Breakdown of Miksi monimuotoisuuden säilyminen on kriittistä?
olla
to be
miksi
why
kriittinen
critical
monimuotoisuus
biodiversity
Questions & Answers about Miksi monimuotoisuuden säilyminen on kriittistä?
How could we use this lesson's topic to say "Why is preservation critical from the perspective of biodiversity?"
You would take the genitive word monimuotoisuuden and add the postposition kannalta. The sentence would then become: Miksi säilyminen on monimuotoisuuden kannalta kriittistä?
Why is kriittistä in the partitive case here rather than the nominative kriittinen?
The subject of the sentence, säilyminen (preservation), is an abstract, uncountable concept. In Finnish, when a predicative adjective describes an abstract or uncountable subject, it takes the partitive case.
What is the base verb for säilyminen and how does it affect the grammar here?
Säilyminen is the noun form (often called the fourth infinitive) of the intransitive verb säilyä (to remain intact, to be preserved). Because it acts as a noun here, the thing being preserved is put into the genitive case (monimuotoisuuden) to show that it 'owns' the preservation.
How is the long word monimuotoisuuden constructed?
It is the genitive form of monimuotoisuus (biodiversity). This is a compound of moni (many) and muoto (form), plus the suffix -isuus, which turns an adjective into an abstract noun (similar to '-ity' or '-ness' in English).