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26th Aug 2004, 10:01am

Finnish words for "there"

I originally wrote this blog entry a while ago, but our server died, and the hosting company's most recent backup was from over a week before the failure, so it was lost.

No matter, I will try to re-create it... I wrote about a curious feature of the Finnish language, and one that makes it difficult to learn. Word endings are all important in Finnish - for instance the word for restaurant is ravintola, but if you are in a restaurant you need to say olen ravintolassa (I am in a restaurant). Note how ssa gets added to the word. Well, there are cases for going to, being in, and coming from. And a different set of cases for places you would be outside (at) and not inside (like being in a restaurant).

There are irregular endings for some common words. And worse, in the case of the word "there", there are two cases - one for a "there" you can see (like "over there") and one for somewhere further away. And more confusingly, there is an additional set of endings for the "at" case. This gives you no less than 16 cases for the word "there".

I list them below - mostly to help myself remember:

Case	Here	There (seen)	There (far)
Inessiivi (in)	Tässä	Tuossa	Siinä
Elatiivi (from)	Tästä	Tuosta	Siitä
Illatiivi (to)	Tähän	Tuohon	Siihen
Adessiivi (at)	Tällä	Tuolla	Sillä
Ablatiivi (from)	Tältä	Tuolta	Siltä
Allatiivi (to)	Tälle	Tuolle	Sille
Superessiivi (at)	Täällä	Tuolla	Siellä
Delatiivi (from)	Täältä	Tuolta	Sieltä
Sublatiivi (to)	Tänne	Tuonne	Sinne

Note that the word täällä would often be pronounced täälä, but the difference is mostly lost on my ears.

There are subtle differences in usage between, for instance, the adessiivi and superessiivi cases. If you use täällä you would more likely be talking about a here that your interlocutor would not be able to see (as in "me here on the phone") rather than somewhere in front of you, for which you would use tällä. More cases are here too.