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Questions & Answers about Koira syö lihaa.
How do we get syö from its dictionary form?
The dictionary form is syödä (to eat). This is a Type 2 verb, which means it ends in -da or -dä. To get the stem, you just drop that ending, leaving syö-. For the "he/she/it" form (like our dog here), we usually lengthen the last vowel of the stem, but since syö- already ends in a diphthong (two vowels), it stays exactly as it is: koira syö.
How would I say "The dog doesn't eat meat"?
You would say Koira ei syö lihaa. To make a Type 2 verb negative, you use the negative word (here, ei for the dog) followed by the plain verb stem without any personal endings. Since the stem of syödä is syö-, the negative form is simply ei syö.
Why does the word for meat have an extra -a at the end (lihaa instead of liha)?
Lihaa is in the partitive case. We use this case for the object of an action when it is an uncountable "mass noun" (like meat, water, or coffee) and we mean an unspecified amount. The dog is eating some meat, rather than a whole, countable object.
There is no word for "the" in the Finnish sentence. How do we know it's "The dog" and not "A dog"?