# Finnish nouns



## Tjahzi

Do all Finnish nouns end in a vowel?


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## Gavril

Tjahzi said:


> Do all Finnish nouns end in a vowel?



No, quite a few end in a consonant. A couple of examples:

_manner _(genitive _manteren_) "mainland, continent"
_kevät _(_kevään_) "spring"
_tiehyt _(_tiehyen_) "duct"
_sävel_ (_sävelen_) "musical note"
_avain _(_avaimen_) "key"
_jäsen _(_jäsenen_) "limb, member"

Off the top of my head, I can only think of nouns that end in _-r, -t, -l _and _-n_ in the nominative singular, but there may be more possibilities.

As you can see from examples like _avain, _earlier word-final *_-m _has become _-n_ , so at one time there may have been examples with _-m _as well.


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## MaijaPoppanen

And there are also nouns that end in -s.
opas "guide"
opus "opus, tome"


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## Tjahzi

I see. 

Hm, according to wiktionary, _avain_ originates from the verb _ava- _and the "verb to noun"-suffix _-in_. However, the strong presence of _-m-_ in the declension table certainly suggest it has been there for a while...

Interesting to see that the nouns that don't end in a vowel end in a coronal consonant, given that both _-t_ and _-n_ are such important morphemes.

On a side note, do you have any idea of whether all the nouns ending in a vowel have lost a consonant or gained the vowel?


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## Gavril

Tjahzi said:


> I see.
> 
> Hm, according to wiktionary, _avain_ originates from the verb _ava- _and the "verb to noun"-suffix _-in_. However, the strong presence of _-m-_ in the declension table certainly suggest it has been there for a while...



Yes, _-in _is usually an instrumental suffix (_laskin _"calculator" < _laskea _"count", _pakastin _"freezer" < _pakastaa _"freeze", etc.). There are some nouns with original *_-m _that don't contain this suffix: _sydän _(_sydäme-_) "heart", _laidun _(_laitume_-) "pasture".



> Interesting to see that the nouns that don't end in a vowel end in a coronal consonant, given that both _-t_ and _-n_ are such important morphemes.
> 
> On a side note, do you have any idea of whether all the nouns ending in a vowel have lost a consonant or gained the vowel?



Almost all nouns that end in _-e _in modern (standard) Finnish -- _huone _"room", _lähde _"source", _vene _"boat", etc. -- originally ended in *-_eš_. If I recall correctly, these nouns still have a final consonant (preserved as _-h_) in some Finnish dialects, and in some standard Finnish words the consonant has survived through metathesis (e.g., _perhe _"family").

Newer words incorporated from other languages often have an _-i _added to them if they end in a consonant: e.g., _albumi _"album", _grilli _"grill".

These two types of nouns are the only examples that come to mind right now of final consonant -> final vowel.


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## Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Tjahzi said:


> On a side note, do you have any idea of whether all the nouns ending in a vowel have lost a consonant or gained the vowel?



I am no expert in etymology, but it looks like for some loanwords, like television, Finns chose to adapt it in way that the ending consonant isn't pronounced.


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## Gavril

Extra Virgin Olive Oil said:


> I am no expert in etymology, but it looks like for some loanwords, like television, Finns chose to adapt it in way that the ending consonant isn't pronounced.



I think _televisio _(like _resoluutio, kommunikaatio _etc.) is a case of trying to be closer to the original Latin form, rather than a case where final _-n _(cf. Swedish _television, resolution_ etc.) has been dropped. The nominative singular of these words in Latin would have been _televisio, resolutio, communicatio_ etc., but most languages have used the accusative singular (_televisionem, resolutionem, communicationem_) as their model when adopting these words.


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## DrWatson

There are indeed some constraints in Finnish concerning the final sound in a word. Original Finnish nouns (i.e. not including e.g. non-integrated loanwords like_ show_ and_ pop_) can only end in a vowel or a coronal consonant (_-t, -s, -l, -n, -r_). The number of vowel-final nouns surpasses by far the number of consonant-final ones. Even in Proto-Uralic most (if not all) nouns ended in a vowel, so I would say this tendency is a very old one.

As Gavril noted, in the course of history some words have lost the final consonant (_*saδek > sade _'rain', _*hooneh > huone_ 'room') or it has become something else (_*syδäm > sydän_). The words that have ended in _-ek_ or _-eh_ still retain a trace of the final consonant in most dialects, usually assimilating the initial consonant of the following word. For example, _hernekeitto_ (_herne_ 'pea + _keitto_ 'soup') is pronounced [hernekkeitto], because _herne_ comes from _*herneh_.


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