Counting! That’s a pretty useful skill! Let’s take a look at the numbers in Finnish. First, I’ll present the cardinal numbers, which are just the regular numbers. After that, we’ll take a look at the ordinal numbers, which means “first, second, third” and so on.

1. The Cardinal Numbers in Finnish

All these example sentences use the phrase “Minulla on”, which means “I have”. The links in the translation lead to other beginner pages that deal with similar vocabulary (eg. cat will lead to a page about pets). The extra -a at the end of these Finnish words is the partitive, which is used with all numbers except one.

The next batch of numbers all have an example that starts with a location in the –ssa form, which means in. In addition, the partitive of the words in this list have a different ending than just -a.

These existential sentences are generally rephrased in English as “There are 10 xx in the xxx”, but I’m sticking to the word-for-word translation for this article.

If you’ve already progressed some in your studies, you will want to start exploring the inflection of these numbers. Yes, the numbers can be put in all the cases! For example the number six (kuusi), can be put in the partitive (kuutta), the genetive (kuuden), the inessive (kuudessa), the translative (kuudeksi) and all the other cases. You can find out more about the inflection of the numbers on our website too.

2. The Ordinal Numbers in Finnish

With the ordinal numbers, the bigger numbers are especially interesting. The numbers from 11 to 19 all end in –toista, with an –s– only added to the first part of the number (kahdestoista, kolmastoista). In numbers beyond 20, you can have up to three –s– markers within one number (kahdeskymmenesviides).

Just like the cardinal numbers, the ordinal numbers will also inflect in all the cases.