# possesive pronouns & sound alternations



## PaBin

As I was going on with my study of Finnish, many questions arose. I hope you could help me answering them.

It seems that there's no difference between plural and singular possesive form:

my child - lapseni
my children - lapseni
my dog - koirani
my dogs - koirani

Am I right? So the only indicator of the plural form would be the word context:
My little dog - Minun pieni koirani
My little dogs - Minun pienet koirani

And how would you say e.g. "My friend's  book" and "My friends' books"

There's also this _-i -> -e_ sound alternation. From what I understad it applies only to two syllable words. So it would be:

lapsi - lapset
lumi - lumet

But not:

insinööri - *insinööret
tiikeri - *tiikeret

Is it correct?

I also asume that words borrowed from foreign languages are not likely to undergo any sound alternations, e.g. _kurssi, auto_. On the other hand, concerning the _-i -> -e_ alternation, I'm not sure about e.g. _posti, pankki, penkki, viini_. In spite of being borrowed, they look quite Finnish.


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## sammio

PaBin said:


> It seems that there's no difference between plural and singular possesive form:
> 
> my child - lapseni
> my children - lapseni
> my dog - koirani
> my dogs - koirani
> 
> Am I right? So the only indicator of the plural form would be the word context:
> My little dog - Minun pieni koirani
> My little dogs - Minun pienet koirani



You are totally right.



PaBin said:


> And how would you say e.g. "My friend's  book" and "My friends' books"



My friend's book = Ystäväni kirja.
My friends' books = Ystävieni kirjat.



PaBin said:


> There's also this _-i -> -e_ sound alternation. From what I understad it applies only to two syllable words. So it would be:
> 
> lapsi - lapset
> lumi - lumet
> 
> But not:
> 
> insinööri - *insinööret
> tiikeri - *tiikeret
> 
> Is it correct?



Correct.



PaBin said:


> I also asume that words borrowed from foreign languages are not likely to undergo any sound alternations, e.g. _kurssi, auto_. On the other hand, concerning the _-i -> -e_ alternation, I'm not sure about e.g. _posti, pankki, penkki, viini_. In spite of being borrowed, they look quite Finnish.



Correct again. In my opinion _penkki_ or _viini_ looks just as Finnish as _kurssi_, I mean they are all borrowed in the same way. Kurs -> kurssi, post - posti, bank -> pankki, bänk -> penkki etc. So no sound alternation here.

What were you asking again, you already seem to know alot!


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## sakvaka

Here's a list of all Finnish i-e mutation nouns:

http://users.jyu.fi/~pamakine/kieli/suomi/vaihtelu/ievaihtelu.html

Here's a nice rule of thumb: If the word is related to nature, it should belong to this type. If the word looks ancient and appears to belong to basic vocabulary, it should belong to this type.

järvi - järven
tähti - tähden
kivi - kiven
saari - saaren
lehti - lehden

But there are some notable exceptions:

kasvi - kasvin (plant)
siili - siilin (hedgehog) (occasionally also siili - siilen, but the Finnish Dictionary doesn't approve of this form)
äiti - äidin (mother)


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## Gavril

sakvaka said:


> Here's a list of all Finnish i-e mutation nouns:
> 
> http://users.jyu.fi/~pamakine/kieli/suomi/vaihtelu/ievaihtelu.html
> 
> Here's a nice rule of thumb: If the word is related to nature, it should belong to this type. If the word looks ancient and appears to belong to basic vocabulary, it should belong to this type.
> 
> järvi - järven
> tähti - tähden
> kivi - kiven
> saari - saaren
> lehti - lehden
> 
> But there are some notable exceptions:
> 
> kasvi - kasvin (plant)
> siili - siilin (hedgehog) (occasionally also siili - siilen, but the Finnish Dictionary doesn't approve of this form)
> äiti - äidin (mother)



Another rule of thumb is that words derived from verbs and ending in _-nti_ don't undergo vowel alternation. Some examples: 

_syönti_ "eating" (genitive _syönnin_), related to _syödä_ "eat"
_lyönti_ "blow, hit" (_lyönnin_), rel. to _lyödä_ "to beat"
_saanti_ "supply" (_saannin_), rel. to _saada_ "to receive"


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## PaBin

Thank you all!
I have one more question. If there is no change in the plural form in:

Minun pieni _koirani_
Minun pienet _koirani_

why is there one in:

_Ystäväni_ kirja
_Ystävieni_ kirjat.

I can see that in the second case there's apparently no word context to specify wheter I mean the plural or singular form of _ystävä. _Does it mean that always when I cannot rely on the word context, I should insert the indicator of the plural form _-i_ ?

Would it be then:

The ball of my dog - Koirani pallo
The ball of my dogs - Koiraini pallo ?


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## sammio

In the first examples _minun pieni koirani_ and _minun pienet koirani_ there's only a possessive suffix _-ni_ added to them, otherwise they're just basic forms of the word, in other words in nominative. In _ystäväni kirja_ and _ystävieni kirjat_ the word _ystävä_ has indeed a possessive suffix too but it is in genitive, so that's the difference. The translation for "my friend" and "my friends" would be _minun ystäväni_ for both, because there the word _ystävä_ is in nominative again. I don't have time to check if I'm 100% right but I'm quite sure that the singular and plural form is the same only for words in the nominative case, otherwise words in singular and plural have different forms.


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## sakvaka

Indeed. 

my friend's book - "friend" is logically in genitive
my friend - "friend" is logically in nominative

The possessive suffix makes distinction between nominative singular & plural and genitive singular disappear.

N _ystävä - ystävät_
G _ystävän - ystävien_
P _ystävää - ystäviä_

With -ni:

N _(minun) ystäväni - (minun) ystäväni_
G (minun) _ystäväni - (minun) ystävieni_
P _(minun) ystävääni - (minun) ystäviäni_

So, three forms all-in-one.

EXTRA: Spoken, informal form of Finnish loses all possessive suffixes, and see what the result is:

N _mun ystävä - mun ystävät_
G _mun ystävän - mun ystävien_
P _mun ystävää - mun ystäviä_


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## PaBin

Now it makes sense. Again thank you all. It's been really helpful.


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