The suffix -mainen/mäinen can be used to create adjectives. When used to describe a noun, these adjectives express that the noun resembles the base word. In English, you can do the same by adding, for example, -like (motherlike, catlike) or -y (oily, mushroomy) to a noun. You choose either -mainen or -mäinen depending on the word you add the suffix to, following the vowel harmony rules.

This list is far from complete, especially because this suffix is productive. In other words, people can use the suffix on the fly and add it to random nouns to create temporary words that describe that something is much like the base word.

There are some words created with the suffix MAINEN that have lexicalized, ie. their meaning has shifted slightly into a very specific meaning. This is the case for the following adjectives.

To be fair, we could extend this list to include some of the adjectives I decided to just put in the table above. For example, kettumainen doesn’t mean someone looks like a fox. Rather, in Finnish fairytales the fox is a cunning jokester, so the adjective kettumainen refers to cunning behavior.

Other similar suffixes and adjectives

There are in fact several suffixes in the Finnish language that carry a similar meaning.

The suffix -llinen has multiple meanings, but in some cases it carries the same meaning of resembling something, such as in adjectives like ystävällinen “friendly” and lapsellinen “childish”. There is a different feel to these adjectives, because with -llinen you create adjectives that embody the base word’s meaning, while with -mainen you create adjectives that just resemble the base word’s meaning.

You might also consider the suffix -kas. The difference is most easily explained using the base word aalto “wave”. The adjective aaltomainen describes wave-like phenomenons or things, such as the shingles on a roof. Meanwhile, aallokas means “wavy” in the sense of actually containing waves: aallokas meri means the sea is full of waves rather than still.

The suffix –inen is also common in Finnish. We can compare these suffixes through the word maito “milk”. The adjective maitomainen is used to refer to things that resemble milk, either in taste, color or texture. On the other hand, the adjective maitoinen typically means that something contains milk, such as maitoinen juusto, a cheese that has a rather milky flavor because it contains lots of milk.

In addition to saying someone’s behavior is aikuismainen “adultlike”, we can use the adjective kaltainen to create “aikuisen kaltainen” which means “resembling an adult”. You can add kaltainen behind the genitive form of any noun when describing similar things. This is used in dictionary definitions quite a bit: a kornetti (cornet) is a “trumpetin kaltainen soitin” (an instrument that is similar to a trumpet), and mate is a “teen kaltainen juoma” (a drink that is similar to tea).

Other adjectives that allow for the same comparison are: veroinen, tapainen and ominainen. I won’t be diving into these here, but something that can be described as being like new, almost new, could in Finnish be described as being “uuden veroinen” or “uuden kaltainen“. If someone’s behavior is tyrannical, we could describe that as tyrannimainen, tyrannille ominainen or tyrannin kaltainen. Dictionaries do use these different suffixes to describe each other, creating a bit of a circular definition. For example, unenomainen “dreamlike”, is defined saying “unelle ominainen” and “unen kaltainen“.

Read more elsewhere:

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