Breakdown of Ero tapahtui vuosi sitten, ja minä palasin lapsuudenkotiin.
minä
I
ja
and
vuosi
year
palata
to return
Questions & Answers about Ero tapahtui vuosi sitten, ja minä palasin lapsuudenkotiin.
Why is vuosi in the basic nominative form before sitten?
The postposition sitten (ago) requires the time word before it to be in either the nominative or partitive case. Because we are talking about exactly one year, we use the nominative vuosi. If it were a number other than one, it would be in the partitive, like kaksi vuotta sitten (two years ago). Notice how this contrasts with future time postpositions from this lesson, which require the genitive case: vuoden kuluttua (in a year).
What kind of verb is palasin and why does its stem look different from the base form?
Palasin comes from the verb palata (to return), which is a Type 4 verb ending in -ata. While the present tense stem is palaa- (e.g., minä palaan), Type 4 verbs change their stem to -as- or -is- in the past tense. Here, the stem becomes palas-, and adding the personal ending -in gives us palasin (I returned).
Why do we use the illative case (-iin) at the end of lapsuudenkotiin?
The verb palata (to return) is a verb of motion that requires you to express where you are returning to. In Finnish, you must use a destination case (illative or allative). Because a home (koti) is treated as an enclosed physical space, we use the inner destination case (illative) to say you returned "into" it: kotiin.
How is the compound word lapsuudenkotiin formed?