Breakdown of Meillä on neljätoista pöytää ja neljäkymmentä tuolia.
olla
to be
tuoli
chair
ja
and
me
we
pöytä
table
neljätoista
fourteen
neljäkymmentä
forty
Questions & Answers about Meillä on neljätoista pöytää ja neljäkymmentä tuolia.
Why does the sentence use the verb 'on' (is) to mean 'we have'?
Finnish doesn't have a direct verb for 'to have'. Instead, it uses a structure that literally means 'at someone is'. Meillä means 'at us', and on means 'is'. Even though there are many tables and chairs, the verb in this 'having' structure is always the singular on.
Why are the words for tables and chairs in the singular partitive case (pöytää and tuolia) instead of plural?
In Finnish, when you use a specific number greater than one, the noun that follows it must be in the partitive singular case, not the plural. That is why the base words pöytä (table) and tuoli (chair) take the partitive endings -ä and -a after the numbers.
Why does pöytää get an -ä ending, but tuolia gets an -a ending?
This is due to a rule called vowel harmony. If a word has front vowels like ä, ö, or y (as in pöytä), its endings must also use front vowels, so it gets -ä. If a word has back vowels like a, o, or u (as in tuoli), it gets back vowel endings like -a.
How do the number endings work for neljätoista (14) and neljäkymmentä (40)?
The ending -toista is used for numbers 11 to 19 and literally means 'of the second'. So neljätoista is 'four of the second ten'. For multiples of ten, you add -kymmentä (which means 'tens') to the base number. So neljäkymmentä means 'four tens'.
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