Nationaalisen

Nationaalisen is the genitive singular form of the Finnish adjective nationaalinen, a loanword borrowed to mean “national” or “pertaining to a nation.” In standard Finnish, the more common equivalent is kansallinen. Nationaalinen reflects influence from Dutch nationaal and related languages, and it appears primarily in contexts where Finnish text mirrors a source language’s terminology or in bilingual materials.

As a Finnish inflected adjective, nationaalinen follows the normal pattern for adding case endings to -inen adjectives. The base form nationaalinen combines the root nationaal- with the Finnish adjective suffix -inen, and the genitive singular is nationaalisen. This case ending marks nouns modified by the adjective in a possessive or relational sense, such as “nationaalisen identiteetin” (of the national identity) or “nationaalisen lainsäädännön” (of the national legislation).

Usage and prevalence are modest in contemporary Finnish. Writers typically substitute kansallinen or kansallisen in most contexts. Nationaalinen may be found in legal or technical translations aiming to preserve original phrasing, in historical texts discussing language contact, or in stylistic choices that deliberately echo a source language’s terminology.

See also:

- Kansallinen (the standard Finnish equivalent)

- Nationaalinen as a loanword in Finnish vocabulary

- Language contact and loanword influence in Finnish

In summary, nationaalisen is a grammatical form tied to a nonstandard loanword for “national,” chiefly encountered in specialized or bilingual contexts rather than everyday Finnish.