Breakdown of Olen kunnianhimoinen, joten minusta tulee kirjanpitäjä.
olla
to be
minä
I
tulla
to become
joten
so, therefore
kunnianhimoinen
ambitious
kirjanpitäjä
the accountant
Questions & Answers about Olen kunnianhimoinen, joten minusta tulee kirjanpitäjä.
Why does the sentence use minusta tulee instead of "minä tulen"?
This is the classic Finnish "becoming" construction. To say you are becoming a profession or changing states, you put the person in the elative case (minusta, meaning "out of me") and use the 3rd person singular verb tulee. It literally translates as "Out of me comes..."
Why is the verb tulee not conjugated to match "I" (tulen)?
Because minusta is in the elative case, it is not the grammatical subject of the sentence. In this specific construction, the verb tulla is always locked into the 3rd person singular (tulee), no matter who is becoming something. For example, "you will become" would be sinusta tulee.
What case is kirjanpitäjä in, and why?
It is in the nominative (basic) case. In the tulla transformation construction, the result (what you are becoming) always stays in the nominative case. The strict formula is: Elative person + tulee + Nominative result.
How does the word kirjanpitäjä translate to "accountant"?
It is a highly literal compound word! It combines kirjan (the genitive form of kirja, meaning "book's") and pitäjä (keeper or holder, from the verb pitää). So an accountant is literally a "bookkeeper".
Does tulee indicate the future tense here?
Yes, though Finnish does not have a dedicated future tense. The present tense verb tulee is used for things happening right now, but also for things that will happen in the future. Here, the context of being ambitious implies the result will happen later.
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