Breakdown of Ostin uuden puhelimen. Se oli kallis.
olla
to be
se
it / he / she (of a person) / that
uusi
new
kallis
expensive
puhelin
phone
ostaa
to buy
Questions & Answers about Ostin uuden puhelimen. Se oli kallis.
Why do both uuden and puhelimen end in -n?
They make up the object of the sentence, meaning they are the thing you bought. Because the buying action is complete and you bought one whole phone, Finnish requires the object to take the genitive case ending -n. The adjective uusi (new) must grammatically match the noun it describes, so both words get the ending.
How does the basic word uusi turn into uuden?
Finnish words ending in -si often change to a -te- stem when adding endings, making the base uute-. Then, because adding the -n ending closes the last syllable, the strong consonant t softens to a d through a rule called consonant gradation. This gives us uuden.
What happens to the word puhelin to make it puhelimen?
Finnish nouns ending in -in follow a special pattern. The -in changes to -ime- before you add any case endings. So, the base stem of puhelin becomes puhelime-, and then we add the -n ending.
Why is kallis in its basic form and not the partitive case?
When using the verb olla (to be) to describe something, the adjective takes the partitive case for uncountable things or abstract concepts (like 'the coffee is hot'). However, a phone is a single, countable object. When describing a specific, countable noun, the adjective stays in the basic nominative form, kallis.
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