Breakdown of Lähettäjä on kotoisin jostakin tuntemattomasta kaupungista.
kaupunki
city
olla kotoisin
to be from, to come from
jokin
something
lähettäjä
sender
tuntematon
unknown
Questions & Answers about Lähettäjä on kotoisin jostakin tuntemattomasta kaupungista.
Why use jostakin here instead of jostakusta?
This sentence is talking about an inanimate place, a city (kaupunki). The pronoun jokin (some/something) is used for things and places, while joku (some/someone) is typically used for people. Jostakin is the elative form of jokin.
Could I say jostain instead of jostakin?
Yes! Jostain is a very common, slightly shorter version of jostakin. Both mean the exact same thing and are perfectly correct, but jostakin is the more formal, standard written form.
Why do three words in a row (jostakin tuntemattomasta kaupungista) have the "out of" case ending?
The phrase on kotoisin (is from) requires the location to be in the elative case, which ends in -sta or -stä. In Finnish, pronouns and adjectives must agree with the noun they describe. Because kaupunki becomes kaupungista, the words describing it (jokin and tuntematon) must also take the elative case.
What is the base word for tuntemattomasta and why does it change so much?
The base word is the adjective tuntematon (unknown). Whenever a word ends in -ton or -tön, its stem changes to -ttoma- or -ttömä- before you can add a case ending like -sta. This word is built from the verb tuntea (to know) and the ending -maton, which means without or un-.
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