State adverbials with possessive suffixes (innoissaan, huolissaan)

Expressing Internal States

In Finnish, some emotions and internal states are not expressed with simple adjectives. Instead, you use a state adverbial (tilanilmaus). Literally translated, these structures imply that you are "in your excitements" or "in your worries."

These words are formed by taking a noun root, adding the plural inessive case (-issa-), and attaching a possessive suffix.

When you look these words up in a dictionary, they are usually listed with the third-person suffix -an / -ään:

• innoissaan (excited)
• huolissaan (worried)
• tosissaan (serious, in earnest)
• raivoissaan (furious, in a rage)

Matching the Subject

Because these expressions are built with possessive suffixes, the ending must change to match the subject of the sentence. If I am excited, I use the first-person suffix -ni. If we are worried, we use the first-person plural suffix -mme.

Here is how the possessive suffixes attach to the base innoissa- (excited):

Let's see this in action. When speaking about yourself, you will use the -ni suffix:

Notice that the third-person suffix (-an) is identical for both singular (hän) and plural (he) subjects:

The same rules apply to all the other state adverbials in this group, no matter how intense the emotion gets on the track:

When speaking about "us" (me) or "you all" (te), remember to use the plural suffixes -mme and -nne respectively:

Because these words behave like adverbs rather than standard adjectives, they do not change based on what case the rest of the sentence is in. You just need to ensure the possessive suffix matches the person experiencing the emotion!