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Star Glam Gazette

What are the 15 grammatical cases in Finnish?

Author

Matthew Wilson

Updated on May 27, 2026

Finnish language: Grammatical cases

  • Inessive (inside)
  • Elative (from inside to outside)
  • Illative (from outside to inside)
  • Adessive (external closeby)
  • Ablative (from external closeby to outside)
  • Allative (from outside to external closeby)

What are cases in Finnish?

A case is an inflection of nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals, infinitives, participles, and adverbs. Many cases are similar in function to English prepositions. In Finnish, there are 15 cases which can be divided into five groups, each of which consists of three cases.

How many grammatical cases does Finnish have?

Genitive. Characteristic ending: -n possibly modified by consonant gradation: mäki → mäen, talo → talon. For the nouns and adjectives that have two vowel stems, the weak vowel stem comes from the genitive singular. The genitive indicates possession.

What is nominative case in Finnish?

Nominatiivi (nominative) is the case of a subject and has no ending in the singular. In plural it has the ending -t, whereas in most other cases, the plural suffix is -i- which appears before the case suffix (e.g.: taloissa). It is also one of the cases of a grammatical object.

What is partitive Finnish?

The partitive singular is formed using the partitive stem and the partitive plural using the strong-grade plural stem. If the partitive stem ends in a consonant or two or more vowels, the partitive ending is -ta/-tä in the singular. Otherwise the ending is -a/-ä.

What does the Finnish alphabet look like?

The Finnish alphabet has 29 letters: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z, å, ä ja ö. The letters š and ž can occur only in loan words.

Does Finnish have honorifics?

Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Herra (Finnish: [ˈherːɑ]) means “Lord” in Finnish and “Sir” in Icelandic. It is now generally used in Finnish as an honorific for all men, the equivalent to the English titles “Mister,” “Sir,” and “gentleman”. Usually, noble landowners and high priests were “herra”.

Does Finnish have a word for please?

Finnish has no ‘please’ But “please” just simply doesn’t exist in Finnish. This nonexistent word is why Finns can be considered rude at first take.