Notations used in this book

talo

Finnish words (and foreign words used in Finnish) are written in italic in the text.

talo (house)

The meaning of a Finnish word is briefly explained in English in parentheses, usually very coarsely, with a single word. Parentheses are also used to make other parenthetic remarks.

talo “house”

The meaning of a Finnish word is given in English in quotation marks. This is used inside parentheses, to avoid nested parentheses.

ssa

Parts of Finnish words, mainly suffixes, are written in italic.

sisä-

In this book, a part of a Finnish word may be followed by a hyphen to emphasize that it only appears as a part of a word at its start (as in sisällä or sisään), not as an independent word.

talo|ssa

Parts of a word (morphemes) may be separated by a vertical line “|” to indicate the structure. The vertical line is never used in actual Finnish writing.

tule^x

A superscript “x” at the end of a Finnish word indicates boundary gemination (a consonant is pronounced, under certain conditions, at the end of a word that ends with a vowel in the spelling). Normal Finnish spelling does not use a superscript “x” or any other indication in this context.

tálo

An acute accent (´) is occasionally used to indicate main stress. Not used in actual Finnish writing.

tálossàmme

A grave accent (`) is occasionally used to indicate secondary stress. Not used in actual Finnish writing.

linja-auto

A hyphen “-” appearing in a Finnish word, as part of the word in its normal spelling.

vaa’an

An apostrophe (’) appearing in a Finnish word, as part of the word in its normal spelling.

os.ta.ji.a

A period “.” indicates syllable boundary when it is relevant. Not used in actual Finnish writing.

os·ta·jia

A middle dot “·” indicates permitted hyphenation point. Not used in actual Finnish writing.

ruoan [ruuan]

The pronunciation of a Finnish word is given in square brackets after its spelling, using the Finnish writing system, in the rare cases where the pronunciation differs from the spelling.

kenkä [keŋkä]

In pronunciation information, “ŋ” indicates the eng sound, like “n” in English “sink”.

[ə]

In pronunciation information about foreign words, “ə” indicates a neutral vowel as at the start of “about” in English.

[ð]

In pronunciation information about foreign words, “ð” indicates a “th” sound as in English “this”. In practice, Finns often pronounce it as unvoiced, as in English “thing”.

A, O, U

Uppercase letters A, O, U are used when describing suffixes, so that A corresponds to a or ä, O corresponds to o or ö, and U corresponds to u or y, according to a phenomenon called vowel harmony.

C

The letter C is used in some patterns to denote any consonant letter.

V

The letter V is used in some patterns to denote any vowel letter.

Adj

The abbreviation Adj is used in some contexts to denote any adjective.

NP

The abbreviation NP is used in some contexts to denote any noun phrase, i.e. a noun (or adjective used like a noun, or pronoun, or numeral) optionally preceded by one or more attributes.

*n

An asterisk “*” indicates that a suffix contains a vowel that is identical with the last vowel of the base word. For example, *n appended to talo yields taloon, and appended to kissa it yields kissaan. (In many grammars, the letter V is used instead.)

kala : kalassa

A colon “:” is used as a separator when different inflected forms of a word are shown. Usually, but not necessarily, the first of the forms is the base form.

kala → kalaisa

An arrow “→” indicates derivation, e.g. the word kalaisa has been derived from the word kala. (In many grammars, the greater than sign “>” is used instead.) However, in the presentation of common spoken language and dialects, the arrow points from standard Finnish form to a spoken or dialect form.

töiden ∼ töitten

A tilde operator “∼” indicates variation, i.e. alternative forms. This means that there is no difference in basic meaning, but there may be a difference in tone or style.

hän (he/she)

A slash “/” indicates alternatives with different meanings.