Illative case is one of the six locative cases of Finnish – others being inessive (‘talossa’ – in the house), elative (‘talosta’ – from the house), adessive (‘talolla’ – at the house), allative (‘talolle’ – to(wards) the house) and ablative (‘talolta’ – from the house). In case you’re wondering the difference of elative (‘talosta’) and ablative (‘talolta’) – elative means more ‘from inside’ while ablative is ‘from outside’. (I’ll do a separate post of each of the cases in the future.)

Illative case is used to answer the question ‘Mihin?’ (to where?) or ‘Mihin asti?’ (until when). It normally indicates movement into (or to close contact with) something. Illative case is also found in Estonian and Hungarian languages.

Some examples of the usage of illative case (in blue color), linked to its English translation (underlined):

1) In a sense of ‘into’

He matkustavat Ranskaan huomenna – They’ll travel to France tomorrow.

Menin suoraan kotiin – I went straight (to) home.

Metsiin istutetaan uusia puita – New trees are planted to the forests.

Aurinko ei paista huoneisiin iltaisin – The sun doesn’t shine to the rooms in the evenings.

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Finnish scenery at winter... (Koli National Park)

Hello readers!

Glad to see so many people have already found their way here :) Hopefully the previous posts have been useful!

Now it is your chance to request different topics for future blog posts I should write about. I have some ideas on my mind already, but more are welcome. It can be about spelling, grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary – almost anything, really. I can’t promise I will write about every suggested topic, but I’ll try to choose the ones that would be most helpful for those who are learning Finnish.

Hope to hear from you soon,

Jenni

Venn's diagram of Finnish vowel harmony

Vowel harmony is a phonotactical rule that restricts which vowels can be used within one word. In Finnish, the vowel harmony also concerns the suffixes of the word, such as cases. One reason why vowel harmony as a rule exists is to make pronunciation easier. Some loan words from other languages may not follow the vowel harmony rule first, but Finnish speakers quite quickly, sometimes unconsciously, alter the loan word pronunciation so that it fits the vowel harmony rule.

The rule of the Finnish vowel harmony is that front vowels Y [y], Ö [ø] and Ä [æ] cannot be used together with back vowels A [ɑ], O [o], U [u]. Vowels E [e] I [i] are considered neutral vowels (even though they are phonologically front vowels) and can be therefore combined with either front or back vowels in the same word.

When a word contains only neutral vowels, its suffixes use front vowels. For example, when the adessive case (-lla or -llä) is added to ‘kieli’ (‘tongue’ or ‘language’), it becomes kiele|llä, not kiele|lla. With respect to vowel harmony, compound words are separate words, for example ‘syyskuu’ (September).

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When metals are used in Finnish as adjectives or colors, they get different endings. Here are some of the most common ones that came to my mind.

For example, ‘silver ring’ can be said in Finnish either as ‘hopeasormus’ or ‘hopeinen sormus’, former indicating that it’s made of silver, latter that it looks like silver, but might not necessarily be made of silver.

To help writing correct Finnish, here are the ‘Scandinavian letters’ of Finnish alphabet. You can either copy+paste them from here or press (in Windows) Alt button + <number>. Remember to use the left side Alt and right side numbers in your keyboard!

UPPERCASE

Ä – Alt + 0196

Ö – Alt + 0214

Å – Alt + 0197

LOWERCASE

ä – Alt + 0228

ö – Alt + 0246

å – Alt + 0229

When correcting Finnish exercises, especially written, it saddens (and bit angers) me that some native Finnish speakers are giving five stars to Finnish learners even though there’s lots of errors in the submission. Who does this serve? Being a Finn, I know that it is in our national mentality that we rather pretend that everything’s alright instead of saying the truth – knowing that it might hurt someone’s feelings. But what purpose does it serve for the learner if he/she is told “Perfect!” when any other native speaker can instantly see that there’s still lots of errors in the submission?

I’m quite strict with whom I give five stars – if the exercise is otherwise correct, but Ä and Ö are missing, it’s still four stars. You wouldn’t go writing Arabic with Latin alphabet, right? To avoid figuring out every time where you can get Ä and Ö for your Finnish exercise when you need them, I suggest you copy both uppercase and lowercase letters to a Notepad (or similar program, depending on your OS) and copy them from there. You really want to learn this language, right? Then don’t take the easy way out!

If you keep doing the same grammar error(s) in your exercise(s), I’ll explain why I’ve corrected your exercise the way I have, and also link you to some extra materials if needed. I want you to learn this language, I’m not gonna pat you on the head if I think there’s still work to be done. I may be strict, but I’m never mean. If I point out you’ve done something wrong, there’s always an explanation for it.

Enjoy learning Finnish!

Finnish has 8 vowel phonemes (presented here with IPA symbols). I’ve read the Finnish vowels aloud myself to give an example of them.

A [ɑ], E [e], I [i], O [o], U [u], Y [y], Ä [æ] and Ö [ø]

The ninth vowel that belongs to the Finnish alphabet is Å [o] and it occurs only in words of Swedish origin, e.g. Åbo (the Swedish name for Turku, a Finnish city). It is pronounced like O [o] in Finnish.

When correcting the Finnish speaking exercises at Livemocha, I’ve noticed that many foreigners have problems pronouncing especially U, Y, Ä and Ö. Of these, Y is the only sound that doesn’t exist in (for example) English at all – others appear in words like ‘book’ (U), ‘cat’ (Ä) and ‘bird’ (Ö).

Finnish vowels are divided into three groups – back, middle and front vowels. The name of the group indicates where in mouth the sound is born.

BACK VOWELS

A [ɑ] – open back unrounded vowel

The [ɑ] sound is open, which means that the tongue lays low, as far as possible from the roof (palate) of the mouth – the tip of your tongue should lay against the floor of your mouth behind your lower front teeth. As a back vowel, the back (dorsum) of the tongue should be as back in the mouth as possible. In unrounded sounds, lips are open wide when pronouncing.

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DISCLAIMER: As the rules concerning the usage of partitive are very detailed, this post only goes thru the most common scenarios.

Partitive case in Finnish is probably the one that’s most difficult for a foreigner to learn – and it’s rather common as well (about 8% of all nouns appearing in Finnish texts). Partitive case is most common in Baltic-Finnic languages (Finnish and Estonian, and minority languages spoken in Russian Karelian and around the Gulf of Finland), but is very rare (or basically non-existent) in other languages.

Partitive can be recognized by -a/-ä,  -ta/-tä and -tta/-ttä endings. Partitive case answers to questions “What?”, “Who?” and “How many?”. Example sentences including partitive case could be:

Syön omenaa – I’m eating an apple
Älkää herättäkö häntä – Don’t wake him/her up

Partitive case usually indicates a part of something or unfinished action. It’s also used with numbers, uncountable words and in negative sentences.

Yksi tyttö – One girl
Kaksi tyttöä – Two girls
Yksi musta kissa – One black cat
Kolme mustaa kissaa – Three black cats

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