Questions & Answers about Kotona me juomme lisää vettä.
Why is the word for water vettä here instead of its dictionary form vesi?
Vesi (water) is a mass noun, meaning it's an uncountable substance. When you do an action to an indefinite amount of a mass noun—like drinking some water rather than all the water in existence—Finnish puts the object in the partitive case. This is why we use vettä.
How does vesi turn into vettä in the partitive? That seems like a big spelling change!
Old, core Finnish words ending in -si often have surprising changes. The invisible stem for vesi is actually vete-. To form the partitive, the letters shift to vett- and take the partitive ending -ä. Because it is such a common word, it's easiest to just memorize that vesi becomes vettä.
Does the word lisää (more) also affect the form of vettä?
Yes! Words that express an indefinite amount, like lisää (more), paljon (a lot), or vähän (a little), always force the noun that follows them into the partitive case. So,
I've learned that 'in' or 'at' usually uses endings like -ssa or -lla. Why is 'at home' kotona?
While you could technically use the regular location endings to describe being physically inside the building (kodissa), kotona is a special, fixed expression used to mean the general state of being 'at home'. The -na ending here is an old grammatical form that survived in a few common words.
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