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I've answered a couple of questions about choosing the right case to use (you can find them here and here). In each of these posts, I've been talking about the concept of ainesana, but I haven't really devoted time to explaining what they are and how to recognize them. So here goes!
The word ainesana is composed of two words, aine 'material, element' and sana 'word'. Ainesana literally means an "element word" or "material word", and its English counterpart is the uncountable noun. However, unlike in English, in Finnish it's often less useful to think of these words in terms of counting. In my experience, it's often more useful to think about dividing, and some Finnish grammars use the term jaollinen, 'divisible' to mean the same thing - if you can divide it, it's an ainesana. Ainesanas behave a bit differently than other words, especially when it comes to using the partitive case. The following groups of nouns are ainesanas: 1) food and drink: kahvi 'coffee', juusto 'cheese', mehu 'juice', leipä 'bread' 2) elements and materials: vesi 'water', nahka 'leather', tuli 'fire' 3) abstract concepts and feelings: rakkaus 'love', ystävyys 'friendship', ilo 'joy' Ainesanas are things that you can stick into a blender and mush up without them losing their essence. A mashed potato is still a potato, but stick your cellphone (not an ainesana) into your vitamix and what you get is a pile of broken plastic, glass and metal. Love remains love even when your heart is broken. Another way to phrase the same idea is that with ainesanas, even the tiniest bit of the thing is still the thing. If you pour some coffee into a coffee cup, you now have coffee in a cup as well as in a coffee pot. Cut up a cake, kakku, and dish it out and you have lots of plates with cake. If you cut up a t-shirt in a similar way you end up with garbage, not a t-shirt, but the shards are still fabric, kangas, which of course is, again, an ainesana. If you can divide it without it losing its essence, it's an ainesana. If you can't, it's not.
5 Comments
Mayor
21/4/2018 15:31:21
What about 'sää'? :)
Mari
23/4/2018 15:50:09
Hi Mayor! 6/1/2019 08:04:43
English is such a hard subject to fully understand. I can confidently say that there are a lot of people who are great at English, but still struggle with grammar. Being able to speak English is such a great skill to have, especially today. Being able to speak multiple languages can benefit you in so many ways. That is why, I really think that people should invest their time in trying to learn the English language and improving their grammar. Having just been introduced to ainesana in the past hour, I was very confused about why some words took the partitive and others did not. This article was super helpful, and also warmed my heart to Finnish language again. My first thought upon the different endings was frustration and confusion because it seemed there was no logic, but I think what you explained is incredibly interesting. It's fascinating when languages have this kind of subconscious (to natives) differentiation of ideas/objects in thought. Kiitos :) Leave a Reply. |
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