puhkasin

Puhkasin is a Finnish verb form that functions as the first-person singular imperfect indicative. It is not a standalone verb in itself, but the past tense inflection that appears with various verbs whose infinitives end in -a or -ä and whose stems allow the sequence seen in puhka- plus the personal ending.

Meaning and usage are determined by the base verb. The form can occur with verbs such as puhkaista (to burst open) or puhjeta (to erupt or sprout), among others, yielding different lexical senses: the grammatical function remains past tense and first-person subject, while the exact meaning corresponds to the chosen verb.

In Finnish, the imperfect is used to describe actions completed in the past from the perspective of the speaker. The ending -sin marks the first-person singular in this tense for many -a/-ä verbs. The same verb can have other subject forms in the past, such as puhkasit (you burst) or puhkasimme (we burst), illustrating how person and number are encoded by suffixal morphemes on the verb stem. Consonant gradation and vowel harmony can influence the exact spelling or pronunciation in related forms, but puhkasin itself generally preserves the expected pattern for the 1st person singular imperfect.

Puhkasin may appear in narrative prose, historical texts, or dialectal speech. It is a standard grammatical form in Finnish, useful for illustrating how past tense and person are conveyed in one word through verb conjugation.

See also: Finnish grammar, Finnish verb conjugation, Imperfect tense, Verb.