Breakdown of Olipa se erikoisin juoru raskaudesta!
olla
to be
se
it / he / she (of a person) / that
juoru
the gossip
raskaus
the pregnancy
erikoinen
peculiar
Questions & Answers about Olipa se erikoisin juoru raskaudesta!
Why does the sentence start with Olipa instead of the subject Se?
When you use the emphatic clitic -pa or -pä to express surprise or strong feeling, you attach it to the word you want to emphasize. That emphasized word is then moved to the very beginning of the sentence. Here, the verb oli (was) gets the clitic, becoming Olipa, which flips the normal Se oli word order.
How is the word erikoisin (most peculiar) formed?
It is the superlative form of the adjective erikoinen (peculiar or special). To form the superlative, you take the inflectional stem of the adjective, which is erikoise-, and add the superlative marker -in. The -e- at the end of the stem drops out before the -i-, giving us erikoisin.
Why is the word for pregnancy, raskaus, in the elative (-sta) case here?
In Finnish, when you talk about what a story, rumor, or piece of gossip is about, you use the elative case (-sta / -stä). Just like you would say kirja kissoista (a book about cats), here we have juoru raskaudesta (gossip about the pregnancy). Notice how the basic noun raskaus changes to its stem raskauden- before adding the -sta ending.
In English, gossip is usually an uncountable concept. Is juoru countable in Finnish?
Yes, in Finnish juoru can refer to a single, specific piece of gossip or a rumor, making it a countable noun. That is why it pairs with the singular adjective erikoisin (the most peculiar). If you were talking about gossip as a general concept, you would use the partitive case (juorua).
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