Breakdown of Kulta ja hopea ovat kauniita metalleja.
olla
to be
ja
and
kaunis
beautiful
kulta
gold
hopea
silver
metalli
metal
Questions & Answers about Kulta ja hopea ovat kauniita metalleja.
Why are kauniita and metalleja in the partitive plural instead of the nominative plural?
When saying what kind of things a subject is, the describing words are in the partitive plural if they represent an indefinite group or category. Here, you are saying gold and silver belong to the general category of beautiful metals, not that they are the only beautiful metals in existence.
How is the partitive plural formed for metalli?
The base word is metalli. For most words ending in -i, you form the partitive plural by adding -ja or -jä. Since metalli has a back vowel (a), it takes the back-vowel ending -ja, making it metalleja.
Kauniita looks very different from its base form. How do we get there from kaunis?
The basic word is kaunis. Words ending in -is change their ending to -ii- in their plural stem. Then, the partitive plural ending -ta is added to that stem, resulting in kauniita.
Kulta and hopea are uncountable nouns. Why do they take a plural verb (ovat) here?
Even though they are uncountable mass nouns individually, they are connected by ja (and). When you combine two separate things into one subject with ja, they act as a plural subject. Because of this, they require the plural verb ovat.
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