Breakdown of Ministeri nauttii suurlähettilään seurasta.
nauttia
to enjoy
suurlähettiläs
ambassador
ministeri
minister
seura
company (being with someone)
Questions & Answers about Ministeri nauttii suurlähettilään seurasta.
Why is "company" in the elative case (seurasta) instead of the partitive or accusative?
The verb nauttia (to enjoy) is a rection verb that always requires its object to be in the elative case (-sta/-stä). In Finnish, you literally "enjoy from" something.
How do we get suurlähettilään from the dictionary word for ambassador?
The base word is suurlähettiläs. For nouns ending in -as/-äs, the stem changes to -aa-/-ää- before adding case endings. To make it genitive (the ambassador's), suurlähettiläs becomes the stem suurlähettilää- plus the -n ending.
Since this lesson is about the comitative case, why don't we use it here instead of suurlähettilään seurasta?
The comitative case expresses doing an action accompanied by others (e.g., "The minister arrived with his ambassadors" = Ministeri saapui suurlähettiläineen). Here, the minister isn't just doing an action alongside the ambassador; the ambassador's company (seura) is the specific object the minister is enjoying. Furthermore, the verb nauttia strictly demands the elative case.
Does seura just mean "company" as in being around someone, or can it mean a business company?
Seura means "company" in the social sense of spending time with someone, or it can mean a club or society (like a sports club). If you want to talk about a business company, you must use words like yritys or yhtiö.