Breakdown of Minun tekemäni hillo on todella maukasta.
olla
to be
minä
I
tehdä
to do
todella
really (very, intensifier)
maukas
tasty
hillo
jam
Questions & Answers about Minun tekemäni hillo on todella maukasta.
How exactly does tekemäni break down to mean "made by me"?
It uses the agent participle marker -mä-. We take the strong stem of tehdä (to do/make), which is teke-, add the marker -mä-, and then attach the first-person possessive suffix -ni (my) to match the doer of the action.
Do I have to include the word minun here, or would just tekemäni be enough?
You can drop minun! For first and second-person pronouns (my, your, our), the possessive suffix at the end of the participle (like the -ni in tekemäni) is enough. So, Tekemäni hillo... is perfectly correct and very common. However, for third-person pronouns (his/her/their), the genitive pronoun is mandatory.
Why can't we just use the regular past passive participle tehty here?
You use the past passive participle (tehty) when the doer is unknown or unimportant, like in tehty hillo (the made jam). Because we want to specify who made the jam (me), we must use the agent participle (tekemä) paired with a possessive suffix or genitive subject.
Why is the adjective maukasta in the partitive case instead of the basic nominative maukas?
This is because the subject of the sentence, hillo (jam), is a mass noun (an uncountable substance). When describing a mass noun with the verb olla (to be), the adjective describing it must be in the partitive case.
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