The structure of this book

This book is divided into sections grouped into chapters. The sections are numbered consecutively through the entire book. Within each section, and even each subsection, the presentation proceeds from simple descriptions to finer details and exceptions, if possible. In systematic reading, if you find some topic covered in more detail than you care about on first reading, just skip to the next section (or subsection).

The single-page version of this book is large, but it might be suitable e.g. for doing searches over the entire content. Normally, you would use the version consisting of sections, with an index page for selecting them.

The overall structure of this book is the following:

• First, some general information about Finnish is presented for orientation, in chapters “Historical and cultural background” and “Key features of Finnish”. The latter describes principles of using suffixes, phenomena like variation in word stem in inflection, and other general concepts and principles. Many features are described here at the general level, to be repeated in more concrete forms later.
• The chapter “Pronunciation and writing” then describes the rules for writing and pronunciation, covering differences between them in detail. It also presents punctuation rules and special writing rules applied in various notations, such as dates and monetary quantities.
• The vocabulary is described next. For practical reasons, this part consists of three chapters: “Vocabulary”, “Word derivation”, and “Compound words”.
• Then the parts of speech are described, in chapters “Nouns”, “Adjectives”, “Adverbs”, “Pronouns”, “Numerals”, “Particles”, and “Word-like suffixes". The description includes both the formation of inflected forms and their meanings and use. Intermixed with the presentation of parts of speech, there are two chapters “Singular and plural” and “Possessive suffixes”, which would be differently placed in a purely logical order.
• Higher-level structural issues like word order and subclauses are discussed in chapter “Sentence structures”. It also includes things like the choice of the case form of an object, one of the tough parts for advanced learners.
• After this systematic presentation, some additional topics are covered. First, chapter “Poetic features” describes phenomena like alliteration, described as something appearing in normal prose, too, rather than as poetry proper.
• Chapter “Spoken Finnish” describes first common spoken Finnish, a language form that you normally hear in TV, public discussions, and everyday language when it lacks specific dialect features. Then some key features of major dialects are described.
• The last of the normal chapters, “Language technology and Finnish” describes technical aspects, such as writing Finnish on a computer, typesetting Finnish texts, and translation and localization issues specific to Finnish. The chapter starts with an executive summary of the topic, designed to be readable as standalone, too.
• The remaining chapters are appendix-like: “Suffix glossary”, which is an index to derivation, inflection, and other suffixes; “Inflection classes”, which lists the inflection types of noun-like words and verbs; “Compositive forms of verbs”, which covers a large number of forms of verbs used in compound words; “Proper names”, which lists Finnish forms of foreign proper names, with English equivalents and some explantations; “Abbreviations”, which lists the commonly used (and some less common) abbreviations; “Style settings for Finnish in Word”, which has information that is otherwise very difficult to find; “Ref­er­ences”, which describes essential reference material on Finnish, mostly in Finnish, in printed or online form; and “Finnish grammar terms”, which lists Finnish-language terms used in Finnish grammars, with English equivalents.