Breakdown of ”Tämä on koko huutokauppakamarin ennätyshinta”, kuiskasi nainen.
tämä
this
olla
to be
nainen
woman
koko
whole
Questions & Answers about ”Tämä on koko huutokauppakamarin ennätyshinta”, kuiskasi nainen.
Why is the word order kuiskasi nainen instead of nainen kuiskasi?
Because the reporting clause comes directly after a quotation, Finnish uses Verb-Subject inversion. This makes kuiskasi nainen the grammatically correct and most natural word order here, whereas starting with the subject would sound clunky in this specific structure.
Why does huutokauppakamari take the genitive ending -n here?
It acts as a possessor for the main noun ennätyshinta, meaning the auction house's record price. It also serves as a good reminder that the indeclinable word koko (entire/whole) generally requires the noun following it to be in the genitive case or partitive case.
How does the punctuation around the quotation marks differ from English?
In Finnish, the comma separating the quote from the reporting clause is placed strictly outside the closing quotation mark. In American English, this comma typically goes inside the quotation marks.
How is the compound word ennätyshinta constructed?
It is made of ennätys (a record) and hinta (price). The word ennätys is very commonly used in Finnish to form compounds by simply attaching it to the front of other nouns, giving us words like ennätysaika (record time) or ennätysyleisö (record crowd).