Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Very common object sentences in Finnish

Here's a random list of sentences where the object is in the genitive case. All the sentences are positive. If they were negative, the object would be in partitive.

  1. Minä tiedän sen. - I know that.
  2. Luin hyvän kirjan. - I read a good book. (past tense)
  3. Ostin hänelle pienen lahjan. - I bought her a small present. 
  4. Antaisitko minulle omenan? - Would you give me an apple?
  5. Voisitko sanoa sen uudelleen? - Could you say it again?
  6. Miksi sinä ostit vain yhden sipulin? - Why did you buy just one onion?
  7. Voitko ottaa minusta kuvan? - Can you take a picture of me?
  8. Minä haluan koiran! - I want to have a dog!
  9. Sinä tarvitset uuden puhelimen - You need a new phone. 
  10. Minä löysin sen! - I found it!
  11. Miksi sinä myit sen? - Why did you sell it?
  12. Lähetin hänelle viestin. - I sent him a message. 
  13. Mä unohdin meidän tapaamisen! - I forgot our meeting!
  14. Muistitko maidon? - Did you remember the milk?
  15. Aiotko kutsua Liisan? - Are you going to invite Liisa?
  16. Mistä sinä olet ostanut tämän? - From where have you bought this?
  17. Ymmärsin melkein kaiken. - I understood almost everything.


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My name is Hanna Männikkölahti. I am a professional Finnish teacher who gives private online lessons and simplifies books into easy Finnish. Please read more in www.linktr.ee/hannamannikkolahti and follow this blog, if you want to be the first one to know when I post something new. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I get what you are saying when you say "and the object is something that you can count." but it is still a bit dubious (and I must say confusing) statement to make about:
- everything
- milk
- Liisa (15)
- it/this/that (1,5,10,11,17)

The 3rd and 4th category don't feel that unintuitive to me but the whole thing where "milks" can mean "multiple containers of milk" and thus turning milk into something countable needs that context in order to make sense.

I don't really know what to say about the "everything" here. The Kaikki/kaiket distinction is one I don't really understand yet, meaning I'm not sure how to pass "kaiken" in various contexts, but in any case, I felt the need to comment on behalf of anyone who like me, thinks: "What do you mean? One every(thing), two everies (everythings)?" when they see this word described as a countable.

Tommy Quist said...

Oh, I should add that it only just occurred to me that in the circumstance of ordering at like a bar or something is the one circumstance you might expect "two milks" to work. But certainly not (like in Finnish)"Can you go to the store and buy me three milks" - or more directly related to this article - "a milk" "