Breakdown of Tämä uusi laukku on nahkainen.
tämä
this
olla
to be
uusi
new
laukku
bag
nahkainen
made of leather
Questions & Answers about Tämä uusi laukku on nahkainen.
How exactly is the word nahkainen built in this sentence?
It is formed by taking the noun nahka (leather) and adding the suffix -inen. This is a highly productive pattern in Finnish used to turn a noun denoting a material into an adjective that means "made of [material]".
Could I also just say Tämä uusi laukku on nahkaa?
Yes, absolutely! Saying on nahkaa (using the partitive case of the noun nahka) is just as common and natural as using the derived adjective nahkainen. Both effectively mean that the bag is made of leather.
If I want to use nahkainen right in front of the noun (attributively) in a different case, how does it change? For example, "I bought a leather bag."
Words ending in -inen have a word stem that changes to -ise- before you add case endings. To say "I bought a leather bag", both the adjective and the noun need the genitive/accusative -n ending, so it becomes: Ostin nahkaisen laukun.
Are there other common materials that use this exact -inen pattern?
Yes, you will see this everywhere! Some common examples you might already know or will soon encounter are puu (wood) becoming puinen (wooden), lasi (glass) becoming lasinen (made of glass), and kulta (gold) becoming kultainen (golden).
Learn Tämä uusi laukku on nahkainen and more in Finnish
All course content and exercises are completely free — no paywalls, no trial periods, no signup needed.
- ✓ Practice with interactive exercises
- ✓ Track your progress with spaced repetition
- ✓Learn at your own pace — completely free