Questions & Answers about Ennen kaikkea perhe on minulle tärkeä.
Literally, what does ennen kaikkea mean, and why is it in this case?
It translates literally as "before everything". The word ennen (before) is a preposition that requires the following word to be in the partitive case. That is why we use kaikkea (the partitive of kaikki - all/everything) instead of the nominative. As a fixed phrase, it means "above all".
Why is the adjective tärkeä in the nominative case rather than the partitive (tärkeää)?
In an "A is B" sentence, the predicative adjective must match the subject. Because perhe (family) is a countable noun in the nominative case, the adjective tärkeä must also be nominative. You would use the partitive tärkeää only if the subject was an uncountable mass noun (like ruoka - food) or a purely abstract concept.
Is "family" not considered an abstract concept in Finnish?
While English speakers might think of "family" abstractly, in Finnish perhe is strictly a countable noun (you can have one family, two families, etc.). Therefore, it acts like any other concrete, countable noun and takes the nominative case as the subject here, never the partitive.
Does the meaning change if I put ennen kaikkea at the end of the sentence?
You could grammatically say Perhe on minulle tärkeä ennen kaikkea, and the core meaning remains the same. However, Finnish uses word order for emphasis. Moving ennen kaikkea to the very beginning highlights it as the most critical point of your statement, just like starting with "Above all" in English.