Breakdown of Minusta hyvä asenne on tärkeä, vaikka kielitiede tuntuu joskus vaikealta.
Questions & Answers about Minusta hyvä asenne on tärkeä, vaikka kielitiede tuntuu joskus vaikealta.
Minusta literally means “from me”, but idiomatically it means “in my opinion” / “I think”.
Grammatically:
- minä = I
- minu- = stem
- -sta = elative case ending (“from inside something”)
So minusta = “from me (as a viewpoint)” → “as far as I’m concerned / in my view”.
This is a standard Finnish way to express opinions:
- Minusta tämä on hyvä. = In my opinion this is good.
- Sinusta se on helppoa. = In your opinion it is easy.
So in your sentence, Minusta introduces that what follows is the speaker’s opinion.
All three can express an opinion, but they have slightly different flavors:
Minusta hyvä asenne on tärkeä…
- Very common, short, and neutral.
- Literally “From me, a good attitude is important…” → “I think…”
Minun mielestäni hyvä asenne on tärkeä…
- More explicit and a bit more formal or emphatic.
- Literally “In my opinion…”
- Doubling of possession (minun
- -ni) is normal in standard Finnish.
Mielestäni hyvä asenne on tärkeä…
- Also common and maybe a bit more “bookish” or careful.
- Literally “In my opinion…” (the -ni ending = “my”).
In this sentence you can use any of the three without changing the basic meaning:
- Minusta hyvä asenne on tärkeä…
- Minun mielestäni hyvä asenne on tärkeä…
- Mielestäni hyvä asenne on tärkeä…
They all sound natural.
Both tärkeä and tärkeää are forms of the adjective tärkeä (“important”), but in different cases:
- tärkeä = nominative singular
- tärkeää = partitive singular
In “Hyvä asenne on tärkeä”, the subject is hyvä asenne (a good attitude), which is:
- singular, countable, whole → a complete thing
In this situation, the predicative adjective (tärkeä) usually agrees with the subject in number and case:
- Hyvä asenne on tärkeä. = A good attitude is important.
- Hyvät asenteet ovat tärkeitä. = Good attitudes are important. (plural)
You use tärkeää (partitive) instead when:
The subject is mass / uncountable or seen as “indefinite amount”:
- Raha on tärkeää. = Money is important.
- Terveys on tärkeää. = Health is important.
You’re emphasizing partialness / ongoingness / non-completeness in some structures.
Here, “hyvä asenne” is a concrete, countable thing in the speaker’s mind, so tärkeä (nominative) is the normal choice.
Vaikealta is the ablative case of the adjective vaikea (“difficult”):
- vaikea (nom.) → vaikealta (ablative, singular)
The pattern is:
- Ending -lta / -ltä = ablative (“from, off, from the surface of”).
With the verb tuntua (“to feel, to seem”), Finnish normally uses this ablative case:
- Se tuntuu hyvältä. = It feels good.
- Idea tuntuu oudolta. = The idea feels strange.
- Kielitiede tuntuu vaikealta. = Linguistics feels difficult.
So the construction is:
[subject in nominative] + tuntuu + [adjective in ablative].
You do not say “tuntuu vaikea” or “tuntuu vaikealtaa” – the correct, idiomatic form is with -lta/ltä.
Logically, Minusta colors the whole statement as the speaker’s opinion, but syntactically it clearly belongs to the first clause:
- Minusta hyvä asenne on tärkeä,
- vaikka kielitiede tuntuu joskus vaikealta.
Literal structure:
- “In my opinion, a good attitude is important, even though linguistics sometimes feels difficult.”
If you specifically want to say “To me, linguistics sometimes feels difficult”, it’s natural to repeat minusta in the second clause or move it:
- Minusta kielitiede tuntuu joskus vaikealta. = To me, linguistics sometimes feels difficult.
- Minusta hyvä asenne on tärkeä, ja minusta kielitiede tuntuu joskus vaikealta.
In your sentence as given, the basic reading is that the opinion is about the importance of a good attitude; the difficulty of linguistics is presented more as a general fact (though in practice, listeners still understand it as your experience).
Vaikka is a subordinating conjunction and here it means “although / even though”:
- …, vaikka kielitiede tuntuu joskus vaikealta.
= “… although linguistics sometimes feels difficult.”
Features:
- It introduces a subordinate clause with a normal (indicative) verb form:
- vaikka + [finite verb]
- vaikka kielitiede tuntuu… (3rd person singular, indicative)
Vaikka can also mean “even if” in other contexts, still followed by an indicative or conditional depending on meaning. For your sentence, “although/even though” is the natural reading because it contrasts “good attitude is important” with “linguistics feels difficult”.
No extra että is used: not “vaikka että”; just vaikka + finite clause.
Here kielitiede (“linguistics”) is the subject of the verb tuntuu, so it appears in the nominative singular:
- kielitiede tuntuu joskus vaikealta
= linguistics feels difficult.
You would use kielitiedettä (partitive) mainly in other constructions, for example:
- Opiskelen kielitiedettä. = I study linguistics. (object → partitive)
- Kiinnostun kielitieteestä. = I become interested in linguistics. (elative -stä)
But with tuntua, the thing that “feels/seems” is normally the nominative subject, and the quality is in ablative:
- Asia tuntuu helpolta.
- Kielitiede tuntuu vaikealta.
So kielitiede (not kielitiedettä) is correct here.
Yes, you can move joskus (“sometimes”) to a few different positions. All are grammatically possible, with slight emphasis differences:
kielitiede tuntuu joskus vaikealta (neutral, common)
- “Linguistics feels sometimes difficult.”
- Focus: the feeling of difficulty sometimes occurs.
joskus kielitiede tuntuu vaikealta
- “Sometimes, linguistics feels difficult.”
- Emphasis at the beginning: sometimes (as opposed to always/never).
kielitiede joskus tuntuu vaikealta
- A bit more marked; can sound more spoken or expressive.
- Slightly emphasizes kielitiede and the irregularity of the feeling.
kielitiede tuntuu vaikealta joskus
- Possible, but in neutral writing less common; can sound a bit afterthought-like, similar to English “feels difficult sometimes”.
Meaning remains essentially the same; the choice mainly affects rhythm and emphasis. The original “kielitiede tuntuu joskus vaikealta” is a very natural default.
Yes, in standard written Finnish, you normally put a comma before a subordinate clause, and vaikka introduces such a clause.
Structure:
- Main clause: Minusta hyvä asenne on tärkeä,
- Subordinate clause: vaikka kielitiede tuntuu joskus vaikealta.
Rules (simplified):
- Use a comma before conjunctions like että, koska, vaikka, kun, jos, vaikka when they introduce a subordinate clause:
- Tiedän, että se on totta.
- Lähden, vaikka sataa.
So the comma here is required in formal writing.
Yes. Finnish word order is fairly flexible, and this alternative is natural:
- Hyvä asenne on minusta tärkeä, vaikka kielitiede tuntuu joskus vaikealta.
Meaning: still “In my opinion, a good attitude is important…”; only the focus changes a bit:
Minusta hyvä asenne on tärkeä…
- Neutral way to present your opinion at the start.
Hyvä asenne on minusta tärkeä…
- Slightly more emphasis on “good attitude”, with minusta slipped into the middle as a comment: “A good attitude is, in my view, important.”
Both word orders are correct and idiomatic; the difference is subtle and mostly about information flow and emphasis, not about core meaning.