teemän

Teemän is the nonstandard or nonessential variant often cited as the genitive form of the Finnish noun teema, which means theme or topic. In standard Finnish, the possessive/genitive singular form is teeman, not teemän. Therefore, teemän is generally considered incorrect in formal writing and language references.

Teema is a loanword in Finnish, borrowed from Swedish tema or English theme, and it denotes a central subject or topic. The genitive is formed with the suffix -n, yielding teeman in normal usage. The form teemän may appear in historical texts, dialectal writing, or stylized branding, but it is not part of contemporary standard Finnish morphology.

Usage notes and related terms: The correct genitive construction is teeman (for example, teeman valinta, “the selection of the theme”). The base word teema is common in many compounds and phrases such as teemaviikko (theme week) and teema-alue (thematic area). Writers of formal Finnish are advised to use teeman and reserve any appearance of teemän for stylistic purposes, misprints, or nonstandard contexts. The distinction reflects broader Finnish orthography, where the standard genitive suffix -n is used with the word teema.

See also: teema, Finnish language, Kielitoimisto.