Breakdown of Minun nukkumaanmenoaikani on kello yksitoista.
Questions & Answers about Minun nukkumaanmenoaikani on kello yksitoista.
Yes, in a sense it is “double marking” possession, and that’s normal in Finnish.
- minun = my (1st person singular, genitive)
- nukkumaanmenoaikani = my bedtime
- the ending -ni means my / mine
So literally you get something like “my my-bedtime is at eleven o’clock.”
In everyday Finnish, you usually use either the possessive suffix -ni or the pronoun, not both, unless you want emphasis:
- Nukkumaanmenoaikani on kello yksitoista.
= My bedtime is at eleven. (normal, quite neutral) - Minun nukkumaanmenoaikani on kello yksitoista.
= My bedtime is at eleven. (emphasises that it’s mine, not someone else’s)
So the sentence is perfectly correct; it just slightly stresses that we’re talking specifically about my bedtime.
It’s a typical Finnish “word train” (compound + suffix). Break it down like this:
- nukkua – to sleep
- nukkumaan – “to go to sleep”
- this is the illative form of the 3rd infinitive of nukkua
- meaning literally “into sleeping / toward sleeping”
- meno – going
- nukkumaanmeno – the act of going to sleep, “going-to-bed”
- aika – time
- nukkumaanmenoaika – bedtime, literally “going-to-sleep time”
- nukkumaanmenoaika + -ni → nukkumaanmenoaikani – my bedtime
So the whole thing is:
nukkua → nukkumaan → nukkumaanmeno → nukkumaanmenoaika → nukkumaanmenoaikani
Not really; that version is ungrammatical.
There are two normal ways to express possession with this structure:
Pronoun + possessive suffix
- Minun nukkumaanmenoaikani on kello yksitoista.
Possessive suffix only (most common in speech and writing)
- Nukkumaanmenoaikani on kello yksitoista.
But using only the pronoun and leaving off the possessive suffix in this type of noun phrase is not standard:
- ✗ Minun nukkumaanmenoaika on… → sounds wrong to native speakers
So: keep the -ni, and feel free to drop minun if you don’t need emphasis.
Minun is the genitive form of minä (I).
In Finnish, when a noun belongs to someone, the owner is put in the genitive:
- minä → minun (I → my)
- sinä → sinun (you → your)
- me → meidän (we → our)
So:
- minun nukkumaanmenoaikani
= my bedtime
literally: the bedtime of me
Even when you use the possessive suffix -ni, the optional pronoun before it must still be in the genitive.
Finnish usually writes compound nouns as a single word.
nukkumaanmenoaika is a compound of:
- nukkumaanmeno (going to bed)
- aika (time)
So they are simply glued together → nukkumaanmenoaika.
Writing it with a space, like nukkumaan meno aika, would look wrong and confusing. Finnish treats it as one lexical unit.
Hyphens are used only in some special cases (long or ambiguous compounds, or across line breaks), but the default is: if it’s one concept, write it as one word.
You can, but the meaning shifts slightly.
- nukkumaanmenoaika
= bedtime in the sense of the time you go to bed / start going to sleep - nukkumisaika
= sleeping time, time for sleeping (could refer more to the period when you are sleeping)
So:
- Lasten nukkumaanmenoaika on kello yhdeksän.
= The children’s bedtime (when they go to bed) is nine. - Lasten nukkumisaika on kello yhdeksästä kahdeksaan.
= The children’s sleeping time (the span during which they are supposed to sleep) is from nine to eight.
In everyday talk, nukkumaanmenoaika is the normal, precise word for bedtime.
Finnish needs the verb olla (to be) here; you cannot drop it.
- Minun nukkumaanmenoaikani on kello yksitoista. ✅
- ✗ Minun nukkumaanmenoaikani kello yksitoista. ❌
Unlike some languages that sometimes omit “to be”, standard Finnish keeps olla in sentences like “X is Y”.
on is the 3rd person singular present form of olla:
- se on – it is
- nukkumaanmenoaikani on – my bedtime is
kello literally means “clock” or “o’clock”, but in time expressions it behaves almost like an obligatory label that “this is a time”.
In many contexts, when you say at 11 o’clock, you use:
- kello + [cardinal number]
Examples:
- Tapaaminen on kello kolme. – The meeting is at three.
- Bussi tulee kello seitsemän. – The bus comes at seven.
- Nukkumaanmenoaikani on kello yksitoista. – My bedtime is at eleven.
You can sometimes omit kello, especially in spoken language with verbs like herätä (wake up):
- Herään kuudelta. – I wake up at six.
But in a sentence like this one, kello yksitoista is the most neutral and textbook‑like way to say “at eleven”.
This is about cardinal vs ordinal numbers:
- yksitoista = 11 (cardinal number)
- yhdestoista = 11th (ordinal number)
For clock times, Finnish uses cardinal numbers:
- kello yksi – one o’clock
- kello kaksi – two o’clock
- …
- kello yksitoista – eleven o’clock
- kello kaksitoista – twelve o’clock
Ordinals (yhdestoista, kahdestoista, etc.) are used in things like the 11th day, the 11th floor, the 11th chapter, not for telling the time.
So kello yksitoista is the normal way to say eleven o’clock.
Yes, you can, and it’s natural Finnish, but there’s a small difference in style/feel.
- kello yksitoista – neutral, clear, quite standard (and slightly more written/formal)
- yhdeltätoista – uses a case form of the number alone (ablative), common especially in spoken Finnish with many verbs
Compare:
- Tapaaminen on kello kolme.
- Tapaaminen on kolmelta.
Both mean “The meeting is at three.”
Likewise:
- Nukkumaanmenoaikani on kello yksitoista.
- Nukkumaanmenoaikani on yhdeltätoista.
Both can mean “My bedtime is at eleven.”
The difference is mainly stylistic; kello yksitoista is what you’ll often see in textbooks and formal writing.
In kello yksitoista, yksitoista is in the nominative case, the basic dictionary form.
The structure is:
- kello (nominative)
- yksitoista (nominative)
Together they form one time expression: kello yksitoista = eleven o’clock.
If you use the ablative form instead (like in yhdeltätoista), then the case shows up in the number:
- yksitoista → yhdeltätoista (ablative)
used in patterns like herään yhdeltätoista – I wake up at eleven.
Yes, that word order is grammatically correct.
- Minun nukkumaanmenoaikani on kello yksitoista.
= neutral; topic is my bedtime. - Kello yksitoista on minun nukkumaanmenoaikani.
= emphasises the time; something like “Eleven o’clock is my bedtime.”
Finnish word order is fairly flexible. Both orders mean the same basic thing, but shifting elements to the front tends to put focus or contrast on them.
nukkumaan is the illative form of the 3rd infinitive of nukkua (to sleep). It often corresponds to English “to go to do X” / “off to do X” or just “to VERB” in motion contexts.
Examples:
- Menen nukkumaan. – I’m going to sleep.
- Lapset pitäisi saada nukkumaan. – The children should be gotten to sleep.
- Hän lähti aikaisin nukkumaan. – He/She went to bed early.
In nukkumaanmenoaikani, this same nukkumaan is used inside the noun nukkumaanmeno (“going to sleep”), which is then compounded further.
So once you recognise nukkumaan in these various roles, the long compound becomes much more transparent.