Word
Kelloseppä osti uuden suurennuslasin ja erinomaista öljyä.
Meaning
The watchmaker bought a new magnifying glass and excellent oil.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Kelloseppä osti uuden suurennuslasin ja erinomaista öljyä.
ja
and
uusi
new
ostaa
to buy
erinomainen
excellent
Questions & Answers about Kelloseppä osti uuden suurennuslasin ja erinomaista öljyä.
Why is uuden suurennuslasin in the genitive-like accusative, but erinomaista öljyä is in the partitive?
This sentence perfectly illustrates how Finnish handles objects with different countability. Suurennuslasi (magnifying glass) is a single, countable object being bought completely, so it takes the total object case (the genitive-accusative). Öljy (oil) is an uncountable mass noun, so it must take the partitive case (öljyä), and its modifying adjective erinomainen must match it (erinomaista).
Since we are learning about the Translative of Intended Purpose, how could we modify this sentence to say he bought the magnifying glass "as a tool"?
You would use the translative case ending -ksi. By adding it to työkalu (tool), you get työkaluksi. You could add this to the sentence: Kelloseppä osti uuden suurennuslasin työkaluksi.
How is the word suurennuslasi built?
It is a compound word made of suurennus (enlargement or magnification) and lasi (glass). The word suurennus itself comes from the verb suurentaa (to make larger, to magnify), which is turned into a noun using the -us suffix.
The base form for excellent is erinomainen. Why does its partitive form look so different in erinomaista?