A Finnish Grammar

by Charles Eliot

I. The letter d does not exist. T disappears altogether in the cases where in the ordinary dialect it is softened to d. For instance—saa’a (saada), pöyän (pöydän), tieän (tiedän), tahon (tahdon), kahen (kahden), yhen (yhden), puhas (puhdas), ouoille (oudoille), eellä, eessä (edellä, edessä), sio (sido).

II. Similarly the letter k is dropped altogether when in literary Finnish it either becomes j or remains unchanged.

(1) lk, rk in a closed syllable become simple l and r, not lj, rj: e.g. jälen for jäljen (jälki), kulen for kuljen.

(2) sk and tk, which are not subject to softening in ordinary Finnish, become s and t in closed syllables: kosen for kosken, kaselle for kaskelle, itettävä for itkettävä.

III. rt, lt are not assimilated in the infinitive of verbs of conj. 3: kuulta, surten for kuulla, surren.

IV. The pronominal affixes do not always prevent consonants being softened as in ordinary Finnish: ajansa for aikansa, iäni for ikäni.

V. Where long vowels and diphthongs are the result of contraction, the Kalevala employs dissyllabic forms. These contracted forms in ordinary Finnish may be divided into two classes.

(a) The long vowel is the result of the omission of h (representing an original s or other consonant) between the two component vowels. In such cases the Kalevala always employs the fuller and more primitive forms with h. So we have vierahan for the literary vieraan, kotihin for kotiin, käyähän for käydään (d omitted).

(b) But there are a number of cases where the long vowels aa and ää in ordinary literary Finnish are not the result of the omission of h. Under these circumstances the Kalevala has oa instead of aa and eä instead of ää. Thus the partitive singular of kala is formed by suffixing a—that is kala-a. In ordinary Finnish this gives kalaa (dissyllabic), but in the Kalevala we find kaloa. This form may be compared with the partitive plural, kaloja, where a becomes o in ordinary Finnish. It is to be noted however that the change to oa occurs in the Kalevala even when the vowel of the first syllable is a—oroa for oraa.