Breakdown of Joulukuussa syömme kakkua ja juomme viiniä.
ja
and
viini
wine
juoda
to drink
syödä
to eat
kakku
cake
joulukuu
December
Questions & Answers about Joulukuussa syömme kakkua ja juomme viiniä.
How do we form "in December" from the word for December?
The word for December is joulukuu. To say "in" a month, you add the inessive ending -ssa or -ssä directly to the month name. Since joulukuu contains the back vowels 'o' and 'u', vowel harmony dictates we use -ssa, making it joulukuussa.
Where is the word for "we" in this sentence?
In Finnish, the "we" is already built into the verbs syömme (we eat) and juomme (we drink). Because the -mme ending clearly tells us who is doing the action, it is very common to drop the pronoun me (we) entirely.
Why are the words for cake and wine written as kakkua and viiniä?
They are in the partitive case, which is often used for indefinite amounts or "some" of a mass noun. We are eating "some cake" and drinking "some wine", rather than a whole specific cake. To show this, we added an -a or -ä ending to the base words kakku and viini.
Why did we add -a to kakku but -ä to viini?
This is due to vowel harmony. The word kakku has back vowels (a, u), so it takes the back vowel ending -a. The word viini only contains the vowel 'i'. Since 'i' and 'e' are neutral vowels, words containing only neutral vowels take the front vowel ending -ä.
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