Came across this phrase in a Finnish course but I can’t find any other examples of the adessive being used this way? As I understand it, “mulla” is the colloquial form of “minulla”, which is paired with “on” to mean “I have”, e.g. “minulla on kissa” = “I have a cat”. So “mulla on ruokakauppa” would mean something like “I have a supermarket”, which I guess could technically be correct but from context (the course is just in Finnish) it seems like it’s supposed to mean something more like “I’m at the supermarket”. Is “minulla on …” ever used in this way? Or have I just gotten confused somewhere?
It indeed means “I have a grocery store” and is a correctly formed Finnish phrase assuming you are an owner of a grocery store. For the vast majority it makes no sense unless you continue it with something like “mulla on ruokakauppa tien toisella puolella”, which means “I have a grocery store on the other side of the street”. In that context you could of course say that “mulla on ruokakauppa / I have a grocery store” means that you have an access to a grocery store, which some people in the world might not have, because there might be no grocery stores in the area they live in.
Thanks, that makes sense! It was just a full sentence on its own which seemed a bit odd to me, especially with no context of being the owner.
You’re correct, it means “I have a supermarket”. It’s not supposed to mean “I’m at the supermarket”, the “minulla on” form is never used to say you’re somewhere.
Thanks, I thought so, just figured I’d make sure!
The colloiqualism goes a bit further still in real world Finnish, ‘mulla on ruokakauppa’ gets chopped to ‘mullon ruokakauppa’. But yeah, just what you’d expect at the late night grill when two strangers share: ‘Mä oon lääkäri’ - ‘I’m a doctor’. ‘Mulla on ruokakauppa’ - ‘I run a grocery store’.
That’s helpful, thank you! I think I was getting confused because I was translating directly to English and ‘I have a grocery store’ sounds a bit odd. But thinking of it more as ‘I run a grocery store’ in this context makes sense. And I can see how ‘mulla on’ could roll together into ‘mullon’ quite easily as well.
