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Luokkakokouksessa miehet vain kättelevät toisiaan.

Luokkakokouksessa miehet vain kättelevät toisiaan.
At the class reunion, the men just shake each other's hands.
From Lesson 154:Each other (toisiaan)·Finnish

Questions & Answers about Luokkakokouksessa miehet vain kättelevät toisiaan.

Why does the word for "each other" (toisiaan) end in -aan?
To say "each other", Finnish uses forms of the word toinen. Here, it is in the plural partitive form (toisia) because the verb kätellä (to shake hands) requires a partitive object. Then, we add the third-person possessive suffix -an (which stretches the vowel to -aan). Literally, they are shaking "their others".
Could I use the singular form toistaan instead of toisiaan here?
Usually, if there are exactly two people shaking hands, you would use the singular form toistaan. Because miehet (the men) implies a larger group mingling at a class reunion, the plural form toisiaan is the most natural choice to show they are all shaking hands with various people in the group.
Is the verb kätellä related to the word for hand?
Yes! The basic word for hand is käsi, and its word stem is käte-. Adding a verb suffix to this stem creates kätellä, which is a verb specifically used to mean "to shake hands".
Why does kokous change to kokouksessa in the word luokkakokouksessa?
The word is a combination of luokka (class) and kokous (meeting). In Finnish, words ending in -us almost always change to an -ukse- stem before you add a location ending. That is why kokous plus the "in/at" ending -ssa becomes kokouksessa.

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