Breakdown of Tuo on kissa, ja se on sisällä.
olla
to be
tuo
that
kissa
cat
se
it / he / she (of a person) / that
ja
and
sisällä
inside
Questions & Answers about Tuo on kissa, ja se on sisällä.
Why does the sentence use tuo at the beginning but se later on?
Tuo is a demonstrative pronoun meaning "that", used to point out something you can see further away. Once you have pointed out the cat, you switch to the basic pronoun se ("it") to refer back to it in the second half of the sentence.
Since we are learning plurals like he ovat (they are), why couldn't we use he if there were multiple cats?
In Finnish, hän (he/she) and its plural he (they) are strictly used for people. Because a cat is an animal, we use se (it). If there were multiple cats inside, you would use the non-human plural ne and say ne ovat sisällä.
What is the -llä ending on sisällä doing?
The -llä ending tells us where something is (it is a location ending, called the adessive case). The base word sisä means "interior" or "inner part". Adding -llä turns it into sisällä, which translates to "at the interior" or simply "inside".
Why is there a comma before ja (and)?
In Finnish, you must put a comma before ja when it connects two complete thoughts that each have their own subject and verb. Because Tuo on kissa and se on sisällä are both complete independent clauses, they need a comma between them.
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