Word
Väestönlaskenta järjestetään kerran kymmenessä vuodessa.
Meaning
The census is organized once in ten years.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Lesson
Breakdown of Väestönlaskenta järjestetään kerran kymmenessä vuodessa.
kymmenen
ten
kerta
time
vuosi
year
järjestää
to organize
Questions & Answers about Väestönlaskenta järjestetään kerran kymmenessä vuodessa.
Since we are learning about fraction suffixes like '-nes', is kymmenessä a fraction here?
No, but it is a very common trap! Kymmenessä is simply the number kymmenen (ten) in the inessive case, meaning 'in ten'. The formal fraction 'a tenth' is kymmenennes, which uses the suffix you are learning now. To make things even trickier, the ordinal 'tenth' is kymmenes.
Why do both kymmenessä and vuodessa take the inessive case (-ssä/-ssa) ending?
In Finnish, you must inflect both the number and the noun it modifies into the same case. When expressing frequency within a time period, that case is the inessive. You already know this from simpler phrases like kerran viikossa (once a week) - this is the exact same structure applied to 'ten years'.
How does the word kerran work in this sentence?
Kerran is a fixed adverb meaning 'once'. It is historically the genitive singular of kerta (time or occasion). As a B2 refresher, remember that if this census happened twice a decade, you would switch to the partitive case: kaksi kertaa kymmenessä vuodessa.
What words make up the compound väestönlaskenta?
It is built from väestö (population) in the genitive case (väestön) plus laskenta (counting or calculation). Literally, it translates to 'the population's counting'.