kirjojen

Kirjojen is the genitive plural form of the Finnish noun kirja, meaning book. In Finnish, the genitive plural marks possession or association with more than one book, and it appears in noun phrases to show that relationship. For example, kirjojen kansi translates to the cover of the books, and kirjojen määrä to the number of books. The genitive plural is commonly used when a head noun governs another noun in a possessive or relational sense.

Form and usage: The typical pattern for genitive plural is a suffix -en attached to the nominative plural stem. For kirja, the nominative plural is kirjat, and its genitive plural is kirjojen. This form is used with various head nouns, producing phrases such as kirjojen sisältö (the content of the books), kirjojen sivut (the pages of the books), and kirjojen tarinat (the stories of the books). The genitive plural does not require an article in Finnish, and word order in a simple possessive phrase generally places the genitive noun before the head noun.

Etymology and grammar context: Kirjojen derives from kirja (book), a word with roots in Proto-Finnic. The genitive plural -en is a productive inflectional ending in Finnish, applied across many nouns to indicate possession or association with multiple items. English equivalents include phrases like “of the books” or “the books’.” Finnish uses this case system broadly to link nouns in compound meanings without prepositions.