Uni jäi lyhyeksi viime yönä.

Sleep was short last night.

Breakdown of Uni jäi lyhyeksi viime yönä.

• lyhyt: short
• uni: the sleep
• jäädä: to remain
• viime yönä: last night

Questions & Answers about Uni jäi lyhyeksi viime yönä.

Why is uni in the nominative case here, rather than the partitive unta?

Because uni is the subject of the finite verb jäädä, and Finnish subjects take the nominative. The partitive unta would only appear if uni were the direct object of a verb that governs partitive.

What does the verb jäädä mean in this context, and why is the past tense jäi instead of jääi?

Here jäädä means “to remain” or “to end up.”

• The third-person singular past tense of jäädä is irregular: it becomes jäi, not jääi or jääti.
• In many Finnish verbs you drop -da/-dä and add -i, but stems can change: jäädä → stem jä-
  • -i = jäi. You simply have to memorize this irregular form.

Why is the adjective lyhyt in the translative case lyhyeksi?

After verbs of resulting state like jäädä, the complement takes the translative case -ksi to express “becoming” or “ending up” in that state.

• lyhyt (“short”) + -ksi → lyhyeksi (“into/for short”).

What case is viime yönä, and how does it express “last night”?

Viime yönä breaks down as:
• yö “night” → genitive yön
• add the essive ending -ä → yönä, meaning “as the night” or “during the night (on that night)”
• viime “last” modifies it.
So viime yönä literally means “on the last night,” i.e. “last night.”

What's the difference between yönä and yöllä when talking about night?

• yöllä (adessive -llä) means “during the night” in a general sense, without specifying which night.
• yönä (essive of the genitive) is used with determiners or modifiers—tänä yönä (“tonight”), viime yönä (“last night”), ensi yönä (“next night”)—to single out a particular night.

Can I add a pronoun or possessive suffix to show “my” in this sentence?

Yes. Finnish allows:
• Minulla uni jäi lyhyeksi viime yönä. (“I ended up with too little sleep last night.”) using minulla in the adessive to mark the experiencer.
• Uneni jäi lyhyeksi viime yönä. (“My sleep ended up short last night.”) using the possessive suffix -ni on uni.
Often, however, the possessor is omitted if it’s clear from context.