Plural partitive

[maximumforum]

Hi! I'm learning plural case endings and I see kahvila -> kahviloita
I'm trying to understand what process turns it that way, which one of the formation types on the page below is it?
www.uusikielemme.fi/partitive.html
My brain hurts, please help.

Fake edit: On the partitive pages it says there are different rules for words longer than two syllables.
One some other page I found plural elative kahvila -> kahviloista which makes sense in relation to kahviloita.
www.uusikielemme.fi/plulocalo.html
But no pages on that website for plural partitive longer than two syllables.

Are the rules for long plural partitive exactly the same as the rules listed on the last link (the ones for "the plural forms of the inessive, elative, adessive, allative and ablative cases.. the endings for long words, meaning words of more that two syllables.")?

[AldenG]

It belongs to -la/ja words.

You should use the categories for Finnish declensions in the English Wiktionary.

Finnish Declension Appendices

Same for conjugations when you get around to verbs.

Finnish Conjugation Appendices

A rules-based approach will not be very productive compared to an analogy-based approach. It might work for answering questions on an exam but it won't get you writing or speaking the language.

Take the effort you would have put into learning rules and use it to learn the basic paradigms (50-some for substantives, 20-some for verbs). Soon enough you'll know intuitively which paradigm a word matches. At least sooner than you'd become productive by memorizing rules.

[maximumforum]

It belongs to -la/ja words.

You should use the categories for Finnish declensions in the English Wiktionary.

Finnish Declension Appendices

Same for conjugations when you get around to verbs.

Finnish Conjugation Appendices

A rules-based approach will not be very productive compared to an analogy-based approach. It might work for answering questions on an exam but it won't get you writing or speaking the language.

Take the effort you would have put into learning rules and use it to learn the basic paradigms (50-some for substantives, 20-some for verbs). Soon enough you'll know intuitively which paradigm a word matches. At least sooner than you'd become productive by memorizing rules.

Hey thanks for the suggestion! ^_^ What you said makes sense. English isn't my mother-tongue and I know it in an intuitive way, just as you suggested to do with Finnish rather than by rules (never studied English rules).

[AldenG]

As to "why" a certain class looks a certain way in a certain case, it's all after-the-fact rationalization. It just does.

[Rekkari]

maximumforum wrote:
Hey thanks for the suggestion! ^_^ What you said makes sense. English isn't my mother-tongue and I know it in an intuitive way, just as you suggested to do with Finnish rather than by rules (never studied English rules).

That's because there are no rules in English! Finnish, on the other hand, is very much a rule-based language, and it seldom deviates from them.

AdenG wrote:
A rules-based approach will not be very productive compared to an analogy-based approach.

And a strictly analogy-based approach won't get you very far, either. One has to know the underlying rules to properly apply the analogies! Example: I've learned how to decline koira-type words. But what exactly is a koira-type word? Without knowing the rules (given, for a reason, in each of the Wiktionary Declension Listings) I might think that vara looks like koira (afterall, both end in -ra) and incorrectly come up with varia.

I learned perhaps two dozen rules for nominals and six for verbs, which my brain uses to correctly apply the appropriate paradigm. And with practice, it happens without thinking about it.

In short, it's analogy according to rules that are the key.

[maximumforum]

maximumforum wrote:
Hey thanks for the suggestion! ^_^ What you said makes sense. English isn't my mother-tongue and I know it in an intuitive way, just as you suggested to do with Finnish rather than by rules (never studied English rules).

That's because there are no rules in English! Finnish, on the other hand, is very much a rule-based language, and it seldom deviates from them.

AdenG wrote:
A rules-based approach will not be very productive compared to an analogy-based approach.

And a strictly analogy-based approach won't get you very far, either. One has to know the underlying rules to properly apply the analogies! Example: I've learned how to decline koira-type words. But what exactly is a koira-type word? Without knowing the rules (given, for a reason, in each of the Wiktionary Declension Listings) I might think that vara looks like koira (afterall, both end in -ra) and incorrectly come up with varia.

I learned perhaps two dozen rules for nominals and six for verbs, which my brain uses to correctly apply the appropriate paradigm. And with practice, it happens without thinking about it.

In short, it's analogy according to rules that are the key.

In English there are rules! Everyone around me was taught to learn English in school by repeating the rules over and over (like now the Finnish books are trying to make me do, which is honestly mind-numbing) and I just blazed past them and they ended up hating English and failing to learn it. The reason I leaned English is that I didn't study English!

Of course it's important to know the rules, but it's also helps to build an internal heuristic of the langage ("this rhymes/looks like this, so I conjugate it like this"). The rules are systematic and precise, but the heuristic helps get one up to speed in real-time conversations. Concentrating on rules too much is boring as @#$% for me and most books do that. Missing the forest for the trees. Maybe it depends on what kind of learner you are. ^^

[Upphew]

In English there are rules!

And exceptions. And exceptions to those exceptions, with couple of exceptions to those too.

[jahasjahas]

As to "why" a certain class looks a certain way in a certain case, it's all after-the-fact rationalization. It just does.

Although in this case we can (just to satisfy our linguistic curiosity) theorize that the -oi- has appeared to help us distinguish between the singular and plural forms more easily.

Some southeastern dialects use -loi-/-löi- as a plural marker for all sorts of words. You'll have "tyttöä" ~ "tyttölöitä" for the partitive of "tyttö" (instead of the standard "tyttöä" ~ "tyttöjä" which sound pretty similar.)

[Rekkari]

maximumforum wrote:
In English there are rules! Everyone around me was taught to learn English in school by repeating the rules over and over (like now the Finnish books are trying to make me do, which is honestly mind-numbing) and I just blazed past them and they ended up hating English and failing to learn it. The reason I leaned English is that I didn't study English!

Becasue so many other languages have influenced English, the exception has become the only steadfast rule. The only other "rules" I can remember are:

"If two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking." and " 'i' before 'e' except after 'c' and when sounded like 'ay' as in 'neighbor' and 'weigh'.", in both of which can be found plenty of exceptions.

And what is the rule for the correct pronunciation of rough, cough, through, although?

Trying to learn English by rules? No wonder you grew to hate it! Not like Finnish at all...

Or are you referring to grammatical rules?

[maximumforum]

maximumforum wrote:
In English there are rules! Everyone around me was taught to learn English in school by repeating the rules over and over (like now the Finnish books are trying to make me do, which is honestly mind-numbing) and I just blazed past them and they ended up hating English and failing to learn it. The reason I leaned English is that I didn't study English!

Becasue so many other languages have influenced English, the exception has become the only steadfast rule. The only other "rules" I can remember are:

"If two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking." and " 'i' before 'e' except after 'c' and when sounded like 'ay' as in 'neighbor' and 'weigh'.", in both of which can be found plenty of exceptions.

And what is the rule for the correct pronunciation of rough, cough, through, although?

Trying to learn English by rules? No wonder you grew to hate it! Not like Finnish at all...

Or are you referring to grammatical rules?

I am referring to all kinds of rules. Grammatical and such. I think that "the exception is the rule" is an exaggaration. And no, I didn't grow to hate English. Everyone in my local environment did because all they did was study the school books, while I slept at school and learned English from books, music etc. Traditional methods of teaching languages can be terribly inefficient and only make the students hate the language.

[Sami-Is-Boss]

You need both really, in my opinion. I prefer to get an outline of the rules and then see/hear them used in practice as much as possible. You can't really say one is better than the other