Breakdown of Jos mikään kasvaa kuivuudessa, meillä on onnea.
olla
to be
me
we
kasvaa
to grow
mikään
anything, nothing (with negation)
jos
if
onni
luck
kuivuus
drought
Questions & Answers about Jos mikään kasvaa kuivuudessa, meillä on onnea.
Why use mikään here when the sentence isn't negative?
Normally, mikään means "nothing" and requires a negative verb. However, in conditional clauses starting with jos (if), negative pronouns are used in an affirmative sentence to mean "anything" in a broad, unlimited sense. If you used jotain (something), it would imply a more specific expectation that something in particular might grow.
Why is it mikään and not its partitive form mitään?
Mikään is in the nominative case because it acts as the subject of the verb kasvaa (anything grows). You would use the partitive form mitään if it were the object of the action, for example: Jos näet mitään (If you see anything).
How does the word kuivuus become kuivuudessa?
The base word is kuivuus (drought). Nouns ending in -uus form their stem by changing to -uute- (so, kuivuute-). When you add the closed inessive ending -ssa (in), consonant gradation weakens the strong -t- to a weak -d-, resulting in kuivuudessa.
Why is onnea in the partitive case?
In the Finnish "to have" construction (meillä on), abstract, uncountable nouns like luck (onni) take the partitive case (onnea). This expresses that we have "some" luck, rather than one whole, countable unit of luck.
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