Breakdown of Joulu on merkkipäivä, jona suku syö yhdessä.
olla
to be
syödä
to eat
yhdessä
together
merkkipäivä
the special day
suku
extended family, kin
joulu
Christmas
Questions & Answers about Joulu on merkkipäivä, jona suku syö yhdessä.
Why is the relative pronoun jona here instead of jossa?
jona is the essive case of the relative pronoun joka. The essive case is used for days, times, and occasions like merkkipäivä to express when something happens. If we were talking about a physical place, like a room in which they eat, we would use the inessive case jossa.
What exactly does jona refer back to in this sentence?
It refers back to the noun right before the comma: merkkipäivä (special day or occasion). The relative pronoun joka always takes its meaning from the noun immediately preceding it. Here it takes the essive ending -na to mean on which.
Is suku treated as a singular or plural word here?
It is treated as singular, which is why the verb is syö and not syövät. Even though suku refers to a group of people (extended family), it is grammatically a single unit in Finnish.
Does jona change if the word it refers to is plural?
Yes. If the sentence was about multiple occasions, the relative pronoun would become the plural essive form: joina. Since merkkipäivä is singular, we use the singular jona.
Could I just use kun or milloin instead of jona to say when?
You cannot use milloin because it is a question word. You could loosely use kun, but jona is much more precise and natural here because it acts as a relative pronoun linking directly back to the specific noun merkkipäivä to say exactly on which occasion this happens.
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