Breakdown of Hänellä ei ole työpaikkaa, koska hän on sairas.
olla
to be
hän
he / she
koska
because
ei
no / not (negative verb)
Questions & Answers about Hänellä ei ole työpaikkaa, koska hän on sairas.
Why does this sentence use työpaikkaa instead of the basic form työpaikka?
Because this is a negative possession sentence ("doesn't have"). In Finnish, when you say someone does not have something, the thing they don't have must be in the partitive case. We add -a to työpaikka to make it partitive.
Why do we use Hänellä at the beginning of the sentence, but just hän after the comma?
Finnish doesn't have a verb for "to have." To say "he has" or "he doesn't have," you put the person in the adessive case (-llä or -lla), which acts like saying "on him." But after the comma, we are just saying "he is sick." For a normal "is" sentence, the subject stays in its basic dictionary form (hän).
Is työpaikka a compound word?
Yes! It is made by combining työ (work) and paikka (place). Together they mean "job" or "workplace."
Could this sentence also mean "She does not have a job"?
Yes! The Finnish pronoun hän is completely gender-neutral. It means both "he" and "she", so you would rely on the surrounding context to know who is being talked about.