Learn Finnish: Lapsella on kuume tänään. - The child has a fever today.

In Finnish, there is no single verb for "to have". Instead, you use the ending -lla or -llä (which usually means "on" or "at") followed by the verb on (is). So, lapsella on literally means "on the child is". This is the standard Finnish structure for saying someone has something, including illnesses.

The dictionary word for child is lapsi. Why is it lapsella and not "lapsilla"?

For many older Finnish words ending in -i, the -i changes to an -e- before you add an ending. So the stem of lapsi becomes lapse-, giving us lapsella. Be careful: if you write lapsilla, that extra -i- actually marks a plural, meaning "the children have"!

This lesson teaches possessive suffixes like -ni (my). How would I change this to say "My child has a fever today"?

You would attach the possessive suffix to the very end of the word that already has the -lla ending. Lapsella becomes lapsellani (on my child). The full sentence is then Lapsellani on kuume tänään.

What happens to the word kuume (fever) if the child does not have a fever?