Breakdown of Valmistujaiset ovat päivä, jona minusta vihdoin tulee aikuinen.
olla
to be
minä
I
päivä
day
aikuinen
the adult
tulla
to become
vihdoin
finally
joka
who / which (relative pronoun)
valmistujaiset
the graduation party
Questions & Answers about Valmistujaiset ovat päivä, jona minusta vihdoin tulee aikuinen.
Why do we use the essive form jona here instead of the inessive jossa?
jona is the essive form of the relative pronoun joka. In Finnish, the essive case (ending in -na or -nä) is heavily used to express when something happens on a specific day or date. So päivä, jona is the natural way to say 'a day on which'.
Why is the pronoun minä (I) in the elative case minusta?
This is due to how Finnish expresses 'to become'. It uses a specific structure: the person changing is put in the elative case (like minusta, literally 'out of me'), followed by the verb tulla in the third-person singular (tulee). Literally, the phrase means 'Out of me comes an adult.'
If Valmistujaiset is plural and uses the plural verb ovat, why is päivä (day) in the singular?
Like many words for events and celebrations in Finnish (such as häät for weddings), valmistujaiset is grammatically a plural word. Even though it behaves as a plural and takes a plural verb, it refers to a single event, so equating it to a singular päivä is perfectly correct.
Since this sentence is about a change of state (becoming an adult), why isn't aikuinen in the translative case?
That is a great observation! While the translative case is usually the go-to for a change of state, the specific phrase minusta tulee is an exception. In this 'out of me comes' structure, the resulting thing (aikuinen) acts as the grammatical subject of the sentence, so it stays in the basic nominative case.
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