Breakdown of Minä tarvitsen muistutuksen ennen kokousta.
Questions & Answers about Minä tarvitsen muistutuksen ennen kokousta.
In Finnish, the verb ending already shows the subject, so you can drop the pronoun.
– Minä tarvitsen muistutuksen… is emphatic or used for clarity.
– More commonly you’d say Tarvitsen muistutuksen ennen kokousta.
tarvitsen is the 1st person singular present tense of the verb tarvita, “to need.”
– Verb stem: tarvit-
– Ending for “I” in present: -sen
So tarvitsen = “I need.”
Finnish distinguishes between partial/indefinite objects (partitive) and complete/definite objects (accusative/Genitive).
– Partitive (muistutusta) implies “some reminder” or an incomplete action.
– Accusative (muistutuksen) treats the reminder as a specific, whole thing you need.
muistutus means “reminder.” It’s built from the verb muistuttaa (“to remind”) plus the noun-forming suffix -us, which turns a verb into “the act or result of.”
– muistuttaa → muistutus (“the act of reminding” / “reminder”)
The preposition ennen always governs the partitive case.
– kokous (nom.) → kokousta (partitive)
So ennen kokousta = “before (the) meeting.”
Yes. Time expressions are flexible in Finnish. Putting it first adds emphasis on “before the meeting”:
Ennen kokousta tarvitsen muistutuksen.