# Plural or singular?



## pablosfon

Hi, in the sentence "Hyvaa joulua rakkaalle ruskeakarhulleni"  this means "*MY* dear bear" or "*OUR* dear bear"?
I wanna know if this is a _personal _message saying: you are the dearest bear _for me _ or if it is a more general thing like you are the bear _everyone loves_.
Thank you!


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## fennofiili

It definitely means “my (brown) bear”. The suffix -ni is the first person singular possessive suffix, corresponding to “my”. The first person plural suffix is -mme (e.g. ruskeakarhullemme).

By the way, the word “ruskeakarhu” is not present in normal dictionaries. It is a normal word, though not in popular language. The species brown bear,_ Ursus arctos_, is commonly known as just “karhu”, since there are no other bear species in Finland. In contexts where other bear species might be referred to, it may also be called “maakarhu” (literally “land bear”) to distinguish it from “jääkarhu” (polar bear, literally “ice bear”) or “ruskeakarhu” (literally “brown bear”) to distinguish it from other bears, like “mustakarhu” (literally “black bear”).


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## pablosfon

Kiitos!
What about the word rakkaalle in the phrase? is the suffux *lle* plural or personal singular? 
When I translate this phrase on google translator it says: Merry Christmas to OUR dear brown bear. In the french transltion and portuguese translation it has the same meaning of OUR. I dont know what makes it be translated as OUR and not as MY. As a consequence in the end I do not know if the person tryed to be personal saying "...MY beloved bear" or general "...OUR beloved bear".
Kiitos!


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## fennofiili

pablosfon said:


> Kiitos!
> What about the word rakkaalle in the phrase? is the suffux *lle* plural or personal singular?



Neither. It is a case suffix, often (and here) corresponding to the English preposition “to”.



> When I translate this phrase on google translator it says: Merry Christmas to OUR dear brown bear. In the french transltion and portuguese translation it has the same meaning of OUR. I dont know what makes it be translated as OUR and not as MY.


Google Translator does odd things. Machine translation generally uses mixed strategies and may produce strange results, like translating white to black. In this case, the mistranslation seems to be caused by an error in the grammatical analysis of the Finnish text, since the same mistake appears to be present, no matter what we set as the target language. Perhaps the reason is that “hyvää joulua” is such a common phrase and Google Translator uses phraseological translation based on data where such greetings are mostly directed to “our” friends or relatives.

You can see that the Translator is thoroughly confused if you try “Hyvää joulua rakkaalle karhulleni", i.e. with just the first part of compound omitted from the original. You get “Merry Christmas to our dear karhulleni”, i.e. the Tranlastor treats the last word as uninflected. If you try “Hyvää joulua rakkaalle koiralleni” (... to my dear dog), you get “Merry Christmas to our dear my dog”!


> As a consequence in the end I do not know if the person tryed to be personal saying "...MY beloved bear" or general "...OUR beloved bear".


It is personal “...MY beloved bear”. There is no doubt about it. Here’s a full analysis:
– hyvää: partitive singular of “hyvä” (good)
– joulua: partitive singular of “joulu” (Christmas)
– rakkaalle: allative singular of “rakas” (dear, beloved)
– ruskeakarhulleni: allative singular of “ruskeakarhu” (brown bear) with 1st person singular possessive suffix -ni

The partitive, with -a, -ä, -ta, or -tä suffix, is a form generally used in greetings, where it can be regarded as the case of a grammatical object, with an implied verb like “toivotan” or “toivon” (I wish). The allative, with -lle suffix, typically corresponds to the English preposition “to”. The case suffix is appended both to a noun and an adjective preceding it, whereas a possessive suffix is appended to the last word of a phrase only.


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## pablosfon

Thank you very much for your attention, your answer and explanation were great!
Kiitos!


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