Questions & Answers about Hän ei syö omenaa.
Why is it omenaa and not just omena?
Because the sentence is negative. In Finnish, if an action does not happen, the object receiving the action must always be in the partitive case. To get the partitive of omena, we just add an extra -a to the end.
Why doesn't the verb syö have a personal ending here?
In Finnish negative sentences, the negative word (ei) does the work of showing who is acting, while the main verb drops its personal ending. Because it follows ei, the verb uses its plain stem form (syö).
How do we know hän means 'he' and not 'she'?
We actually do not know from this sentence alone! The Finnish pronoun hän is completely gender-neutral and means both 'he' and 'she'. In real life, you would know who is being talked about from the rest of the conversation.
Does the partitive ending on omenaa mean it translates to 'an apple' instead of 'the apple'?
Not necessarily. Finnish does not have words for 'a' or 'the'. While the partitive can sometimes mean an unspecified amount, in a negative sentence like this, using the partitive is just a strict grammar rule for the object. Hän ei syö omenaa can mean 'He does not eat the apple' or 'He does not eat an apple' depending entirely on context.
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