Breakdown of Tämän vaihto-ohjelman opiskelijat kiintyivät nopeasti toisiinsa.
tämä
this
opiskelija
student
nopeasti
fast
toisiaan
each other (also toisiamme, toisianne)
vaihto-ohjelma
exchange program
kiintyä
to become attached to
Questions & Answers about Tämän vaihto-ohjelman opiskelijat kiintyivät nopeasti toisiinsa.
Why is the word for "to each other" in the illative case (toisiinsa)?
This is because of the verb kiintyä (to become attached). Similar to verbs like rakastua (to fall in love) or tottua (to get used to), kiintyä describes forming a new psychological or emotional bond. In Finnish, this "movement" into a new emotional state requires the target to be in the illative case.
How exactly is the word toisiinsa constructed?
To express "each other", Finnish uses the pronoun toinen. When it acts as the target of a verb, it goes into the required case—here, the illative plural toisiin. Because the students are doing the action to each other (the action reflects back onto the subject), it also requires a possessive suffix. Adding the third-person suffix -nsa to toisiin gives us toisiinsa.
What is the root of the verb kiintyä?
It is related to the word kiinni, which means closed, fastened, or caught. While a verb like kiinnittää means to actively attach or fasten something, kiintyä is an inchoative verb—a verb expressing a process of becoming. Here, it literally means undergoing the emotional process of becoming attached.
Why are both tämän and vaihto-ohjelman in the genitive case?
They form a genitive chain modifying the main subject of the sentence, opiskelijat. Vaihto-ohjelman translates to "of the exchange program", and the demonstrative pronoun tämä (this) must match its noun in case, becoming tämän. Together, they give us "the students of this exchange program".
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