“ The basic principle of word formation in Finnish is the addition of endings “
By attaching different endings to a stem in different ways, you can get different sentences with individual meanings; autossa = in the car, auton = my car, autolla = with the car or autoissasikin = in your cars too (auto/is/ssa/si/kin = car/s/in/your/too).
The principe works the same way with verbs; sanon = I say, sanohan = (emphasis) do say or sanonhan = I (emphasis) do say (Sano/n/han/ = Say/I/do)
So the conclusion of this is that Finnish case endings normally correspond to prepositions or postpositions in other languages.
But, Finnish also uses endings where other languages would have independent words, like kirjani = my book.
“ Another set of endings particular to Finnish is that of the enclitic particles, which always occur in the final position after all other endings. It is not easy to say exactly what these particles mean; their function is often emphasis of some kind, similar to that of intonation in some other languages. “
By changing the last letter(s) in a word, you can make new words similar to the original one; kirja = book -> kirje = letter. Finnish has a wide-ranging use made of endings in the formation of new independent words. You can also remake words by endings like; kirja = book -> kirjasto = library. You can attach particles mentioned above upon these too to make words like kirjastossakin = In the library too (kirja/sto/ssa/kin = (book/sto = library)/in/too).
When it comes to nouns in Finnish, there’s a difference compared to many Indo-European languages; they don’t have any grammatical gender. Finnish doesn’t have any articles either, and the semantic function of articles is often expressed by word order in Finnish.
There’s another issue too: the form of the basic stem often alters when certain endings are added to it. There’s no real way to learn when to change them and when not to, since it usually differs according to the following ending and its sound structure. These rules are extremely complex to understand by its own, so it is easier to learn how to grammatically bend words when you learn them than learning some kind of rule of usage.
