Breakdown of Kun loma alkaa, on kahdeskymmenesviides toukokuuta.
olla
to be
alkaa
to start
toukokuu
May
loma
vacation
kun
when (conjunction)
kahdeskymmenesviides
twenty-fifth
Questions & Answers about Kun loma alkaa, on kahdeskymmenesviides toukokuuta.
The current lesson covers using the essive case for dates. Why is kahdeskymmenesviides in the basic form here instead?
Because the sentence is simply stating what the date is (on kahdeskymmenesviides). You only use the essive case when saying that an action happens on a date. If the sentence was "The holiday begins on the 25th", you would use the long essive form: kahdentenakymmenentenäviidentenä.
How do you build a long ordinal number like kahdeskymmenesviides?
In Finnish, every single part of a compound number changes into an ordinal. To say "twenty-fifth", you literally say "second-tenth-fifth" by combining kahdes (second), kymmenes (tenth), and viides (fifth) into one single word.
Why is the word for "it" missing before on?
In English we say "it is the twenty-fifth", but Finnish doesn't use a pronoun like se (it) for general statements about dates, time, or weather. You just start the clause directly with the verb on.
Why does the month toukokuu have a -ta ending here?
Toukokuuta is in the partitive case. When giving a date in Finnish, the month always takes the partitive ending because you are referring to a specific day out of that month, much like saying "the 25th of May" in English.
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