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Questions & Answers about Minä olen eri mieltä.
'Olen' means 'I am', so how does this sentence translate to 'I disagree'?
In Finnish, agreeing and disagreeing are expressed by saying you are of a certain mind. Here, eri means 'different', and mieltä is the partitive form of mieli (mind, opinion, mood). So literally, you are saying 'I am of a different mind.'
Where would I add the -kin ending from this lesson to say 'I also disagree'?
You attach -kin to the part of the sentence you want to emphasize. Most commonly, to say 'I also disagree' (as opposed to just someone else disagreeing), you add it to the pronoun: Minäkin olen eri mieltä.
Why isn't the word eri in the partitive case to match mieltä?
The word eri (different) is a special adjective in Finnish because it is indeclinable. This means it never takes any case endings. It stays exactly the same, even though the noun it describes, mieltä, is in the partitive case.
How do I change this sentence to mean 'I agree'?
To agree is to be 'of the same mind'. You replace eri with samaa, which is the partitive form of sama (same). The sentence becomes Minä olen samaa mieltä. Notice that samaa has to take the partitive ending to match mieltä, unlike the special rule-breaking word eri.