This article is an extension of my Old words vs. new words ending in -i article. Here, you can find a longer list of words that belong to one of the types of words ending in -i: UUSI-type words.

There are many wordtypes in Finnish that ends in an -i. Usually, they are divided into “old” and “new” words. These terms refer to the relative age of these words in the Finnish language. Old words have existed for millennia. Often, these are words related to nature (such as järvi “lake” and kivi “stone”), the human body (such as poski “cheek” and polvi “knee”) or other things that have been part of everyday life in the early years of Finnish inhabitation (such as kilpi “shield” and suksi “ski”).

Within the “old word” category, there are some subtypes. For words belonging to to uusi-type, the most distinguishable inflection elements are:

• The partitive case: these words will have -si replaced by -tta/ttä (e.g. uusi > uutta)
• Most of the singular cases: -si will be replaced by -de- before the case ending (e.g. uusi > uuden, uudella, uudessa, uudeksi)
• The illative and essive singular cases: the -si will be replaced by -te- before the case ending (e.g. uusi > uuteen, uutena)
• In the plural cases the case ending appears at the end of the word’s -si (e.g. uusi > uusia, uusissa, uusina)
  (apart from the T-plural ie. the plural nominative, e.g. uusi > uudet)

There is a very interesting historical explanation of how these words ended up having this “ti > si change” (ti > si muutos). One source you could give a read if your Finnish is good enough and you’re interested in linguistics is this pdf. While this change is extremely interesting, I haven’t covered this topic myself because so many people seem to be so much better at explaining this specific element.

1. Inflection of the word uusi

2. Words that inflect like uusi

2.1. SI > TE > DE

The following table contains words where -si replaced with -te- in the strong singular forms (uuteen and uutena) and -de- in the weak singular forms (e.g. uudessa, uudesta, uuden, uudeksi).

2.2. -NSI, -RSI and -LSI

While I decided to give the words below their own special space, they don’t in essence differ from uusi. However, as a new learner of Finnish, you may have grasped on to -si turning into -te- and -de- without realizing this isn’t the only consonant combination that is available for UUSI-type words.

The following table contains words which also get -si replaced with -te-. However, due to the consonant in front of the -te-:

• -rte- turns into -rre- (e.g. hirsi > hirteen > hirren, hirressä, hiirrelle)
• -nte- turns into -nne- (e.g. kansi > kanteen > kannen, kannessa, kannelle)
• -lte- turns into -lle- (e.g. jälsi > jälteen > jällen, jällessä, jällelle)

Note that there are only a few actually useful words of this type. I have bolded the words which I think are worth studying properly.

2.3. Some exceptional uusi-type words

The following words are also old words ending in -si but they have an exception within their inflection which sets them apart from the regular ruleset. Bolded are the forms that are different.

Notes

1. Wikipedia’s links

My article focuses on base words that belong to the UUSI-type. As such, you will find vesi in my list, but you won’t find jäävesi (ice water), keitinvesi (cooking water) or kraanavesi (tap water). For compound words, I suggest you look at Wikipedia’s list.

2. Other words ending in -i

You can find similar articles to this one for the other wordtypes that end in an -i:

Related posts:

List of old words ending in i of the ovi-type Plural Partitive of Long Words So-Called Partitive Verbs – Not Always Partitive? Duolingo: Introduction of the partitive case