lukumäärä

Lukumäärä is a Finnish noun meaning the number of items in a set or the quantity of discrete units. It is used to count concrete, countable entities such as people, objects or events and contrasts with broader quantities indicated by määrää in non-countable contexts. In statistical or survey language, lukumäärä refers to a discrete count often presented alongside percentages or proportions.

The base form is lukumäärä; the word inflects like other Finnish nouns. Common forms include lukumäärän (genitive), lukumäärää (partitive), and plural lukumäärät with lukumäärien in the genitive plural. In writing and tables, the abbreviation lkm. is frequently used to indicate count.

In practice, you might encounter sentences such as: Lukumäärä osallistujia oli 250. Tiedot osoittavat lukumäärän nousun viime vuosina. The partitive form lukumäärää appears in constructions that treat the amount as an indeterminate portion or in contexts using certain verbs: Lukumäärää ei ole vielä tiedossa.

Lukumäärä is often contrasted with määrä, which is a broader term for amount or quantity that does not necessarily imply discrete counting. Related terms include kappalemäärä (number of pieces), which is more specific to counting individual items, and prosentti, which expresses the relative share of a lukumäärä in relation to a total.