Hänen vaimonsa nimi on. .

Hi,

In dictionary, it says Hänen means “his” and vaimonsa “his wife”. So in the sentence: Hänen vaimonsa nimi on Mary Smith, I am wondering why there have to be “his”, twice?

Many thanks!

If you were to say, “Minun vaimoni nimi on …”, you could definitely leave out the “Minun”. Likewise with “Sinun vaimosi nimi on…”.

Choosing to use “Minun” or “Sinun” in the above contexts could be a way of adding emphasis to your statement. “MY wife’s name is…”

But when you say “Hänen vaimonsa nimi on…”, it sounds incomplete and incorrect to leave out the “Hänen”.


Nb: In spoken Finnish, I think most people will tend to leave out the correct ending of the word and just say “Hänen vaimon nimi on …” or (even more colloquially) “Sen vaimon nimi on …”

Thank you, Peter!

Though, what is the basic form of them(vaimoni, vaimosi, and vaimonsa)? The form is changing by the subject(Minun, Sinun, Hänen) here, am I correct?

Oh and, do you know any resources that have both audio and transcript, aiming to teach specifically colloquial Finnish? At the moment I am more interested to learn Finnish for a conversation than the written language for reading books.

Paljon kiitoksia!

The basic form is “vaimo”.

Sorry, I’m terrible at answering questions about things like “subject” and “object”. But I can give you the following examples.

"Minun siskoni… " (sisko)
"Sinun talosi… " (talo)
“Hänen kirjansa…” (kirja)
“Meidän sohvamme…” (sohva)
"Teidän autonne… " (auto)
"Heidän kynänsä… " (kynä)

In “correct” Finnish these endings are used. I think the words “hänen” and “heidän” are the only ones that need to be used in order for it to make sense, the others (minun, sinun, meidän, teidän) can be left out in a sentence.

In terms of resources, the only thing I have are the “colloquial” lessons that formed part of the FSI course that I have already edited and uploaded. I will upload those if you like. The only issue is that they are a little bit dated, and they are not really THAT colloquial. But I guess it’s better than nothing…

@Monyou Not on LingQ, but one book with CD is “Kato hei” by Maarit Berg snd Leena Silfverberg,

@Peter - Thanks!! I decided to stick to the written language for a while… but of course I would appreciate your colloquial Finnish lessons but if you say it’s not THAT colloquial! :smiley:

@keke eo - Thank you! I will definitely look for that one.