Breakdown of Pidätkö tästä uudesta varasuunnitelmasta?
tämä
this
uusi
new
pitää
to like
varasuunnitelma
backup plan
Questions & Answers about Pidätkö tästä uudesta varasuunnitelmasta?
How does the prefixoid vara- work in varasuunnitelmasta, and what are its common meanings?
Vara- is a very common prefixoid used to mean "backup", "spare", or "vice-". Combined with suunnitelma (plan), it creates "backup plan". You will also see it in highly productive compounds like vararengas (spare tire) and varapuheenjohtaja (vice chairperson).
Why are the words tästä, uudesta, and varasuunnitelmasta all in the elative (-sta/-stä) case?
The verb pitää means "to like" only when its object is in the elative case. The main noun varasuunnitelma gets the -sta ending, and its modifiers—the demonstrative tämä (becoming tästä) and the adjective uusi (becoming uudesta)—must agree and also take the elative ending.
In the compound word varasuunnitelmasta, why doesn't the vara- part take an ending to match?
In Finnish compound words, only the final word in the compound inflects to show the case. The prefixoid vara- is locked in its nominative form, while the core noun suunnitelma takes the -sta ending. This is different from adjectives, which do inflect to match the noun.
I always trip up on the word uusi. Why does it change to uudesta here instead of "uusista"?
Old Finnish words ending in -si change their -si to -te- in the singular stem, making the basic stem uute-. Because the elative ending -sta closes the syllable, consonant gradation kicks in and weakens the t to a d, giving us uudesta. The form uusista is the plural elative, which you would use if you were talking about liking "these new backup plans" (näistä uusista varasuunnitelmista).
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