kanssa

Kanssa is a Finnish postposition meaning with or along with. It marks accompaniment or association and is used to indicate that someone is together with another person or group. In Finnish grammar it forms a comitative construction, typically following the word it relates to and connecting to the genitive form of the other participant.

Forms and usage. With pronouns, kanssa combines to create fused forms such as kanssani, kanssasi, kanssaan, kanssamme, and kanssanne. With nouns, the preceding noun is put in the genitive: kavereiden kanssa (with friends), ystävien kanssa (with friends). The construction is flexible enough to attach to both singular and plural entities and to express various inclusivity or exclusivity in discourse.

Examples. Kävelin hänen kanssaan. (I walked with him.) Hän tuli kanssamme. (He came with us.) Hän tuli kanssanne. (He came with you all.) Kävin kaupungilla ystävieni kanssa. (I went to town with my friends.) These examples show kanssa defining companionship as part of the action or situation.

Notes. Kanssa is a distinctive Finnish feature used for expressing accompaniment and is not a general preposition; it often appears in fixed phrases and everyday speech. Its forms with pronouns (kanssani, kanssasi, kanssaan, kanssamme, kanssanne) reflect person and number. In translated or cross-linguistic contexts, the exact equivalent of “with” may be expressed through different grammatical devices.

See also. Finnish grammar; Comitative constructions in Uralic languages.