Breakdown of Kun säilytän rauhallisen hengityksen, koko keho tuntuu valoisammalta kokonaisuudelta.
Questions & Answers about Kun säilytän rauhallisen hengityksen, koko keho tuntuu valoisammalta kokonaisuudelta.
Finnish usually drops personal pronouns if the verb ending already shows the person.
- säilytän ends in -n, which marks 1st person singular (I).
- Because the person is clear from the verb ending, minä is optional and would usually only be added for emphasis, like:
Kun minä säilytän rauhallisen hengityksen… = When I (as opposed to others) keep my breathing calm…
So the sentence without minä is completely normal and neutral in Finnish.
The verb säilyttää literally means to preserve, to keep, to maintain.
- säilytän rauhallisen hengityksen = I maintain / keep (a) calm breathing.
This is acceptable Finnish, and in a context like meditation, yoga, or mindfulness it sounds quite natural and a bit deliberate: you are maintaining that calm state.
However, in everyday language you might more often see, for example:
- Kun hengitän rauhallisesti… – When I breathe calmly…
- Kun pidän hengitykseni rauhallisena… – When I keep my breathing calm…
(here hengitykseni = my breathing, rauhallisena = essive case)
So the original is correct and understandable, but there are also other very natural ways to express the same idea.
Both rauhallisen and hengityksen are in the genitive singular (ending -n), and together they form the direct object of säilytän.
- hengitys = breathing (basic form)
- hengityksen = of the breathing / breathing as a whole (genitive/“total” object)
- rauhallinen hengitys = calm breathing (nominative phrase)
- rauhallisen hengityksen = the calm breathing (as a whole thing that I maintain)
In Finnish, a completed or bounded action often takes a genitive (so-called total) object:
- Luet kirjan. – You read the (whole) book.
- Säilytän rauhallisen hengityksen. – I keep (my) breathing calm (as a maintained, complete state).
So the -n shows that this is a total object, not just “breathing” in general.
Yes, säilytän rauhallista hengitystä is grammatically possible, but the nuance changes.
rauhallisen hengityksen (genitive / total object)
→ Your breathing is treated as a stable, maintained state. You keep it calm as a whole, in a focused, goal‑like way.rauhallista hengitystä (partitive / partial object)
→ Emphasises the ongoing process of maintaining calm breathing, more like I am in the middle of keeping calm breathing going.
In practice, both could appear in similar contexts, but rauhallisen hengityksen fits well if you think of “keeping a calm breathing pattern” as a clearly maintained condition.
In Kun säilytän rauhallisen hengityksen, koko keho tuntuu…, kun introduces a time/condition clause:
- kun here ≈ when / whenever.
So the main reading is:
- When(ever) I maintain calm breathing, my whole body feels…
Finnish kun can, in other contexts, also mean because, but that usually depends on intonation and context. In your sentence, with no extra context, kun is best understood as when/whenever, not “because”.
The ending -lta/-ltä is the ablative case. With the verb tuntua (to feel, to seem), the thing that something “feels like” is put in the ablative.
Structure:
- koko keho – the whole body (subject, nominative)
- tuntuu – feels / seems
- valoisammalta kokonaisuudelta – like a brighter whole (predicative complement in ablative)
Both valoisammalta and kokonaisuudelta are ablative singular:
- valoisampi → valoisammalta
- kokonaisuus → kokonaisuudelta
Together they form one NP: a brighter whole. The ablative with tuntua roughly corresponds to English “feels like X”:
- Se tuntuu hyvältä. – It feels good.
- Koko keho tuntuu valoisammalta kokonaisuudelta. – The whole body feels like a brighter whole.
Finnish distinguishes between:
tuntea – to feel / to know something actively, with a person as subject
- Tunnen kehoni. – I feel / know my body.
tuntua – to feel / seem from the point of view of the thing itself, often with an ablative complement
- Keho tuntuu raska alta. – The body feels heavy.
- Koko keho tuntuu valoisammalta kokonaisuudelta.
In your sentence, the body is the subject that “feels like” something, so Finnish uses tuntua:
- koko keho tuntuu… = the whole body feels… (to me)
Base adjective: valoisa – bright, light.
Comparative: valoisampi – brighter, more bright.
Then we add the ablative ending -lta to the comparative stem:
- valoisampi → stem valoisammi-
- -lta → valoisammalta
So you see two things:
- -mpi signals the comparative degree.
- In this case, the p in -mpi assimilates to mm before -lta, giving -mma-: valoisammalta.
The important takeaway for usage: for tuntua, you take the comparative (valoisampi) and put it in the ablative: valoisammalta.
Yes, that is grammatically fine:
- Koko keho tuntuu valoisammalta. – My whole body feels brighter.
In that version:
- valoisammalta still has ablative -lta because it is the complement of tuntuu (“feels like brighter”).
Adding kokonaisuudelta (as a whole, as a complete entity) makes the sentence emphasise that the body feels like a brighter unified whole, not just that individual parts feel brighter. It’s mainly a nuance of emphasis.