Breakdown of Matkakortti unohtui kotiin tänään.
Questions & Answers about Matkakortti unohtui kotiin tänään.
Unohtui comes from the verb unohtua, which means to get forgotten / to end up forgotten, and it’s used in a kind of subjectless or impersonal way. The idea is:
- Matkakortti unohtui kotiin tänään.
≈ The travel card got (left) forgotten at home today.
This structure:
- focuses on what happened (the card being forgotten),
- and downplays who did it.
If you say:
- Minä unohdin matkakortin kotiin tänään.
you are explicitly saying I forgot the travel card at home today, taking clear responsibility.
With unohtui, the sentence is softer and a bit more neutral: the forgetting sort of “happened” to you.
In normal everyday use, a sentence like Matkakortti unohtui kotiin tänään. almost always implies that the speaker forgot it.
However, grammatically:
- There is no explicit subject (no minä, sinä, etc.).
- The action is described in a neutral way, as if the card “ended up forgotten”.
Depending on context, it could refer to:
- the speaker: I forgot my travel card,
- someone else previously mentioned: He/She forgot the travel card,
- or simply “it got forgotten”, without stressing who did it.
Context usually makes it clear, but in everyday conversation, if you say this about your own day, people will understand it as I forgot my travel card.
In Matkakortti unohtui kotiin tänään, matkakortti is grammatically the subject, not an object.
Reason:
- The verb unohtua is intransitive here: it doesn’t take a direct object.
- The thing that “gets forgotten” (the travel card) is treated as the subject of unohtua.
- Subjects in Finnish stand in the nominative case, which is the basic dictionary form: matkakortti.
If you use the transitive verb unohtaa, then the card becomes the object and changes case:
- Minä unohdin matkakortin kotiin tänään.
– matkakortin is the object (accusative/genitive form).
Kotiin and kotona are different cases and express different ideas:
- kotiin = illative case (movement to home)
→ in this expression, it means left at home / remaining back at home - kotona = inessive case (at home, being in that location)
With unohtua, Finnish uses kotiin to express that something was left behind at home:
- Matkakortti unohtui kotiin.
≈ The travel card got left at home.
If you said Matkakortti unohtui kotona, it would sound unusual or wrong in standard Finnish. For “being left somewhere (by mistake)”, the pattern is:
- jokin unohtui + place in illative
e.g. Puhelin unohtui töihin. – The phone got left at work.
Lompakko unohtui autoon. – The wallet got left in the car.
So kotiin is the normal required form here.
The given order:
- Matkakortti unohtui kotiin tänään.
is neutral and natural. It starts with matkakortti, so the topic is “the travel card”, then tells what happened, then adds the place and time.
In Finnish, you can move elements for emphasis or flow, for example:
- Tänään matkakortti unohtui kotiin.
– Emphasis a bit more on today. - Matkakortti unohtui tänään kotiin.
– Very similar meaning; a little extra focus on today.
There is no hard word-order rule like in English, but:
- Keeping the verb in the second slot is common in more neutral written Finnish,
- and time words like tänään often appear at the beginning or end.
All of these versions would be understood; the differences are mostly about what you want to emphasize.
Yes, you can say:
- Minä unohdin matkakortin kotiin tänään.
This is completely correct and means essentially the same situation, but the nuance changes:
- Matkakortti unohtui kotiin tänään.
– focuses on the event, softer, less personal;
– “the travel card got forgotten at home today.” - Minä unohdin matkakortin kotiin tänään.
– focuses on you as the agent;
– “I forgot the travel card at home today.”
The second sentence sounds more direct about whose fault it was. The first sounds a bit more like it just happened.
Unohtui is:
- verb: unohtua (to get forgotten)
- person: 3rd person singular
- tense: past (simple past)
Formation:
- Verb stem: unohtu-
- Past tense marker: -i-
- 3rd person singular ending: no personal ending (it’s zero in this form)
So:
- unohtu- + i → unohtui
Present tense would be:
- unohtuu – “gets forgotten / is forgotten (in this sense)”
They are related but used differently:
unohtaa = to forget (something)
– transitive, needs an object
– Minä unohdin matkakortin. – I forgot the travel card.unohtua = to get forgotten / to end up forgotten
– intransitive, does not take a direct object
– the thing forgotten becomes the subject
– Matkakortti unohtui kotiin. – The travel card got (left) forgotten at home.
So unohtaa highlights who forgot; unohtua highlights what happened to the thing.
Yes, you can say:
- Matkakortti on unohtunut kotiin.
Difference in feel:
- Matkakortti unohtui kotiin tänään.
– Simple past event: it got left at home (at some point today). - Matkakortti on unohtunut kotiin.
– Present perfect: emphasizes the current result:
“The travel card has ended up forgotten at home (and is still there).”
In everyday speech, if you want to tell what happened earlier in the day, the simple past unohtui with tänään is very natural. The perfect form on unohtunut is more about the state right now (it has been forgotten and remains at home).
To negate unohtui, you use the negative verb ei plus the past participle form of unohtua:
- Matkakortti ei unohtunut kotiin tänään.
– The travel card was not forgotten at home today.
Structure:
- ei (negative verb, 3rd singular)
- unohtunut (past participle)
- no personal ending
This is the standard way past tense is negated in Finnish.