Questions & Answers about Meillä ei ole rahaa.
Why is the word for money rahaa instead of just raha?
This is the partitive case, which you are learning now! In Finnish, when you say you do not have something, the thing you do not have must be in the partitive case. So, the base word raha gets the partitive ending -a to become rahaa.
How do I know whether to add -a or -ta for the partitive ending here?
For words ending in a short single vowel like raha, the partitive ending is usually just -a or -ä. The ending -ta or -tä is mostly used for words ending in two consecutive vowels or a consonant.
Why does the sentence use meillä instead of the basic word for we, me?
Finnish does not have a direct verb for to have. Instead, it uses the adessive case (the -lla or -llä ending) to say at someone. So meillä literally means at us.
Why is the negative verb ei instead of emme (we do not)?
In the Finnish to have structure, the verb is always in the third-person singular (it is). The literal translation of this sentence is at us it is not money. Because of this structure, we use the it form ei instead of the we form emme.