Questions & Answers about Kesällä sade on lämmin.
Why does kesä (summer) get the -llä ending here instead of the "in" ending -ssä?
In Finnish, to say that something happens during a certain season, we use the adessive case (-lla or -llä), which normally translates to "on" or "at". So kesällä literally works like "on summer". This is the rule for all seasons: talvella (in winter), keväällä (in spring), and syksyllä (in autumn).
Why does kesällä use the -llä ending instead of -lla?
This is due to vowel harmony, an important rule you learned earlier. The word kesä contains the vowels e and ä, which are front vowels. In Finnish, words with front vowels must take endings that also have front vowels, so we use -llä instead of the back vowel version -lla.
Why is lämmin (warm) in the basic form and not the partitive case (lämmintä)?
You might remember that uncountable liquid substances take the partitive case, like vesi on lämmintä (the water is warm). However, sade (rain) is grammatically treated as a regular, countable event in Finnish, not an uncountable substance. Because of this, the adjective describing it stays in the basic nominative form: lämmin.
Why does the sentence start with Kesällä instead of the subject sade?
Finnish word order is quite flexible. Starting with the time or place (like Kesällä) sets the scene for the rest of the sentence, exactly like saying "In summer, the rain is warm" in English. If you said Sade on lämmin kesällä, it would also be perfectly correct but it puts slightly less focus on the season itself.
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