sellään

Sellään is a Finnish word that translates to "on the back" or "in the back." It is a versatile locative case ending used in Finnish grammar. The word indicates the position or location of something relative to a surface or object. For instance, in the sentence "Kirja on pöydällä" (The book is on the table), the ending "-llä" attached to "pöytä" (table) signifies the book's position on top of the table.

The usage of sellään is not limited to inanimate objects. It can also describe the position of people or animals. For example, "Lapsi istuu äidin sylissä" (The child sits on the mother's lap) uses the "-ssä" ending, which is a variation of the locative case often used for enclosed spaces or more intimate resting places. However, the more general "on the back" meaning is conveyed by "sellään."

This grammatical feature is common in Finnish and many other Finno-Ugric languages. Understanding the nuances of the locative case, including sellään, is crucial for comprehending Finnish sentence structure and expressing spatial relationships accurately. It is a fundamental aspect of the language's agglutinative nature, where suffixes are added to root words to convey grammatical information.