Learn Hardcore Finnish: Minusta tämä katu on kapea mutta turvallinen. - In my opinion this street is narrow but safe.

Minusta tämä katu on kapea.
= From me, this street is narrow → In my opinion, this street is narrow.
Sinusta se on kallis.
= From you, it is expensive → You think it’s expensive.

So minusta is a fixed, very common way to say “I think / in my opinion” without any extra verb. It’s understood as a subjective judgment, not a physical “from me” in this context.

Is minusta related to minä? What case is it, and how do I form it?

Yes. Minusta is one of the case forms of the pronoun minä.

Mini-paradigm:

minä = I (nominative)
minun = my (genitive)
minua = me (partitive)
minussa = in me (inessive)
minusta = from me, out of me (elative)
minulle = to me (allative)
… and so on.

Here we use the elative case (-sta / -stä ending): minä → minusta.

Other similar opinion phrases:

Sinusta tämä on helppoa. = In your opinion, this is easy.
Meistä elokuva oli hyvä. = We thought the movie was good.

So whenever you see [person pronoun] + -sta/-stä at the start of such a sentence, it often means “in X’s opinion”.

Could I say minun mielestä tämä katu on kapea or minun mielestäni tämä katu on kapea instead of minusta? Are they different?

Yes, you can, and they are very close in meaning:

Minusta tämä katu on kapea…
Minun mielestä tämä katu on kapea… (colloquial)
Minun mielestäni tämä katu on kapea… (more formal / careful)

All mean roughly “I think this street is narrow…”.

Differences:

Minusta is:
- very common
- short and natural in speech and writing
- slightly more neutral/formal than minun mielestä, but not stiff
Minun mielestä:
- everyday spoken Finnish
- grammatically “less complete” than minun mielestäni, but super common
Minun mielestäni:
- more formal or emphatic, literally “in my opinion” with the possessive suffix -ni.

In everyday language, minusta and minun mielestä are both fine. In a textbook or formal writing, minusta or minun mielestäni is more likely.

Why is it tämä katu and not tämän kadun?

Tämä katu is the subject of the sentence, so it stays in the nominative case:

tämä katu = this street (basic form, acting as subject)
on = is
kapea = narrow
turvallinen = safe

If you said tämän kadun, that would be the genitive case (“of this street”), which doesn’t fit as the subject here.

Compare:

Tämä katu on kapea.
= This street is narrow. (subject in nominative)
Näen tämän kadun.
= I see this street. (object in genitive after certain verbs)

So: subject → tämä katu, not tämän kadun.

Why are the adjectives kapea and turvallinen in their basic form? Shouldn’t they have some ending?

In Finnish, adjectives that describe what the subject is (so-called predicative adjectives) usually:

Agree in number with the subject (singular/plural), and
Are in the nominative case when the subject is a countable noun in the nominative.

Here:

Subject: tämä katu (singular, nominative)
Verb: on (3rd person singular)
Predicative adjectives: kapea, turvallinen (singular, nominative)

So we get:

Tämä katu on kapea.
Tämä katu on turvallinen.
Together: …on kapea mutta turvallinen.

If the subject were plural:

Nämä kadut ovat kapeat mutta turvalliset.
(“These streets are narrow but safe.”)

Now both adjectives take -t to agree with the plural subject kadut.

Could it be kapeaa instead of kapea? When do I use partitive with adjectives like this?

With katu (a countable object), you normally use the nominative adjective:

Katu on kapea. = The street is narrow.

Using kapeaa (partitive) here would be very unusual.

The partitive predicative is more common with mass nouns or when describing “some unspecified amount” or “a kind of” something:

Vesi on kylmää. = The water is (somewhat) cold.
Maito on hyvää. = Milk is good.

Here vesi and maito are mass nouns, so kylmää, hyvää are often in the partitive.

With katu (a specific street, countable), the natural choice is:

Katu on kapea.
not
Katu on kapeaa. (sounds wrong or at least very odd)

So in Minusta tämä katu on kapea mutta turvallinen, nominative adjectives are the normal, correct choice.

Why is the verb on used, and how would it change with a plural subject?

On is the 3rd person singular form of olla (“to be”):

Tämä katu on… = This street is…

It matches the singular subject tämä katu.

For a plural subject, you change the verb:

Nämä kadut ovat kapeat mutta turvalliset.
= These streets are narrow but safe.

Pattern:

Singular: katu on…
Plural: kadut ovat…

Can I move minusta somewhere else in the sentence? Does it change the meaning?

Yes, you can move minusta around; the main meaning stays the same, but emphasis can shift slightly.

Some natural variants:

Minusta tämä katu on kapea mutta turvallinen.
(Default; emphasizes that this is your opinion.)
Tämä katu on minusta kapea mutta turvallinen.
(A bit more focus on tämä katu; then you add “in my opinion” as a kind of afterthought.)
Tämä katu on kapea mutta turvallinen, minusta.
(More colloquial; “this street is narrow but safe, I think.” Sounds like a tag at the end.)

All three are understandable and fairly normal in speech. The differences are nuance and rhythm, not core meaning.

Could I just say Tämä katu on kapea mutta turvallinen without minusta? What changes?

Yes. Tämä katu on kapea mutta turvallinen is a perfectly good sentence.

Difference in nuance:

Tämä katu on kapea mutta turvallinen.
Sounds like a more neutral / objective statement of fact.
Minusta tämä katu on kapea mutta turvallinen.
Explicitly marks it as your personal opinion.

In everyday conversation, people often skip minusta when the context already makes it clear that they’re giving a personal view.

Why is the conjunction mutta used here? What’s the difference between mutta and vaan?

Mutta means “but / however” and is used for a general contrast:

kapea mutta turvallinen
= narrow but safe

Here, both parts (narrow, safe) are true and you’re just contrasting them: the street has a negative feature (narrow) and a positive one (safe).

Vaan is more like “but rather / but instead” and is used mainly after a negation, to correct or replace something:

Se ei ole vaarallinen, vaan turvallinen.
= It’s not dangerous, but (rather) safe.

In our sentence there is no negation, and we’re not correcting a previous statement, so mutta is the correct conjunction:

Minusta tämä katu on kapea mutta turvallinen. ✅
Minusta tämä katu on kapea vaan turvallinen. ❌ (ungrammatical / wrong use of vaan)

Why is there no comma before mutta in this sentence?

In Finnish, you usually put a comma before mutta when it starts a new clause with its own subject and verb:

Pidän tästä kadusta, mutta se on kapea.
(“I like this street, but it is narrow.”)
Two clauses:
1. Pidän tästä kadusta
2. se on kapea

In Minusta tämä katu on kapea mutta turvallinen, the second part turvallinen doesn’t have its own subject and verb; it shares tämä katu on from the first part. So it’s one clause with two adjectives:

…on kapea mutta turvallinen.

Because it’s a shared verb and subject, Finnish punctuation rules say: no comma before mutta in this kind of structure.

Can minusta mean something else in other sentences? How do I know it means “I think” here?

Yes, minusta can also have its “literal” spatial meaning “from me / off me / out of me”, depending on context:

Ota se minusta.
= Take it from me (e.g. physically from my hand or from on top of me).
Minusta tuntuu pahalta.
= I feel bad. (Literally “from me it feels bad,” but really just an idiomatic structure.)

In Minusta tämä katu on kapea mutta turvallinen, there’s a full sentence with an opinion about something external (the street), and nothing is physically moving “from me”. That strongly suggests the “in my opinion” reading.

So you decide the meaning of minusta by looking at the overall sentence:

Physical movement / location → literal “from me”
Evaluation / feeling / thought → “I think / in my opinion”

What would change if I said ja turvallinen instead of mutta turvallinen?

…kapea ja turvallinen = narrow and safe
→ simply listing two properties, both neutral or positive/negative.
…kapea mutta turvallinen = narrow but safe
→ suggests a contrast: being narrow is a drawback, but despite that, it’s safe.

So:

Minusta tämä katu on kapea ja turvallinen.
= In my opinion, this street is narrow and safe. (Both just listed.)
Minusta tämä katu on kapea mutta turvallinen.
= In my opinion, this street is narrow but (still) safe. (Narrowness is treated as something negative or inconvenient.)

The grammar stays the same; only the logical relation between the adjectives changes.