Breakdown of Nämä eettiset dilemmat ovat todella vaikeita.
tämä
this
olla
to be
vaikea
difficult / hard
todella
really (very, intensifier)
dilemma
dilemma
eettinen
ethical
Questions & Answers about Nämä eettiset dilemmat ovat todella vaikeita.
Why is vaikeita in the partitive plural, and how would this change if the subject were an että clause like in our current lesson?
In this sentence, the subject is a regular plural noun phrase (Nämä eettiset dilemmat), so the predicative adjective (the adjective after the verb to be) must be in the partitive plural (vaikeita). If the subject were an evaluative että clause instead—such as "It is difficult that they disagree"—the adjective would take the singular partitive (On vaikeaa, että...) because an että clause is treated as a single, uncountable concept.
Why do nämä eettiset take the nominative plural, while vaikeita takes the partitive plural?
Words that directly attach to and modify the subject (nämä and eettiset) must match the subject's exact case, which here is the nominative plural (dilemmat). However, vaikeita is a predicative adjective—it describes the subject from across the verb ovat. In Finnish, when a subject is in the nominative plural, its predicative adjective is almost always in the partitive plural.
Does the loan word dilemma follow normal Finnish noun rules?
Yes, it adapts perfectly into the standard Finnish noun system. Because it ends in -a, it behaves like native words of the same structure (like kala). To make it plural, you simply add the standard nominative plural marker -t to get dilemmat.
Could I use tosi instead of todella to say "really difficult"?
Absolutely. Nämä eettiset dilemmat ovat tosi vaikeita means exactly the same thing. Todella (which is technically the adessive case of tosi, meaning "with truth") is slightly more standard in formal writing, whereas tosi is extremely common in everyday spoken Finnish. Both work perfectly as adverbs meaning "really" or "very" here.
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