Cases of loanwords and foreign words

Inflecting words of foreign origin

Loanwords are not exempted from inflection in Finnish. This applies even to foreign nouns, i.e. names and other nouns taken from other languages as such.

Oldest loanwords have been completely adapted to the Finnish inflection system, and their inflection is described in dictionaries of Finnish. Therefore, the subsections below deal with new loanwords and foreign words. For many commonly used names, appendix Proper names of this book may be useful, as it has some information about inflection, too.

Erisnimien ja vieraiden sanojen taivutus.

Cases of new loanwords

New loanwords are inflected in a simple manner:

• The stem of the word remains invariant except for consonant gradation of double consonants kk, pp, and tt. Examples: trukki : trukin but loki : lokin (no gradation of single k).
• If the basic form of the word ends in a consonant, an i is inserted as a binding vowel between it and any suffix, e.g. maraton : maratonin: maratoniin. As the example shows, the illative ends with iin for such words. In plural inflection, the i is changed to e as in words that end with an invariant i in singular forms, e.g. maraton|e|i|ssa.

However, the line between old and new loanwords in this sense may differ from what you might expect. Even many words that are otherwise apparently new loanwords have adapted to a pattern of inflection of old Finnish words, e.g. bisnes : bisneksen (business). For psyyke : psyyken : psyykeä (psyche), the partitive form psyykettä is common, but substandard. The word avatar tends to be inflected like -tar derivations, e.g. avattaren : avatarta, but the only accepted inflection is avatarin : avataria. For siitake (shitake), it is common and accepted to inflect it like most Finnish words ending with e, e.g. siitakkeen : siitaketta, and the inflection siitaken : siitakea is rare.

Cases of foreign words

A foreign noun that ends with a vowel is inflected by simply appending case suffixes, with no change in the word stem, e.g. Alabama : Alabamassa (in Alabama) : Alabamaan (to Alabama).

A foreign noun ending with a consonant is inflected so that the letter i is used as a binding vowel between the stem and the suffix, e.g. Oxford : Oxfordissa : Oxfordiin. In plural forms, the binding vowel changes to e before the plural suffix i according to general vowel change rules, e.g. Smith : Smithillä : Smitheillä.

There are several complications to these rules, such as the following:

• If the final vowel is stressed or otherwise treated as long, as in the Swedish name Malmö, this affects the partitive and illative suffixes: Malmö : Malmötä : Malmöhön.
• If a word ends with a mute e, as English and French words often do, the word is inflected as if the e were pronounced, and it is pronounced as e or (less often) i, e.g. Locke : Locken [lokken], Voltaire : Voltairen [voltäären] ∼ [voltäärin].
• If a word ends with unpronounced consonant(s) so that it is pronounced as ending with a vowel, it is inflected according to the pronounced form and an apostrophe is used between the stem and the suffix, e.g. Bordeaux [bordoo] : Bordeaux’ssa [bordoossa] : Bordeaux’hon [bordoohon]. However, it is common, especially in literature, to inflect such words against this rule, according to their written form, e.g. Bordeauxissa, Bordeauxiin.