Breakdown of Saimme uutisen ulkoministeriön kautta.
saada
to get
uutinen
news
kautta
via
ulkoministeriö
ministry for foreign affairs
Questions & Answers about Saimme uutisen ulkoministeriön kautta.
How does the postposition kautta function in this sentence?
Kautta translates to "via," "through," or "by means of." Here, it expresses the abstract channel through which the news arrived. As with most postpositions, it requires the preceding noun, ulkoministeriö (ministry for foreign affairs), to be in the genitive case, resulting in ulkoministeriön kautta.
In English, "news" is usually an uncountable noun. How does Finnish treat uutinen here?
In Finnish, uutinen is a perfectly normal countable noun meaning a single news item, article, or report. Because it is singular here (uutisen), the sentence literally means we received one specific piece of news. If you meant the news in general or multiple reports, you would use the plural: uutiset.
Why is uutinen in the accusative case (uutisen) instead of the partitive case (uutista)?
This represents a complete, bounded action. The subject received a specific, whole piece of news, so the object takes the accusative case (which looks identical to the genitive case for this word). If the sentence used the partitive (Saimme uutista), it would imply an incomplete action or an unspecified mass of ongoing information.
What is the suffix -ö doing at the end of ulkoministeriö?
The compound word ulkoministeriö is made of ulko- (foreign, outer) and ministeriö (ministry). The -ö (or -o) suffix is often used to derive nouns that represent an institution, location, or collective entity from a base word. Here, it turns the person ministeri (minister) into the institution ministeriö (ministry).
Learn Saimme uutisen ulkoministeriön kautta and more in Finnish
All course content and exercises are completely free — no paywalls, no trial periods, no signup needed.
- ✓ Practice with interactive exercises
- ✓ Track your progress with spaced repetition
- ✓Learn at your own pace — completely free