Questions & Answers about Vapaa-aika on minulle tärkeää.
Tärkeää is the partitive singular form of the adjective tärkeä (important).
In sentences with olla (to be), the adjective that describes the subject (the predicative) can be either nominative (tärkeä) or partitive (tärkeää). The choice affects the nuance:
- Vapaa-aika on minulle tärkeää.
– Literally: Free time is to-me important (some/abstractly).
– Here tärkeää in the partitive makes tärkeä feel like a general, abstract quality.
– Vapaa-aika is seen as a kind of mass / abstract concept (leisure in general), so tärkeää sounds very natural and neutral.
Compare:
- Raha on tärkeää. – Money is important. (money as a general concept)
- Tämä raha on tärkeä. – This money is important. (this particular sum of money)
You can say:
- Vapaa-aika on minulle tärkeä.
That is grammatically correct, but it tends to sound more like “free time is an important thing for me”, treating vapaa-aika more like one concrete item among other important things.
For everyday use, Vapaa-aika on minulle tärkeää is the most typical way to express this idea.
Minulle is the allative singular of minä (I).
- Base form: minä – I
- Allative: minulle – to me / for me
Functions of minulle here:
- It marks the experiencer: the person for whom something is important.
- So on minulle tärkeää literally means “is important to/for me”.
This allative behaves a bit like a dative in languages that have one.
Compare with a similar but different form:
Minulle vapaa-aika on tärkeää.
– Free time is important to me (it matters to me personally).Minusta vapaa-aika on tärkeää.
– In my opinion, free time is important.
– Minusta (elative, from me) is used for opinions, like “from my point of view”.
So:
- Use minulle when you mean for me / to me (personally important, beneficial, relevant).
- Use minusta (or minun mielestäni) when you mean in my opinion.
In Vapaa-aika on minulle tärkeää, vapaa-aika is the subject of a simple “A is B” sentence:
- Subject: vapaa-aika (nominative)
- Verb: on
- Predicative adjective: tärkeää
In that pattern, the normal subject form is nominative, so vapaa-aika is correct.
You use vapaa-aikaa (partitive) mainly in existential / possessive / quantity structures, for example:
Minulla on vapaa-aikaa.
– I have (some) free time.Vapaa-aikaa on liian vähän.
– There is too little free time.Hänellä ei ole vapaa-aikaa.
– He/She doesn’t have any free time.
So:
- Vapaa-aika on minulle tärkeää. – Free time is important to me. (normal subject, nominative)
- Minulla on vapaa-aikaa. – I have free time. (partitive because it’s an indefinite amount of something)
The basic meaning stays the same in all these variants, but the emphasis changes.
Vapaa-aika on minulle tärkeää.
– Neutral, very natural order.
– Topic = vapaa-aika (as for free time, it’s important to me).Minulle vapaa-aika on tärkeää.
– Also correct and common.
– Topic/contrast = minulle.
– Can sound like: For me, free time is important (maybe not for everyone, but for me it is).Vapaa-aika on tärkeää minulle.
– Grammatically fine.
– Puts a bit more focus on minulle by placing it at the end.
All three basically mean “Free time is important to me”, but Finnish uses word order to signal what is being contrasted or highlighted. The first one is the most neutral choice in isolation.
Vapaa-aika is a compound noun:
- vapaa = free
- aika = time
Together: vapaa-aika = free time / leisure.
About the spelling:
- The standard form for the general concept “free time, leisure” is vapaa-aika (with a hyphen).
- It is not normally written as one string vapaaika.
- Writing it as two separate words vapaa aika is possible, but it usually has a more literal, context-specific feel:
- Onko sinulla vapaa aika huomenna? – Do you have a time that is free tomorrow?
In your sentence, we are talking about free time as a general life category, so you should use the lexicalized compound vapaa-aika. The hyphen mainly helps readability; it does not change pronunciation or stress.
The original Finnish sentence already implies “my” from context, but if you want to make it explicit, you can use a possessive structure:
- Minun vapaa-aikani on minulle tärkeää.
Breakdown:
- minun – my (genitive of minä)
- vapaa-aikani – my free time
- vapaa-aika
- possessive suffix -ni (my)
- vapaa-aika
- on minulle tärkeää – is important to me
In everyday speech, Finns often drop minun and just rely on the possessive suffix:
- Vapaa-aikani on minulle tärkeää.
But even more commonly, people are happy with simply:
- Vapaa-aika on minulle tärkeää.
and let the context show that it is their own free time.
You can make the having of free time explicit with an että-clause:
- Minulle on tärkeää, että minulla on vapaa-aikaa.
– It is important for me that I have free time.
Parts:
- Minulle on tärkeää – It is important to me
- että – that
- minulla on vapaa-aikaa – I have (some) free time
- Here vapaa-aikaa is in the partitive, because it’s an indefinite amount of free time.
So:
- Vapaa-aika on minulle tärkeää. – Focus on free time (as a concept) is important to me.
- Minulle on tärkeää, että minulla on vapaa-aikaa. – Focus on the fact that I have free time is important to me.
Approximate pronunciation, with syllable breaks and rough English hints:
Vapaa-aika → VAH-paa AI-kah
- va – like va in variation but shorter
- paa – long aa, as in father, just held longer
- ai – like eye
- ka – like kah in kamikaze
- Stress on the first syllable: VAH-paa.
on → on
- Pretty much like English on, but very short.
minulle → MI-nul-leh
- mi – like mi in minimum
- nul – short, like nul in null without strong l
- le – leh
- Stress on MI: MI-nul-leh.
tärkeää → TÄR-ke-ää
- tä – tae in tacky, ä like a in cat
- r – rolled or tapped
- ke – keh
- ää – long ä, same sound as in cat, just held longer
- Stress on TÄR: TÄR-ke-ää.
General tips:
- Finnish stress is always on the first syllable of each word.
- Double vowels (aa, ää) are long: hold them clearly longer than single vowels.
- ä is a front vowel, like the a in cat, not like the a in father.