDER

The basic word order in finnish is SVO, as in English and Chinese.

If we want to add an adjective to some SVO sentence, it'd go right after the verb.

Subject Verb Object

Laura asuu talossa

= "Laura lives in a house"

don't get confused about verbs yet..


EXERCISES

1. Put the word into genetive

- Hanna (a name)
- Koira (dog)
- Tietokone (computer)
- Mitta (measure)

2. Put the word into inessive

- Ruotsi (Sweden)
- USA (USA)
- Tietokone
- Tyttö

3. What's the nominative of the word?

- Japanissa (In Japan)
- Mitassa
- Elämän (Life's)

ANSWERS

1. Hannan, koiran, tietokoneen, mitan
2. Ruotsissa, Usassa, tietokoneessa, tytössä
3. Japani, mitta, elämä

__________________
-Jonne
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Mitch62

Ok, so I take it that names are exempt from the double consonant->single consonant rule?
I'd have thought that Hanna -> Hanan, Matti -> Matin, Ville->Vileen were correct ...lol
So, are names of cities, regions, lakes, rivers etc. also exempt?

Jonne

Yes, true, it's with all names.
Only thing is that you don't use with partitive, essive (as something) or illativ (into something)
so if you inflect the name matti in all cases, it'd go as
matti
matin
mattia
matissa
matista
mattiin
matilla
matilta
matille
mattina
matiksi
matitta
-and the rest of the cases works only with plulars.. with 'houses' it's
taloine
taloin
taloitse

get it now?

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-Jonne
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Mitch62

Thanks again for your fast response... and I am glad I have got all the different cases for Matti now :D
Maybe my question was a bit imprecise, sorry for that. In the original lesson, you wrote:
"EXERCISES
1. Put the word into genetive
- Hanna (a name)
- Koira (dog)
- Tietokone (computer)
- Mitta (measure)
ANSWERS
1. Hannan, koiran, tietokoneen, mitan"

So from this I concluded that -- if Hanna (Nom., double consonant) ->Hannan (Gen., double consonant)-- there must be an exception to the rule, in the case of names, unlike to Mitta (Nom., double consonant)->Mitan (Gen., single consonant).

However, now you say Matti (Nom, double consonant) -> Matin (Gen, single consonant), so I reckon that the "Hannan" in the original post was a typo. If it was a typo, my question of course was redundant. Sorry, sighs, and again thanks
Michael

Jonne

yes, those are all right.
you see, i was talking about k, p, t changes
pp -> p
kk -> k
tt -> t
this doesn't work with other consonants.

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-Jonne
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Mitch62

Ok I seem to have gotten it ... the rule regarding double consonant->single consonant in the Genitive applies not to all consonants, but only to k, p and t. Hurray! so it is
"Hannan auto on kaunis, mutta AnnuKan auto on ruma." (Nom: Hanna, AnnuKKa)
"Jussin auto on sininen, mutta JuPen auto on keltainen." (Nom: Jussi, JuPPe)
"Emmin auto on vanha, mutta OTon auto on uusi." (Nom: Emmi, OTTo)
Thanks for your help!
Now I try to get the Inessiv into my head ...

Jonne

exactly

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-Jonne
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