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Questions & Answers about Veri on punaista.
Why is the adjective in the partitive case (punaista) instead of the nominative (punainen)?
In Finnish, when the subject of a sentence is an uncountable mass noun like veri (blood, or other substances like water or coffee), the describing adjective must be in the partitive case. Because blood is treated as an uncountable substance, we use punaista.
How does this compare to a sentence with a countable noun?
If the subject is a countable, singular object, the adjective stays in the basic nominative case. For example, if you want to say the car is red, you would say Auto on punainen because a car is countable.
How does the word veri behave in other cases?
While veri is in its basic nominative form here, it belongs to an older, slightly unpredictable group of words. When adding most endings, the stem changes to vere- (making the genitive veren), and its partitive form is unusually verta.