There is a small group of words that end in a consonant without belonging to one of the big groups, like words ending in -tAr, -tOn or -As. In this article, we will go through Finnish words ending in -l, -n, -r.

1. Finnish Words Ending in -l, -n, -r

First, I will be listing the most common Finnish words ending in -l, -n, -r. The numbers next to each word refer to how these words will be inflected in the Finnish cases (see further below).

2. The Inflection of Words Ending in -l, -n, -r

2.1. Words marked with #1 above: general rule

The words from the table above that are marked with a #1 are the easiest of the bunch.

2.2. The inflection of the word vasen

The inflection of the word vasen is pretty special. Its inflection looks very much like how the comparative of an adjective would look, with the exception of the basic form and the partitive.

2.3. The inflection of the word kevät

The inflection of kevät is very much like the inflection of nouns such as vieras. The only difference other than the nominative is the singular partitive (kevättä vs vierasta).

2.4. The inflection of the words lämmin and hapan

Lämmin and hapan both undergo wordtype B consonant gradation.

2.5. The Inflection of the words mies

The word mies is one of a kind, with that -h- coming seemingly out of nowhere!

3. Mixed Paradigms

There is a fairly large group of words ending in -l, -n, r that have a synonym that’s near-identical. For example, the words ommel and ompele both mean “stitch”, which the words manner and mantere both mean “mainland”.

These are interesting words because both synonyms have their own inflection, but in practice people only use certain forms of each paradigm. It’s common to use the -er word for the basic form and the partitive (e.g. manner, mannerta), but in the other cases use the -ere variant’s forms (e.g. mantereella, mantereeseen).

3.1. Contrastive Inflection of ommel and ompele

Below, you can find the full paradigm of both the words ommel and ompele. As you can see, they each have their own inflections. However, when used, these two paradigms will be mixed, with certain forms from one paradigm being used in certain cases.

In practice, we will inflect this word with ommel and ommelta from the first table, and the rest of the paradigm from the second table, e.g. ompeleeseen and ompeleelta.

3.2. Combined Inflection of ommel and ompele

For many words, ommel included, the basic form and the singular partitive will be taken from the consonant stem (the left/first table), while all the other forms are taken from the vowel stem (the right/second table).

3.3. Combined Inflection of manner and mantere

3.4. Combined Inflection of sammal and sammale

3.5. Combined Inflection of kyynel and kyynele

The word for “tear” is less clear than manner. Both paradigms are used for most of the cases. Only the bolded cases have a fairly clear preference form.

3.6. Combined Inflection of udar and utare

While you may sometimes hear or see the inflected forms of udar, we can consider this word as more or less dead. I am listing the inflection of both mainly for contrastive purposes.

3.7. Combined Inflection of taival and taipale

3.8. Combined Inflection of penger and penkere

Read more about the topic in Finnish

Related posts:

Words Ending in -is – Kallis Kaunis Futis Roskis Old Words versus New Words Ending in -i Words Ending in -As – Taivutus: As-Loppuiset Sanat Words ending in -llinen- Finnish Vocabulary