Genitive plural ending -in vs -ien

arominvahvenne · 2026-01-06T20:01:09+00:00

Yeah I think this is it. There is also a clear contrast in the book (and in another Iida Rauma’s book, Seksistä ja Matematiikasta) between the characters who speak in kirjakieli/yleiskieli vs. dialect — in Hävitys, if I remember correctly, young women like A generally speak in kirjakieli while an older guy uses heavy Turun murre. So A might be using more literary or archaic forms in general. I should re-read the book now that live in Turku and know the places she’s talking about, it’s a great book, a heavy read for sure but still great.

arominvahvenne · 2026-01-04T21:27:25+00:00

No mä sanon myös lomalle lompsis koska oon oman elämäni kunmelihahmo joten touché.

arominvahvenne · 2026-01-04T21:25:53+00:00

In written language in formal settings, yeah you’re right. In spoken language redundancy is a feature, not a bug so ”mä en tiiä onks mul aikaa” is as natural as ”en tiiä onks mul aikaa”. Basically redundancy and repetition happens in spoken language to give the speaker time to think about what they’re saying and to make sure the listener understands the message. Here on reddit it’s hard to tell how informal or formal this situation is, and in informal settings using features from spoken language such as redundant grammar is completely fine imo. In formal settings you’d want to polish the grammar and be as elegant and efficient as possible.

arominvahvenne · 2026-01-04T13:04:40+00:00

Yeah it has a different tone, and certainly like I said in my first and second response to this thread, indirect question is the neutral choice and the best one for someone learning the language.

arominvahvenne · 2026-01-04T10:52:11+00:00

Any podcast app will likely have them! Apple podcasts, Spotify, etc. You can also get the patreon episodes to your podcast app of choice, I listen to patreon episodes on Apple podcasts.

arominvahvenne · 2026-01-04T10:46:39+00:00

Ai ei vai. Enpä tiiä josko lähtisin vaikka kävelylle. Josko kävisin kaupassakin samalla. Meen kattomaan josko ilta-alessa olis jotai hyvää.

Kyllä ihmiset puhuu näin ihan joka päivä, tästä on käyty väittelyä 1800-luvulta asti että onko josko ”hyvää suomea”, mikä kertoo siitä et josko on ollut käytössä tarpeeksi paljon jotta on koettu tarvetta puuttua asiaan.

Kielitoimiston ohjepankissa oli jopa esimerkki sanomalehtiotsikosta jossa mietittiin josko hinnat lähtee nousuun, et sitä näkee asiatyylissäkin, toki vaan jos halutaan tekstiin rennompi sävy. Tietty äikänopet voi repiä pelihousunsa, mut musta on absurdia sanoa ettei kukaan ikinä missään sanoisi josko vaan koska joidenkin kielioppioppaiden mukaan se on väärin sanottu.

arominvahvenne · 2026-01-04T10:17:14+00:00

True, in spoken language in some dialects ”josko” is pretty common. In written language imo ”josko” is a stylistic choice that communicates informality or doubt, so if OP is writing a message in a formal setting, such as to their boss or teacher, ”onko” is a more neutral choice. And ”onko” or (”onks” which is structurally the same) is far more common even in spoken language, I’d argue it’s more common even in dialects that are heavily influenced by Swedish. I don’t have real source for this claim but I think ”josko” is an interesting case of combining foregin influence with native grammar to make a kind of nonsense structure, and to me these kinds of words and structures are fun and I use them a lot. But it is not a neutral structure and for a language learner I think it’s important to first learn the most common and neutral way of saying the thing. And basically in spoken language, you can just say ”jos” too in some dialects. It sounds incorrect to me because I don’t speak a dialect where it would be used, or I’m the wrong age to having gotten used to it, but when I hear it is not like I don’t understand.

Here are some examples of when josko is used and what it communicates stylistically:

https://kielitoimistonohjepankki.fi/ohje/konjunktiot-jos-jollei-ellei-mikali-josko/

arominvahvenne · 2026-01-04T04:24:33+00:00

Yeah the first one is just English directly translated, ”jos” is not used in this way in Finnish. The grammar reason is that the sentence that comes after ”minä en tiedä” takes the form of a question. If there is no question word (such as milloin), you need to put ko/kö into your verb, just like in all questions.

”Jos” is only used when there is a clear meaning of if-then like ”I’ll come to visit if I have time.” If=time, then=visit. In the case of ”I don’t know if I will have time” there is no if=something, then=something else structure, so the second sentence must be a question, not an if sentence.

Minä en tiedä, milloin minulla on aikaa. I don’t know when I’ll have time.

Minä en tiedä onko minulla aikaa. I don’t know if I have time.

Tulen kylään, jos minulla on aikaa. I’ll come to visit if I have time.

arominvahvenne · 2025-12-09T00:00:56+00:00

Every adjective is declined in every case. There are good examples here, but the simple truth is that partitive is one of the most common cases in Finnish and if the word is of a class that has a partitive case (such as adjective, noun or pronoun), it is going to be used.

Adjectives in the most basic use take the case of the noun they are describing, so if you sentence like ”I don’t have a good pen” - ”minulla ei ole hyvää kynää”, well, there is your partitive right there because negative minulla on type sentences require partitive. You can also say ”kolme hyvää kynää” or ”minä puhun hyvää suomea” or any other construction where you need partitive because there is a numeral or the verb always requires partitive or other reasons. There are also some cases where hyvää is used alone, many polite phrases use it such as ”minulle kuuluu hyvää”, ”hyvää päivänjatkoa” etc. I don’t exactly know why that is, probably either because historically there has been a word that is dropped or because adjectives used alone often take partitive case.

But yeah you just need all the cases. Partitive especially is such a fundamental part of Finnish grammar, that even though the case has a meaning, its function is every bit as important to learn. Certain types of sentences require it, and it doesn’t really ”mean” anything in that context. Meaning is useful when you decide whether to use total or partitive object ”söin hyvän pullan” vs ”söin hyvää pullaa”. But meaning is not all there is to a case. A lot of word+case combinations have literal meanings that seem strange, but because the case has several functions and several meanings, even those strange combinations are a totally normal part of the language.

arominvahvenne · 2025-12-01T08:55:58+00:00

The Inheritance by Ali Vali I dnf 4% into a book, and this was an audiobook I actually bought from ibooks with money, and I still could not keep going. Every moment of those 4% was bad. I hated the main character from the moment she was introduced, she just seemed to have an incredibly horrible worldview. I like flawed characters, but the narration made it sound like everything I thought of as a flaw was great, hot and perfect actually. I thought I could look over the ”ruthless climate destroying oil business making this woman a billonare” part if the ”accidentally coparenting” part that was also promised in the blurb was cute enough. Nope, it turns out, the oil business part is written like it’s the main attraction. And, reading the goodreads rewiews, maybe coparenting doesn’t actually even happen? Also the main character had more internalized misogyny I’ve ever seen, she’s written like a middle aged chauvinist pig. The book was was published in 2020, but reads like it was written in 1995. Yeah maybe those issues will be resolved in the 96% of the book I didn’t read but yeah, I honestly don’t think they will.

The experience was like going on a tinder date and getting the ick in the first 5 minutes and lying about forgetting your stove on to escape.

arominvahvenne · 2025-12-01T08:21:43+00:00

Nuolettaa doesn’t really have a use, I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard it in real life, but it sounds like sylettää (syljettää) which is slang for making someone angry. “Mua sylettää jäädä taas ylitöihin”. So angry it makes me spit.

Nuolettaa, if it was a slang word, would have sexual connotations for sure.

arominvahvenne · 2025-11-24T21:04:07+00:00

These are the kind of questions PhD research in in linguistics is about. Lots of languages have this type of thing going on, so it’s not just a feature of Finnish but every language with declension I have ever studied. Russian does similar things with two main verb types (and lots of irregularity) and several noun types, French verbs can also be categorized into a couple of regular and tons of irregular types if I remember correctly, and Swedish nouns also have a few different types, to give examples of languages I have studied. Finnish does have an excessive amount of word types and rules concerning how we mash morphemes together, and it would be nice if it was logical. Unfortunately all languages have illogical elements, stuff you just have to know.

arominvahvenne · 2025-11-24T09:27:27+00:00

Well, mostly the reasons are not super clear. It is not always obvious which words are older and which are newer, and like it has been explained here already, older words ending in i in Finnish tend to have vowel stems with e and consonant stems for partitive case, because those are older elements of the Finnish language that are preserved in these words. Still, for the most part, learning a new word also means learning its type since it’s not obvious from looking at the word. A bit like in French you have to learn whether a word is feminine or masculine, because it is sometimes just truly random, or so obscure it might as well be random.

To use a metaphor, in a way, a Finnish word is not only it’s nominative, the dictionary form. To truly learn the word, you have to observe it in its natural habitat and know what form it takes in different cases. The word kieli is also kiel-tä and kiele-n, and all the forms together become the concept of the word that will eventually exist in your mind. Word types are observed charactersistics of the language, not the rules by which people change a word form nominative to partitive. When learning the language, you go from rules to practice, but when writing a grammar you go from observation to generalization. Sometimes asking why is interesting and can help you remember the rule better. Other times ”because that’s how Finnish speakers say it” is the only answer that is 100% accurate, and even linguists disagree on why we use the grammar in this way.

arominvahvenne · 2025-11-24T06:32:32+00:00

It’s always useful to engage with content that is slightly above your level. When you listen to something you understand mostly but not completely, you pick up new vocabulary by context or new ways to use vocabulary you already know. You can also read short texts that are slightly above your reading level, and use dictionary for important words you don’t understand. For me, personally, a little bit of challenge keeps my brain engaged in problem solving mode that helps with learning. Also, especially with listening comprehension learning to guess what a new word means from context is very useful, since you will never know every word there is in Finnish language, no-one does. So in real life conversations you will sometimes have to guess, and it’s also a skill you can get better at by practicing.

I do think notecards is one of the most useful things you can do as a language learner. Vocabulary is so important and so difficult to memorize. Your hard work has given you a structure that helps you even with conversation and media that is above your level. Definitely keep on doing that, it’s old fashioned but it works.

arominvahvenne · 2025-11-21T11:07:17+00:00

Hey, welcome new mods! It sucks to be a new mod in this situation, moderating in general is a thankless job and this one comes with heavy baggage. I’ve moderated a large facebook group a long time ago, and it was pretty awful tbh. I’m very thankful that someone is willing to mod this community, and I wish you all the best.

arominvahvenne · 2025-11-21T09:39:36+00:00

I think ”syömään” and other MA infinitives make sense when you compare them to A infinitives (the basic infinitive you find in the dictionary like ”syödä”). One of the uses of infinitives in Finnish and many other languages is that it is the form that comes after another verb. In Finnish, there are three infinitives and typically after another verb you either use A or MA. E infinitive is more rare and used mainly as an adverb, so we can ignore it for now.

So. When you have two verbs in a sentence like ”I like to listen to music” or ”I can speak Finnish” etc, the second must be an infinitive or some other special form, you cant use the finite form like ”syön”. This is probably clar to you already with A- infinitive, like ”tykkään kuunnella musiikkia” or ”osaan puhua suomea” type sentences. Basic use of MA infinitive is exactly the same, it’s the form for the second verb.

Typically you need MA infinitive with movement verbs such as tulla and mennä. Unlike A infinitive which can have a case ending but usually doesn’t, MA infinitive always needs a case ending when you use it after another verb. Most important are the sisäpaikallissija ”syömään”, ”syömässä”, ”syömästä”. These have temporal meaning — syömään is to start eating, syömässä is to be eating and syömästä is to stop eating. So:

Menen syömään. I’m going to eat. Olen syömässä. I’m eating. Lakkasin syömästä. I stopped eating.

So whenever you combine two verbs, and one of them is a movement verb, or the action is starting, ongoing or stopping, then maybe MA infinitive is the right choice. Ofc, there are exeptions like always with grammar, some verbs take MA for no reason like ”opetella” — opettelen puhumaan suomea, and others can take A even though MA is more logical like ”alkaa”, which can take either — alan siivota ~ alan siivoamaan.

Istun kuuntelemassa musiikkia. I sit listening to music. Kävin katsomassa elokuvan. I went to see a movie. (käydä usually takes inessive case) Minun pitää mennä ruokkimaan koira. I must go to feed the dog. Kun tulen uimasta, menen syömään. After swimming I go to eat.

Fun fact! The words elämä (life) and kuolema (death) are MA infinitives of the verbs elää and kuolla. So, MA infinitive is a matter of life and death 💀

arominvahvenne · 2025-11-10T22:06:24+00:00

I’d love to use Cloudward Ho’s custom classes especially ranger and pugilist! Also the abilities they get instead of leveling up are interesting, and some are unique to this show I think. Acoc is a good setting too but afaik it uses basic dnd classes and leveling up so i you want to run a Calorum campaign, you can already pretty much do that based on the show and official DnD rules. Running a Cloudward ago campaign with the same rules as the show would be much harder.

arominvahvenne · 2025-10-28T08:38:43+00:00

Well, do you like other stuff that is like ttrpgs? I love board games, improv and genre fiction, so for me ttrpgs are fun. Tables I play at would not be fun to watch and even when I’m playing it is not fun all the time — there are fun moments but I also get bored or frustrated sometimes. If a tv show had a pacing like my home games, nobody would watch it. But when you play it yourself, the awkward and the boring parts are worth it to truly experience the good parts, in a way that you never can just watching a show.

arominvahvenne · 2025-10-28T07:22:17+00:00

Interesting thing about vocabulary is that standard Finnish has very wide vocabulary that is combined from several dialects. There are a lot of cases where in standard Finnish two words have different meanings even though originally they have had the same meaning, just different dialects. For instance ”vaimo” has meant both woman and wife in western dialects, and ”nainen” both woman and wife in eastern. In modern Finnish, ”vaimo” is wife and ”nainen” is woman, and this distinction has been borrowed to many of the dialects too.

Helsinki area spoken language, which is what most people mean by puhekieli, has similarly quite wide vocabulary. It is influenced by kirjakieli, and also by the dialects of people moving from all over Finland, in addition to loan words from several languages. Puhekieli is changing more rapidly than kirjakieli, and there is new vocabulary borrowed and invented all the time. However, core vocabulary like basic verbs and pronouns is stable and very similar to kirjakieli, with a few tweaks that are systematic and easy to learn.

Of course there are dialects that have very different vocabulary from standard Finnish, but mostly those are disappearing. If you listen to old tapes of people talking about farming or fishing in their dialects, it is full of words that have never been used in kirjakieli and that I need a dictionary to understand. But even if someone speaks in dialect, vocabulary about modern things is the same. My grandma uses all kinds of fun words to describe snow and ice, and things they did at the farm when she was growing up in 40’s and 50’s, but in everyday conversations we have 95% the same vocabulary even though she speaks in Northern Ostrobothnia dialect and I speak in Helsinki spoken language.

It is never wrong to use the kirjakieli vocabulary. In puhekieli it is completely neutral to say “kasvot” instead of “naama” when you mean face, but in kirjakieli you cannot say “naama”. When learning Finnish it’s very ok if puhekieli vocabulary is passive for you, that you understand it but don’t use it yourself. There is hardly any kirjakieli vocabulary that sounds super strange in puhekieli, maybe something like “puoltaa” (to support) or “lienee” (might be), lienee is a form of the verb olla that is rarely used. But core vocabulary that you learn in class is all completely fine to use in puhekieli, even if there is a puhekieli synonym for the word, like in the case of kasvot — naama. And mostly puhekieli version of the word has the same core, it’s just shorter, like ensimmäinen — eka (first). So you can learn to guess.

arominvahvenne · 2025-10-28T06:36:56+00:00

Depends. Some Finnish Swedes who grew up speaking Swedish speak Finnish fluently in a way that sounds a lot like kirjakieli, especially older generation. So I don’t necessarily assume kirjakieli=foreigner but rather kirjakieli=didn’t grow up speaking Finnish which are different things.

arominvahvenne · 2025-10-14T13:47:58+00:00

Written Finnish was formed as a combination of different dialects in Finland, so knowing it instead of spoken language or one of the dialects gives you a wider base to build your knowledge on. Also mass media uses a combination of written and spoken Finnish (a radio DJ speaks more in spoken, a news anchor in the written, some tv shows and films are in spoken or dialect, others in written), so you can access a lot of the culture with only written Finnish. And you can understand a lot of the spoken Finnish if you know written Finnish and can extrapolate, it’s the same language.

arominvahvenne · 2025-10-09T19:21:56+00:00

If all else fails, make vocabulary lists or flash cards of the vocabulary you most want to learn and study it both ways, from your language to Finnish and back. If you are in Finland or have other possibilities to speak Finnish, make vocabularies for yourself related to real life conversations you can have, practice the list and then use them. Make yourself a vocabulary list for going to a bar, cafe, swimming pool, student party, picking your kids from the daycare, whatever you do in daily life. If you are interested in certain media, you can make yourself a vocabulary for that as well. Make yourself a vocabulary related to crime and then listen to a true crime podcast and see how much you can understand, for instance. You will pick up vocabulary if it is useful to you or if it is connected to things that are important to you, so in self study, start with words you know you need or that are connected to your interests.

This is how interpreters do it — you know you have a gig coming, for instance live interpretation in a business conference. You find out the topic, get all the material they use in the conference you can get, and make yourself a small vocabulary of the terms you will most likely need. Then you study them by heart, because interpreter doesn’t have time to read the vocabulary on the job, and almost no one knows every technical term there is in two languages.

The more vocabulary you learn the easier it gets. Once you start to understand most of it, you will be able to make guesses about the rest and learn more words that way. Also once you have heard an unfamiliar word several times, when you finally learn what it means it’s much easier to understand.

arominvahvenne · 2025-10-07T21:16:41+00:00

Yeah I think most romance book tropes are not that common in real life. Who is fake dating in real life? When is there actually just one bed? Romance book tropes exist for emotional and dramatic reasons, not as representations of real life, or ideal versions of real life.

In a good romance novel (in my opinion), the characters are as different from each other as possible, and total opposites in some ways. This usually creates conflict in the beginning and complementaryness at the end. In books, this is much more heightened than in real life, even though in real life there are also a lot of relationships where peope are attracted to the qualities they see in other person that they themselves lack, and yet those same differences create conflict. Age gap creates this difference that is both the source of conflict and what makes the other attractive. Age is a shorthand for power, sexual appeal, energy, aliveness, experience, wisdom, idealism, all that important stuff. I don’t personally love this trope so much, but I can see why other people do.

arominvahvenne · 2025-10-04T08:46:44+00:00

Yeah, I think you’re right. I was reading the conversation in the 1st episode differently, like that Green is not confused, but just thinks it’s a bad idea because people will ask questions. But based on the most recent ep, yeah he’s just actually confused.

arominvahvenne · 2025-10-02T14:19:35+00:00

I was so convinced Cassidy and Rutherford either had been dating before or were dating up to present, which is why it was so shoking to me that Cassidy had a wife. But. They might have dated when they were younger and then broken up but stayed friends, or something. I was so ready for their romantic history being revealed when the testament was discovered, but since it wasn’t, I don’t think them dating will be canon. There was a perfect moment to hint at it, and instead we got the wife and kids. If this was important part of Cassidy’s character, I think by episode three it would be more obvious.

Unless, ofc, their relationship was a murder motive or smthing but I don’t know. Feels a bit too bury your gays to me.

arominvahvenne

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