Case Government: A Summary

Which case a verb, adjective or postposition demands of its complement is called its rection (case government), and it is the single hardest thing to guess in Finnish — because it is lexical, not logical. There is no rule that derives pidän kahvista ("I like coffee", literally "I like of coffee") from meaning; you simply learn that pitää governs the elative, the way you learn that English "depend" wants "on". This page gathers the highest-frequency rections into lookup tables so you can check the case a word requires. Treat each verb as arriving with its case attached — learn pitää + elative as one unit, not two.

The trap: English prepositions do not map onto Finnish cases

The deepest error is transfer. English marks these relationships with prepositions, and learners reach for whatever Finnish case feels like the English preposition. It rarely lines up:

Verbs with a partitive object

A large class of verbs takes its object in the partitive — because the action is open-ended, directed at its target rather than completing it. English gives no signal; the object just looks like a plain object. (The full mechanism is on the partitive after verbs page.)

Verbs governing the elative (-sta/-stä)

The elative — literally "out of / from" — is the case of liking, talking about, and depending on. This is where pitää ("like") lives, the rection English speakers forget most often:

Verbs governing the illative (-Vn/-hVn/-seen)

The illative — "into" — is the case of trusting, believing in, getting used to, and taking part in. Think of it as directing your belief or attention into something:

Verbs governing the ablative and allative

These two mark the "from" and "to" of transactions — asking, buying and borrowing pull from a source (ablative -lta/-ltä); giving, telling and calling push to a recipient (allative -lle):

A special ablative cluster covers seeming: näyttää (look), tuntua (feel), kuulostaa (sound), maistua (taste) all take the ablative for what something is like:

Note too that several of these verbs take two complements at once. Kysyä and pyytää combine ablative (the person) with a partitive (the thing): kysyn sinulta neuvoa ("I ask you for advice"); kertoa combines allative (person) with elative (topic): kerron sinulle matkasta ("I tell you about the trip").

Adjectives and their case

Predicate adjectives govern cases too, and again they rarely match English:

Postpositions

Rection is not only a verb matter — postpositions govern cases too, and the pattern is clean: almost all take the genitive (talon edessä, työn jälkeen), while a short set takes the partitive (ennen joulua, ilman rahaa). The full account is on the cases required by postpositions page.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Rection is lexical: each word's case must be learned as a unit — pitää + elative, luottaa + illative — never derived from the English preposition.
• Partitive object verbs: rakastaa, odottaa, auttaa, tarvita, kuunnella, etsiä, harrastaa, pelätä.
• Elative verbs (liking, discussing, depending): pitää, tykätä, nauttia, puhua, huolehtia, riippua, johtua, luopua.
• Illative verbs (trust, belief, participation): uskoa (in), luottaa, rakastua, tutustua, tottua, keskittyä, osallistua, vastata.
• Ablative "from" (kysyä, pyytää, ostaa, lainata, saada, and seeming: näyttää, tuntua, kuulostaa) vs allative "to" (antaa, soittaa, kertoa, sanoa, lähettää).
• Postpositions: genitive by default (talon edessä), partitive for a short set (ennen joulua).