Spotting differents parts of language

[darkeale]

Hi guys,

I'm wondering anyone has any basic rules for picking the different parts of the language out of a text quickly, for example which words are verbs, nouns, adjectives etc. Is there an easy way to tell by endings or something else? Also, is there a list of the suffixes and their meanings somewhere? So not the case endings for verbs but the other ones like -han/hän, -kin etc.

Thanks

[Rob A.]

Hi guys,

I'm wondering anyone has any basic rules for picking the different parts of the language out of a text quickly, for example which words are verbs, nouns, adjectives etc. Is there an easy way to tell by endings or something else? Also, is there a list of the suffixes and their meanings somewhere? So not the case endings for verbs but the other ones like -han/hän, -kin etc.

Thanks

If only it were that easy....certainly there are words that can be quickly identified as verbs or adverbs or adjectives etc., but there are quite a variety of different shapes they can take. I would go at it gradually looking at simple stuff first and the patterns will gradually emerge. Some of the differences can be quite subtle for a beginner.

For example:

[Minä] juoksin nopeasti.="I ran quickly." ...the word, minä, is optional...and is understood from the "-n" ending on juoksi-
Juoksin nopeammin.="I ran more quickly."
Juoksin nopeimmin.="I ran the most quickly."

In each instance, the last word is an adverb...juoksin is the first person, past tense of the verb juosta...Finnish verb infinitive eni

Have a look at these links:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_gr ... ormation_2...[Kind of complex....and nouns ...and adverbs, adjectives, and verbs that have been nominalized...have case endings....verbs have endings for person, tense, mood, and number... verbs conjugate...]

2. http://wiki.verbix.com/Verbs/AllFormsOfFinnishVerb [Since you asked here's a "complete paradigm for a Finnish verb...but I would just look at at out of interest...waste of time to memorize ...and some of the forms are theoretical, they aren't actually used]

3. http://donnerwetter.kielikeskus.helsink ... t-next.htm ...[This is a nice simple site the builds things up gradually.]

4. http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/finnish-cases.html ...[Case endings for a simple Finnish noun... The nominative form is the typical subject of a sentence...the "big" cases are the genitive and the partitive....and several at the bottom of list are not so commonly used...and, for me anyway, easy to get confused about... ]