Learn how to say "not" and "don't have" in Finnish
Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.
| Hei, minun nimeni on Paula. Hi everybody! I’m Paula. |
| Welcome to FinnishPod101.com’s “Suomea kolmessa minuutissa”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Finnish. |
| In our previous lessons, we have been practicing the different usages of the verb olla. In this lesson, we’re going to learn how turn it into a negative form to say “I am not” and “I don’t have”. |
| So imagine you are going to see a movie with your friend. You want to know if he is ready, so you ask Oletko sinä valmis? |
| He isn’t ready yet so he replies Minä en ole valmis. “I’m not ready.” |
| Then you’d like to know if he already has the tickets. You ask, Onko sinulla liput?, “Do you have the tickets?” and to your disappointment he answers Minulla ei ole lippuja, “I don’t have the tickets”. |
| Let’s break down these two negative sentences. |
| “I’m not ready.” Minä en ole valmis. |
| “I don’t have the tickets”. Minulla ei ole lippuja. |
| [slowly] Minä en ole valmis./ Minulla ei ole lippuja. |
| Can you guess what word we added to make them negative? It’s ei, which simply means “no”. This word is conjugated in the first sentence. |
| So let's have a look at the way to switch from affirmative to negative. |
| If your friend *were* ready, he would say Minä olen valmis, “I am ready.” But he wasn’t, so he said Minä en ole valmis. |
| So to make it negative, you must start by adding the word ei, which is conjugated. Then use the olla verb, which is in the form ole, when paired with ei. Ei ole. This is how to conjugate according to the pronoun: Minä en ole, “I am not”, sinä et ole, “you are not”, hän ei ole, “he or she is not”, me emme ole, “we are not”, te ette ole, “you are not” he eivät ole, “they are not”. |
| Now let's take a look at the example when talking about what you have. |
| "I have the tickets" is minulla on liput, and "I don't have the tickets" is Minulla ei ole lippuja. |
| You see this is almost the same as the earlier example, you just use the word minulla instead of minä. The words ei ole stay the same, but you have to conjugate the pronoun. It’s the same as we learned in the last lesson, do you remember? Minulla, sinulla, hänellä, meillä, teillä, heillä. |
| Let's see a few more examples. |
| How would you say “I don’t have a car”? |
| If you did have a car, you would say Minulla on auto. And turning it into a negative? |
| That’s right, Minulla ei ole autoa. |
| How about a phone? If you do have one, you could say Minulla on puhelin. So the negative is? Yes, minulla ei ole puhelinta. |
| You might have noticed that the noun changes a bit in the negative sentence. This is again because of the grammatical cases. When talking about a noun as the object, it sometimes gets the partitive ending -a, if the last letter is a vowel, or -ta, if it is a consonant. Hence auto, “car”, becomes autoa, and puhelin, “telephone”, becomes puhelinta. |
| Now it’s time for Paula’s insights |
| The grammatical cases are considered to be one of the most difficult aspects of learning Finnish. And no wonder, there are fifteen different cases! Even Finns sometimes have trouble with them. Although at this point it’s not essential for you to master them all, at least you will know why the nouns keep changing into weird forms! |
| So how about if you want to describe what your car or phone looks like? In the next lesson we will take a look at how to use adjectives in Finnish. |
| I’ll be waiting for you in the next Suomea kolmessa minuutissa lesson. |
| Nähdään pian! |
Comments
Hide