Breakdown of Minusta on tärkeää viettää aikaa läheisten ihmisten kanssa ilman puhelinta.
Questions & Answers about Minusta on tärkeää viettää aikaa läheisten ihmisten kanssa ilman puhelinta.
Literally, Minusta on tärkeää is something like “From me, it is important” or “In my opinion, it is important”.
- minusta = from me / in my view
- This is the elative case (-sta/-stä) of minä.
- In Finnish, opinions and feelings are often expressed with this pattern:
- Minusta on hauskaa. = I think it’s fun / It feels fun to me.
- Sinusta on vaikeaa. = You find it difficult.
So Minusta on tärkeää... is a natural Finnish way to say “I think it is important…” or “To me it is important…”, using a grammatical pattern where the “experiencer” is in elative (minusta).
Tärkeää is the partitive singular form of the adjective tärkeä.
In sentences like:
- On tärkeää viettää aikaa...
- Minusta on tärkeää, että...
Finnish normally uses the partitive form of the adjective because the “thing that is important” is not a concrete, countable noun but an action or a whole idea (an infinitive or a clause). It’s kind of “unbounded” in Finnish grammar.
Compare:
- Tämä asia on tärkeä.
Here asia is a concrete subject, so tärkeä (nominative) is used.
Versus:
- On tärkeää levätä. = It is important to rest.
No concrete noun subject; the important thing is an action, so tärkeää (partitive) is used.
So on tärkeää is the normal pattern when followed by an infinitive (viettää) or an että-clause.
Grammatically, this is one of those Finnish sentences where the subject is not a normal noun.
You can think of it like this:
- The core structure is On tärkeää viettää aikaa...
= It is important to spend time...
There is no visible noun subject. The “thing” that is important is the action viettää aikaa läheisten ihmisten kanssa ilman puhelinta.
Some grammars will say that:
- The infinitive clause viettää aikaa... functions as the subject-like element.
- Minusta is an experiencer (“in my opinion”) in the elative case.
- on is the verb.
- tärkeää is the predicative adjective in partitive.
So from an English point of view: Finnish doesn’t need a dummy subject like “it” here. The whole spending time… without a phone idea is what is important.
Viettää here is the 1st infinitive (dictionary form) and is used as a complement of on tärkeää:
- On tärkeää viettää aikaa...
= It is important to spend time...
In English we use “to spend”; in Finnish the equivalent is the infinitive without “to”:
- on vaikeaa ymmärtää = it is difficult to understand
- on hauskaa matkustaa = it is fun to travel
- on tärkeää viettää = it is important to spend
So it stays in the basic infinitive form viettää, not in a personal form like vietän (“I spend”).
Yes. Viettää aikaa is the standard, idiomatic way to say “spend time” in the sense of passing time with someone or doing something:
- viettää aikaa perheen kanssa = spend time with (one’s) family
- viettää aikaa kotona = spend time at home
Literally, viettää can mean “to spend (a period, a holiday)”, “to celebrate”:
- viettää joulua = celebrate/spend Christmas
- viettää lomaa = spend a vacation
So viettää aikaa is very natural and common.
Because of the word kanssa (with).
- kanssa requires the noun phrase before it to be in the genitive case.
- The phrase is “close people”: läheiset ihmiset (nominative plural).
- In genitive plural, both adjective and noun change:
läheiset ihmiset → läheisten ihmisten
So:
- läheiset ihmiset = close people (as a subject, object, etc.)
- läheisten ihmisten kanssa = with close people
The pattern is:
- X (genitive) + kanssa = with X
e.g. ystävän kanssa (with a friend), opettajan kanssa (with the teacher), lasten kanssa (with the children).
Here läheisten ihmisten is the whole noun phrase in genitive plural governed by kanssa.
Yes, absolutely. That’s quite natural in Finnish.
- läheisten kanssa literally: with (my/your/his/her) close ones.
The word läheiset can be used on its own as a noun meaning “close people / loved ones / close family and friends”. When you put it into genitive plural:
- läheiset → läheisten
and then add kanssa: läheisten kanssa.
So you could also say:
- Minusta on tärkeää viettää aikaa läheisten kanssa ilman puhelinta.
The meaning is basically the same; ihmisten just makes it explicitly “close people”, while läheiset is slightly more compact and idiomatic.
Because the word ilman (without) normally takes the partitive case.
- puhelin (nominative) → puhelinta (partitive singular)
This is a fixed pattern in Finnish:
- ilman rahaa = without money
- ilman autoa = without a car
- ilman lounasta = without lunch
- ilman puhelinta = without a phone
So after ilman, you should expect the partitive form, not the basic nominative form.
Both essentially mean “I think it’s important…” and are correct.
Minusta on tärkeää...
- Shorter, very common in everyday speech and writing.
- Literally: From me, it is important → In my view, it is important.
Minun mielestäni on tärkeää...
- More explicit: literally In my opinion/mind, it is important.
- Feels a bit more emphatic or formal/clear, but also appears in normal conversation.
You’ll also hear colloquial versions:
- Mun mielestä on tärkeää...
- Mun mielestäni on tärkeää... (less common, and feels a bit redundant)
In practice, Minusta on tärkeää... and Minun mielestäni on tärkeää... are almost interchangeable in meaning; the difference is mainly style and length.
Yes, you can say:
- Minulle on tärkeää viettää aikaa läheisten ihmisten kanssa ilman puhelinta.
But there is a slight nuance difference:
Minusta on tärkeää...
→ In my opinion, it is important that… (focus on your judgment / opinion about what is generally important)Minulle on tärkeää...
→ It is important *to me personally to… (focus on *personal value/importance for you, even if others don’t care)
In many contexts they overlap, and both can be translated to English as “It’s important to me to...” or “I think it’s important to...”, but:
- If you want to stress your evaluation of what is important in general, minusta is more natural.
- If you want to stress that this is personally important to you (a personal priority), minulle fits very well.