Questions & Answers about Heidän anoppinsa on kotona.
Why do we need both heidän and -nsa? Can I just say heidän anoppi?
In standard Finnish, when the owner is in the third person ("his/her" or "their"), you must use both the genitive pronoun (hänen or heidän) and the possessive suffix on the noun (-nsa/-nsä). In casual spoken Finnish, people often drop the suffix and just say heidän anoppi, but standard Finnish strictly requires heidän anoppinsa.
Why is the suffix -nsa instead of -nsä?
This is determined by vowel harmony. The word anoppi contains the back vowels 'a' and 'o' (the 'i' at the end is neutral), so it must take the back-vowel version of the suffix, which is -nsa.
The lesson mentions another third-person suffix, -Vn. Could I use that here instead?
No, you can't use it in this sentence. The -Vn (lengthened vowel + n) suffix can only be attached when a word is in a grammatical case that ends in a short vowel (for example, the inessive case autossa becomes autossaan). Because anoppi is in the basic nominative dictionary form, you are forced to use -nsa.
Since the owners are plural ("their"), why is the verb on (is) instead of ovat (are)?
A quick refresher: why is "at home" kotona instead of using the inessive case kodissa?
Kotona is a fixed, traditional expression that uses the essive case ending -na. While kodissa is grammatically possible when you mean physically "inside the house" (referring to the building), kotona is the standard, everyday way to express the state of being "at home".
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