Finland Forum

I know that Finnish word order is not free, though I am ignorant
of its nuances. Years ago, while studying Russian, I was asked
more than once if it were true that Russian had free word order.
I don't know how people got that idea.

Thanks again for the explanation.

Steve

Thank you much for the reply. It was quite helpful. I was not aware of
the subtle role of word order in this context.

Steve

Otherwise: Siellä on isoja ikkunoita / There are big windows there (no specific number). Siellä on iso ikkuna. /There is a big window there. Thank you much for that very helpful explanation, and sorry for the belated reply. What about the case of a particular number of windows, but not a natural se...

Just fixing the typo: That should have been "Meilla" rather than "Meila."

Steve

I have to agree. "Me" is plural, but we say "Meilla on . . . " when expressing possession. I am still trying to figure this one out. According to Wiktionary, "siellä" is the superessive adverbial case of of "se" and that it "resembles" the adessive. ...

If we are using "on" rather than "ovat" because we are
talking about an indefinite quantity, shouldn't "isot ikkunat"
be in the partitive?

Steve

So does "siellä" (rather than "ikkunat") serve as the
logical subject of the sentence? And if that is the case,
is "siellä ovat" always incorrect?

Thank you, and please convey my thanks to your wife.
Steve

In working through Agi Risko's book "Beginner's Finnish" I came across this sentence: "Siellä on varmasti isot ikkunat ja niistä ihana näköala." (They're talking about their cabin on the Stockholm ferry.) Why do we use "Siellä on" here instead of "Siellä ovat"...

In John Olli's book "Fundamentals of Finnish Grammar" the comitative plural suffix of both nouns and adjectives is -ine. In other sources (e.g. Wiktionary) adjectives get the -ine and nouns -ineen. Is Olli's book wrong on this point? Or out of date? While we're on the subject, I noticed th...

Thank you for the explanation. As my knowledge of Finnish is quite rudimentary, I may suspect twists where there are none. In this example the "from" made me want to use the elative or ablative, but the "many" the partitive.

In a sentence like "These wines come from many countries," which case governs "from many countries"?

What, or who, is Atari?

I was going to say "Not necessarily double, just a bit longer.", but then I checked this data, which seems to indicate that a double vowel is about twice as long as the corresponding single vowel. However, as we can see, the absolute lengths are very much dependent on the context where th...

1. When listening to Finnish, I seldom catch the elongated double vowels. I only know that they're there if I'm reading along. Are Finnish speakers really supposed to double the vowel length? 2. Are there languages with elaborate declension systems in which the noun is declined but the adjective is ...

Got it. Thank you.