Breakdown of Koiramme oli sairas, joten kävimme eläinlääkärillä.
olla
to be
koira
dog
sairas
sick
käydä
to visit, to go (and come back)
joten
so, therefore
eläinlääkäri
veterinarian
Questions & Answers about Koiramme oli sairas, joten kävimme eläinlääkärillä.
Why is eläinlääkärillä in the adessive (-llä) case instead of a "to" case like the illative?
The verb käydä (to visit) is special in Finnish: it requires a static location case (meaning "in" or "at"), not a movement case (meaning "to"). We use the adessive (-llä, "at") rather than the inessive (-ssä, "in") because a vet is a person or profession, just like you say lääkärillä (at the doctor's).
Why use kävimme here instead of menimme (we went)?
English often uses "went" for a visit, but Finnish distinguishes between a one-way trip and a round trip. Kävimme implies you went to the vet and already came back. If you used menimme, it would focus only on the trip there. Note that mennä would also change the case of the destination: you would have to say menimme eläinlääkärille.
Why does the sentence use koiramme instead of meidän koira?
Both mean "our dog". Koiramme uses the first-person plural possessive suffix -mme and is typical for standard written Finnish. In everyday spoken Finnish, people usually drop the suffix and just use the genitive pronoun, saying meidän koira instead.
Is there a difference between using joten and niin for the word "so"?
Yes. Joten is a conjunction that strictly means "therefore" or "as a result", making it the grammatically correct choice to link a cause and its effect here. Niin is very common in spoken Finnish to mean "so", but it acts more like a filler or an adverb, making joten the better choice in standard language.
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