Breakdown of Minusta on tärkeää, että jokainen saa rakastaa ketä haluaa ja puhua mielipiteestään vapaasti.
Questions & Answers about Minusta on tärkeää, että jokainen saa rakastaa ketä haluaa ja puhua mielipiteestään vapaasti.
Minusta is literally “from me” (the elative case of minä, I), but in this structure it means “I think / in my opinion”.
Finnish often uses elative (-sta / -stä) to express where an opinion or assessment comes from:
- Minusta on tärkeää… = I think it is important… (literally: From me it is important…)
- Sinusta on tylsää… = You think it’s boring…
So minusta here doesn’t mean physical movement “from me”, but “from my point of view”.
All three are grammatical, but they do slightly different things:
Minusta on tärkeää, että…
- Idiomatic way to say “I think it is important that…”
- Focus: your opinion about something in general.
Minun mielestäni on tärkeää, että…
- Literally “in my opinion, it is important that…”
- Very close in meaning to minusta on tärkeää.
- Slightly more explicit/“formal opinion-sounding”, but in everyday speech you’ll also hear the shorter mielestäni on tärkeää….
Minulle on tärkeää, että…
- Literally “It is important to me that…”
- Focus: it is personally important for you, emotionally or practically, not just an abstract opinion.
So:
- minusta / mielestäni on tärkeää ≈ I think it’s important (in general)
- minulle on tärkeää ≈ it matters to me personally
Tärkeää is the partitive singular of tärkeä (important).
In Finnish, the adjective used as a complement (predicative) of olla (to be) can appear in nominative or partitive. For abstract or “open-ended” statements like:
- On tärkeää, että…
- On hyvä, että…
- On mahdollista, että…
the predicative is almost always in partitive. This often happens when the complement is a clause (an että-clause) rather than a concrete, counted thing.
So:
- On tärkeää, että jokainen saa… = It is important that everyone can… (general, abstract idea)
Using tärkeä here would sound ungrammatical or at least very odd.
Että is a subordinating conjunction meaning “that” (in the sense of “I think that…”).
Structure:
- Minusta on tärkeää, että jokainen saa rakastaa…
- Main clause: Minusta on tärkeää
- Subordinate clause: että jokainen saa rakastaa…
You cannot leave out että in this kind of sentence.
- Minusta on tärkeää, jokainen saa rakastaa… ❌ (wrong)
- Minusta on tärkeää, että jokainen saa rakastaa… ✅
So että introduces the whole idea that is being judged as “important”.
Jokainen means “each / everyone (each person)” and is grammatically singular, so it takes a singular verb:
- jokainen saa = everyone gets/is allowed (lit. each one gets)
There is no form jokaiset in standard Finnish.
You could also say:
- kaikki saavat rakastaa… = everyone (all) can/is allowed to love…
Difference in nuance:
- jokainen emphasizes each individual: each and every person.
- kaikki emphasizes the group as a whole: all people.
In this kind of rights/freedoms sentence, jokainen feels a bit more individual-focused and is very natural.
Saa is the 3rd person singular of saada. It can mean:
- to get/receive (concrete):
- Hän saa lahjan. = He/she gets a present.
- to be allowed to / may (permission):
- Hän saa mennä. = He/she is allowed to go / may go.
In this sentence:
- jokainen saa rakastaa… ja puhua…
saa is used in the permission/rights sense:
- “everyone is allowed to love… and (is allowed to) speak…”
→ Similar to English may / has the right to / is free to.
Using voi (can, is able to) would focus more on ability rather than permission or right.
Ketä is the partitive form of kuka (who).
The verb rakastaa (to love) always takes its object in the partitive case:
- rakastan sinua = I love you.
- rakastamme heitä = We love them.
So when you use “who(ever)” as the object of rakastaa, it must also be in partitive:
- rakastaa ketä haluaa ≈ to love whoever one wants (whomever one wants)
Kuka (nominative) would be the subject form (“who is doing something”), not the correct case for the object of rakastaa.
You may also see:
- rakastaa ketä tahansa = to love whoever / anyone (at all) one wants
but the key point is: rakastaa + partitive object ⇒ ketä, not kuka.
In the sentence:
- …että jokainen saa rakastaa ketä haluaa…
the understood subject of haluaa is jokainen (everyone). Finnish does not need to repeat it:
- literally: “that everyone is allowed to love whom (he/she) wants”
We could spell it out more fully:
- että jokainen saa rakastaa ketä hän haluaa
but Finnish very often drops the repeated subject pronoun when it’s clear from context.
So:
- ketä haluaa = who(ever) he/she wants
- the “he/she” is just understood from jokainen earlier.
Mielipiteestään breaks down like this:
- mielipide = opinion
- mielipiteestä = from/about the opinion (elative singular: -stä / -stä)
- mielipiteestään = from/about his/her/their opinion (elative + 3rd person possessive -än)
Two key grammar points:
The verb puhua + elative
- puhua jostakin = to talk about something
- So we need elative: mielipiteestä (about an opinion).
Possessive suffix for “one’s own opinion”
- Subject: jokainen (everyone).
- Their own opinion: mielipiteestään (about his/her/their own opinion).
So puhua mielipiteestään literally means “to speak about his/her/their (own) opinion”.
Just mielipide would be the basic dictionary form and not in the right case, and it would also miss the possessor (whose opinion?).
Finnish doesn’t have grammatical gender, and for “their own” referring to “everyone / each person”, it uses the 3rd person singular possessive suffix -nsa / -nsä / -aan / -ään:
- jokainen (everyone) → possessor is 3rd person (he/she/they in English)
- mielipiteestään = about his/her/their opinion
English uses singular they here for gender-neutrality (“their opinion”), but structurally it is closest to Finnish 3rd person.
So even if you translate it as “their opinion”, grammatically in Finnish it’s 3rd person (his/her) possessive attached to the noun.
Vapaasti is an adverb formed from the adjective vapaa (free).
- vapaa = free (adjective):
- vapaa maa = a free country
- vapaasti = freely (adverb):
- puhua vapaasti = to speak freely
The ending -sti is a common way to turn adjectives into adverbs in Finnish:
- nopea → nopeasti (fast → quickly)
- selvä → selvästi (clear → clearly)
So vapaasti here describes how one speaks: freely.
Yes, both are grammatically correct:
- puhua mielipiteestään vapaasti
- puhua vapaasti mielipiteestään
Finnish word order is quite flexible, especially with adverbs like vapaasti.
Nuance:
- puhua mielipiteestään vapaasti – slightly neutral, lists “about one’s opinion” and then adds how (freely).
- puhua vapaasti mielipiteestään – may place a tiny bit more emphasis on vapaasti (“to speak freely about one’s opinion”).
But in everyday usage, the difference is minor, and both sound fine.
The current order clearly groups what belongs with what:
- rakastaa ketä haluaa = to love whoever one wants
- puhua mielipiteestään vapaasti = to speak freely about one’s opinion
If you moved ketä haluaa to the very end:
- …rakastaa ja puhua mielipiteestään vapaasti ketä haluaa
it becomes confusing: it can sound like “speak freely about his/her opinion whoever he/she wants”, which doesn’t really make sense.
So the original order keeps the two ideas parallel and clear:
- love whomever you want
- speak freely about your opinion