Learn Hardcore Finnish: Tytöllä on vaaleanpunainen mekko, ja se on minusta tosi kiva. - The girl has a pink dress, and I think it is really nice.

In everyday conversation, “Tytöllä on mekko” is very commonly understood as “The girl is wearing a dress.” Context (what you’re talking about at the moment) tells which meaning is intended.

What case is “tytöllä”, and how is it formed from “tyttö”?

Tytöllä is in the adessive case.

Forming it:

Base word: tyttö (girl)
Stem: tytö- (the final vowel changes as part of normal Finnish stem formation)
Add the adessive ending -lla/-llä (here -llä because of vowel harmony)

So: tyttö → tytö + llä → tytöllä

Main ideas for adessive (-lla/-llä):

Location: pöydällä = on the table
Time-ish expressions: kesällä = in (the) summer
Possession: tytöllä on mekko = the girl has a dress

Why is there no word for “a” or “the” before “mekko”?

Finnish has no articles (no words like a, an, the). The noun mekko by itself can mean:

a dress
the dress

Which one you choose in English depends on context and what sounds natural:

Tytöllä on vaaleanpunainen mekko.
→ “The girl has a pink dress.” (most natural)
→ In some contexts: “The girl has the pink dress.”

The Finnish sentence doesn’t make that distinction grammatically.

Does “se” refer to the girl or the dress? Why use “se” and not “hän”?

In this sentence, “se” clearly refers to the dress (mekko), not to the girl:

Tytöllä on vaaleanpunainen mekko, ja se on minusta tosi kiva.
The girl has a pink dress, and it is really nice in my opinion.

mekko is an inanimate thing → the pronoun is se (“it”).

About hän vs. se:

hän = he/she (for people, standard/written Finnish)
se = it, but in colloquial spoken Finnish, se is also very often used for people instead of hän.

In standard written Finnish, if se refers to a person, some teachers will still prefer hän. Here it’s naturally se, because we’re clearly talking about the dress.

What does “minusta” mean here, and how is it related to “minä”?

Minusta is the elative case (“from me”) of minä (“I”). The forms are:

minä = I (basic form)
minua = me (partitive)
minussa = in me (inessive)
minusta = from me, out of me (elative)
minulle = to/for me (allative)
etc.

In expressions of opinion, minusta + olla means:

minusta se on kiva = from me it is nice → “I think it is nice / In my opinion it is nice.”

This is very common and natural:

Minusta tämä kirja on hyvä. = I think this book is good.
Minusta se on tylsää. = In my opinion, it’s boring.

A slightly longer synonym is:

Minun mielestäni se on tosi kiva. = In my opinion, it is really nice.

Can the word order “Minusta se on tosi kiva” be changed? For example, “Se on minusta tosi kiva”?

Yes. Both are correct:

Minusta se on tosi kiva.
Se on minusta tosi kiva.

They mean the same thing: “I think it is really nice.”
The difference is only in emphasis:

Minusta se on tosi kiva. – slightly more emphasis on “as for me / in my opinion” at the start.
Se on minusta tosi kiva. – starts by focusing on “it” and then adds “in my opinion”.

In everyday speech and writing, both orders are natural.

What does “tosi” mean in “tosi kiva”? Is it the same as “todella” or “oikein”?

Literally, tosi means “true / real”. But in modern everyday Finnish, it’s very often used as an intensifier, like “really” or “very”:

tosi kiva = really nice / very nice
tosi hyvä = really good
tosi kallis = really expensive

It’s roughly similar to:

todella kiva – really/indeed nice (a bit more formal/neutral)
oikein kiva – very nice (often sounds a bit polite)

Tosi + adjective is very common in informal and neutral speech.

How is “vaaleanpunainen” formed, and does it literally mean “light red”?

Yes. Vaaleanpunainen is a compound adjective:

vaalea = light (in color)
punainen = red

When forming this color word, vaalea takes a genitive-like form vaalean, then combines with punainen:

vaalea + n + punainen → vaaleanpunainen = light-red → pink

Other similar color compounds:

tummansininen = dark blue (tumma + sininen)
vaaleanvihreä = light green (vaalea + vihreä)

Note that vaaleanpunainen behaves like a regular adjective and agrees with the noun:

vaaleanpunainen mekko = a pink dress (singular, nominative)
vaaleanpunaiset mekot = pink dresses (plural, nominative)

Why is there a comma before “ja”: “… mekko, ja se on …”? English usually doesn’t put a comma there.

Finnish comma rules differ from English. In Finnish, you usually put a comma between two main clauses, even if they are joined by ja (“and”).

Here:

Tytöllä on vaaleanpunainen mekko = first main clause
se on minusta tosi kiva = second main clause

Because they’re both full clauses (each with its own subject and verb), Finnish punctuation normally uses a comma:

Tytöllä on vaaleanpunainen mekko, ja se on minusta tosi kiva.

In English, we’d often write:

“The girl has a pink dress and I think it’s really nice.” (no comma needed)

Why is “kiva” in the form kiva (not something like kivan or kivaa) in “se on minusta tosi kiva”?

Here kiva is a predicative adjective linked to se by on (“is”):

se (subject) on (verb ‘to be’) kiva (predicative adjective)

In such X on Y sentences, the predicative is generally nominative, matching the subject in number:

Se on kiva. = It is nice.
Ne ovat kivoja. = They are nice. (here plural partitive, because of plural + adjective; more advanced detail)
Mekko on kallis. = The dress is expensive.

So kiva is in its basic form because it directly describes se via on. The tosi in front is just an adverb-like intensifier and doesn’t change the case.