Breakdown of Pelkään kohtaamista, joten olen puhuvinani puhelimessa.
olla
to be
puhua
to speak
puhelin
phone
pelätä
to fear
Questions & Answers about Pelkään kohtaamista, joten olen puhuvinani puhelimessa.
How exactly does olen puhuvinani mean 'I am pretending to talk'?
This is the quasi-construction (kvasirakenne), which expresses pretending. You form it using the verb olla (here olen) paired with a special form of the action verb. You take the present active participle (puhuva), add the plural marker -i-, the state-expressing suffix -na-, and a possessive suffix matching the subject. Together, this builds puhuvinani.
Why does the word end in -ni instead of the standard -vinaan?
The ending of the quasi-construction must always agree with the subject doing the pretending by using a possessive suffix. Since the subject here is 'I' (olen), it takes the first-person singular suffix -ni. You only use -vinaan (which contains the third-person suffix -an) when talking about 'he', 'she', or 'they', such as in hän on puhuvinaan.
Why is the word for encounter (kohtaaminen) in the partitive form kohtaamista?
The verb pelätä (to fear) is a partitive verb, meaning its object must always be in the partitive case. Kohtaaminen is a noun formed from the verb kohdata (to meet), and its partitive form is kohtaamista.
Why do we use the inessive case puhelimessa ('in the phone') instead of a case meaning 'on'?