Breakdown of Sota alkoi kolmantenatoista maaliskuuta.
sota
war
alkaa
to start
maaliskuu
March
kolmastoista
thirteenth
Questions & Answers about Sota alkoi kolmantenatoista maaliskuuta.
Why does "the thirteenth" look so long here (kolmantenatoista), and what is its base form?
The dictionary form for "thirteenth" is kolmastoista. When saying "on the [date]", Finnish puts the ordinal number in the essive case, which uses the -na ending. For "teen" numbers, only the first part changes: kolmas (third) changes to kolmantena, while toista (-teen) stays exactly the same. Combined, this gives us kolmantenatoista.
Why is the month in the partitive case (maaliskuuta)?
When expressing dates, the month is always in the partitive case because you are referring to a part of that month (literally "the thirteenth of March"). Because maaliskuu ends in two vowels, its partitive ending is -ta.
There is no word for "on" in the Finnish sentence. How is that expressed?
In English, we say "on the thirteenth". In Finnish, the essive case ending -na (seen right in the middle of kolmantenatoista) handles the meaning of "on a specific day". You never need a separate preposition for dates.
What is the base verb for "alkoi" (started), and how is the past tense formed here?