Questions & Answers about Nuo silmälasit ovat uusia.
Why is the adjective uusia in the partitive plural here?
This showcases the core rule of your current lesson! When a sentence has a regular plural subject, the adjective describing it after the verb olla (the subject complement) must generally be in the partitive plural form. Therefore, we use uusia rather than the singular uusi.
I've sometimes seen uudet instead of uusia with words like this. What is the difference?
That is a great observation. Silmälasit is a word that is always plural, just like "glasses" in English. When you are talking about exactly one pair of glasses, Finnish actually prefers the nominative plural for the adjective (Nuo silmälasit ovat uudet). Using the partitive plural (uusia) in this sentence implies that you are pointing at multiple pairs of new glasses.
How is the partitive plural uusia formed from the basic word uusi?
For many common Finnish words ending in -si (like uusi, vesi, or vuosi), the partitive plural is very easy to form. You can think of it as taking the basic singular form and simply adding the partitive ending -a or -ä to the end. Therefore, uusi becomes uusia.
Why do we use nuo here instead of tuo?
In Finnish, demonstrative pronouns must agree in number with the noun they modify. Because silmälasit is a plural word, you cannot use the singular tuo (that). Instead, you must use its plural form nuo (those).
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