Breakdown of Historia on kaupungin raunioissa ja kivissä.
olla
to be
ja
and
kaupunki
city
historia
history
kivi
the stone
raunio
the ruin
Questions & Answers about Historia on kaupungin raunioissa ja kivissä.
How do we form the inessive plural raunioissa from the basic word raunio?
To form the plural inessive (meaning "in the..."), you add the plural marker -i- followed by the inessive ending -ssa or -ssä. Since raunio ends in o, you just attach them directly: raunio + i + ssa = raunioissa.
The word for stone is kivi. Why is the plural "in the stones" kivissä instead of kiveissä?
For older Finnish words ending in -i, the stem changes to an -e- in the singular (like kivessä for "in the stone"). However, in the plural, that -e- combines with the plural -i- and becomes just -i-. So the plural stem is kivi-, making the inessive plural kivissä.
Why does raunioissa end in -ssa but kivissä ends in -ssä?
This is due to vowel harmony. Because raunio contains the back vowels a, u, and o, it must take the back vowel ending -ssa. The word kivi only contains the neutral vowel i, which takes the front vowel ending -ssä when no back vowels are present in the word.
I recognize the word kaupunki (city), but here it is kaupungin. What caused this change?
The word is in the genitive case to show possession ("the city's"). Adding the -n ending closes the last syllable, which triggers consonant gradation. The strong nk in kaupunki softens to the weak ng in kaupungin.
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