Inflecting '-ton' adjectives (-ton, -ttömän)

In Finnish, the suffix -ton or -tön is used to mean "without" or "-less", much like in English. For example, asua (to inhabit) gives us asumaton (uninhabited). But to describe our struggles on a deserted island, we need to know how to inflect these adjectives to fit into sentences.

The Stem Change: -ton to -ttoma-

Before adding most case endings (except the partitive singular) or a plural marker to an adjective ending in -ton or -tön, the end of the word undergoes a significant stem change.

• -ton becomes the strong stem -ttoma-
• -tön becomes the strong stem -ttömä-

To form the genitive case (adding -n), asumaton becomes asumattoman. Notice how we use it to describe the island:

The exact same stem is used when forming the nominative plural with -t:

Vowel Harmony: -tön to -ttömä-

If the word follows front-vowel harmony (containing ä, ö, or y), you use -ttömä-. Let's apply an illative (into) ending (-Vn) to ääretön (infinite), which becomes äärettömään:

Locative Cases

This strong stem is the foundation for all locative cases. If you want to say "in a merciless place", armoton becomes armottomassa with the inessive (-ssa) ending:

Here we use the illative case again, this time with pohjaton (bottomless) changing to pohjattomaan:

Survival Vocabulary in Action

Let's put this into practice with a couple more essential survival words. Avuton comes from apu (help), meaning "helpless". In the genitive form, it becomes avuttoman:

Similarly, tulokseton (fruitless/unsuccessful) becomes tuloksettoman when describing a day's effort: