Questions & Answers about Sormesi on kuvan päällä.
Why is it sormesi and not sormisi?
The basic word for "finger" is sormi. When attaching an ending to many older Finnish words that end in -i, the -i changes to an -e-. So, the base becomes sorme-, and adding the "your" suffix -si gives us sormesi.
Why isn't the word sinun (your) used here?
In standard written Finnish, you can leave out the pronoun sinun (your) or minun (my) because the possessive ending attached to the noun (like -si) already tells the reader who owns it. Dropping the pronoun is especially common when talking about body parts.
Why does the word for picture (kuva) have an -n at the end (kuvan)?
The word päällä (on / on top of) is a postposition. In Finnish, words that come right before a postposition almost always take the genitive ending -n. So kuva (picture) becomes kuvan to connect it to päällä.
We've learned that -lla/-llä means "on" (like on a table). Is that what's happening at the end of päällä?
Exactly! The word pää means "head" or "top", and -llä is the location ending for "on". While it literally means "on the head of", päällä functions as a set postposition that simply means "on" or "on top of".