Grammar.

Allow me to clarify my emo-ness from yesterday and use words to explain instead of emo-pictures found on Google when inputting song names haha.

So after I finished reading and doing exercises from "From Start to Finnish," I sort of felt, and still feel, as though I've hit a wall. I have some problems with cases - as many people do, I'm sure - and I'm trying to work those out before learning more grammar. I don't want to overwhelm myself any more than I already have and build anything on a crumbling foundation. I've thus decided to spend a little more time on the "easy" aka. basic stuff and blog/babble about it on my blog. [Feel free to skip this post if this is of no interest to you, or read it and learn a little about how the Finnish language works.]

Alright so where do I begin?

As a basic introduction, Finnish has few pre-/postpositions. Instead, state of objects are expressed by inflecting the end of a word to convey a certain meaning.
In the house = talossa [where -ssa means 'in', and talo is 'house']
There are 15 different ways to inflect a noun, adjective, adverb, even preposition or postposition...in the singular [let's keep it simple for now.].

Additionally, there are two different roots for each word, the strong root and the weak root. Type A words are strong in the basic, partitive, illative and essive forms and weak in all other singular forms. Whereas type B words are weak in the basic and partitive forms and strong in all other singular forms.

In order to categorize words and eventually learn their patterns, it's easiest to think of them as 13 separate groups [if only I were joking]... or at least it makes things feel as though they can be learned, instead of just stared at.
- words that end in vowels
-> ending in 1 vowel
-> ending in 2 vowels or a consonant
-> old words ending in -i
-> words that end in -e
-> words that end in -li, -ni or -ri
- words that end in -si
- words that end in -nen
- words that end in -in
- words that end in -is, -as or -äs
- words that end in -us/-ys/-os/-ös/-es
- words that end in -ton/-tön
- words that end in -ut/yt
- words that end in -nut/nyt (-lut/lyt, sut/syt, -rut)
- words that end in -uus/-yys, -us, -ys
- words that end in -el, -en, -er, -ar
- words that end in -tar/-tär

That was slightly more than 13 but some of the vowel endings might actually be the same. Either way, those categories help divide the different patterns that words in the partitive and genitive form follow. Oftentimes when learning words, knowing the partitive and genitive forms (strong and weak respectively) is enough to form all other cases.

I think that's enough for now. I know that lesson jumped from knowing nothing about Finnish to not understanding anything but I hope I got most of that right. I've been trying to learn all the groups lately and their respective partitive endings [I didn't even delve into that above]. The next step is learning all their genitive endings... and then slowly going back to the plural case forms that will soon cause me much less grief.
I hope this post didn't sound too whinny. Or at least that it conveyed my sense of frustration with hope and a decent amount of effort being put it.

<3.