Consonant Gradation

You have seen stems mysteriously softening: pankki → pankin, katu → kadun. This is consonant gradation. When a case ending "closes" a syllable — like the genitive -n or the inessive -ssa — a strong consonant weakens to its weak partner. The good news: the dictionary form is always the strong one, so you start from something you can look up.

The gradation patterns

Which weak partner?

Complete the gradation

Match the pairs