Breakdown of Sain pitkän kirjeen ystävältäni.
minä
I
minun
my
ystävä
the friend
pitkä
long
-lta
from
saada
to receive
kirje
the letter
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Questions & Answers about Sain pitkän kirjeen ystävältäni.
Why is sain used, and what does it mean?
sain is the first person singular past tense form of saada (“to get” or “to receive”). In this sentence sain translates as “I got” or “I received.”
Why is there no subject pronoun minä (“I”) in the sentence?
In Finnish the verb ending indicates the person, so the pronoun minä is unnecessary and usually omitted unless you want to add emphasis or clarify who performed the action.
Why are pitkän and kirjeen both ending in -n? Shouldn’t the adjective stay in its base form?
When you have a complete, countable object (here a long letter), Finnish marks it with the accusative singular, which for many nouns and their modifying adjectives takes -n. Hence pitkä → pitkän and kirje → kirjeen.
Could we instead use the partitive pitkää kirjettä?
You’d use the partitive ( pitkää kirjettä ) to express an incomplete or ongoing action, or an unspecified quantity. But since you fully received one specific letter, the accusative (pitkän kirjeen) is the correct choice. Using the partitive here would sound odd, as if you only got some portion of a letter.
How is ystävältäni built, and what does each part mean?
ystävältäni consists of three parts:
- ystävä (“friend”)
- elative case -ltä (“from [the surface of/from]”)
- possessive suffix -ni (“my”)
Put together, ystävä + lta + ni gives “from my friend.”
Can I change the word order in this sentence?
Yes. Finnish word order is flexible and often used for emphasis. For example:
- Ystävältäni sain pitkän kirjeen. (Emphasizes who I got it from.)
- Pitkän kirjeen sain ystävältäni. (Emphasizes what I got.)
All variants still mean “I got a long letter from my friend,” with slight shifts in focus.
What’s the difference between using -lta and -sta for “from” when talking about people?
Both -lta (ablative) and -sta (elative) can translate as “from,” but Finnish normally uses -lta for persons (so ystävältäni). If you said ystävästäni, it would literally mean “out of/about my friend” and not “from my friend.” Always use -lta/-ltä when you mean “from someone.”