Finnish cases explained: all 15, with examples
Finnish famously has 15 cases. It sounds scary, but the idea is simple: where English adds a little word (in, from, to, with, as), Finnish changes the noun's ending. Learn the endings once and they work on almost every noun.
Learn Finnish with every noun's cases on the card →
The cases, with talo (house)
| Case | Ending | talo → | Means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | — | talo | a/the house (the subject) |
| Genitive | -n | talon | of the house / house's |
| Partitive | -a / -ta | taloa | house (partial / as an object) |
| Inessive | -ssa | talossa | in the house |
| Elative | -sta | talosta | out of the house |
| Illative | -Vn | taloon | into the house |
| Adessive | -lla | talolla | at/on the house · also “to have” |
| Ablative | -lta | talolta | from the house |
| Allative | -lle | talolle | to / onto the house |
| Essive | -na | talona | as a house |
| Translative | -ksi | taloksi | (turning) into a house |
| Abessive | -tta | talotta | without a house |
The three not shown — comitative (-ine, “with”), instructive (-in), and the accusative (which just borrows the nominative or genitive) — are rare or predictable, so most learners meet them last.
The three “location” trios
Six of the cases are just in / out of / into and at / from / to — learn them as two sets of three:
| where (static) | from | to | |
|---|---|---|---|
| inside | -ssa (in) | -sta (out of) | -Vn (into) |
| on / at | -lla (at) | -lta (from) | -lle (to) |
Consonant gradation (the tricky bit)
Some consonants soften when an ending is added — k, p, t weaken (or the reverse). It's regular once you spot it:
| word | changes to | English |
|---|---|---|
| käsi | kädessä (t→d) | hand → in the hand |
| katu | kadulla (t→d) | street → on the street |
| tyttö | tytön (tt→t) | girl → girl's |
| kauppa | kaupassa (pp→p) | shop → in the shop |
In VocabFreak, every Finnish noun card has a 🔤 Word forms button showing its full case table — singular and plural — with gradation already applied. The forms come from Wiktionary's inflection data, so they're the real thing.
Study the ~5,000 most common Finnish words — with every noun's cases →
See also: spoken Finnish (puhekieli) · how the method works · open the app