Breakdown of Minun pitää kastella orkideani kerran viikossa.
minä
I
viikko
week
kastella
to water
pitää
must / have to
kerran
once, one time
orkidea
orchid
Questions & Answers about Minun pitää kastella orkideani kerran viikossa.
How does kerran viikossa express "once a week"?
To say how often something happens, Finnish uses the quantity (kerran, "once") followed by the time period in the inessive case (-ssa or -ssä, meaning "in"). So kerran viikossa literally translates to "one time in a week".
Where does the word kerran come from?
Why isn't the object orkideani in the partitive or genitive case?
Normally, a whole object might take a genitive -n ending. However, in a sentence with a necessity verb like pitää, the object takes the nominative (basic) form. Here, it is the basic word orkidea with the possessive suffix -ni ("my") attached.
As a refresher, why do we say Minun pitää instead of Minä pidän?
When pitää is used to mean "must" or "have to", it is a necessity verb. The person who has to do the action is put in the genitive case (Minun), and the verb is frozen in the third-person singular form. If you said Minä pidän, it would mean "I like" or "I hold"!
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