Learn Finnish: Keneltä teini saa viikkorahaa, kun hän tekee kotitöitä? - From whom does the teen get a weekly allowance when he does chores?

Keneltä teini saa viikkorahaa, kun hän tekee kotitöitä?

From whom does the teen get a weekly allowance when he does chores?

Breakdown of Keneltä teini saa viikkorahaa, kun hän tekee kotitöitä?

Questions & Answers about Keneltä teini saa viikkorahaa, kun hän tekee kotitöitä?

Since this lesson is about sikäli kuin (insofar as), how would using it instead of kun change this sentence?

Replacing kun (when) with sikäli kuin would turn this into a stricter condition: "From whom does the teen get an allowance insofar as they do chores?" It emphasizes that the allowance strictly depends on the chores being done, whereas kun just sets the general time or circumstance.

Why is kotitöitä in the partitive plural here?

Kotitöitä is the partitive plural of kotityö (chore). It is used because the action is ongoing and the quantity is undefined. The teen is doing "some chores" rather than a specific, finite list of tasks, which would require the accusative case.

Why is viikkorahaa in the partitive case?

Viikkorahaa is the partitive of viikkoraha (allowance or weekly money). Although "an allowance" sounds like a countable singular noun in English, money is usually treated as an uncountable mass noun in Finnish, so the object takes the partitive case here.

Why does "from whom" translate to the ablative keneltä rather than the elative kenestä?

With verbs of receiving like saada, the person giving the item is treated as an external source, so we use the ablative case ending -lta/-ltä. The elative ending -sta/-stä would mean taking something literally out from the inside of someone, or it would be used when talking about them.