# Finnish partitives and French partitive articles



## kimko_379

Do you translate French "du pain," "de la viande," "des filles" into Finnish with partitive-cases?


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## jazyk

Yes.


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## Jagorr

Even though their grammatical meanings may be in some aspects similar, the translation highly depends on the context.


E.g. _La bonne terre, comme la bonne nourriture, ne doit être ni trop grasse, ni trop lourde, ni trop froide <...>, elle doit être comme *du pain*, ou *du pain d' épices*  <...>
->
Hyvä multa ei saa hyvän ruoan lailla olla liian rasvainen ja raskas eikä kylmä  <...>,  sen on oltava kuin *leipä *, kuin *piparkakku*._
(Čapek, _L’Année du jardinier_)


_Hélas, le manuscrit arabe n’était plus là. Je m’en rappelais vaguement la vieille couverture, pas très robuste, fort usée, *avec de fines bandes métalliques*.
->
Mutta arabialaista käsikirjoitusta ei enää löytynyt. Muistin hämärästi sen vanhat, ohuet ja varsin kuluneet kannet, *joissa oli kevyet metallihelat*. _

If you use nouns in partitive after such words as _beaucoup, assez, un kilo _or _paljon, liian, tarpeeksi - _it is more likely that you'll have the correspondence between partitiivi and l'article partitif.

_Beaucoup de filles veulent faire l'acte charnel avec moi, tellement je danse bien.
->
Monet tytöt haluavat minua, koska olen niin hyvä tanssija._

But:
_Beaucoup de filles ici.  ->  Tyttöjä kyllä riittää._


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## kimko_379

Excuse me:  I am a beginner with only just a smattering of Finnish.
Would you mind explaining to me the difference(s) between the last two translations, please?


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## Jagorr

kimko_379 said:


> the difference(s) between the last two translations, please?



There, the French examples do not differ. The difference lies in the Finnish constructions. _Monet _is used with Plural nominative.

Partitive in _Tyttöjä kyllä riittää._ can be explained by the meaning of the subject, which is an indefinite quantity not defined by other determinators (like monet/minut/nämä _tytöt_). In the same manner one can say _Tyttöjä on paljon/vähän/enemmän kuin... _etc.

_Minä kirjoitin yllä, etten kaipaa tyttövauvaa yhtään, vaan __*pojat* __riittävät._ (eli minut pojat)


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## kimko_379

Jagorr said:


> There, the French examples do not differ. The difference lies in the Finnish constructions. _Monet _is used with Plural nominative.
> 
> Partitive in _Tyttöjä kyllä riittää._ can be explained by the meaning of the subject, which is an indefinite quantity not defined by other determinators (like monet/minut/nämä _tytöt_). In the same manner one can say _Tyttöjä on paljon/vähän/enemmän kuin... _etc.
> 
> _Minä kirjoitin yllä, etten kaipaa tyttövauvaa yhtään, vaan __*pojat* __riittävät._ (eli minut pojat)


I wonder if you could possibly assign/attach an English translation to each major new example word, phrase, and sentence.  I am SUCH a novice that I fail to have any Finnish dictionary, even.  Excuse me the troubles I've been causing you.


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## Jagorr

kimko_379 said:


> I wonder if you could possibly assign/attach an English translation to each major new example word, phrase, and sentence.  I am SUCH a novice that I fail to have any Finnish dictionary, even.  Excuse me the troubles I've been causing you.



You could use for instance bab.la, sanakirja.org, kielitoimistonsanakirja.fi (only Finnish) to help you with translation.


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## n8abx9

I think what Jagorr tries to explain with the last example is that 
a) Finnish use of partitive depends on syntactical features, and
b) you need to consider that Finnish has entirely different sentence types than French. 

In Finnish, only certain types of sentences can have a partitive subject, for instance. (And it is even debatable whether this actually is a subject, or whether the term is used only due to a history of describing Finnish grammar with Indo-European glasses on.) So the partitive "tyttöjä" (girls) cannot be used in every syntactical position. For instance, it can not be the subject of a verb that takes an object nor the subject of a copula that takes a predicative. There are also many other counter examples to demonstrate that French and Finnish partitive are not used the same way.

The takeaway for someone who starts studying Finnish is: Pay utmost attention to the different sentence types in Finnish as they all come with very different sets of rules concerning the use of cases.


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## n8abx9

"Partitiivin valinta" - the following interview addresses this question, also the relation to French: Monipuolinen partitiivi on suomensukuisten kielten erikoisuus | Audio Areena


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## kimko_379

Thank you so much for your trouble, n8abx9 !  But as for myself, like I said, I'm just such a Finnish beginner that I would fail to comprehend the interview anyway.  I can only hope that other answerers and occasional/accidental readers will find your info very useful.


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## n8abx9

He basically says that the French partitiivi is an entirely different thing as it means "taken of something", i.e. "du lait" = "some of the milk". The Finnish partitive apparently used to have a similar meaning but that was wayyyyyyyyy long ago and for the past 10 000 years or so the Finnish partitive has acquired a meaning of absence or incompletion (wheras the separation "of something" is dealt with by the elatiivi). So "juon vähän maidosta" (elatiivi, comparable to French "du lait") is technically/linguistically not the same as "juon maitoa" (partitiivi), even though the meaning is similar.

He also says that the Finnish partitiivi can occur in many different places (subject, object, predicative, time, ...) BUT only in certain cases, and case changes frequenty for all sorts of reasons (both semantical and grammatical). So even a near-perfect foreign-origin speaker of Finnish would likely be recognizable by the odd partitiivi mistake (using it where it shouldn't be or forgetting to use it).


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## Jagorr

Jagorr said:


> monet/minut/nämä _tytöt_)





Jagorr said:


> (eli [minut] pojat)


Something came over me and I started declining possessive pronouns.  
It should be _minu*n*_, of course.


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## kimko_379

Jagorr said:


> Something came over me and I started declining possessive pronouns.
> It should be _minu*n*_, of course.


Excuse me?  Which line in what number post ( = post  # ? ) do you mean?
And I would like you to add English translations of the above word, please.


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## Jagorr

Post 5. Possessive pronoun. Means _my_/_mine_. Has no declension in Finnish.


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