Breakdown of Minulla ei ole passia, mutta minulla on yhdeksäntoista euroa.
olla
to be
minä
I
mutta
but
ei
no / not (negative verb)
Questions & Answers about Minulla ei ole passia, mutta minulla on yhdeksäntoista euroa.
Why does the sentence use minulla instead of minä for 'I'?
Finnish doesn't have a direct verb for 'to have'. Instead, it uses a structure that literally means 'at me is'. The ending -lla on the pronoun makes it minulla (at me).
Why is the word for passport passia instead of just passi?
In Finnish, when you say you do not have something, the thing you don't have must be in the partitive case. Adding -a to passi makes it passia.
Why is the verb ole used instead of olen?
Why does euroa have an -a at the end if there are nineteen of them?
After numbers greater than one, Finnish uses the partitive singular form of the noun, not a plural form like in English. So, after yhdeksäntoista (nineteen), the word euro becomes euroa.