Äideillä

äideillä is a Finnish grammatical form, specifically the plural adessive of the noun äiti (mother). In English it roughly corresponds to “with the mothers” or “at the mothers,” depending on the sentence. The adessive case marks location, accompaniment, or context, and the plural form is created by adding -illä to the plural stem of the noun. The base plural nominative is äidit (mothers); the singular adessive is äidillä (with the mother / at the mother), and the plural adessive is äideillä (with the mothers / at the mothers).

Usage in Finnish centers on referring to a group of mothers in a context such as location or accompaniment, or to attribute something to that group. For example, a sentence using äideillä in the adessive plural might convey that something is associated with or provided by the mothers, such as “Äideillä on tärkeä rooli perheiden arjessa” (The mothers have an important role in family life). Because it is a case-inflected form rather than a standalone lexical item, äideillä appears as a morphologically marked noun within a larger sentence.

Morphology notes: Finnish nouns form the adessive plural by attaching -llä/-illä to the plural stem. For äiti, the plural nominative is äidit, and the plural adessive is äideillä. This form contrasts with the singular adessive äidillä and the other cases of äiti (e.g., genitive äidin, partitive äitejä). The term äideillä therefore functions as a grammatical form used to talk about mothers as a group, rather than as an independent word with a separate meaning.

See also: Finnish grammar, adessive case, noun inflection, case forms.