matkustajia

Matkustajia is a Finnish noun form meaning travelers or passengers. It is the partitive plural of matkustaja, the term for a person who travels.

In Finnish, the partitive plural is used in several common situations, including when referring to an indefinite quantity or when the noun functions as the object of a verb or preposition. For example: bussissa on paljon matkustajia (There are many passengers on the bus), and Kaksi matkustajaa odottaa laiturilla (Two travelers are waiting on the platform). The latter sentence also illustrates how numerals interact with noun forms: kaks i matkustajaa uses the partitive singular, while when the quantity is expressed more broadly, the partitive plural is used.

Matkustajia appears in contexts discussing groups of people who travel, such as in transportation statistics, travel planning, or everyday conversation about passengers on a vehicle or at a station. The form is associated with phrases like matkustajien määrä (the number of travelers) where the genitive plural matkustajien marks possession with a plural noun.

Etymology and form: matkustaja is formed from the verb matkustaa (to travel) with the agentive suffix -ja. Its plural nominative is matkustajat, and its productive partitive forms include matkustajaa (partitive singular) and matkustajia (partitive plural). The use of matkustajia thus signals an indefinite or non-specific group of travelers or passengers within a sentence’s structure.