okay, i cant sleep and im a tiny bit hungover, but here goes a run through my latest finnish exam. (which was on wednesday). i got just under 70% which wasnt too bad considering the almost complete lack of proper study i did for it.

there was nine parts to the test. i’ll go through most of them here. here we go!

1. essiivi or translatiivi

essiivi translates to “essive” which means: of, relating to, or being the grammatical case indicating a state of being or an existence in a particular capacity or state in some languages, as in finnish professorina, “as a professor.” translatiivi is the translative case which is defined as being: of, relating to, or being the grammatical case indicating the state into which one passes in certain languages, as in finnish (tule) terveeksi! “(get) well!”

for this part, we were given ten sentances and we had to choose if the correct form was essiivi or translatiivi. this was a pretty straightforward thing. but as with everything in finnish, the end of the word changes. essiivi changes the ending of the word by adding a “-na” or “-nä” to it. whilst translatiivi changes it by adding “-ksi”. so, some examples from the test: (the word in backets is what we had to use as a basis)

jukka valmistui lääkäriksi (lääkäri) viime vuonna (jukka graduated to be a doctor last year) jo lapsena (lapsi) jukka tiesi, että hanestä tulee lääkäri already as a child, jukka knew that he wanted to become a doctor

in the second example, lapsi changes to lapsena. the i changes to an e in some circumstances. here is another two from the test:

heti kesällä han meni sijaiseksi (sijainen) terveyskeskuskseen right away during the summer, he went to be an assisitant at a health centre opiskeluaikana hän työskenteli apulaisena (apulainen) lääkäriasemalla during his study period, he worked as an aid in a doctors station.

in these two examples you can see one of the many strange things in the finnish language. “-nen” ending words act to a certain pattern. when they are changed for whatever reason, the -nen becomes -se-. and after the “se” other endings are added on (which in this case was -ksi and -na). (for plural words the -nen changes to -si). hours of fun.

okay, its 0930 and ive been up since 0600 and i got to bed drunk at 0200 (see the two previous posts). so i’ll continue later today.