Finnish uses suffixes—short parts of a word appended to a word—for a wide range of purposes. Suffixes are used to form different cases of a noun, largely for the same purposes as English uses prepositions. In English, we say “at school”; in Finnish, this is one word, koulussa, consisting of the base koulu (school) and the case suffix ssa. Some suffixes of nouns, conventionally called possessive suffixes, are used to express association with a person or a thing: “my school” is kouluni in Finnish.
Suffixes of verbs are used to express person, tense, and mood. The verb from sanoisin means “I would say”, with sano being the verb base, isi being the suffix of the conditional mood, and n being the person suffix for first person singular.
To take a more complicated example, juoksentelisinkohan (I wonder if I should run around aimlessly) is one of the examples often presented about the complexity of Finnish word forms. Its division into morphemes (parts that have a meaning of their own) is: juokse|ntel|isi|n|ko|han. It starts with the verb stem juokse- (to run; infinitive: juosta). This is followed by the suffix -ntel-, which is one of the variants of a derivational suffix that indicates repeated action, often with some other change in meaning, too (hence “to run around aimlessly”). The -isi- suffix is the conditional suffix, -n- is 1st person singular suffix, -ko is an interrogative suffix (turning the verb to a predicate of a question), and -han is a suffix with varying meanings, such as softening a question or turning it to express doubt (hence “I wonder if”).
Adding suffixes is the only way of inflecting words in Finnish, though this may involve changes in word stem. In linguistics (but not in this book), the inflection of nouns, adjectives, and numerals is often called declension, and the inflection of verbs is often called conjugation.
To be exact, some inflection of pronouns means using infixes, something added inside a word, rather than at the end, e.g. joka : jonka (which : of which). However, these are formally described in terms of using suffixes and an invariable ending like ka.
Some features of Finnish may look like stem inflection in the same sense as in English use of vowel alteration inside a word, e.g. “sing : sang : sung”. The words vyössä and vöissä are forms of the Finnish word vyö (belt), in the inessive case, in singular and plural. So it may look like Finnish formed the plural by changing the diphthong yö to the diphthong öi. Here the plural suffix is i, but it causes changes in the form stem: yö before i is simplified to ö.
Finnish nouns have 14 or 15 case forms, most of which have both a singular form and a plural form. The plural forms have a plural suffix before the case suffix. Adjectives, pronouns, and numerals have in principle the same case forms as nouns, but pronouns have many specialties in this respect.
Some suffixes, called word-like suffixes or enclitic particles, are comparable to independent words in meaning but attached to another word. Many of them have varying and even idiomatic usage, which is difficult to master. One of the simplest suffix of this kind is kin, which basically corresponds to “also” or “too”, so that e.g. koulussakin means “at school, too”. Instead of this suffix, the separate adverb myös (e.g., myös koulussa) can often be used. However, the kin suffix may have a special tone or even special meanings.
Suffixes are also widely used for word derivation. Words with multiple derivational suffixes are common in Finnish. For example, from tila (status, state, condition), the word tilasto (statistics) has been derived, and from it, the verb stem tilastoi- (to collect statistics) has been formed—and this can go on, e.g. tilastointi means the act or process of collecting statistics.
Suffixes and compound words are by far the most important methods of forming new words in Finnish. Prefixes are used much less, and all prefixes can actually be explained as words used in compounds rather than true prefixes. The common negative prefixes are ei- and epä-, corresponding to English “non-” or “un-”, but they can be regarded as forms of the negation verb.
The order of suffixes is regular: derivational suffixes come first, then inflectional suffixes, then possessive suffixes, and finally the word-like suffixes. For example, the word tilastoinnissammekin consists of the base word tila, the derivational suffixes sto, i-, and nni- (a contextual variant of nti), the case suffix ssa, the possessive suffix mme, and the enclicitic kin. In English, the corresponding expression is “in our process of collecting statistics, too”. In inflection of nouns, the plural indicator (i or j) precedes the case suffix.
The following figure illustrates the order of suffixes in an another example, varastoistasiko (from your stores, with an interrogative suffix ko; such a form is used in questions of a particular type).
|
stem |
derivational |
plural |
case |
possessive |
enclitic |
|
vara |
sto |
i |
sta |
si |
ko |
A word may contain several derivational suffixes and several enclitic suffixes. Only one plural suffix, one case suffix, and one possessive suffix may appear. As an exception, the word montaa, a double partitive form of moni (many) with two partitive suffixes ta and a, is now accepted in standard language. The words sinällään and sinälleen (as such) have the essive suffix nä and another case suffix (adessive llä or allative lle) are in use, but regarded as substandard; the simpler sinänsä (or sillään) and silleen are recommended.
Due to the extensive use of suffixes, Finnish has relatively few “small words”. It has no articles and almost no prepositions. Very short words are usually conjunctions, common pronouns, interjections, or other affective particles.
Finnish is often characterized as a “synthetic” language, as opposite to e.g. English, which is largely “analytic” language. Synthetic languages express relationships using suffixes or other inflection of words, whereas analytic languages use auxiliary words or word order for the same purpose.
Although Finnish uses suffixes heavily, it is possible to exaggerate this. In contests for the longest word, you may encounter words like epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkäänköhän. It is understandable in principle, but would never be used in practice. There is no theoretical upper limit on the amount of suffixes in a word, but at some point, words just become incomprehensible if they have too many suffixes.
In spoken language and in informal writing, very long words are rare, and separate words might be used instead of or in addition suffixes. For example, instead of kouluni, common spoken language uses mun kouluni, expressing the first person singular in two ways, or simpler mun koulu, using just the genitive of a personal pronoun (mun is a spoken form of the literary minun).
Similarly, many complicated word forms that you might see mentioned as good examples of the suffix-rich, synthetic nature of Finnish are more or less just literary creations. A word like kirjoitettuasi corresponds to a multi-word clause in English: “after you have/had written”. However, you rarely hear such words. Normal spoken language, as well as informal written language, would use a clause that is structurally close to the English example: kun olet/olit kirjoittanut.
Considering only inflection, not word derivation or word-like particles that may be appended to words, Finnish has about 140 forms for a noun and about 260 forms for a verb.
Inflection suffixes create new forms of a word, whereas derivational suffixes create new words. The difference is conventional and relative, though. In particular, derived forms often become used as independent words and lose connection with their base word. This is called lexicalization.
Quite often, a lexicalized form still survives as an inflection form, too. For example, the postposition jälkeen (after), e.g. tämän jälkeen (after this), is a lexicalization of the illative form of jälki (track, trace), thus originally meaning “into the track/trace of…”. It is still possible to use it as a normal inflected form of jälki, too. This may be confusing, but mostly a lexicalized form is used primarily in its special meaning; when such an interpretation is impossible, it is interpreted as an inflected form.
Due to extensive use of word derivation and compound words, Finnish words that are related to the same concept are often related in an apparent way. This may help in learning new words, and it makes many words easier even to native speakers to the language. Compare, for example, the English words “botany” and “phytology”, with no roots in the basic vocabulary of English, with their Finnish counterpart kasvitiede, formed from the common words kasvi (plant) and tiede (science).
On the other hand, the repetition of the same base word can be stylistically disturbing, and Finnish writers and translators often need to take extra measures to avoid too much repetition. It is easy to construct sentences that are formally quite correct but ridiculous due to base word repetition, e.g. Kirjailija kirjoitti kirjeen kirjastossa (An author wrote a letter in a library).
It is easy to present examples of dozens and hundreds of words based on a single root word. However, such sets of words do not always form a cluster of interrelated words in the mind of a native speaker. For example, it is easy to see that järjestelmällinen (systematic) is derived from järjestelmä (system), but the latter is not intuitively seen as ultimately a derivative of järki (reason, sense), even though it historically is. Irregular changes in word stem may hide the relationships. For example, probably only a Finn who has studied the history of the language recognizes the verbs käydä (to visit etc.) and kävellä (to walk) as related.