Breakdown of Sinä voit nojata pöytään minun edessäni.
sinä
you
pöytä
table
edessä
in front of
voida
can, to be able to
Questions & Answers about Sinä voit nojata pöytään minun edessäni.
Why is there a -ni at the end of the postposition edessäni?
In Finnish, when a postposition is used with a personal pronoun like minun, the postposition must also take a possessive suffix that matches the pronoun. Since the pronoun is minun, the postposition edessä gets the first-person singular suffix -ni.
Is it possible to drop the word minun and just say edessäni?
Yes! For first and second person pronouns (I, you, we, you all), you can usually drop the genitive pronoun. The suffix -ni already shows that it means in front of me, so just saying edessäni is perfectly correct and very common.
Why is the table in the illative case (pöytään) if the translation says lean on?
The verb nojata (to lean) requires the word you are leaning against to be in the illative case (the into case). So while in English we lean on something, in Finnish you lean into it.
Why does pöytään keep the strong -t- instead of changing to a weak -d- like in pöydällä?