Questions & Answers about Meidän koiramme on viides.
How is viides (fifth) formed from the number viisi (five)?
To make most ordinal numbers, Finnish adds the suffix -s to the number's stem. The stem for viisi is viite-. Because of consonant gradation (a pattern where consonants soften when certain suffixes are added), the t softens to a d before the -s. This gives us viides.
Why do we need the -mme at the end of koiramme if we already have meidän (our)?
In standard written Finnish, when you use a possessive pronoun like meidän, you must also add the matching possessive suffix to the noun. In this case, that is -mme. It might feel redundant because you are essentially saying "our dog-our", but it is grammatically required. In casual spoken Finnish, people often drop the suffix and just say meidän koira.
Why is viides in the basic (nominative) form here?
Words that come after the verb olla (to be) to describe the subject generally match the subject's case. Here, the subject koiramme is a single, countable, whole thing in the basic nominative case. Therefore, the ordinal number describing it (viides) stays in the nominative case too.
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