Breakdown of Heidän lomansa alkaa kahdentenakymmenentenäkahdeksantena.
he
they
alkaa
to start
loma
vacation
kahdeskymmeneskahdeksas
twenty-eighth
Questions & Answers about Heidän lomansa alkaa kahdentenakymmenentenäkahdeksantena.
Why is the word for "on the twenty-eighth" so extremely long?
To say "on a specific date" in Finnish, you use the essive case. For compound ordinal numbers like the 28th, every single part of the number is put into the ordinal form AND gets the essive ending. It physically joins together three fully inflected words: kahdentena (on the 2nd), kymmenentenä (on the 10th), and kahdeksantena (on the 8th).
Why does kahdentenakymmenentenäkahdeksantena mix the endings -na and -nä? Doesn't that break vowel harmony?
Even though compound numbers are written together as one massive word, each number inside it follows its own vowel harmony rules. The middle part comes from kymmenen, which only has front vowels, so it takes the front-vowel ending -nä (kymmenentenä). The first and last parts come from kaksi and kahdeksan, which have back vowels and take the -na ending.
Why do we need the -nsa ending on lomansa if we already said heidän (their)?
In standard Finnish, when you use a genitive pronoun like heidän (their), you must also attach the matching possessive suffix to the noun. So "their holiday" becomes heidän lomansa. In casual spoken Finnish, the suffix is often dropped, and people might just say heidän loma or niiden loma.
How would I add the month to this sentence if I wanted to say "on the twenty-eighth of July"?
You simply add the month in the partitive case right after the number. For example, July is heinäkuu, so you would say ...kahdentenakymmenentenäkahdeksantena heinäkuuta.
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