Questions & Answers about Hän nauraa kolme kertaa päivässä.
Why is kertaa used instead of the basic word kerta?
The basic word for 'time' (as in one time, two times) is kerta. Because the number kolme (three) is greater than one, the noun following it must be in the partitive singular form. The partitive form of kerta is kertaa.
Why does the sentence use päivässä instead of just päivä?
Päivässä is the inessive ('in') form of päivä (day). In Finnish, to say how often something happens 'per day' or 'a day', you literally say it happens 'in a day'.
Why does the verb nauraa look exactly like its dictionary form?
The basic dictionary form of the verb is nauraa (to laugh). To conjugate it for the pronoun hän (he/she), Finnish takes the verb stem (naura-) and doubles the last vowel. Doubling the 'a' gives us nauraa, which just happens to look identical to the dictionary form!
Does hän specifically mean 'he' in this sentence?
It can mean either 'he' or 'she'! Finnish does not have separate pronouns for genders. The pronoun hän is completely gender-neutral. We translated it as 'he' here, but 'she' would be equally correct.
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