Questions & Answers about Minun kokoelmani on iso ja harvinainen.
Why does the sentence use both minun and the -ni ending on kokoelmani?
In standard written Finnish, when you use a genitive pronoun like minun (my), you must also add the matching possessive suffix (here, -ni) to the noun. You can actually drop minun and just say kokoelmani (which still means "my collection"), but you cannot drop the suffix in formal text. In casual spoken Finnish, however, it is very common to drop the suffix and just say mun kokoelma.
What is the base word for kokoelmani?
The base noun is kokoelma (collection). The -ni at the end is simply the possessive suffix meaning "my". The word kokoelma itself is built from the verb koota, which means to collect or to gather.
Why are the adjectives iso and harvinainen in the basic (nominative) form rather than the partitive?
In Finnish, when you have a descriptive "A is B" sentence, the adjectives only take the partitive case if the subject is an uncountable mass noun (like water, coffee, or love). Because a collection (kokoelma) is a distinct, countable thing, the adjectives describing it stay in the basic nominative form.
This lesson focuses on the partitive. If we needed to put harvinainen into the partitive case, how would it change?